However, the sympathetic transmission of sentiments can vary in effectiveness depending upon the degree of resemblance and contiguity between the observer and the person with whom he sympathizes. 3). 10. 2. Thus for effective use there must be some act of the speaker’s mind expressed by the special phrase “I promise” and its synonyms, and our moral obligation results from this act of the mind. 1. Morality is always and everywhere a cooperative phenomenon. First, it shows that actions cannot be reasonable or unreasonable. Commentators have proposed various nterpretations to avoid these difficulties. The will, Hume claims, is an immediate effect of pain or pleasure (T 2. . The Common Point of View As we saw, the moral sentiments are produced by sympathy with those affected by a trait or action. He gives two arguments to this end. Those traits of which we approve naturally (without any social contrivance), such as beneficence, clemency, and moderation, also tend to the good of individuals or all of society. Therefore morals cannot be derived from reason alone. Linked with these meta-ethical controversies is the dilemma of understanding the ethical life either as the “ancients” do, in terms of virtues and vices of character, or as the “moderns” do, primarily in terms of principles of duty or natural law. We can determine, by observing the various sorts of traits toward which we feel approval, that every such trait — every virtue — has at least one of the following four characteristics: it is either immediately agreeable to the person who has it or to others, or it is useful (advantageous over the longer term) to its possessor or to others. Hume rejects both theses. They have referred to a number of different principles as the basis for moral goodness, but in Hume's opinion they have not succeeded in giving a satisfactory account of the virtues, nor have they been able to show why it is that they have been preferred to other types of conduct. Intentional actions are caused by the direct passions (including the instincts). Ethical theorists and theologians of the day held, variously, that moral good and evil are discovered: (a) by reason in some of its uses (Hobbes, Locke, Clarke), (b) by divine revelation (Filmer), (c) by conscience or reflection on one’s (other) impulses (Butler), or (d) by a moral sense: an emotional responsiveness manifesting itself in approval or disapproval (Shaftesbury, Hutcheson). 1. 6) Interpreters disagree as to whether Hume is an instrumentalist or a skeptic about practical reason. Assess the View That the Disagreements About the Second Front Were the Most Significant Cause of Tension Between Russia and the West Between 1941-5? 1 The Circle * 10. For oneself and for others. Such disinterested uneasiness, and the concomitant pleasure we feel on contemplating the public benefits of adherence, are instances of moral disapproval and approval. ISBN 978-0199878574. 3). Such a claim could not be supported a priori. We superimpose government on such a pre-civil society when it grows large and prosperous; only then do we need to use political power to enforce these rules of justice in order to preserve social cooperation. One advantage Hume’s explanation of the moral sentiments in terms of sympathy has over Hutcheson’s claim that we possess a God-given moral sense is that it enables him to provide a unified theory of the mind. Note that on this reading it is compatible with the is/ought paragraph that once a person has the moral concepts as the result of prior experience of the moral sentiments, he or she may reach some particular moral conclusions by inference from causal, factual premises (stated in terms of ‘is’) about the effects of character traits on the sentiments of observers. The Influencing Motives of the Will * 4. But, Hume argues, it is absurd to think that one can actually bring an obligation into existence by willing to be obligated. Such sympathetically-acquired feelings are distinct from our self-interested responses, and an individual of discernment learns to distinguish her moral sentiments (which are triggered by contemplating another’s character trait “in general”) from the pleasure or uneasiness she may feel when responding to a trait with reference to her “particular interest,” for example when another’s strength of character makes him a formidable opponent (T 3. . 7). There is heated debate about what Hume intends by each of these theses and how he argues for them. Since Hume here understands representation in terms of copying, he says a passion has no “representative quality, which renders it a copy of any other existence or modification” (T 2. . (A more refined form of this interpretation allows that moral evaluations have some propositional content, but claims that for Hume their essential feature, as evaluations, is non-propositional. According to the dominant twentieth-century interpretation, Hume says here that no ought-judgment may be correctly inferred from a set of premises expressed only in terms of ‘is,’ and the vulgar systems of morality commit this logical fallacy. Particular governments are legitimate because of their usefulness in preserving society, not because those who wield power were chosen by God or received promises of obedience from the people. 1. * 1. This signalling is not a promise (which cannot occur without another, similar convention), but an expression of conditional intention. 9), he repeats and expands it to argue that volitions and actions as well cannot be so. Hume says the argument, as applied to actions, proves two points. Required fields are marked *. 2. If moral evaluations are merely expressions of feeling without propositional content, then of course they cannot be inferred from any propositional premises. Once the convention is in place, justice (of this sort) is defined as conformity with the convention, injustice as violation of it; indeed, the convention defines property rights, ownership, financial obligation, theft, and related concepts, which had no application before the convention was introduced. 1. taken to imply the failure of Hutcheson and Hume’s moral sentimentalism as a whole. (T 1. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. This instance confirms that “the reflecting on the tendency of characters and mental qualities, is sufficient to give us the sentiments of approbation and blame” (T 3. . And since the imagination is more struck by what is particular than by what is general, manifestations of the natural virtues, which directly benefit any individual to whom they are directed, are even more apt to give pleasure via sympathy than are the manifestations of justice, which may harm identifiable individuals in some cases though they contribute to a pattern of action beneficial to society as a whole (T 3. Of this impression there is a copy taken by the mind, which remains after the impression ceases; and this we call an idea. 17). "Mill's Moral and Political Philosophy". It is enough that we experience it as a principle inherent in human nature. Other interpreters — the more cognitivist ones — see the paragraph about ‘is’ and ‘ought’ as doing none of the above. Hume’s empirically-based thesis that we are fundamentally loving, parochial, and also selfish creatures underlies his political philosophy. This is a controversial claim and not one of which Hume offers any defense. We use our own and third-party cookies to improve the browsing experience. Passions (and volitions and actions), Hume says, do not refer to other entities; they are “original existence[s],” (T 2. 3. The first is a largely empirical argument based on the two rational functions of the understanding. Also, perhaps there are (propositional) beliefs we acquire via probable reasoning but not by such reasoning alone. It is possible that Hume only means to say, in the premise that reason alone cannot influence action, that reasoning processes cannot generate actions as their logical conclusions; but that would introduce an equivocation, since he surely does not mean to say, in the other premise, that moral evaluations generate actions as their logical conclusions. Hume famously declaims, “’Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. The understanding discovers the abstract relations of ideas by demonstration (a process of comparing ideas and finding congruencies and incongruencies); and it also discovers the causal (and other probabilistic) relations of objects that are revealed in experience. Fidelity to Promises Fidelity is the virtue of being disposed to keep promises and contracts. Henry D. Aiken (New York : Hafner, 1948). Instrumentalists understand the claim that reason is the slave of the passions to allow that reason not only discovers the causally efficacious means to our ends (a task of theoretical causal reasoning) but also requires us to take them. Baselines, at Legal Theory Blog. While even so law-oriented a thinker as Hobbes has a good deal to say about virtue, the ethical writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries predominantly favor a rule- or law-governed understanding of morals, giving priority to laws of nature or principles of duty. And that he knew the simplest and universal principle in which you can solve and base your virtuous and original general principles for individual use. Since actions cannot be reasonable or against reason, it follows that “[l]audable and blameable are not the same with reasonable or unreasonable” (T 458). Moral rationalists tend to say, first, that moral properties are discovered by reason, and also that what is morally good is in accord with reason (even that goodness consists in reasonableness) and what is morally evil is unreasonable. In the Treatise Hume includes among the artificial virtues honesty with respect to property (which he often calls equity or “justice,” though it is a strangely narrow use of the term), fidelity to promises (sometimes also listed under “justice”), allegiance to one’s government, conformity to the laws of nations (for princes), chastity (refraining from non-marital sex) and modesty (both primarily for women and girls), and good manners. We Will Write a Custom Essay SpecificallyFor You For Only $13.90/page! Add then: "...we can only hope to be successful following the experimental method and deducting general maxims through a comparison of particular cases". Hume gives three arguments in the Treatise for the motivational “inertia” of reason alone. The properties are not identical. While for Hume the condition of humankind in the absence of organized society is not a war of all against all, neither is it the law-governed and highly cooperative domain imagined by Locke. Hume explicitly favors an ethic of character along “ancient” lines. Causal reasoning, by contrast, does infer matters of fact pertaining to actions, in particular their causes and effects; but the vice of an action (its wickedness) is not found in its causes or effects, but is only apparent when we consult the sentiments of the observer. If reason alone were to resist a passion, it would need to give rise to such a contrary impulse. For oneself and for others. So does observing the typical cause of a passion: if we contemplate the instruments laid out for another’s surgery, even someone unknown to us, they evoke ideas in us of fear and pain. Divine voluntarists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as Samuel Pufendorf claim that moral obligation or requirement, if not every sort of moral standard, is the product of God’s will. In the Treatise, however, he explicitly repudiates the doctrine of liberty as “absurd… in one sense, and unintelligible in any other” (T 2. 133: Of Superstition and Enthusiasm . 145: Of the Dignity or Meanness of Human Nature XII Of Civil Liberty . From this many draw the sweeping conclusion that for Hume moral evaluations are not beliefs or opinions of any kind, but lack all cognitive content. 4). 1. We possess greed, and also “limited generosity” — dispositions to kindness and liberality which are more powerfully directed toward kin and friends and less aroused by strangers. They are seduced from important, yet distant interests by the allure of present, often frivolous temptations. To make a moral evaluation I must sympathize with each of these persons in their dealings with the subject of my evaluation; the blame or praise I give as a result of this imaginative exercise is my genuine moral assessment of the subject’s character. 2. 7–8). The Project Gutenberg EBook of An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, by David Hume This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. First, observation of the effects of another person’s “affection” and its outward expressions in his “countenance and conversation” conveys the idea of his passion into my mind. The typical moral judgment isthat some trait, such as a particular person’s benevolence orlaziness, is a virtue or a vice. The virtues and vices are those traits the disinterested contemplation of which produces approval and disapproval, respectively, in whoever contemplates the trait, whether the trait’s possessor or another. This last view emphasizes Hume’s claim that moral good and evil are like heat, cold, and colors as understood in “modern philosophy,” which are experienced directly by sensation, but about which we form beliefs. And he adds that even "the subtle Lord Shaftesbury " (who often quotes in his works) is not entirely free of it. His view is not, of course, that reason plays no role in the generation of action; he grants that reason provides information, in particular about means to our ends, which makes a difference to the direction of the will. 2); so while Hume is not explicit (and perhaps not consistent) on this matter, it seems that he does not regard the will as itself a (separate) cause of action. c) And they are utilitarian norms. Teleological rules, of the good and its consequences. The traits he calls natural virtues are more refined and completed forms of those human sentiments we could expect to find even in people who belonged to no society but cooperated only within small familial groups. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of … Powered By Child Education WordPress Theme. But now we need to pursue what the word is taken to mean, in order to see if that is true. He says in the Treatise that the liberty of indifference is the negation of necessity in this sense; this is the notion of liberty that he there labels absurd, and identifies with chance or randomness (which can be no real power in nature) both in the Treatise and the first (epistemological) Enquiry. 4. 3 The Motive of Honest Actions Does this account resolve the circularity problem? . It is not simply by reasoning from the abstract and causal relations one has discovered that one comes to have the ideas of virtue and vice; one must respond to such information with feelings of approval and disapproval. The moral sentiments are typically calm rather than violent, although they can be intensified as a result of our awareness of the moral responses of others. 1). He then asks a general nature about the nature of the passions and says that “the impression arising from virtue [is being] agreeable, and that proceeding … One version says that the moral judgments, as distinct from the moral feelings, are factual judgments about the moral sentiments (Capaldi). For every virtue, therefore, there must be some non-moral motive that characteristically motivates actions expressive of that virtue, which motive, by eliciting our approval, makes the actions so motivated virtuous. Consider reading the moral writings of atheistic thinkers, modern ethicists, and theologians, such as Dawkins, Rand, Aristotle, Epicurus, Mill, Confucius, Kant, Nietzsche, Hume, and the various authors of the Abrahamic and Buddhist texts, to list some of the original author's favorites. We must stop somewhere in our examination of the causes. Often grouped with the latter view is the third, dispositional interpretation, which understands moral evaluations as factual judgments to the effect that the evaluated trait or action is so constituted as to cause feelings of approval or disapproval in a (suitably characterized) spectator (Mackie, in one of his proposals). Now, we at all times possess a maximally vivid and forceful impression of ourselves. The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law. (Moral Rationalism) Morality — this argument goes on — influences our passions and actions: we are often impelled to or deterred from action by our opinions of obligation or injustice. They aim happiness through virtues.