The Scottish Philosopher
David Hume
(1711-1776):
An Introduction into the ethical theory
of David Hume.
If you want truth look to science or mathematics; ethics is
ultimately based on our feelings; Natural moral sentiments is
where moral decision-making is grounded.
1
Consider the following quote…
“Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the
destruction of the whole world to the
scratching of my finger.”
~ A Treatise on Human Reason, edited by L.A. Selby-Rigge
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 416.
2
Consider the following quote…
“Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the
passions, and can never pretend to any other
office to serve and obey them.”
~ A Treatise on Human Reason, edited by L.A. Selby-Rigge
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 416.
3
Consider the following quote:
“Take any action allowed to be vicious: willful murder, for
instance. Examine it in all its lights and see if you can find
that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice….
You never can find it, till you turn your affection into your
own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which
arises in you, towards this action. Here is a matter of fact;
but it is the object of feeling, not of reason. It lies in your self,
not in the object. So that which you pronounce any action or
character to be vicious, you mean nothing, but that from the
constitution of your nature you have a feeling or sentiment of
blame from the contemplation of it.”
~ A Treatise of Human Nature, Everyman’s Library (New
York: E.P. Dutton, 1956) 2:177.
4
Consider the following quote…
“When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles what
havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume-of
divinity or school metaphysics, for instance-let us ask, Does
it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or
number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning
concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then
to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry
[literalism] and illusion.”
~ Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 12.3.173.
5
I.
Major Tenets:
(1)
Reason alone cannot be a motive to the will, but rather is the
“slave of the passions” In other words, reason alone
cannot motivate to action; the impulse to act itself must
come from moral sentiments.
(2)
Morals are not derived from reason; they are derived from
the experience of people.
(3)
Morals are generated from moral sentiments: feelings of
approbation (approval, esteem, praise) & disapprobation
(disapproval,, blame) felt by spectators who consider a
character trait or action;
6
I.
Major Tenets:
(4)
While some virtues and vices are natural, others,
including justice, are artificial.
(5)
The human psychological makeup of man is
similar. Therefore, moral judgments will tend to be
similar.
(6)
Since morals will tend to be similar, moralities may
be conceived in terms of “social utility”
7
I.
Major Tenets:
(7) Hume’s ethics comes out of the worldview of empiricism:
only matters of fact are those discernible by the senses.
(8) Moral facts do not exist; rules of morality are not derived
from reason.
(9) Vice and virtue are perceptions in the mind and that is all
that is needed to regulate moral behavior.
(10) Moral distinctions are constituted by their pleasantness
and usefulness (he did not synthesize how the relate to
each other).
8
II.
Overview of Significant Points:
1. Primacy of feelings over reason as a guide to ethics;
2. Hum was profoundly influenced by Newtonian scientific
revolution;
3. Empirical science nor science can offer us ethical truths; only
genuine knowledge comes from pure mathematics or empirical
science. It is not because reason is flawed, but because basic
ethical preferences are generated from feelings passions;
4. Factual knowledge arises exclusively from the data supplied by
the senses and is extended in usefulness by means of inferences
based on a belief in cause-and-effect relations.
9
II. Overview:
5. Feelings cannot provide an objective foundation for ethics;
In fact, feelings are not subject to reason.
6. Hume attacks the idea of a necessary “metaphysical”
connection between cause and effect.
7. The basis of moral assertion is sourced in feelings of
approval (pleasure) or disapproval (pain or uneasiness).
8. Hume is a compatibilist regarding free-will and Newtonian
determinism (he is a strict empiricist).
10
II. Overview:
9. Hume agrees with the moral sense theorists such as
Shaftesbury and Hutcheson (moral sense) and Butler
(conscience) that all requirements to pursue goodness and
avoid evil as consequent upon human nature, which is so
structured that a particular feature of our consciousness
(whether moral sense or conscience) evaluates the rest.
10.Because we are the kinds of creatures we are, with the
dispositions for pain and pleasure, the kinds of familial and
friendly interdependence that make up our life together, and
our approvals and disapprovals of these, Hume believes we
can escape radical relativism, generate natural and artificial
virtues are socially agreeable.
11
II. Overview:
 Natural and Artificial Virtues:

Artificial virtues are dependent upon social structures
(justice*; fidelity to promises, chastity, modesty,
duties to sovereign states);

Natural virtues originate in nature and are more
universal (compassion, generosity, gratitude,
friendship, fidelity, charity, benevolence, clemency,
equity, prudence, etc).
12
On Justice*
 On Justice*
 It is natural for justice to arise, but we will come
together and establish conventions of justice.
13
II. Overview:
11.
This view of moral grounding in “moral sense”,
“emotions,” or “passional nature” is contrary to
rationalists like Locke, Hobbes, and Clarke, who
believed that good and evil were discovered by
reason.
12.
Locke, Hobbes, and Clarke believed, in some
moods, that moral standards or requirements are
requirements of reason.
14
II. Overview:
13.
Hume takes an intermediate view regarding
whether morality is conventional (Hobbes) or
natural (Locke). Hume thinks natural impulses of
humanity and dispositions to approve cannot
entirely account for our virtue of justice; a correct
analysis of that requires the thesis that mankind, an
“inventive species,” has cooperatively constructed
rules of property and promise.
15
II. Overview:
14. Hume disagrees with Hobbes regarding the
following:
a.
b.
Necessary psychological Egoism;
Necessary violent view of a state of nature
whereby without an organized state “all is
in a war against all”
16
II. Overview:
15.
Hume disagrees with Locke (and Rawls) about the idea of
humanity being involved in a highly cooperative domain of lawgoverning citizens for the following reasons:
a
It is a hypothetical condition in which we would
care for our friends and cooperate with them;
b.
Self-interest and preference for friends over
strangers would make any wider cooperation
impossible.
One of the central themes of Hume’s political philosophy is that we are both
fundamentally loving and selfish.
17
II. Overview:
16.
Turning from reason to sentiment Hume believes that has
avoided radical relativism or mere subjectivism.
a.
Since people have the same psychological makeup, their
moral responses will be similar.
b.
If provided the same data, people will tend to respond
similarly. That does mean that all people will agree about
the moral worth of an action.
c.
Ethical disagreements generally stem not from differences
in our “passional” nature or feelings but from (a)
misunderstandings regarding circumstantial evidence or
from (b) incomplete analyses.
18
II. Overview:
17. Study of individual assessments reveal that “socially
useful acts are approved while those which are
socially detrimental are disapproved.
18. Since we judge acts generally by their conformity to
social utility (rather than by immediate, personal
preferences), impartiality will tend to prevail in
moral judgments.
19
II. Overview:
18. Conjoined events do not prove they are causally
connected any more than there is a causal connection
between the “rooster crowing” and the “sun rising.” All
one can do is extrapolate based on oft-repeated
occurrences. He does not deny the principle of
causality; he denies the basis on which some people try
to prove causality.
19. All objections of human inquiry are relations of ideas
(mathematics; definitions) or matters of fact (everything
known through one or more of the senses).
20
II. Overview:
20. Laws of nature are habits formed in our minds
on what has occurred in the past and the
expectation of similar experiences will occur in
the future.
21
III.
The Nature of Moral Judgment:
3 Textual Interpretations:
1. Non-propositional View: a moral evaluation does not
express any proposition or state any fact. Either it
gives vent to a feeling, or it is itself a feeling. (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).
22
III.
The Nature of Moral Judgment:
3 Textual Interpretations:
2. Description of the Feelings of the Spectator: Hume is
describing the feelings of the spectator, or the feelings
a spectator would have were she to contemplate the
trait or action from the common point of view.
23
III.
The Nature of Moral Judgment:
3 Textual Interpretations:
3. Dispositional interpretation: Evaluated trait or action
is so constituted as to cause feelings of approval or
disapproval in a (suitably characterized) spectator. On
the dispositional view, in saying some trait is good we
attribute to the trait the dispositional property of
being such as to elicit approval.
24
IV.
Moral Sentiments:
1.
Moral sentiments are emotions which possess unique
phenomenological quality, and special set of causes.
2.
Moral Sentiments are caused by contemplating the
person or action.
3.
Moral sentiments tend to be clarified or brought into
focus by social utility which is a common moral
sentiments or similar responses (collectively).
25
IV. Moral Sentiments:
Moral sentiments are the sort of pleasure & uneasiness which are
associated with 4 passions:
1. Pride;
2. humility;
3. Love;
4. Hatred.
Some argue that pleasure and pain cause these 4 passions others
believe these 4 passions make up the pleasure or pain.
Thus, when we feel moral approval we tend to love or esteem, and
when we approve a trait of our own we are proud of it.
26
IV. Moral Sentiments:
Because we share a similar psychological makeup, thus
share common moral sentiments, we are able to generate or
invent artificial virtues because we find them to be pleasant
and not painful (e.g.,):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Justice with respect to property,
Allegiance to government,
The laws of nations,
Modesty, and
Good manners), which (Hume argues) are inventions
contrived solely for the interest of society.
27
IV. Sentiments: Sympathy and
Benevolence.
 Sympathy is not seen as a mental capacity in the Inquiry as it is in the
State of Nature (as a mirror to yourself).
 Rather he replaces sympathy with a general benevolence in Inquiry.
We care about our species of such but not as a mental capacity.

Example, in Human Treatise, he states, “there is no such passion in
human minds, as the love of mankind, merely as such, independent of
personal qualities, of service, or of relation to ourseit ‘Tis true, there is
no human, and indeed no sensible, creature, whose happiness or
misery does not, in some measure, affect us when brought near to us
and represented in lively colours” (pg. 13).

But in Inquiry he doesn’t talk about a mental capacity as a mirror to
yourself but we have a benevolence which is part of our species.
28
V. Kant vs. Hume
1.
Similarity: Hume and Kant recognized the difference between pure reason
(understanding) from practical reason (work of the will). In other words,
they both recognized an important difference between judgments of facts
and judgments of value.
2.
Difference: Kant was a rationalist in his conception of morals; Hume was
an empiricist. A rationalist derives principles of morality from
metaphysical assumptions. Stated differently, Kant grounds his morality in
rationalism and Hume on natural moral sentiments.
3.
Difference: According to Kant, no matter how unpleasant the command
makes you feel, you are obligated to fulfill it.
29
VI.
Kant vs. Bentham and Mill on “utility”
Jeremy Bentham argued that the standard of goodness in the greatest
amount of happiness for the greatest number of persons is intrinsically
valuable.
1 While Hume and Bentham agree that happiness is good, Hume
does not admit that it is the only thing that is good. Human beings are
complex organisms, and their total welfare includes more than the
satisfaction of the one need for happiness.
2. Mill recognizes the cultural, intellectual, and spiritual pleasures
are of greater value than mere physical pleasure. While Hume
will agree that we are complex humans, he would reject Mill’s finite
godism and would reject his utilitarianism because he grounds
morality
not in utility but in moral sentiments which all humans share.
30
VII. Hume on Justice:
1. The purposes of justice can be realized only by adapting the methods
that are used to the particular situation that is involved.
a. Justice is a relative virtue in contrast to a deontological version of
justice, one that is not influenced by the situational setting.
b. He believes our human understanding of justice does vary from
one time to another and that the application of the principles of
justice will vary with the circumstances under which they are
applied.
c. Hume implies that there is an unchanging element in justice: The
purpose is always that of meeting the needs of society.
31
VII. Hume on Justice:
“As justice evidently tends to promote public utility and to
support civil society, the sentiment of justice is either
derived from our reflecting on that tendency, or like
hunger, thirst, and other appetites, resentment, love of life,
attachment to offspring, and other passions, arises from a
simple original instinct in the human breast, which nature
has implanted for like salutary purposes.”
~ An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, (Chicago: Open
Court, 1966), 35.
32
VII. Hume on Justice:

2. Justice is “dynamic”:
a.
Justice is expressed in laws and customs which are
generated when the need arises for them.
b.
The nature of justice varies in view of situational setting
(illust. Sexual morality may vary depending upon setting).
33
VII. Hume on Justice:
 3. In view of his appendix on justice in An Enquiry
Concerning the Principles of Morals that there are certain
principles which may be recognized that can advance
justice:
A. Avoid giving special privileges to some but not others;
B. Take into account the long-range interests of others rather than immediate
satisfactions; personal and immediate needs may need to be sacrificed in order
to achieve the well-being of society.
C. Seek to meet the needs of society as a whole.
34
VII. Hume on Justice:

4. On Distributive Justice:









Justice exists for meeting the needs of society;
Justice will be stated in general rules of conduct but particular situations and other
factors may arise whereby the needs and meeting those needs will mean change
(e.g., war).
Distributing justice is quite impossible to meet every need.
Justice is for the purpose of distributing goods in an equitable manner; there is no
exact formula for doing this that will meet the needs of every situations that comes
about.
Neither extreme wealth or poverty are in the best interests of others.
Believes in a moderate view of property rights.
Justice is a relative virtue; nothing remains constant about the nature of justice.
In dire circumstances, scarce resources, there is no justice and no benevolence.
Because of our human nature we have limited benevolent and limited justice.
35
VIII. Hume on Altruism and Selfishness:




1. Altruism and selfishness are not necessarily opposed to one another.
2. We possess a humanitarian sentiment which naturally approves of what is
beneficial and useful to society.
3. Since we share a common morality derived from our nature, principles of
morality are not derived from self-love alone.
4. What gains the admiration and respect of others is by acting upon the pleasing
moral sentiments that fellow-humans share; this is virtuous and meritorious.





Human nature includes both selfish and unselfish sentiments.
Human nature is selfish to some extent.
Human nature also has the capacity to act beyond one’s selfishness.
We can feel the pain of others and their misfortune.
Selfishness can over shadow good intentions but does necessarily have to.
36
IX.
In Summary:
“About Hume's ethics: we have a moral sentiment or feeling of
approval or disapproval (approbation or disapprobation) about
actions that we find pleasing or agreeable. We find actions
agreeable (and thus approve of them) not because of the utility of
such actions but because we ‘naturally’ have an inclination to
approve of what we are attracted to. In thinking about the
pleasures or pains of other people, we (along with all other normal
human beings) are attracted to what arouses in us natural
sentiments of humanity and benevolence. Such sentiments are not
derived from self-love but from a sense of identifying with other
human beings. That sense of fellow-feeling, not the perception of
the utility of actions, is the basis on which we feel moral obligation.
Of course, promoting social utility is in our own self-interest, but
acting for the sake of promoting our own self-interest is not a good
enough reason for acting in a moral way” ~ Dr. Steve Daniel
37
X. Advantages that have been
offered on this view
1. Some will appreciate the fact that it removes “metaphysical
mysteries” from realm of ethics because it grounds morality in
moral sentiments which all humans share.
2.
Pleasure and pain are important considerations in ethical
judgments.
3.
It attempts to balance both selfishness and altruism.
4.
It seems to avoid pure egoism, utilitarianism, and radical
relativism.
38
XI:
Objections Raised against Hume:
1. Hume reduces ethics to a matter of taste (e.g., A.J. Ayer & C.L. Stevenson),
relativism, and subjectivism.

Hume replies: since people have the same psychological makeup, moral
responses will be comparable. To be sure, this doesn’t mean everyone will
agree about but if provided the same data, they will generally tend to respond
similarly:
a.
b.
=
Common Nature
Same Data;
Similar response.
Ethical differences stem not from differences in our “feelings or “passional”
nature but from misunderstandings about the actual circumstances surrounding
a given act or from incomplete analyses of the consequences accruing from the
act.
39
XI. Objections:
2. Those who embrace “objectivist feelings” will reject Hume’s
account of subjectivist feelings. Some believe feelings can be a
source of objective truths of ethics. Consider Blaise Pascal’s
famous statement:
“The heart has its reasons that the reason know not”
For those who embrace objective feelings they would argue that
while feelings may not be an infallible guide to ethics, feelings are
not distractions on the path to ethical truth. Rather, feelings can be
a source of ethical insight.
Do you agree? Can ethical feelings be objectively true or are they more like
tastes?
40
XI. Objections:
3. Moral sentiments cannot provide an adequate basis for moral obligations (e.g.,
justice).
Hume’s response: It is obligatory, for example, to be just…but the reason we
adopt the concept of justice and guide our actions in conformity to it is because
it comes from the moral sentiments we all share.

Hume doesn’t deny a specific instance of injustice could be more beneficial to
society than its corresponding instance of justice in some odd case, but by
conforming ourselves to the moral sentiments of justice, humanity can be
served.
Response: Still justice is not absolute, fixed upon absolutes; it is sourced in
moral sentiments that can change (justice becomes somewhat relative even if it
is not radical relativism).
41
XI. Objections:
4. Borrowing the notion of social utility to find a way to maintain
social order is using reason. Social utility is powerful enough to
incite action to actually do the good.

Hume would respond by saying that the source of utility is not reason
but “moral sentiment” that we naturally share; we identify with other
beings on that sense of “fellow feelings”. Thus, it is not from “social
utility” but moral sentiments that ground our morality. Secondly,
reasons of social utility is not powerful enough to incite action; it is the
“moral sentiments” of feelings of approval or disapproval that motivates
action, not the perception of social utility.
5. Hume’s skepticism is self-defeating because he did not suspend
moral judgments regarding God, miracles, and metaphysics.
42
XI. Objections:
6. Metaphysical problem: According to Hume, meaningful
propositions are empirical. But this is self-defeating, for the
statement that “only analytic or empirical propositions are
meaningful” is not itself an analytic statement. If one allows that
such statements are meaningful, then why cannot metaphysical
statements be meaningful? Stated differently, to say there is no
metaphysics is itself a metaphysical statement, namely that you
know that metaphysics doesn’t exist.
7. Causality can be experienced internally. I am the cause of this
sentence I am typing, and I experience that fact. Everyone
experiences their own thoughts and actions.
43
XI. Objections:
8. Fundamentally it fails to explain what is wrong with a wrong
action because it is solely based on human experience. Reason
only reveals matters of fact.
a.
b.
Good in the moral sense of the term is reduced to feelings or moral
sentiments.
Evil in the moral sense of the term is reduced to feelings or moral
sentiments.
1. Hume’s response is that there is no other way to judge morality.
Moreover, we are naturally constituted in such a way that there is
present in us a “sense of humanity” which always approves of that
which promotes human welfare and is useful in society because we all
share it.
44
XI. Objections:
9. Hume is subject to the postmodern critique that are our
“emotions” are not a product of “moral sentiments”.
Rather, we are morally scripted by our sub-culture.
How does Hume know that our moral sentiments are
natural and not socially inscribed values?
10. Doesn’t the idea that we all share a “similar constitution
of moral sentiments” beg the question that we are
“designed” by God (e.g., Thomas Reid)?
45