 Short Biography

 bibliography
 Contribution to Law (if no law what?)
 Application to modern time
 Personal Reflection

https://iep.utm.edu/hume/

Basic science of human nature in Hume

David Hume’s empiricism was materialist (as opposed to idealist,

like Berkeley’s) in that he mostly focused on what can be directly
observed and experienced in the material world. He believed that
every idea in our mind can be traced to real things that we have
experienced. For example, we might have an idea of an “angel”
(without having ever experienced one) but that is simply a
combination of the idea of a “man” and the idea of “wings”. Definitely
a skeptic, he is thought by some to also have been one of the earliest
modern atheists.It is often been pointed out that many of his ideas
were similar to those of the Buddha.

Hume's "naturalist" approach to a wide variety of philosophical topics resulted in highly original
theories about perception, self-identity, causation, morality, politics, and religion, all of which are
discussed in this stimulating introduction by A.J. Ayer, himself one of the twentieth century's most
important philosophers. Ayer also gives an account of Hume's fascinating life and character, and
includes generous quotations from Hume's lucid and often witty writings.

The third, and in many ways the most important, of the British
empiricists was the skeptic David Hume. Hume’s philosophical
intention was to reap, humanistically, the harvest sowed by Newtonian
physics, to apply the method of natural science to human nature. The
paradoxical result of this admirable goal, however, was
a skeptical crisis even more devastating than that of the early French
Renaissance.
 David Hume
David Hume, oil painting by Allan Ramsay, 1766; in the Scottish
National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh.
Courtesy of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery
Hume followed Locke and Berkeley in approaching the problem of
knowledge from a psychological perspective. He too found the origin
of knowledge in sense experience. But whereas Locke had found a
certain trustworthy order in the compounding power of the mind, and
Berkeley had found mentality itself expressive of a certain spiritual
power, Hume’s relentless analysis discovered as much contingency in
mind as in the external world. All uniformity in perceptual experience,
he held, comes from “an associating quality of the mind.” The
“association of ideas” is a fact, but the relations of resemblance,
contiguity, and cause and effect that it produces have no intrinsic
validity because they are merely the product of “mental habit.” Thus,
the causal principle upon which all knowledge rests represents no
necessary connections between things but is simply the result of their
constant conjunction in human minds. Moreover, the mind itself, far
from being an independent power, is simply “a bundle of perceptions”
without unity or cohesive quality. Hume’s denial of a necessary order
of nature on the one hand and of a substantial or unified self on the
other precipitated a philosophical crisis from which Enlightenment
philosophy was not to be rescued until the work of Kant.

David Hume (1711–77)

A Scottish-born historian, economist, and philosopher, Hume is often

grouped with thinkers such as John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Sir
Francis Bacon as part of a movement called British Empiricism. He was
focused on creating a “naturalistic science of man” that delves into the
psychological conditions defining human nature. In contrast to rationalists
such as Descartes, Hume was preoccupied with the way that passions
(as opposed to reason) govern human behavior. This, Hume argued,
predisposed human beings to knowledge founded not on the existence of
certain absolutes but on personal experience. As a consequence of these
ideas, Hume would be among the first major thinkers to refute dogmatic
religious and moral ideals in favor of a more sentimentalist approach to
human nature. His belief system would help to inform the future
movements of utilitarianism and logical positivism, and would have a
profound impact on scientific and theological discourse thereafter.

Hume

David Hume spent most of his life in his native Scotland, outside of several trips to
France, where he enjoyed wild popularity. His first and most substantial philosophical
work was the Treatise of Human Nature (published in 1739 and 1740). When that work
failed to gain popularity, Hume reworked portions of it into the Enquire Concerning
Human Understanding (1748) and the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751).
Hume was widely regarded (probably accurately) as an atheist and (less accurately) as a
radical skeptic, and the subtlties of his work were often overlooked. Today he is
regarded by many as one of the most sophisticated and insightful philosophers in
history.

Skepticism

Perhaps Hume's most famous argument concerns a certain type of inference known
today as 'inductive inference.' In an inductive inference, one draws some conclusion
about some unknown fact (e.g., whether the sun will rise tomorrow) on the basis of
known facts (e.g., that the sun has always risen in the past). Hume looked closely into
the nature of such inference, and concluded that they must involve some step that does
not involve reason. 'Reason' as Hume saw it, was our capacity to engage in certain,
demonstrative reasoning on the basis of the principle of contradiction. Yet there is no
contradiction in the possibility that the sun might not rise tomorrow, despite it's having
always done so in the past.

The natural response to this worry is to appeal to something like the uniformity of
nature (the view that things tend to operate the same way at different times across all of
nature). For, if we assumed that nature was uniform, then it would be a contradiction if
unobserved instances didn't resemble observed instances. But, Hume asked, how could
such a principle of uniformity be known? Not directly by reason, since there is nothing
contradictory in the idea of a non-uniform nature. The alternative would be that the
uniformity is known by inductive inference. That, however, would require circular
reasoning, since it had already been established that inductive inference could only
proceed via reason if it assumed the uniformity of nature.

Hume went on to conclude that our inductive inferences must therefore make use of
some entirely different capacity. This capacity, Hume claimed, was that of custom, or our
psychological tendency to come to form expectations on the basis of past experience.
Exactly the same capacity is manifested in all other animals (consider the way that one
trains a dog), so one of Hume's conclusions was that philosophers had been deluded in
putting themselves, as rational creatures, above the rest of nature. Hume went on to
claim that the exact same capacity is at the core of our concept of causation and our
belief that objects continue to exist when we no longer perceive them.

God

Hume was thoroughly unimpressed by a priori proofs for God's existence (such as the

ontological argument, or Leibniz's argument from pre-established harmony), yet he
believed that empirical arguments such as Locke's required careful scrutiny. In
the Enquiry, Hume presents a critique of arguments such as Locke's that infer properties
of the cause of the universe (e.g., intelligence, benevolence) simply from properties of
the effect (the universe). It clear, Hume claims, that in normal causal reasoning, one
should not attribute any properties to an unobserved cause beyond those that were
strictly necessary for bringing about the observed effect (consider someone concluding
that aliens had visited earth after finding a twisted piece of metal in the woods). Yet this
appears to be exactly what the Lockean argument is doing.

In his posthumous Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Hume subjected such

arguments to even further scrutiny. Of particular note (and of particular relevance to
contemporary debates) is his regress worries concerning arguments from design. If,
Hume argued, one is entitled to infer that the universe must have some sophisticated,
intelligent cause because of its complexity, and one infers that such a cause must exist,
then one must further be entitled to assume that that intelligent cause (being at least as
complex as its creation) must likewise have some distinct cause. If one insists that such a
being would need no cause, however, then it would appear that one had no basis for
inferring the universe must also have a cause.

BIOGRAPHY

David Hume (7 May 1711 – 25 August 1776) was a Scottish philosopher, historian,
economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and
scepticism. He is regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of
Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment. Hume is often grouped
with John Locke, George Berkeley, and a handful of others as a British
Empiricist.

“He is happy, whose circumstances suit his temper; but he is more excellent, who
can suit his temper to any circumstances.”

David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751)

Beginning with his A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), Hume strove to create a

total naturalistic “science of man” that examined the psychological basis of
human nature. In stark opposition to the rationalists who preceded him, most
notably Descartes, he concluded that desire rather than reason governed human
behaviour, saying famously: “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the
passions.”
David's education began in the schools at Edinburgh. He followed the usual course of study, in
which he achieved an average amount of success. At a comparatively early age, he developed
a passion for literature and took to reading several of the great classics. Because of his studious
disposition, sobriety, and industry, the members of his family thought he was especially fitted for
the study of law. This he attempted but gave it up when it became apparent that he had a strong
aversion to everything except philosophy and general learning. Abandoning the study of law, he
turned all of his energies toward the pursuit of his new interest. His studies along this line were
soon interrupted by a period of ill health which lasted for more than a year and which was
diagnosed by his physician as a condition that was brought on by "the disease of the learned."
Thinking that a different line of activity might be good for his health and hoping to strengthen the
slender income of the family, he made a feeble try at business but with poor success.

In his autobiography written near the end of his life, David Hume describes himself as a “man of mild
disposition, of command of temper, of an open, social, and cheerful humour, capable of attachment, but
little susceptible of enmity, and of great moderation in all my passions.” Those who knew him agreed for
the most part with his assessment.

Hume was born on February 24, 1711, in Edinburgh. His father died when he was an infant, leaving him
and his two older siblings in the care of his mother. Hume went with his older brother to the University
of Edinburgh in 1723. He “passed through the ordinary course of education with success” and left the
university without taking a degree. Hume writes that from an early age, he “found an insurmountable
Aversion to anything but the pursuits of Philosophy and General Learning,” and that his passion for
literature (comprising philosophy and history) “has been the great ruling passion of my life, and the
great source of my enjoyments.”

At age eighteen, a “new scene of thought” opened up to him, and he applied himself to developing
these ideas with such intensity that it eventually led to a kind of nervous breakdown. As a reprieve from
his studies, he worked for a few months as a clerk in a firm of sugar merchants before relocating to
France to compose his Treatise of Human Nature. Hume returned to London in 1737 to see the book
through the final stages of (anonymous) publication and was sorely disappointed with the result.
According to him, the book “fell dead-born from the press.” Believing that the failure of the Treatise
“proceeded more from the manner than the matter,” Hume reworked his ideas into the Enquiry
Concerning Human Understanding (1748) and the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751).
He called these two works “incomparably the best” of all his writings. Between 1740 and his death in
1776 Hume worked on and published (in various forms) essays on moral, political, and literary matters.
In 1752, as Librarian for the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh, Hume began research on his History of
England, which he published between 1754 and 1761. His Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion were
published posthumously and anonymously.

In 1763, Hume accompanied the Earl of Hertford to Paris to work in the embassy. Hume writes in his
autobiography that his readers “will never imagine the reception [he] met with in Paris, from men and
women of all ranks and stations.” Hume soon became close to the leading French philosophes, and
began a lasting friendship with the Comtesse de Boufflers. When Hume returned to England in 1766, he
was accompanied by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who was attempting to escape potential persecution. Their
friendship did not last, however, as Rousseau soon wrote to friends that Hume was involved in a
conspiracy against him, compelling Hume to defend himself.

In 1775, Hume was struck ill with a disorder that would prove fatal. In an obituary of the great
philosopher, his close friend Adam Smith wrote: “Upon the whole, I have always considered him, both in
his life-time, and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous
man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will admit.”

David Hume, (born May 7 [April 26, Old Style], 1711, Edinburgh,

Scotland—died August 25, 1776, Edinburgh), Scottish philosopher,
historian, economist, and essayist known especially for his
philosophical empiricism and skepticism.

Hume was the younger son of Joseph Hume, the modestly

circumstanced laird, or lord, of Ninewells, a small estate adjoining the
village of Chirnside, about nine miles distant from Berwick-upon-
Tweed on the Scottish side of the border. David’s mother, Catherine, a
daughter of Sir David Falconer, president of the Scottish court of
session, was in Edinburgh when he was born. In his third year his
father died. He entered Edinburgh University when he was about 12
years old and left it at 14 or 15, as was then usual. Pressed a little later
to study law (in the family tradition on both sides), he found it
distasteful and instead read voraciously in the wider sphere of letters.
Because of the intensity and excitement of his intellectual discovery,
he had a nervous breakdown in 1729, from which it took him a few
years to recover.
n 1734, after trying his hand in a merchant’s office in Bristol, he came
to the turning point of his life and retired to France for three years.
Most of this time he spent at La Flèche on the Loire, in the old Anjou,
studying and writing A Treatise of Human Nature. The Treatise was
Hume’s attempt to formulate a full-fledged philosophical system. It is
divided into three books: Book I, “Of the Understanding,” discusses, in
order, the origin of ideas; the ideas of space and time; knowledge and
probability, including the nature of causality; and the
skeptical implications of those theories. Book II, “Of the Passions,”
describes an elaborate psychological machinery to explain the
affective, or emotional, order in humans and assigns a subordinate
role to reason in this mechanism. Book III, on morals,
characterizes moral goodness in terms of “feelings” of approval or
disapproval that people have when they consider human behaviour in
the light of agreeable or disagreeable consequences, either to
themselves or to others.
Although the Treatise is Hume’s most thorough exposition of his
thought, at the end of his life he vehemently repudiated it as juvenile,
avowing that only his later writings presented his considered views.
The Treatise is not well constructed, in parts oversubtle, confusing
because of ambiguity in important terms (especially “reason”), and
marred by willful extravagance of statement and rather theatrical
personal avowals. For those reasons his mature condemnation of it
was perhaps not entirely misplaced. Book I, nevertheless, has been
more read among academic philosophers than any other of his
writings.
Returning to England in 1737, he set about publishing the Treatise.
Books I and II were published in two volumes in 1739; Book III
appeared the following year. The poor reception of this, his first and
very ambitious work, depressed him; he later said, in
his Autobiography, that “it fell dead-born from the press, without
reaching such distinction, as even to excite a murmur among the
zealots.” But his next venture, Essays, Moral and Political (1741–42),
won some success. Perhaps encouraged by this, he became a candidate
for the chair of moral philosophy at Edinburgh in 1744.
Objectors alleged heresy and even atheism, pointing to the Treatise as
evidence (Hume’s Autobiography notwithstanding, the work had not
gone unnoticed). Unsuccessful, Hume left the city, where he had been
living since 1740, and began a period of wandering: a sorry year near
St. Albans as tutor to the mad marquess of Annandale (1745–46); a
few months as secretary to Gen. James St. Clair (a member of a
prominent Scottish family), with whom he saw military action during
an abortive expedition to Brittany (1746); a little tarrying in London
and at Ninewells; and then some further months with General St. Clair
on an embassy to the courts of Vienna and Turin (1748–49).
Hume then considers the process of causal inference, and in so doing
he introduces the concept of belief. When people see a glass fall, they
not only think of its breaking but expect and believe that it will break.
Or, starting from an effect, when they see the ground to be generally
wet, they not only think of rain but believe that there has been rain.
Thus belief is a significant component in the process of
causal inference. Hume then proceeds to investigate the nature of
belief, claiming that he was the first to do so. He uses the term,
however, in the narrow sense of belief regarding matters of fact. He
defines belief as a sort of liveliness or vividness that accompanies
the perception of an idea. A belief, in other words, is a vivid or lively
idea. This vividness is originally possessed by some of the objects of
awareness—by impressions and by the simple memory-images of
them. By association it comes to belong to certain ideas as well. In the
process of causal inference, then, an observer passes from an
impression to an idea regularly associated with it. In the process the
aspect of liveliness proper to the impression infects the idea, Hume
asserts. And it is this aspect of liveliness that Hume defines as the
essence of belief.

Hume does not claim to prove that events themselves are not causally
related or that they will not be related in the future in the same ways
as they were in the past. Indeed, he firmly believes the contrary and
insists that everybody else does as well. Belief in causality and in the
resemblance of the future to the past are natural beliefs,
inextinguishable propensities of human nature (madness apart), and
even necessary for human survival. Rather, what Hume claims to
prove is that such natural beliefs are not obtained from, and cannot be
demonstrated by, either empirical observation or reason, whether
intuitive or inferential. Although reflection shows that there is no
evidence for them, it also shows that humans are bound to have them
and that it is sensible and sane to do so. This is Hume’s skepticism: it
is an affirmation of that tension, a denial not of belief but of certainty.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
 Hume’s Works
Texts cited above and our abbreviations for them are as follows:

 [T] A Treatise of Human Nature, edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge, 2nd ed. revised by P. H.

Nidditch, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. [Page references above are to this edition.]
 [Abstract] An Abstract of  A Treatise of Human Nature, 1740, reprinted with an
Introduction by J. M. Keynes and P. Sraffa, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1938.
[Paragraph references above are to this edition.]
 A Treatise of Human Nature, edited by David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton,
Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
 [EHU] An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, and
 [EPM] An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, both contained in Enquiries
concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals, edited by L. A.
Selby-Bigge, 3rd ed. revised by P. H. Nidditch, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. [Page
references above are to this edition.]
 An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, edited by Tom L. Beauchamp,
Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
 An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, edited by Tom L. Beauchamp,
Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
 [HL] The Letters of David Hume, edited by J.Y.T. Greig, 2 volumes, Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1932.
 [MOL] “My Own Life” (Hume’s autobiographical essay), in HL I:1–7.
 [DCNR] Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, edited by Dorothy Coleman,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. [Page references above are to this edition.]

Other works by Hume

 A Dissertation on the Passions and The Natural History of Religion, edited by Tom L.
Beauchamp, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007.
 Essays: Moral, Political, Literary, edited by Eugene F. Miller, Indianapolis: Liberty
Classics, 1985.
 The History of England, edited by William B. Todd, Indianapolis: Liberty Classics,
1983.
In addition to the letters contained in [HL], other Hume letters can be found in:
 New Letters of David Hume, edited by Raymond Klibansky and Ernest C. Mossner,
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954.

David Hume is famous for the elegance of his prose, for his radical empiricism, for
his skepticism of religion, for his critical account of causation, for his naturalistic theory
of mind, for his thesis that “reason is...the slave of the passions,” and for waking Immanuel
Kant from his “dogmatic slumber,” as Kant himself admitted.
David Hume’s philosophical works included A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40), An
Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), An Enquiry Concerning Human
Understanding (1758), and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (posthumously published
in 1779). He also wrote on political economy (the Political Discourses, 1752) and history (the
multivolume History of England, 1754–62).

CONTRUBUTION TO LAW

As a philosopher

Hume conceived of philosophy as the inductive science of human

nature, and he concluded that humans are creatures more of sensitive
and practical sentiment than of reason. For many philosophers and
historians his importance lies in the fact that Immanuel
Kant conceived his critical philosophy in direct reaction to Hume
(Kant said that Hume had awakened him from his “dogmatic
slumber”). Hume was one of the influences that led Auguste Comte,
the 19th-century French mathematician and sociologist, to
develop positivism. In Britain Hume’s positive influence is seen
in Jeremy Bentham, the early 19th-century jurist and philosopher,
who was moved to utilitarianism (the moral theory that right conduct
should be determined by the usefulness of its consequences) by Book
III of the Treatise, and more extensively in John Stuart Mill, the
philosopher and economist who lived later in the 19th century.
In throwing doubt on the assumption of a necessary link
between cause and effect, Hume was the first philosopher of the
postmedieval world to reformulate the skepticism of the ancients. His
reformulation, moreover, was carried out in a new and compelling
way. Although he admired Newton, Hume’s subtle undermining of
causality called in question the philosophical basis of Newton’s science
as a way of looking at the world, inasmuch as that science rested on
the identification of a few fundamental causal laws that govern the
universe. As a result, the positivists of the 19th century were obliged to
wrestle with Hume’s questioning of causality if they were to succeed in
their aim of making science the central framework of human thought.

For much of the 20th century it was Hume’s naturalism rather than

his skepticism that attracted attention, chiefly
among analytic philosophers. Hume’s naturalism lies in his belief that
philosophical justification could be rooted only in regularities of the
natural world. The attraction of
that contention for analytic philosophers was that it seemed to provide
a solution to the problems arising from the skeptical tradition that
Hume himself, in his other philosophical role, had done so much to
reinvigorate.

Hume conceived of philosophy as the inductive,

experimental science of human nature. Taking the scientific method of
the English physicist Sir Isaac Newton as his model and building on
the epistemology of the English philosopher John Locke, Hume tried
to describe how the mind works in acquiring what is called knowledge.
He concluded that no theory of reality is possible; there can be no
knowledge of anything beyond experience. Despite the enduring
impact of his theory of knowledge, Hume seems to have considered
himself chiefly as a moralist.

A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-1740)

David Hume’s comprehensive attempt to base philosophy on a new, observationally grounded study

of human nature is one of the most important texts in Western philosophy. It is also the focal point of

current attempts to understand 18th-century philosophy The Treatise first explains how we form

such concepts as cause and effect, external existence, and personal identity, and how we create

compelling but unverifiable beliefs in the entities represented by these concepts. It then offers a

novel account of the passions, explains freedom and necessity as they apply to human choices and

actions, and concludes with a detailed explanation of how we distinguish between virtue and vice.

The volume features Hume’s own abstract of the Treatise, a substantial introduction that explains

the aims of the Treatise as a whole and of each of its ten parts, a comprehensive index, and

suggestions for further reading.

Enquiries concerning Human Understanding

and concerning the Principles of Morals
(1748, 1751)
David Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature, composed before the author was twenty-six years old, was

published in 1739 and 1740. Its importance was not generally recognized at the time. Hume

attributing the failure of his Treatise to the manner of its writing rather than the matter it contained,

‘cast the first part of that work anew in the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding’ (1748), and

afterwards continued the same process in the second work contained in this volume, the Enquiry

concerning the Princinples of Morals (1751). Both Enquiries are here reprinted, with an Introduction

and Analytical Index by the late L.A. Selby-Bigge, from the posthumous edition (1777) of Hume’s

Collected Essays.

The History of England (1754-1762)

Hume, David. The History of England, edited by William B. Todd, Indianapolis: Liberty Classics,

1983.

Hume’s great History of England the theme of which is liberty, above all English constitutional

development from the Anglo-Saxon period to the Revolution of 1688. This Liberty Fund edition is

based on the edition of 1778, the last to contain corrections by Hume. 6 vols

Essays: Moral, Political, Literary (1741-1777)

Hume, David. Essays: Moral, Political, Literary, edited by Eugene F. Miller, Indianapolis: Liberty

Classics, 1985.

From the publisher:

As part of the tried and true model of informal essay writing, Hume began publishing his Essays:

Moral, Political and Literary in 1741. The majority of these finely honed treatises fall into three distinct

areas: political theory, economic theory and aesthetic theory.

Interestingly, Hume’s was motivated to produce a collection of informal essays given the poor public

reception of his more formally written Treatise of Human Nature in 1739. He hoped that his work would

be interesting not only to the educated man, but to the common man as well. He passionately

argues that essays provide a forum for discussing his philosophy of “common life.”

WORKS
MORAL PHILOSOPHY
he also made many important contributions to moral philosophy. Hume’s ethical
thought grapples with questions about the relationship between morality and reason,
the role of human emotion in thought and action, the nature of moral evaluation,
human sociability, and what it means to live a virtuous life. As a central figure in the
Scottish Enlightenment, Hume’s ethical thought variously influenced, was influenced
by, and faced criticism from, thinkers such as Shaftesbury (1671-1713), Francis
Hutcheson (1694-1745), Adam Smith (1723-1790), and Thomas Reid (1710-1796). Hume’s
ethical theory continues to be relevant for contemporary philosophers and psychologists
interested in topics such as metaethics, the role of sympathy and empathy within moral
evaluation and moral psychology, as well as virtue ethics.

Hume’s moral thought carves out numerous distinctive philosophical positions. He

rejects the rationalist conception of morality whereby humans make moral evaluations,
and understand right and wrong, through reason alone. In place of the rationalist view,
Hume contends that moral evaluations depend significantly on sentiment or feeling.
Specifically, it is because we have the requisite emotional capacities, in addition to our
faculty of reason, that we can determine that some action is ethically wrong, or a person
has a virtuous moral character. As such, Hume sees moral evaluations, like our
evaluations of aesthetic beauty, as arising from the human faculty of taste. Furthermore,
this process of moral evaluation relies significantly upon the human capacity for
sympathy, or our ability to partake of the feelings, beliefs, and emotions of other people.
Thus, for Hume there is a strong connection between morality and human sociability.

Hume’s philosophy is also known for a novel distinction between natural and artificial
virtue. Regarding the latter, we find a sophisticated account of justice in which the rules
that govern property, promising, and allegiance to government arise through complex
processes of social interaction. Hume’s account of the natural virtues, such as kindness,
benevolence, pride, and courage, is explained with rhetorically gripping and vivid
illustrations. The picture of human excellence that Hume paints for the reader equally
recognizes the human tendency to praise the qualities of the good friend and those of
the inspiring leader. Finally, the overall orientation of Hume’s moral philosophy is
naturalistic. Instead of basing morality on religious and divine sources of authority,
Hume seeks an empirical theory of morality grounded on observation of human nature.

Hume’s moral philosophy is found primarily in Book 3 of The Treatise of Human

Nature and his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, although further context and
explanation of certain concepts discussed in those works can also be found in his Essays
Moral, Political, and Literary. This article discusses each of the topics outlined above, with
special attention given to the arguments he develops in the Treatise.
Thus far Hume has only told us what moral approval is not, namely a judgment of reason. So
what then does moral approval consist of? It is an emotional response, not a rational one. The
details of this part of his theory rest on a distinction between three psychologically distinct
players: the moral agent, the receiver, and the moral spectator. The moral agent is the person
who performs an action, such as stealing a car; the receiver is the person impacted by the
conduct, such as the owner of the stolen car; and the moral spectator is the person who observes
and, in this case, disapproves of the agent’s action. This agent-receiver-spectator distinction is
the product of earlier moral sense theories championed by the Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713),
Joseph Butler (1692-1752), and Francis Hutcheson (1694-1747). Most generally, moral sense
theories maintained that humans have a faculty of moral perception, similar to our faculties
of sensory perception. Just as our external senses detect qualities in external objects, such as
colors and shapes, so too does our moral faculty detect good and bad moral qualities in people
and actions.
For Hume, all actions of a moral agent are motivated by character traits, specifically either
virtuous or vicious character traits. For example, if you donate money to a charity, then your
action is motivated by a virtuous character trait. Hume argues that some virtuous character
traits are instinctive or natural, such as benevolence, and others are acquired or artificial, such
as justice. As an agent, your action will have an effect on a receiver. For example, if you as the
agent give food to a starving person, then the receiver will experience an immediately agreeable
feeling from your act. Also, the receiver may see the usefulness of your food donation, insofar as
eating food will improve his health. When considering the usefulness of your food donation,
then, the receiver will receive another agreeable feeling from your act. Finally, I, as a spectator,
observe these agreeable feelings that the receiver experiences. I, then, will sympathetically
experience agreeable feelings along with the receiver. These sympathetic feelings of
pleasure constitute my moral approval of the original act of charity that you, the agent, perform.
By sympathetically experiencing this pleasure, I thereby pronounce your motivating character
trait to be a virtue, as opposed to a vice. Suppose, on the other hand, that you as an agent did
something to hurt the receiver, such as steal his car. I as the spectator would then
sympathetically experience the receiver’s pain and thereby pronounce your motivating character
trait to be a vice, as opposed to a virtue.
In short, that is Hume’s overall theory. There are, though, some important details that should
also be mentioned. First, it is tricky to determine whether an agent’s motivating character trait is
natural or artificial, and Hume decides this one virtue at a time. For Hume, the natural virtues
include benevolence, meekness, charity, and generosity. By contrast, the artificial virtues include
justice, keeping promises, allegiance and chastity. Contrary to what one might expect, Hume
classifies the key virtues that are necessary for a well-ordered state as artificial, and he classifies
only the more supererogatory virtues as natural. Hume’s critics were quick to point out this
paradox. Second, to spark a feeling of moral approval, the spectator does not have to actually
witness the effect of an agent’s action upon a receiver. The spectator might simply hear about it,
or the spectator might even simply invent an entire scenario and think about the possible effects
of hypothetical actions. This happens when we have moral reactions when reading works of
fiction: “a very play or romance may afford us instances of this pleasure, which virtue conveys to
us; and pain, which arises from vices” (Treatise, 3.1.2.2).

Third, although the agent, receiver, and spectator have psychologically distinct roles, in some
situations a single person may perform more than one of these roles. For example, if I as an
agent donate to charity, as a spectator to my own action I can also sympathize with the effect of
my donation on the receiver. Finally, given various combinations of spectators and receivers,
Hume concludes that there are four irreducible categories of qualities that exhaustively
constitute moral virtue: (1) qualities useful to others, which include benevolence, meekness,
charity, justice, fidelity and veracity; (2) qualities useful to oneself, which include industry,
perseverance, and patience; (3) qualities immediately agreeable to others, which include wit,
eloquence and cleanliness; and (4) qualities immediately agreeable to oneself, which include
good humor, self-esteem and pride. For Hume, most morally significant qualities and actions
seem to fall into more than one of these categories. When Hume spoke about an agent’s “useful”
consequences, he often used the word “utility” as a synonym. This is particularly so in
the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals where the term “utility” appears over 50
times. Moral theorists after Hume thus depicted his moral theory as the “theory of utility”—
namely, that morality involves assessing the pleasing and painful consequences of actions on the
receiver. It is this concept and terminology that inspired classic utilitarian philosophers, such as
Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832).

LIFE

 asking himself whether the moral philosophy of human behaviour could be assimilated into the
natural philosophy of the physical world developed famously by Isaac Newton (1643-1727). This is a
question still at the cutting edge of philosophy. All Hume’s major contributions to philosophy were
made before he reached thirty. After their indifferent reception, he shrugged off his disappointment to
become a famous essayist and historian. But his youthful work roused Immanuel Kant from his
“dogmatic slumbers” and so kick-started modern philosophy. Hume was the supreme asker of
awkward questions – someone who flatly refused to accept beliefs on the mere grounds that they
were widely and forcibly asserted. He became the greatest of sceptics.

There can be no progress without scepticism, since otherwise existing beliefs would never be
challenged. Equally, total scepticism – a rejection of all beliefs – would result in intellectual paralysis.
Philosophy thus proceeds in fits and starts: established approaches are challenged, and either
survive or are supplanted by new approaches which are thought to give better explanations or
guidance. Hume’s sceptical attitude to empiricism marked one of the great turning points in
philosophy.

In 1723 John went up to Edinburgh University, and Katherine sent David with him. Even for those
days, twelve was an unusually early age to attend university. The level of instruction was however
fairly elementary, and, as was common at the time, attendance did not necessarily involve taking a
degree. After three years, having studied some Greek, Latin, logic, metaphysics, and natural
philosophy, and in particular gaining some knowledge of Newton’s work, Hume left to head back to
Ninewells, planning to prepare for the study of law. The next four years proved difficult but crucial for
his later development. In his own words, he “found an insurmountable aversion to anything but the
pursuits of philosophy and general learning.” While his family thought he was preparing for the law,
Hume had made a momentous decision. He would seek to do for human behaviour what Newton
had done for the physical universe. Hume was fully aware of the immensity of the task he was
setting himself, and planned a ten year programme of work. But the difficulty of the task, combined
with the intensity of his commitment, provoked a psychological and physical crisis, and he had a
nervous breakdown.
Hume’s most famous contribution to philosophy is perhaps his sceptical scrutiny of the concept that
causality was some mysterious form of physical process. He argued that causality was rather a
method of reasoning used to explain a variety of physical effects. Imagine an infant in its cot playing
with a collection of soft toys and watched over by a grandfather. When the child throws its toys out of
the cot they land on the floor with a soft thud, and stay where they landed. The grandfather now
gives the child a rubber ball, which it has never seen before. After close inspection this is also
thrown out. To the child’s delight it behaves quite differently, bouncing around before finally coming
to rest. As the toys and ball are returned to it, they are repeatedly inspected, then ejected. Soon the
child grasps that there is a fundamental difference in behaviour between soft toys and rubber balls.
Hume would ask a crucial question here: In what way does the grandfather’s knowledge differ from
that of the child’s? His answer is that the only difference is that the adult has had prior experience
which the child did not have. The adult’s experience had led to his association of the ideas of rubber
balls and bouncing.

Generally speaking, Hume maintained that causality cannot be distinguished from the constant
conjunction of ideas. If one thing happens after another, this does not establish any necessary
connection between them. We posit such a connection only when we have repeatedly seen similar
conjunctions of events.

However, ‘necessary connections’ are our essential means of explaining what’s happening in the
world. Causality, a means of arguing from (apparent) cause to (apparent) effect, antedates logic,
which argues from premises to conclusions. Our distant ancestors learned to use causal reasoning
long before formal logic emerged. Making flint axes, for example, would be impossible to explain and
describe without invoking cause and effect: you hit the rock with another rock and the first rock
splinters. A modern view is that all explanations and arguments must start from somewhere, and
causality is best regarded as a form of reasoning. Hume’s insight was that we use causal
relationships to explain certain forms of constant conjunctions of experiences. An older child might
say to a younger one: “If you throw this ball then it bounces. Watch!” The infant then makes an
association of the relevant ideas: throwing rubber balls makes them bounce. Causality, Hume
maintained, is a way of rationalising and organising experience.

Hume brought the same unblinking scepticism to his consideration of human behaviour. He argued
that reason, by itself, is concerned only with truth and falsehood, and so “can never be the motive for
any action of the will.” This led to his famous dictum: “Reason is and ought only to be the slave of
the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.” For Hume,
then, “The rules of our morality are not conclusions of our reason”, and so “the sense of justice, on
which both moral and political obligations depend, is derived not from any natural impressions of
reflection but from impressions due to artifice and human conventions.” In other words our moral
feelings are the result of the education of our sentiments. Hume’s attitudes to causality and human
behaviour are consistent. In his view they both arise from dispositions, formed in the one case by
experience, and in the other by social convention.

While it is much disputed exactly what Hume meant by this and by other claims that morality is based
on sentiment rather than on reason,5 one thing is clear: his arguments against the notion that reason
alone is the guide to moral knowledge were influential in turning subsequent thinkers away from the
natural law path in normative jurisprudence.6 Furthermore, when Hume discusses legal reasoning, he
denies that reason is capable of providing one best outcome to every legal case.7 Of course, Hume was
by no means completely successful in ridding the world of natural law theories, but his role in
undermining their popularity was undeniably a vital one.

LIFE

Hume’s family thought him suited for a legal career, but he found the law “nauseous”,
preferring to read classical texts, especially Cicero. He decided to become a “Scholar and
Philosopher”, and followed a rigorous program of reading and reflection for three years
until “there seem’d to be open’d up to me a new Scene of Thought” (HL 3.2). The intensity
of developing his philosophical vision precipitated a psychological crisis in the isolated
scholar.
WORK
In his day, “moral” meant anything concerned with human nature, not just ethics, as he
makes clear at the beginning of the first Enquiry, where he defines “moral philosophy” as
“the science of human nature” (EHU 1.1/5). Hume’s aim is to bring the scientific method to
bear on the study of human nature.
Hume’s early studies of philosophical “systems” convinced him that philosophy was in a
sorry state and in dire need of reform. When he was only 18 years old, he complained in a
letter that anyone familiar with philosophy realizes that it is embroiled in “endless Disputes”
(HL 3.2). The ancient philosophers, on whom he had been concentrating, replicated the
errors their natural philosophers made. They advanced theories that were “entirely
Hypothetical”, depending “more upon Invention than Experience”. He objects that they
consulted their imagination in constructing their views about virtue and happiness, “without
regarding human Nature, upon which every moral Conclusion must depend”. The youthful
Hume resolved to avoid these mistakes in his own work, by making human nature his
“principal Study, & the Source from which I would derive every Truth” (HL 3.6).
Even at this early stage, the roots of Hume’s mature approach to the reform of philosophy
are evident. He was convinced that the only way to improve philosophy was to make the
investigation of human nature central—and empirical (HL 3.2). The problem with ancient
philosophy was its reliance on “hypotheses”—claims based on speculation and invention
rather than experience and observation.
 He accepts the Newtonian maxim “Hypotheses non fingo”, roughly, “I do not do
hypotheses”. Any laws we discover must be established by observation and experiment.
Newton’s scientific method provides Hume with a template for introducing the
experimental method into his investigation of the mind. In An Enquiry concerning the
Principles of Morals, he says he will follow “a very simple method” that he believes will
bring about a transformation in the study of human nature. Following Newton’s example,
he argues that we should “reject every system … however subtile or ingenious, which is not
founded on fact and observation”, and accept only arguments derived from experience.
When we inquire about human nature, since we are asking “a question of fact, not of
abstract science”, we must rely on experience and observation (EPM

LEGAL CONTRIBUTION
Summary
The subject of the Enquiry is the contributions that moral sense and reason make in our
moral judgments. Hume claims that moral sense makes the ultimate distinction between
vice and virtue, though both moral sense and reason play a role in our formation of
moral judgments. Reason is important when we have to make a judgment about what is
useful, for reason alone can determine how and why something is useful to us or to
others. Hume briefly addresses what moral judges usually include in their lists of virtues,
what they leave out, and how they make these lists. He then returns to the classification
of virtues he proposed first in the Treatise.
Hume first distinguishes between artificial and natural virtues. Artificial virtues depend
on social structures and include justice and fidelity to promises; allegiance; chastity and
modesty; and duties of sovereign states to keep treaties, to respect boundaries, to
protect ambassadors, and to otherwise subject themselves to the law of nations. Hume
defines each of these virtues and explains how each manifests itself in the world. He
notes that artificial virtues vary from society to society.

Natural virtues, on the other hand, originate in nature and are more universal. They include
compassion, generosity, gratitude, friendship, fidelity, charity, beneficence, clemency, equity,
prudence, temperance, frugality, industry, courage, ambition, pride, modesty, self-
assertiveness, good sense, wit and humor, perseverance, patience, parental devotion, good
nature, cleanliness, articulateness, sensitivity to poetry, decorum, and an elusive quality that
makes a person lovely or valuable. Some of these virtues are voluntary, such as pride, while
others are involuntary, such as good sense
As in the Treatise, Hume explains that reason does not cause our actions. Instead, moral
sentiments, or passions, motivate us to act. In the Enquiry, however, Hume goes further to state
that our actions are caused by a combination of utility and sentiment. In other words, we must
care about the outcome if we are to care about the means by which it is achieved. Several
sections of the Enquiry are devoted to utility, the first and most important of the four kinds of
virtue, which Hume calls “virtuous because useful.” He also addresses benevolence and its role
in the moral process. Specifically, Hume says that benevolent acts are virtuous because they
are useful to many others.
Because he locates the basis of virtue in utility rather than in God-given reason, Hume’s list of
virtues implicitly forms a rejection of Christian morality. Items such as ambition are vices under
the old model, so Hume’s acceptance of them into his catalog is an insult to religious theorists.
However, Hume is consistent in his theory that these traits are virtues because they fulfill his
two requirements for moral sentiments: they must be useful to ourselves or others, or they must
be pleasing to ourselves or others.

Hume stresses that his theory of morals follows naturally from the philosophy he
elaborates in the first two books. Hume attempts to distinguish between vice and virtue,
arguing that such moral distinctions are in fact impressions rather than ideas. He then
describes how to distinguish these impressions from other common impressions, such
as sounds and colors. First, the impression of vice is pain, while that of virtue is
pleasure. Second, moral impressions are caused only by human actions, not the actions
of animals or inanimate objects. Third, moral impressions are worth considering only
from a social point of view because our actions are considered moral or immoral only
with regard to how they affect others, not how they affect ourselves. This concept leads
Hume to classify sympathy, feeling for fellow human beings, as the foundation of moral
obligation.

For Hume, morality is not a matter of fact derived from experience. To prove his point,
he suggests we examine ourselves with regard to any supposed moral misdeed, such
as murder. If we examine the act of murder, we can discover no idea of that quality of
immorality, or “vice.” Rather, we will discover only the strong feeling of dislike we have
for murder. This supports the idea that morality resides in passions, or “sentiment,” not
in reason. Although reason does help us explain those feelings, it is not their origin.

Hume makes the point that though we may not like it when one person kills another,
there is nothing contradictory or illogical about the act of murder. This does not mean
that Hume condones murder, merely that immoral actions are not immoral because they
are irrational. Within Hume’s system, murder would be banned on the grounds that it is
not an action that can be universally justified as good for everyone. Hume also
proposes the example of the man who would rather see the whole world destroyed
rather than injure his own fingers. Hume claims this man is not in contradiction to
himself or following illogical inferences, but this man also falls afoul of Hume’s dictum
that methods of justification and rationality must be universal. Other people in the same
situation must be able to justify their actions in the same way. No one but the man will
approve of his reasons for forsaking the world to save his own fingers. It is unlikely that
this man would approve or desire that another person make the same decision.

/////////////

 Moral Philosophy
Hume’s explanation of morality is an important part of his efforts to reform philosophy. He
takes his primary task to be an investigation into the origin of the basic moral ideas, which he
assumes are the ideas of moral goodness and badness. As with the idea of cause and
necessary connection, he wants to explain moral ideas as economically as possible in terms
of their “simplest and fewest causes”. Determining their causes will determine what their
content is—what we mean by them. His secondary concern is to establish what character
traits and motives are morally good and bad.
Hume follows his sentimentalist predecessor, Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746), in building
his moral theory around the idea of a spectator who approves or disapproves of people’s
character traits and motives. The sentiments of approval and disapproval are the source of
our moral ideas of goodness and badness. To evaluate a character trait as morally good is to
evaluate it as virtuous; to evaluate it as morally bad is to evaluate it as vicious.
As he did in the causation debate, Hume steps into an ongoing debate about ethics, often
called the British Moralists debate, which began in the mid-seventeenth century and
continued until the end of the eighteenth. He uses the same method here as he did in the
causation debate: there is a critical phase in which he argues against his opponents, and
a constructive phase in which he develops his version of sentimentalism. Hume has two sets
of opponents: the self-love theorists and the moral rationalists. He became the most famous
proponent of sentimentalism.
Thomas Hobbes’ (1588–1679) brilliant but shocking attempt to derive moral and political
obligation from motives of self-interest initiated the British Moralists debate. Hobbes, as his
contemporaries understood him, characterizes us as naturally self-centered and power-
hungry, concerned above all with our own preservation. In the state of nature, a pre-moral
and pre-legal condition, we seek to preserve ourselves by trying to dominate others. Since we
are equally powerful, this results in a state of “war of all against all” in which life is “nasty,
brutish, and short”. The way out is to make a compact with one another. We agree to hand
over our power and freedom to a sovereign, who makes the laws necessary for us to live
together peacefully and has the power to enforce them. While acting morally requires that we
comply with the laws the sovereign establishes, the basis of morality is self-interest.
Bernard Mandeville’s (1670–1733) The Fable of the Bees served to reinforce this reading of
Hobbes during the early 18th century. According to Mandeville, human beings are naturally
selfish, headstrong, and unruly. Some clever politicians, recognizing that we would be better
off living together in a civilized society, took up the task of domesticating us. Realizing that
we are proud creatures, highly susceptible to flattery, they were able to dupe many of us to
live up to the ideal of virtue—conquering our selfish passions and helping others—by
dispensing praise and blame. Moral concepts are just tools clever politicians used to tame us.
Two kinds of moral theories developed in reaction first to Hobbes and then to Mandeville—
rationalism and sentimentalism. The rationalists oppose Hobbes’ claim that there is no right
or wrong in the state of nature, that rightness or wrongness is determined by the sovereign’s
will, and that morality requires sanctions to motivate us. The sentimentalists object to
Hobbes’ and Mandeville’s “selfish” conceptions of human nature and morality. By the mid–
eighteenth century, rationalists and sentimentalists were arguing not only against Hobbes and
Mandeville, but also with each other.
Hume opposes both selfish and rationalist accounts of morality, but he criticizes them in
different works. In the Treatise, Hume assumes that Hobbes’ theory is no longer a viable
option, so that there are only two possibilities to consider. Either moral concepts spring from
reason, in which case rationalism is correct, or from sentiment, in which case sentimentalism
is correct. If one falls, the other stands. In the second Enquiry, Hume continues to oppose
moral rationalism, but his arguments against them appear in an appendix. More importantly,
he drops the assumption he made in the Treatise and takes the selfish theories of Hobbes and
Mandeville as his primary target. Once again, he thinks there are only two possibilities.
Either our approval is based in self-interest or it has a disinterested basis. The refutation of
one is proof of the other.

7.1 Moral Rationalism: Critical Phase in the Treatise

Hume thinks that “systems and hypotheses” have also “perverted our natural understanding”
of morality. The views of the moral rationalists—Samuel Clarke (1675–1729), Locke and
William Wollaston (1660–1724)—are prominent among them. One distinctive, but
unhealthy, aspect of modern moral philosophy, Hume believes, is that it allies itself with
religion and thus sees itself as serving the interests of “popular superstition”. Clarke’s theory
and those of the other rationalists epitomize this tendency.
Clarke, Hume’s central rationalist opponent, appeals to reason to explain almost every aspect
of morality. He believes that there are demonstrable moral relations of fitness and unfitness
that we discover a priori by means of reason alone. Gratitude, for example, is a fitting or
suitable response to kindness, while ingratitude is an unfitting or unsuitable response. He
believes that the rational intuition that an action is fitting has the power both to obligate us
and to move us. To act morally is to act rationally.
Hume’s most famous and most important objection to moral rationalism is two-pronged.
In Treatise 2.3.3, “Of the influencing motives of the will”, he rejects the rationalist ideal of
the good person as someone whose passions and actions are governed by reason. In T 3.1.1,
he uses these arguments to show that moral ideas do not spring from reason alone.
In the first prong of his objection, Hume begins by remarking that nothing is more common
than for philosophers, as well as ordinary people, to talk about the “combat” between reason
and passion. They say we ought to be governed by reason rather than passion, and if our
passions are not in line with reason’s commands, we ought to restrain them or bring them
into conformity with reason. Hume counters that “reason alone can never be a motive to any
action of the will” and that by itself it can never oppose a passion in the direction of the will.
His first argument rests on his empiricist conception of reason. As we saw in his account of
causation, demonstrative reasoning consists in comparing ideas to find relations among them,
while probable reasoning concerns matters of fact. He considers mathematical reasoning
from the relation of ideas category and causal reasoning from the category of matters of fact.
He asks us to look at instances of actions where these two types of reasoning are relevant and
says that when we do, we will see that reason alone couldn’t have moved us.
No one thinks that mathematical reasoning by itself is capable of moving us. Suppose you
want to stay out of debt. This may move you to calculate how much money comes in and
how much goes out, but mathematical reasoning by itself does not move us to do anything.
Mathematical reasoning, when it bears on action, is always used in connection with
achieving some purpose and thus in connection with causal reasoning.
Hume, however, argues that when causal reasoning figures in the production of action, it
always presupposes an existing desire or want. On his view, reasoning is a process that
moves you from one idea to another. If reasoning is to have motivational force, one of the
ideas must be tied to some desire or affection. As he says,
It can never in the least concern us to know, that such objects are causes, and such others
effects, if both the causes and effects are indifferent to us. Where the objects themselves do
not affect us, their connexion can never give them any influence; and ‘tis plain, that as reason
is nothing but the discovery of this connexion, it cannot be by its means that the objects are
able to affect us (T 2.3.3.3/414).
Noticing a causal connection between exercise and losing weight will not move you to
exercise, unless you want to lose weight.
It immediately follows that reason alone cannot oppose a passion in the direction of the will.
To oppose a passion, reason must be able to give rise to a motive by itself, since only a
motive can oppose another motive, but he has just shown that reason by itself is unable to do
this.
Having exposed reason’s pretensions to rule, Hume inverts the rationalist’s ideal of the good
person, and concludes that “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and
can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them” (T 2.3.3.4/415).
The second prong of Hume’s objection, the argument from motivation, is directed primarily
against Clarke and concerns the source of our moral concepts: either they spring from reason
or from sentiment. Couching this debate in terms of his own version of the theory of ideas,
he reminds us that to engage in any sort of mental activity is to have a perception before the
mind, so “to approve of one character, to condemn another, are only so many different
perceptions” (T 3.1.1.2/456). Since there are only two types of perception—ideas and
impressions—the question between rationalism and sentimentalism is
Whether ’tis by means of our ideas or impressions we distinguish betwixt vice and virtue,
and pronounce an action blameable or praise-worthy?  (T 3.1.1.3/456)
The argument from motivation has only two premises. The first is that moral ideas have
pervasive practical effects. Experience shows that we are often motivated to perform an
action because we think it is obligatory or to refrain because we think it is unjust. We try to
cultivate the virtues in ourselves and are proud when we succeed and ashamed when we fail.
If morality did not have these effects on our passions and actions, moral rules and precepts
would be pointless, as would our efforts to be virtuous. Thus “morals excite passions, and
produce or prevent actions” (T 3.1.1.6/457).
The second premise is that by itself reason is incapable of exciting passions or producing and
preventing actions, which Hume supports with the arguments we just looked at about the
influencing motives of the will. The argument from motivation, then, is that if moral
concepts are capable of exciting passions and producing or preventing actions, but reason
alone is incapable of doing these things, then moral concepts can’t spring from reason alone.
Reason for Hume is essentially passive and inert: it is incapable by itself of giving rise to
new motives or new ideas. Although he thinks the argument from motivation is decisive, in T
3.1.1 he offers a battery of additional arguments, which are intended to show that moral
concepts do not arise from reason alone.
Hume takes the defeat of rationalism to entail that moral concepts spring from sentiment. Of
course, he was not the first to claim that moral ideas arise from sentiment. Hutcheson
claimed that we possess, in addition to our external senses, a special moral sense that
disposes us to respond to benevolence with the distinctive feelings of approbation. Hume,
however, rejects the idea that the moral sentiments arise from a sense that is an
“original quality” and part of our “primary constitution”.
He first argues that there are many different types of virtue, not all of which are types of
benevolence—respecting people’s property rights, keeping promises, courageousness, and
industriousness—as Hutcheson maintained. If we agree with Hume, but keep Hutcheson’s
idea of a moral sense, we would have to believe that we have many different “original”
senses, which dispose us to approve of the variety of different virtues separately. But he
complains that this is not only highly implausible, but also contrary to the
usual maxims, by which nature is conducted, where a few principles produce all the variety
we observe in the universe. (T 3.1.2.6/473)
Instead of multiplying senses, we should look for a few general principles to explain our
approval of the different virtues.
The real problem, however, is that Hutcheson just claims—hypothesizes—that we possess a
unique, original moral sense. If asked why we have a moral sense, his reply is that God
implanted it in us. Although in his critical phase Hume freely borrows many of Hutcheson’s
arguments to criticize moral rationalism, his rejection of a God-given moral sense puts him
on a radically different path from Hutcheson in his constructive phase. One way of
understanding Hume’s project is to see it as an attempt to naturalize Hutcheson’s moral sense
theory. He aims to provide a wholly naturalistic and economical explanation of how we
come to experience the moral sentiments that also explains why we approve of the different
virtues. In the course of explaining the moral sentiments, Hutcheson’s idea of an original
moral sense disappears from Hume’s account of morality.

Hume’s Political Philosophy is difficult to pinpoint, as his

work contains elements of both Conservatism and Liberalism,
and he resisted aligning himself with either of Britain's two
political parties, the Whigs and the Tories. His central concern
was to show the importance of the rule of law, and stressed,
in his "Essays Moral and Political” of 1742, the
importance of moderation in politics (particularly within the
turbulent historical context of 18th Century Scotland). In
general, he thought that republics were more likely
than monarchies to administer laws fairly, but the important
point for Hume was that society be governed by a general and
impartial system of laws, based principally on the "artifice"
of contract (Contractarianism). He supported freedom of
the press; he was sympathetic to elected
representation and democracy (when suitably
constrained); he believed that private property was not a
natural right (as John Locke held), but that it was justified
because resources are limited; he was optimistic
about social progress arising from the economic
development that comes with the expansion of trade; and
he counseled strongly against revolution and resistance to
governments except in cases of the most egregious tyranny.

t it was as a historian that Hume finally achieved literary

fame. His immense 6-volume "History of
England” (subtitled "From the Invasion of Julius
Caesar to the Revolution in 1688”), written between
1745 and 1760, is a work of immense sweep, running to over
a million words. It became a best-seller in its day and
became the standard work on English history for many
years.

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David Hume (1711-1776) went into history as one of the most important figures of
Western philosophy but he also made important contributions to history and literature. In
contrary to rationalists such as Descartes, Hume argued that it is not reason that
governs human behaviour but desire instead. He said that “reason is, and ought only to
be the slave of the passions”. But despite the fact that had profoundly influenced the
next generation of philosophers, his theories were not received particularly well by his
contemporaries.

Personal Life

David Hume was born in 1711 to Joseph Home of Chirnside and his wife Katherine
Falconer in Edinburgh, Scotland. He later changed his surname from Home into Hume
because it was pronounced incorrectly outside Scotland. Hume started to attend the
University of Edinburgh at a very early age. In contrary to most of his schoolmates who
were 14 years old, he was aged 12 or 10. He was pressed by his family to study law but
instead, as he said he had secretly devoted himself to studying Voet, Vinnius, Cicero
and Virgil. Due to the intensity of his intellectual discovery, however, he suffered a
nervous breakdown in 1729 from which he did not recover fully for several years.

In 1734, he went to France, spending most of the time at the La Fleche where he
started to write his best known and most influential work titled A Treatise of Human
Nature. The critics in Britain, however, disliked it and described it as unintelligible. Hume
was disappointed by the reception of his first work but he soon got over it. He returned
to England in 1737. In 1740, he moved to Edinburgh where he wrote “Essays Moral and
Political”. It was published in 1744 and it was much better received than the Treatise.
Possibly encouraged by the success, he applied for the chair of moral philosophy at the
University of Edinburgh, however, he was rejected due to opposition of the Edinburgh
ministers for his “heresy” and “atheism”.

Again disappointed, Hume left Edinburgh and spend an entire decade wandering from
one place to another. But all this time, he continued to study and write. It was during the
period of wandering when Hume started to write the six volume and over million word
“The History of England” that was published between 1754 and 1762, and became a
best-seller. While he was working for Lieutenant-General St Clair, he also wrote the
“Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding” (published as An Enquiry
Concerning Human Understanding in 1758) which was followed by “The Enquiry
Concerning the Principles of Morals in 1751. He continued to write almost until his
death, ending his list of works with the autobiography “My Own Life”. He died from
cancer in 1776. Hume never married and had no children.

Works and Influence

Hume’s approach to the fundamental questions of philosophy, his reformulation of

scepticism and approach to science of human nature dramatically influenced the future
course of Western philosophy. The Scottish philosopher played an important role in the
development of critical philosophy by Immanuel Kant and Auguste Comte’s positivism
but he also greatly influenced Jeremy Bentham and the school of utilitarianism.
Ironically, the greatest impact on history of philosophy achieved his first work, A
Treatise of Human Nature that met a disappointing response from his contemporaries.

In addition to philosophy, Hume is also regarded as one of the most important figures in
the field of history, literature and economy. The History of England broke with the
tradition that traced only political and military history, and was intentionally created to be
more readable. All Hume’s works reveal an exceptional sense for style for which he
became famous already during his lifetime and remains highly valued ever since. His
writing on economy, especially in the Political Discourses and Treatise are thought to
influence his friend, Adam Smith who became a pioneer of political economy. The
extent of Hume’s influence on Smith is unknown but he introduced several ideas that
profoundly influenced the 18th century economy as a whole.

7. Moral Theory
Hume’s moral theory appears in Book 3 of the Treatise and in An Enquiry Concerning the
Principles of Morals (1751). He opens his discussion in the Treatise by telling us what
moral approval is not: it is not a rational judgment about either conceptual relations or
empirical facts. To make his case he criticizes Samuel Clarke’s rationalistic account of
morality, which is that we rationally judge the fitness or unfitness of our actions in
reference to eternal laws of righteousness, that are self-evidently known to all humans,
just as is our knowledge of mathematical relations. Hume presents several arguments
against Clarke’s view, one of which is an analogy from arboreal parricide: a young tree
that overgrows and kills its parent exhibits the same alleged relations as a human child
killing his parent. “Is not the one tree the cause of the other’s existence; and the latter
the cause of the destruction of the former, in the same manner as when a child murders
his parent?” (Treatise, 3.1.1.24). If morality is a question of relations, then the young tree
is immoral, which is absurd. Hume also argues that moral assessments are not
judgments about empirical facts. Take any immoral action, such as willful murder:
“examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence,
which you call vice” (Treatise, 3.1.1.25). You will not find any such fact, but only your own
feelings of disapproval. In this context Hume makes his point that we cannot derive
statements of obligation from statements of fact. When surveying various moral
theories, Hume writes, “I am surpriz’d to find, that instead of the usual copulations of
propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with
an ought or an ought not” (Treatise, 3.1.1.26). This move from is to ought is illegitimate, he
argues, and is why people erroneously believe that morality is grounded in rational
judgments.
Thus far Hume has only told us what moral approval is not, namely a judgment of
reason. So what then does moral approval consist of? It is an emotional response, not a
rational one. The details of this part of his theory rest on a distinction between three
psychologically distinct players: the moral agent, the receiver, and the moral spectator.
The moral agent is the person who performs an action, such as stealing a car;
the receiver is the person impacted by the conduct, such as the owner of the stolen car;
and the moral spectator is the person who observes and, in this case, disapproves of the
agent’s action. This agent-receiver-spectator distinction is the product of earlier moral
sense theories championed by the Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713), Joseph Butler (1692-
1752), and Francis Hutcheson (1694-1747). Most generally, moral sense theories
maintained that humans have a faculty of moral perception, similar to our faculties
of sensory  perception. Just as our external senses detect qualities in external objects,
such as colors and shapes, so too does our moral faculty detect good and bad moral
qualities in people and actions.
For Hume, all actions of a moral agent are motivated by character traits, specifically
either virtuous or vicious character traits. For example, if you donate money to a charity,
then your action is motivated by a virtuous character trait. Hume argues that some
virtuous character traits are instinctive or natural, such as benevolence, and others are
acquired or artificial, such as justice. As an agent, your action will have an effect on a
receiver. For example, if you as the agent give food to a starving person, then the
receiver will experience an immediately agreeable feeling from your act. Also, the
receiver may see the usefulness of your food donation, insofar as eating food will
improve his health. When considering the usefulness of your food donation, then, the
receiver will receive another agreeable feeling from your act. Finally, I, as a spectator,
observe these agreeable feelings that the receiver experiences. I, then, will
sympathetically experience agreeable feelings along with the receiver. These
sympathetic feelings of pleasure constitute my moral approval of the original act of
charity that you, the agent, perform. By sympathetically experiencing this pleasure, I
thereby pronounce your motivating character trait to be a virtue, as opposed to a vice.
Suppose, on the other hand, that you as an agent did something to hurt the receiver,
such as steal his car. I as the spectator would then sympathetically experience the
receiver’s pain and thereby pronounce your motivating character trait to be a vice, as
opposed to a virtue.
In short, that is Hume’s overall theory. There are, though, some important details that
should also be mentioned. First, it is tricky to determine whether an agent’s motivating
character trait is natural or artificial, and Hume decides this one virtue at a time. For
Hume, the natural virtues include benevolence, meekness, charity, and generosity. By
contrast, the artificial virtues include justice, keeping promises, allegiance and chastity.
Contrary to what one might expect, Hume classifies the key virtues that are necessary
for a well-ordered state as artificial, and he classifies only the more supererogatory
virtues as natural. Hume’s critics were quick to point out this paradox. Second, to spark
a feeling of moral approval, the spectator does not have to actually witness the effect of
an agent’s action upon a receiver. The spectator might simply hear about it, or the
spectator might even simply invent an entire scenario and think about the possible
effects of hypothetical actions. This happens when we have moral reactions when
reading works of fiction: “a very play or romance may afford us instances of this
pleasure, which virtue conveys to us; and pain, which arises from vices” (Treatise,
3.1.2.2).
Third, although the agent, receiver, and spectator have psychologically distinct roles, in
some situations a single person may perform more than one of these roles. For example,
if I as an agent donate to charity, as a spectator to my own action I can also sympathize
with the effect of my donation on the receiver. Finally, given various combinations of
spectators and receivers, Hume concludes that there are four irreducible categories of
qualities that exhaustively constitute moral virtue: (1) qualities useful to others, which
include benevolence, meekness, charity, justice, fidelity and veracity; (2) qualities useful
to oneself, which include industry, perseverance, and patience; (3) qualities immediately
agreeable to others, which include wit, eloquence and cleanliness; and (4) qualities
immediately agreeable to oneself, which include good humor, self-esteem and pride. For
Hume, most morally significant qualities and actions seem to fall into more than one of
these categories. When Hume spoke about an agent’s “useful” consequences, he often
used the word “utility” as a synonym. This is particularly so in the Enquiry Concerning the
Principles of Morals where the term “utility” appears over 50 times. Moral theorists after
Hume thus depicted his moral theory as the “theory of utility”—namely, that morality
involves assessing the pleasing and painful consequences of actions on the receiver. It is
this concept and terminology that inspired classic utilitarian philosophers, such as
Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832).