Hume’s moral philosophy builds upon his empiricist theory of mind, an introduction to which can be found here. In short, all human knowledge is a product of our experience, derived primarily through our senses but also through how we feel – our passions, emotions, temperaments. All of these phenomena function as inputs.
In moral philosophy he is responding to two types of argument – the theological one, that argues that morality comes from God, and the rationalist one, that argues that morality is a product of human reason, culture, or education alone.
Hume was also a naturalist in two ways. Firstly, he didn’t believe morality had any religious, supernatural or spiritual foundations. And secondly, he believed humans had a human nature – that is, something that we are wired biologically with.
He was also a moral sentimentalist – meaning the foundation for our moral behaviour can be found in our emotions, our feelings, our sentiments.
A Treatise of Human Nature, published in 1738, was divided into three volumes – understanding, passions, and morals.
His moral philosophy was also simplified into his later work, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals.
In book two of the earlier work, Hume considers how passions are part of these original impressions on the mind. Pleasure, pain, hunger, anger are impressed upon the mind, they are felt by the mind like imaginary inputs.
Because these are the foundational inputs, like the inputs from the senses, reason is secondary to them.
As he famously puts it, ‘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’.
Hume thought that rather than being a product of rational calculation, morality was something that, like a passion, was felt.
He argues against the systems of morality built upon reason, writing, ‘truth is disputable; not taste: What exists in the nature of things is the standard of our judgment; what each man feels within himself is the standard of sentiment. Propositions in geometry may be proved, systems in physics may be controverted; but the harmony of verse, the tenderness of passion, the brilliancy of wit, must give immediate pleasure’.
The problem with arguing that morality is rational, mathematical, geometrical, is that it builds something metaphysical that is meant to be transcendental, universal, eternal – outside of the realm of humanity.
For Hume, morality must be human.
He looks at what happens in us when we see virtue or vice.
He says that the things we call virtuous produce a feeling of agreeableness or pleasure, while the things we call a vice produce a disagreeable sentiment.
We don’t reason and logically explain to ourselves why – it arises as a sentiment.
Hume gives the example of a murder.
You might see a number of actions or moments.
A man demanding another’s wallet. A refusal. A gun fired. A man hit. Blood. Lifelessness. Fleeing.
Hume’s point about impressions – matters of fact – is that none of these inputs to the eyes or ears are moral inputs. We don’t see morality.
There is nothing illogical, irrational, or contradictory about the process or the murder. It is just a series of facts.
This is where his famous is-ought argument comes in. That you can’t get an ought about the world – you ought not murder – from simply observing facts.
He writes, ‘In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprised 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’.
Rather than rationally constructing an ought we have feelings in response to a series of actions, feelings of anger, fear, surprise.
His point is that we don’t have to use our reason to feel this disapproval – what he calls disapprobation.
He uses the terms approbation and disapprobation – approval or disapproval – and these feelings are directed at a person’s actions.
For example, if the murdered man was a bad person it would be a moral action to murder him no matter what the motive.
Consequentialists argue that morality is about outcomes – how much good an act produces – but for Hume it is more than the consequences – it’s about motives, why someone acted, their ‘personal merit’.
Approbation is an appraisal of a person’s action. We don’t deem the sun moral for shining, or mice for chewing through ropes and freeing a kidnapped man. Or a lion for killing a leopard.
Hume then takes a closer look at what motives might be. He sees only three: self-love – engaging in an action for self-interest; private benevolence – acting in the interest of a group – a family, a circle, a friend et cetera; and general benevolence – acting in the interest of humanity, generally.
While actions can be motivated by a mixture of all three, our idea of justice – when evaluating a moral act – arises out of a consideration of the last two.
What we really feel when we appraise an act is a snap judgement of general utility.
In general, Hume argues, the actions we praise as moral are those that produce happiness, satisfaction, and utility.
He writes, ‘In all determinations of morality, this circumstance of public utility is ever principally in view; and wherever disputes arise, either in philosophy or common life, concerning the bounds of duty, the question cannot, by any means, be decided with greater certainty, than by ascertaining, on any side, the true interests of mankind’.
He continues, ‘The eye is pleased with the prospect of corn-fields and loaded vineyards; horses grazing, and flocks pasturing: But flies the view of briars and brambles, affording shelter to wolves and serpents’.
Hume then breaks down these feelings of approbation or disapprobation about utility into two categories: the natural and the artificial.
The natural are part of our human nature – they take no culture or education to learn, and are simply natural reactions.
The artificial take education, extend from the natural ones but also from reason, from thought. Importantly, they still have their basis in the first.
The natural virtues are those always immediately praised by others as being useful.
He lists many, including, ‘prudence, temperance, frugality, industry, assiduity, enterprise, [and] dexterity’; ‘generosity, humanity, compassion, gratitude, friendship, fidelity, zeal, disinterestedness, [and] liberality’; ‘industry, perseverance, patience, activity, vigilance, application, [and] constancy’; as well as ‘temperance, frugality, economy, [and] resolution’.
Of the natural virtues Hume says, ‘their merit consists in their tendency to serve the person, possessed of them, without any magnificent claim to public and social desert’.
He also describes them as, ‘qualities immediately agreeable to ourselves’ and to ‘others’.
I think it’s worth making a point here that he would agree that the specificities of moral behaviour are up for debate. Hume is more interested in working out the foundations of why these arise – in short, the natural feeling of approbation based primarily on usefulness.
He says these traits, ‘universally express the highest merit’, but he goes on to say that is not his present business to recommend generosity or benevolence, but is giving a commentary on the practical part of morals.
Hume is, of course, more interested in the philosophy
He argues that we each feel our way around these sentiments – weighing consequences – we also have a sense of artificial duty, that arises primarily out of a sense for justice. In the Enquiry he also calls this a social virtue.
The ways he describes this in the Treatise and the Enquiry differ slightly, but our sense of justice arises out of the natural desire for public utility.
In the Enquiry he takes the example of property to prove that this artificial justice is neither simply rationally constructed like a universal thereom nor theologically justified as was commonly argued at the time.
Hume says that had the world been one of absolute abundance the need for property would not arise.
If there was absolute scarcity, he also says that we would be warring over the little that was left, and property would be abolished.
Property, then, is not a rational, transcendental, absolute law, but arises out of necessity.
This is in contrary to someone like Locke who argues that property rights are natural themselves – God-given.
Hume writes, ‘The common situation of society is a medium amidst all these extremes. We are naturally partial to ourselves, and to our friends; but are capable of learning the advantage resulting from a more equitable conduct’.
He says that it is this sense of artificial justice that leads to a political community.
When people come together who don’t know each other – who aren’t friends – we require a custom to know how to act.
Hume is a naturalist, a sentimentalist, in the sense that the ‘artificial’ duties grow like a plant out of the natural ones.
Even robbers and pirates, he says, have a code. Even roads, wars, wrestlers need rules of some kind.
Hume argues that these abstract ideas of morality have a pull on us like a magnet because we know they are better for us in the end: ‘Would you have your company coveted, admired, followed’, he asks, ‘rather than hated, despised, and avoided?’
Hume’s argument is complicated but the foundations are more important than the commentary that follows.
What is new, unique and influential in Hume is the dialectic between personal feelings of utility and universalising public moral rules, both ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’.
A dialectic between self-love – looking after ourselves – and the approval of the community – actions that result in the good of all and make all better off.
In this sense he, along with Rousseau, foreshadows the Romantics.
Rationalists might construct a theory of morality opposed to the passions, to feeling – meant to keep emotion in check. In opposing this, Hume was, again, both ahead of his time psychologically and not as easy to place as most modern thinkers.
In the 20th century, Gilles Deleuze argued that Hume was much more radical than he is usually interpreted as being, and that he is primarily a subjectivist because impressions and feelings differ radically between people.
Hume himself wrote that, ‘The difference, which nature has placed between one man and another, is so wide, and this difference is still so much farther widened, by education, example, and habit’.
Hume’s philosophy of morality is a human one. It argues against systematisation from absolute dogmatic abstract rules and instead advocates feeling – being in the world – summarised in one of his most well-known phrases:
Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.
