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Hume’s Common Sense Morality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 1975

David Fate Norton
David Fate Norton*
Affiliation:
McGill University
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Extract

Hume's moral theory, I shall here argue, is explicitly and in fundamental ways a common sense theory. It is widely accepted, of course, that Hume found moral distinctions to rest on sentiment, and that he found in the principle of sympathy the means by which individual sentiments come to be experienced by others. What has not received adequate attention is Hume's concern to refute moral skepticism and his explicit reliance on appeals to “common sense,” nor,so far as I know, has anyone suggested how these several features coalesce in an outlook which is appropriately designated a common sense theory. To support my claim I shall first show that Hume is not, as is widely supposed, what we would term a “subjectivist” in morals, and that in fact he means to establish, in at least two important senses of the term, the “objectivity”of morals.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 5 , Issue 4 , December 1975 , pp. 523 - 543
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1975

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References

1 Norman Kemp Smith has claimed that Hume's entire philosophy is characterized by the “thorough subordination of reason to feeling and instinct,” and that Hume was prepared to accept our “'common sense’ beliefs” and to point out the absurdity of any philosophy which attempts to withhold assent to them, or to replace them. When faced with the choice between these beliefs and a philosophy which denies them, says Smith, Hume maintained that “it is common sense that must be held to.” I do not accept this exaggerated view of Hume's “naturalism” or common sensism, and as I have shown elsewhere Smith's claims are quite mistaken. (“Hume's Defence of Rational Metaphysics,”read at the Pacific Division Meetings, American Philosophical Association, 1973. An expanded version of this paper is in preparation.) For the present I shall suggest that the effort to isolate Hume's common sense morality from other parts of his philosophy is justified by his division of philosophy into the easy and obvious vs. the abstruse and difficult (Inquiry concerning Human Understanding, Sec. 1), and his claim that the standard of truth in morals is not the same as that of other species of philosophy (The Letters of David Hume, ed.J.Y.T. Greig, Vol. I, 150-151). Whether this effort can be sustained is yet, of course, an open question.

2 Abbreviations used in this article: T -A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Selby-Bigge, L. A. (Oxford, 1960)Google Scholar; ICHU-An Inquiry concerning Human Understanding, ed. Hendel, C. H. (Indianapolis, 1955)Google Scholar; ICPM-An Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals,ed. Hendel, C. H. (Indianapolis, 1957)Google Scholar; Works-David Hume: The Philosophical Works, ed. Green, T. H. and Grose, T. H. 4 vols., (Darmstadt, 1964)Google Scholar; LDH-The Letters of David Hume, ed. Greig, J. Y. T. 2 vols., (Oxford, 1932)Google Scholar; NLDH-New Letters of David Hume, ed. Mossner, E.L. and Klibansky, R. (London, 1954).Google Scholar

3 I am disagreeing here with what must be taken as the standard interpretation of Hume, or, that is, with the claim that for Hume virtue and vice are not independent and objective. C.D. Broad says that Hume “defines ‘good’ and ‘bad’ by reference to certain kinds of mental state,” and then specifically notes that “we must not underrate the extent to which Hume's theory conflicts with ordinary views. The common view, though it is never very articulately expressed, is presumably somewhat as follows. Certain things would be good and others would be bad whether the contemplation of them did or did not call forth emotions of approval or disapproval in all or most men. The good things call forth emotions of approval in all or most men because they are good and because men are so constituted as to feel this kind of emotion towards what they believe to be good …. On Hume's contrary view if men did not feel these emotions nothing would be good or bad …. “ In his “Analytical Table of Contents“ Broad summarizes these remarks by saying that Hume's, theory “reverses the view of Common sense.” See Five Types of Ethical Theory(Paterson, New Jersey, 1959) pp. x, 85–86.Google Scholar

For other similarly subjectivist interpretations of Hume, see e.g., Hunter, Geoffrey “Hume on Is and Ought,” Philosophy, Vol. XXXVII (1962), 151-52Google Scholar; Foot, Philippa “Hume on Moral Judgement,” in David Hume: A Symposium (London, 1963) pp. 70–72Google Scholar; Flew, Antony “Hume,” in A Critical History of Western Philosophy, ed. O'Connor, D.J. (London, 1964), p. 271Google Scholar; and in more general works, Jones, W.T. A History of Western Philosophy,(New York, 1952) p. 799Google Scholar; Gilson, Etienne and Langan, Thomas Modern Philosophy: Descartes to Kant, (New York, 1968) pp. 271-72.Google Scholar Àrdal, Pall S. Passion and Value in Hume's Treatise (Edinburgh, 1966)Google Scholar also suggests that too much emphasis is put on the passage first cited, and that, for Hume, “'virtue’ refers to a quality of mind or character that causes, in an observer, a feeling of approval in special circumstances,” (p. 208) I believe Àrdal and I are in agreement on this point, although his rather different concern does not lead him into a detailed analysis of what is perhaps best termed a metaphysical question. Nonetheless, his chapter, “Evaluations and Their linguistic Expressions” does complement this section of my paper.

4 A number of commentators have mentioned this aspect of Hume's ethics, but they have not, so far as I know, shown how Hume's insistence that we must be ideal spectators is consistent with his alleged (metaphysical) subjectivism in morals. Àrdal's criticisms of Hunter (op. cit.) seem germane to this point.

5 On Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, on moral scepticism see my “Shaftesbury and Two Scepticisms,” Filosofia(Supplemento al Fasciolo IV, Nov., 1968), 713-724Google Scholar, and “Hutcheson's Moral Sense Theory Reconsidered,” Dialogue, XIII (March, 1974), 3-23.

7 It is perhaps relevant, however, to note that, while the title-page of Books I and II bears a comment from Horace regarding the felicity of the times for philosophizing, Book III has ” … Durae semper virtatis amator, Quare quid est virtus, et posce exemplar honesti” (Lucan).

8 (T, 546-47) Here it does appear that Hume is maintaining a subjectivist view, one which contradicts both the metaphysical realism I have ascribed to him, and the epistemologiCal realism of his “ideal spectator” account of moral evaluations, unless he means to imply that the sentiments of the rabble are entirely uniform. There is also significant ambiguity in the phrase, “as every one places in it.” In context it appears to have an individualistic bearing, but it is conceivable that reference to a kind of common denominator of feeling was intended. In Hume's defense one can at least note that the explanation of error, or the possibility of error, seems an inherent difficulty of common sense philosphies.

9 Works, III, 459-60. This remark is also a good example of Hume's tendency to blur any possible distinctions there may be between “common sense” and “common sentiments.“

10 Not, however, with complete success. He begins Section II with an appeal to universal language, a move which was throughout the eighteenth-century a standard part of the common sense repertoire. Terms, he says, which denote estimable social qualities are “known in all languages, and universally express the highest merit …. “ A few paragraphs later he seems to catch himself, and reminds us that his inquiry is to have “more the speculative than the practical part of morals” as its concern. It also appears, however, that he lets the damage stand, and uses the fact so established (that there are social virtues) as a basis for his subsequent arguments. And later he again reverts to what “historians and even common sense” tell us as confirmation of his views about perfect equality. (ICPM, 9-10, 25)

11 It has been suggested to me that Hume's views on sympathy alter in the Inquiry concerning Morals. Perhaps. However, I am inclined to think that it is not so much that Hume's views changed, as that his manner of presenting them was altered. Thus, though the principle of sympathy receives proportionately more attention in the Treatise than in the Inquiry, and though in the later work some of the importance that was earlier ascribed to sympathy seems to be ascribed to the “sentiment of humanity,” I am not satisfied that there is any significant alteration in Hume's view, or at least none that affects that part of his theory which I have been discussing. In the Inquiry it is still sympathy that serves to make moral communication and shared sentiments possible; sympathy is still the principle which enables us to obtain a common point of view and pursue common interests. (See Sections V., II; VI, 1). Our sentiment of humanity or natural tendency to benevolence has an essential role in morality, of course, but so does it also in the Treatise account.