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Talents, Abilities and Virtues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Robin Attfield
Robin Attfield
Affiliation:
University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, Cardiff
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Extract

Hume Regards it as a mere “Verbal Dispute” whether or not various “natural abilities” should be regarded as moral virtues. In his Treatise he complains that “good sense and judgment”, “parts and understanding” are classed in all systems of ethics of the day with bodily endowments and ascribed no “merit or moral worth”. Yet if compared with the received virtues, they fell short in no material respect, both sets being “mental qualities” and each equally tending to procure “the love and esteem of mankind’.

Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy , Volume 46 , Issue 177 , July 1971 , pp. 255 - 258
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1971

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References

1 An Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Appendix IV, Of some verbal disputes. Ed. Charles W. Hendel, Bobbs-Merrill, 1957.

2 A Treatise of Human Nature, Book III, Part III, Section IV, in Hume's Philosophical Works, Vol. II, p. 391. (Edinburgh, 1854).

3 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 393.

4 Ibid., p. 393.

5 An Inquiry, p. 129.

6 An Inquiry, pp. 138–39.

7 Works, Vol. II, pp. 400 f.

8 Ibid., p. 404.

9 Ibid., 148–63.

10 “Freewill as involving Determinism”, Philosophical Review, 1957.

11 Cf. P. 138 of An Inquiry, Appendix IV.

12 Works, Vol. II, p. 396.

13 R. S. Downie and Elizabeth Telfer, Respect for Persons, Allen and Unwin, 1969, Ch. 3.

14 An Inquiry, p. 135.