## 1. Life, Works, and General Overview



Price was born in Llangeinor, Wales, the son of a dissenting minister.
He was initially educated privately, but after the death of his
parents was encouraged by an uncle to attend the dissenting academy in
Moorfields, London. In 1744 Price became family chaplain to George
Streatfield at Stoke Newington. His duties were not onerous, leaving
him ample time for study. It was here that he began what became his
most important work: *A Review of the Principal Questions in
Morals* (1758; 3rd. ed. 1787). In its main doctrines
Price was strongly influenced by Ralph Cudworth, whose *Treatise
Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality* was published
posthumously in 1731. In 1757 Streatfield died and, his financial
circumstances having improved, Price married Sarah Blundell in June of
that year and became, shortly after, the minister in Newington Green,
where he remained for most of his life.



Price became a leading figure in liberal intellectual groups,
especially the "Bowood Circle", which was named after the
house of its leader, Lord Shelburne, and included Joseph Priestley and
Benjamin Vaughan. He also belonged to the group that Benjamin Franklin
dubbed the "Club of Honest Whigs": a dining group
revolving round John Canton, which included some other members of the
Bowood Circle. Other prominent visitors or acquaintances included the
eminent politicians, Lord Stanhope, William Pitt the Elder, and the
prison reformer John Howard, as well as David Hume, and Adam
Smith.



Price was a keen supporter of both the American and French
revolutions. In early 1776 he published *Observations on the Nature
of Civil Liberty*, followed by *Additional Observations* in
the next year. In 1784 he added *Observations on the Importance of
the American Revolution.* Price's support of the colonies
earned him the friendship of many of the leading figures in the
rebellion, including Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, and Paine. His
support led to his being invited by the Continental Congress to assist
in the financial administration of the States, and to his being
awarded an honorary LL.D. by Yale University (1781, the other honoree
that year being George Washington), to add to the honorary doctorates
he had already received from Aberdeen and Glasgow Universities. When
Lord Shelburne became Prime Minister in 1782 he offered Price the post
of his private secretary, which Price refused.



His published sermon, *A Discourse on the Love of our Country*
(1789), defending the French revolution, ignited a pamphlet war,
including Burke's famous and furious response in *Reflections
on the Revolution in France* (1790), as well as equally passionate
defenses by his friends Thomas Paine in *Rights of Man* (1791),
and Mary Wollstonecraft in *A Vindication of the Rights of Men*
(1790).



A central aspect of Price's dissension from the doctrines of the
Church of England was his rejection of Trinitarianism. For the
Trinitarian, the Godhead is three persons in one substance, so that
Christ is fully God as well as fully man. For the Socinian, by
contrast, Jesus is merely human: a supreme teacher and exemplar of how
to live, but nothing more. Price takes a position between these
extremes. Christ is creator and judge, who descended from heaven and
became man. He is not God, but the Messiah, and is on no account to be
worshipped. When it comes to Christ's redemptive power, Price
again steers a middle course between the Socinian view that Christ
saves by precept and example, so that his death was not necessary to
salvation, and the Calvinist claim that redemption is wholly the work
of God, who saves whom he will save, and damns whom he will damn (see
*Romans* 9:18). For Price, salvation requires the cooperation
of both parties. The sinner must of his own free will repent and
strive for righteousness, but God is not *required* to accept
repentant sinners, for repentance does not wipe out the consequences
of sin. God wipes out all guilt as a reward to Christ for his perfect
obedience.



In line with Cudworth, Clarke, and many others, Price rejected
theological voluntarism: the view that the precepts of morality depend
on God's will. The fundamental principles of morality are
necessary, and thus eternal and immutable. The standard objection to
this view is that it limits the sovereignty of God by making him
subject to moral demands that are not dependent on him. Price's
response to this difficulty lies in his claim that, since God
*is* eternal truth and reason, and since reason must recognize
moral obligations, moral constraints are part of God's nature,
and not distinct from it. Nothing external to God constrains him.



In addition to his writings on ethics, theology, and politics, Price
corresponded at length with Joseph Priestley on the topic of free
will; their correspondence was published in 1778. He was also a
pioneer in probability theory, and edited Thomas Bayes' major
work *An Essay Towards Solving a Problem in the Doctrine of
Chances* (1763). As a consequence of his important introduction to
Bayes' essay he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in
1765. His statistical work led to an interest in demography and
actuarial calculations. His foundational book, *Observations on
Reversionary Payments* (1771) was in use for about a century, as
was his life table compiled by data he drew from a study of
Northampton. His *Essay on the Population of England*
(2nd ed. 1780) influenced Thomas Malthus. His concern about
the failure of successive governments to tackle the mounting national
debt led to his publication, in the same year, of his *Appeal to
the Public on the Subject of the National Debt* (1771), which may
have influenced William Pitt the Younger to re-establish the sinking
fund for the extinction of the national debt.



It is Price's views on ethics that remain most relevant to
contemporary philosophy, so that will be the central focus of this
entry, which will also cover his political theory, theology, and
his position on free will.


## 2. Price's Moral Philosophy


### 2.1 Overview



Price can be classified as an Ethical Intuitionist in two respects.
First, he rejects empiricism about our acquisition of knowledge, and
espouses an intuitionist epistemology in ethics. Empiricists are
mistaken in thinking that all knowledge has its basis in experience.
There are a number of substantial necessary truths, essential to
rational thought, which cannot be established by empirical methods,
but which are self-evident. Reflection on them is sufficient to
establish their truth. These include, as well as some mathematical and
metaphysical truths, a number of fundamental moral principles.



Empiricism is also mistaken in its account of concept acquisition.
There are certain simple concepts that cannot be acquired by
abstraction from sensory data or from reflecting on the mind's
own operations. Among these are the basic concepts of ethics denoted
by words such as: "right", "wrong",
"good", "bad", "obligation". While
nothing in experience itself answers to these concepts, they can be
grasped and applied correctly by the understanding to pick out genuine
properties of agents and actions. Since we possess these moral
concepts, which cannot arise in the ways that empiricists allow, the
empiricism to which Locke and Hume subscribe must be false.



Are these sufficient grounds for rejecting empiricism as a
methodology? If moral concepts were alone in presenting a difficultly
for empiricism, then there might be grounds for maintaining that
epistemology, and either denying that there are moral concepts, or at
least denying that we have moral knowledge. Price's main
argument against empiricism about concept acquisition consists in
finding what Mackie later called companions in guilt; i.e., other
concepts which are indispensable, and which we happily use, that
cannot be explained on empiricist epistemology of this sort.
Price's rather familiar examples include: solidity, substance,
power, cause, duration, inertia, infinity, number, identity, equality,
and all modal concepts. If empiricists are successfully to defend
their methodology they must either show that the concepts in question
can be explained on their epistemology, or bite the bullet and deny
that we do have any clear understanding of concepts like these or, at
least, that our ideas about such matters are confused or misleading.
For Price, by contrast, it is the *understanding* (a branch of
reason), and not sense experience, that is the source of such
concepts.



Price is also an Intuitionist in a second and quite different sense in
that he embraces pluralism about basic duties. Those of a utilitarian
persuasion held that all our duties were founded in one fundamental
duty: to be benevolent, in the sense of promoting the well-being of
all parties impartially. Price denies this. He contends, first, that
we have a duty to give preference to the welfare of some rather than
others; second, that there are duties that are quite distinct from
benevolence. On the first count, we have positional duties to God, to
ourselves, and to those with whom we have a special relationship. On
the second, there are some duties, such as gratitude, veracity, and
justice, which are quite distinct from benevolence. Indeed, Price
claims, our duties to God do not even include benevolence; it does not
make sense to suppose we can *benefit* God, or increase his
happiness, by our obedience and worship.



Price recognizes that our various duties may conflict in a particular
case: the only way to prevent harm may be to lie; acting justly may be
imprudent, and so on. He maintains that in some cases one duty is
clearly weightier than another and no perplexity arises. But there are
many cases where it is not clear what is the right thing to do, and
conscientious people may differ as to which duty should give way in
such cases. There is always a determinate answer to the question of
which action is right, but as finite creatures we may lack penetration
and wisdom to discern it. Doubt about what we should do in a
particular case should not, however, infect our confidence in the
existence of objective moral truth, for the fundamental principles
that we bring to bear on particular cases are self-evident.



These claims have been made familiar in more recent times by W. D.
Ross, and consequently much debated, so the focus in what follows will
be on what is peculiar to Price's views.


### 2.2 Moral Epistemology and Metaphysics



As a moral realist, Price rejects all forms of voluntarism, all forms
of the self-interest theory, as well as all forms of the
sentimentalist theories of Hutcheson and Hume. A central plank in his
arguments against the first two of these positions is what would later
become known as the Open Question Argument. Indeed it is Price, and
not Moore, that should be credited with its discovery. Price's
challenge, like Moore's, poses a dilemma for his opponent.
Either the opponent is offering an account of what constitutes
rightness and wrongness, or she is offering an account of what
*makes* actions right and wrong. Either answer leads to
difficulties. Embracing the first horn leaves the proponent open to
the Open Question Argument.



> 
> 
> As to the schemes which found morality on self-love, on positive laws
> and compacts, or the Divine Will; they must either mean, that moral
> good and evil are only other words for *advantageous* and
> *disadvantageous*, *willed* and *forbidden.* Or
> they relate to a very different question; that is, not to the
> question, what is the nature and true *account* of virtue; but
> what is the *subject-matter* of it.
> 
> 
> 
> As far as the former may be the intention of the schemes 
> I have mentioned, they afford little room for controversy. Right and wrong
> when applied to actions which are commanded or forbidden by the will
> of God, or that produce good or harm, do not signify merely, that such
> actions are commanded or forbidden, or that they are useful or
> hurtful, but a *sentiment* concerning them and our consequent
> approbation or disapprobation of the performance of them. Were not
> this true, it would be palpably absurd in any case to ask, whether it
> is *right* to obey a command, or *wrong* to disobey it;
> and the propositions, *obeying a command is right*, or
> *producing happiness is right*, would be most trifling. (R
> 16)
> 
> 
> 



(As Raphael points out, it is clear from the rest of the book that by
"sentiment", Price here means opinion, not feeling.)



If, however, the self-interest theorist, or the utilitarian, takes the
second horn, and is propounding a substantial moral theory about what
makes actions right or wrong, then she will have to show that her
theory survives critical reflection. Is it really true that we have no
reason to do anything unless it is in our self-interest, or unless it
produces happiness? Price is confident that the answer to these
questions is in the negative, but they can be answered only by careful
thought about our actual moral judgments.



Whether Price's argument is successful depends on the soundness of the
Open Question Argument about which there is continuing
disagreement. Price has, however, other arguments against
sentimentalism in particular, which is his main target in this
book. The disagreement concerns the metaphysical status of moral
attributes: are they genuinely properties of actions and agents, or
are they best understood as projections of our feelings or sentiments
onto actions and agents?


#### 2.2.1 The battle with sentimentalism



Throughout the eighteenth century there was considerable disagreement,
which continues today, between sentimentalists and rationalists, about
the basis or origin of morals. On the sentimentalist side were those,
such as Hutcheson and Hume, who thought that our moral faculty was
grounded, not in our ability to reason, but in our capacity to
experience emotions, and pleasure or displeasure--in short, in
our sentiments. "Morality is more properly felt than judged
of" (Hume 1739-40: 470; Book III, Part I, Section 2). We
are so constituted that we take pleasure in contemplating some
characters and actions, while we are displeased by others. Reason does
indeed play a role in moral agency, but a subordinate one. Once our
feelings have selected our ends, then we need to use reason to find
suitable means to those ends. Despite some differences, most humans
share many of their basic emotional responses; we tend to care about
the same things. It is in virtue of this widespread agreement that
there can be a shared standard of morality. But such agreement is
contingent; we can imagine agents very different from ourselves in
their emotional make-up. If other agents share our moral outlook it
will not be in virtue of our common rationality, but as a result of
their having a similar range of affective responses to us.



A main strength of sentimentalism is the apparent ease with which it
can explain how our moral attitudes typically motivate us. Since moral
attitudes are expressions of the affective rather than the cognitive
sides of our nature, there is nothing puzzling about how our desires
and aversions, likes and dislikes, approvings and disapprovings, can
play a motivational role. Rationalism, by contrast, is frequently
charged with being unable to explain the connection between morality
and motivation. On the rationalist account, it seems, it must be
possible to know what is right or wrong and not care in the least.



In opposition to sentimentalism were ranged those, such as Cudworth,
Clarke, Balguy, and Price, who adhered to the more traditional view
that moral distinctions are perceived by reason, and that reason has
authority to direct our lives. Reason tells us what goals we should
aim at, as well as how best to achieve them. It has motivational
power.


#### 2.2.2 The battle with sentimentalism: defense



Price offers both defensive and offensive strategies against
sentimentalism. On the defensive side, he tries to meet the following
objections to his view.


1. How can reason, rather than our feelings of approval and
disapproval, be the origin of our moral concepts?
2. How can we discern moral properties and make true moral claims
about them?
3. What is the connection between feeling and cognition?
4. How can reason move us to act?



I briefly discussed the first two questions in
 SS2.1.
 It turns out that the last two are connected.



Sentimentalists claim that we adopt a moral stance in virtue of our
having feelings of approval or disapproval towards an object, action,
or practice. Price maintains that this gets things the wrong way
round: we have feelings of approval towards an action or a person,
*because* we apprehend that the action is right, or the person
morally praiseworthy.



> 
> 
> I cannot perceive an action to be right without *approving* it;
> or *approve* it, without being conscious of some
> *satisfaction* and complacency. ... To *behold*
> virtue is to *admire* it. (R 59) 
> 
> 
> 
> When we are conscious that an action is *fit* to be done, or
> that it *ought* to be done, it is not conceivable that we can
> remain *uninfluenced*, or want a *motive* to action.
> ... An affection or inclination to rectitude cannot be separated
> from the view of it. (R 186-7)
> 
> 
> 



Further, to recognize an action as right, or wrong, *is* to
recognize that one has an obligation to do it, or refrain from doing
it.



> 
> 
> [V]irtue, *as such*, has a real obligatory power. (R 105)
> 
> 
> 
> From the account given of *obligation*, it follows that
> *rectitude* is a *law* as well as a *rule* to us;
> that it not only *directs*, but *binds* all, as far as
> it is perceived ... Reason is the guide, the *natural* and
> *authoritative* guide of a rational being. (R 108)
> 
> 
> 
> How absurd it is to enquire, what *obliges* us to practise
> virtue? ... [I]t is the very same as to ask, why are we
> *obliged* to do what we are *obliged* to do. (R 110)
> 
> 
> 



In the passages above, Price is making three claims that are, on his
view, inseparable. The first is an espousal of motivational
internalism about obligation. To recognize an action as morally
required (or forbidden) *is* to be motivated to do it (or
abstain from doing it). The second is a claim about the connection
between cognition and feeling: the recognition of the moral character
of an action *necessarily* arouses appropriate feelings in us.
We cannot, for example, breach the moral law without suffering remorse
and pain. Thirdly, he takes it that, if we are *morally*
obliged to act then we are obliged to act, period. Why? Because the
principles of morality are principles of reason; thus we have decisive
reason to do what morality dictates. For some philosophers, the
question of what I ought to do has a moral and a deliberative reading.
Once I have determined what *morality* requires of me, the
deliberative question of what, all things considered, I should do is
still open. Price denies this gap. For him the question of why I ought
to do what I morally ought to do makes no sense, for it is simply
asking why I ought to do what I ought.



In more modern parlance, Price is claiming that, in our practical
deliberations, the notions of obligation and duty, right and wrong, are
*normative* ones. Normative features are internally tied to
(motivation to) action, since to think one ought or should do
something is to think there are decisive reasons to do it, and to
think there is decisive reason to do something is, *ceteris
paribus*, to do it. This analysis supplies Price with an answer to
the challenge that Rational Intuitionists are unable to explain how
awareness of moral facts is sufficient to motivate us. Although moral
weakness may cause us to fail to do what we recognize we have decisive
reason to do, no rational creature can be wholly unmoved by the
awareness that she has such reason, and if she fails to act she is
less than fully practically rational in this respect.



These claims are, of course, controversial, and there is no space to
discuss them here. But we might note that Price's position is as
old as Western Philosophy itself. It is, at its heart, a Platonist
view of value. Rational beings cannot fail to love and be moved by
what is good; if they love less than they should it is because they
are not fully rational agents.


#### 2.2.3 The battle with sentimentalism: offense



Hutcheson, and following him, Hume, hold that there is an implanted
moral *sense*, the deliverances of which guide us in matters of
morals. For Hutcheson, there are more than the five senses. As well as
touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing, there is, for example, the
sense of beauty. Certain objects afford aesthetic delight, while
others disgust us. The operation of all senses depends on the actual
constitution of human nature, and that is a contingent matter. It is
perfectly conceivable that, like the dung beetle, we should find the
smell of faeces attractive. Similarly, on this view, the structure of
our moral sense depends on contingent facts about our affective
responses. It is this aspect of the view that Price finds most
intolerable: had our emotional reactions been different then we would
have had a different moral sense, which would have been no better or
worse than the one we have--simply different.



Are our moral judgments the product of sense or of understanding?
Price's main argument for the latter view is an appeal to moral
phenomenology. It is, he asserts, "scarcely conceivable"
that on careful introspection someone should ascribe to the view that




> 
> 
> when he thinks gratitude or beneficence to be *right*, he
> perceives nothing *true* of them, and *understands*
> nothing, but only receives an impression from a *sense*. (R 44)
> 
> 
> 
> 



In short, Price offers the by now very familiar challenge to the
sentimentalist or expressivist to explain how it is, if her view is
correct, that we speak and think as if moral judgments are true or
false independently of what anyone feels on these matters.



The moral sense theorist offers our awareness of color, sound, and smell as
a model or analogy by which to understand the sentimentalist account
of moral properties.



> 
> 
> Vice and virtue, therefore, may be compared to sounds, colours, heat
> and cold, which, according to modern philosophy, are not qualities in
> objects, but perceptions in the mind. (Hume 1739-40: 469;
> III.i.1)
> 
> 
> 



That is, they are akin to secondary rather than primary qualities.
Price, in his criticism of the moral sense theorist fastens on to this
analogy. However, the cogency of Price's objections is somewhat
clouded by the fact that both parties subscribe to a controversial and
rather implausible account of secondary qualities. To appreciate this
point, we need to say more about the then widely accepted distinction
between primary and secondary qualities that had its origin in
Locke.



Our sense-organs enable the mind to receive ideas of objects and
events in our immediate environment. Some of these ideas, those of the
primary properties or qualities, such as shape, size, and solidity,
are both caused by and standardly *resemble* those qualities as
they actually are in the objects themselves. Thus the computer screen
I am looking at now *looks* oblong and *is* oblong.
Under ideal conditions, the way the primary qualities of an object
appear accurately represent its real nature, both as portrayed by
common sense and as understood by scientific investigation. By
contrast, the ideas of secondary qualities do not resemble the
properties in the object that cause us to have those ideas. There is
nothing in the objects themselves that resembles our ideas of color,
sound, and so on. The story, as revealed by scientific investigation,
of what is going on in the physical world when someone sees a red
ball, or smells the aroma of their morning coffee, would not mention
colors or smells at all. Rather, the objects in question are so
constituted that, in suitable conditions, they emit waves or particles
that stimulate the sense-organs in certain ways causing us to have the
characteristic secondary quality experience. The full scientific
account of how this happens is complicated, more complicated than
people in Locke's time realized, but however the story goes,
there will be nothing in the world at all like colors-as-we-see-them,
or sounds-as-we-hear-them. Since the ideas of secondary qualities that
arise in our minds when our sense-organs are stimulated depend on the
nature and constitution of our sensory apparatus, as well as on the
nature of external reality, it follows that creatures whose
sense-organs differ from ours would have a different kind of secondary
quality experience. Nor is this merely a thought experiment; it seems
that insects, for example, make color distinctions that do not match
ours in significant respects.



So far, the theory has talked about the *ideas* of secondary
qualities, and their relation to the physical goings on that lead to
these ideas arising in the mind. But what *are* colors, sounds,
and smells? Two accounts can be found in Locke. First, there is the
dispositional theory: secondary qualities are powers or dispositional
properties in the object to produce certain ideas in us. Thus to say
that something is, for example, red is to say that it has a capacity
or power, based in the physical microstructure of its surface, to
cause the characteristic idea of red in normal human observers in
standard conditions. Second, there is the subjective theory: colors,
sounds, etc. are *not* in objects; rather, they are identified
with the ideas in the perceiving subject caused by those objects. Both
accounts exist in tension in Locke, though it is now generally agreed
that the former view represents his "official" position.
The dispositional account has the advantage of preserving the truth of
many of the things that we want to say about secondary qualities: for
an object standardly retains a power even when it is not being
exercised. Salt is soluble whether or not it is immersed in water; red
objects remain red under lighting conditions that make them look a
different color, or even in the absence of light. But the subjective
account gained considerable currency through the writings of Berkeley
and Hume, who took it to be the one Locke was offering.



The subjectivist allows that we do normally take colors, sounds, and smells
to be properties of things existing outside of us; similarly, we take
right and wrong, vice and virtue, to be properties of actions and
agents. In both cases, the sentimentalist claims, we are mistaken, and
in virtue of a similar mechanism in each case. We project the contents
of the mind on to reality; or, as Hume rather charmingly puts it
(1739-40, 167; 1.3.14), the mind has a tendency to "spread
itself on external objects". In both cases, reflection shows
that, contrary to the way they are presented in experience, these
features in fact have no existence outside the mind. If we can be
mistaken in the case of secondary qualities, we can equally be mistaken in the
case of moral qualities, so the moral phenomenology to which Price
appeals is no more decisive in the one case than the other. Since
Price accepts the subjective account of secondary qualities, he would
seem to be vulnerable to this riposte.



In response, Price denies that the two cases are parallel. The reason
we must reject the phenomenology in the case of secondary qualities is
that the ascription of them to objects is seen, on philosophical
examination, to be *incoherent*. This is not so in the case of
moral properties. Since it makes sense to suppose that they are
properties of actions and agents, we have no reason, in their case, to
reject the phenomenology as mistaken.



> 
> 
> A *coloured body*, if we speak accurately, is the same
> absurdity with a *square sound*. We need no experience to prove
> that heat, cold, colours, tastes, etc. are not real qualities of
> bodies; because the idea of matter and of these qualities are
> incompatible. But is there indeed any such incompatibility between
> *actions* and *right*? Or any such absurdity in
> affirming the one of the other? Are the ideas of them as different as
> the idea of a sensation and its cause? (R 46)
> 
> 
> 



What is it about secondary qualities that makes the supposition that
they are properties of matter absurd? Price's argument has two
premisses. First, only conscious beings can have sensations:



> 
> 
> Sensations, as such, are modes of consciousness, or feelings of a
> sentient being, which must be of a nature totally different from the
> particular causes which produce them. (R 46)
> 
> 
> 



Second, colors, sounds, tastes, smells, are sensations. Price uses the
example of pleasure and pain to illustrate the point. The entry of the
knife into the body causes the person to feel pain, but it is absurd
to think that the pain might be a property of the knife; pains can
only be a property of conscious perceivers. But the colors we see and
the sounds we hear are equally sensations. Therefore, it is
*incoherent* to suppose that they might be properties of
matter.


 This argument appears to beg the question. Price's objection
comes to this: we know *a priori* that realism is an error in
the case of secondary qualities, but it remains an *open
question* whether it is an error in the case of moral properties.
But the sentimentalist can maintain that, strictly speaking, the one
identification is as much a metaphysical error as the other, though we
make them often enough in ordinary life. It only seems to Price to be
an open question in the moral case because he rejects the metaphysics
of the sentimentalist. But that is precisely what is in dispute. If
moral properties are affective responses, it is incoherent to ascribe
them to objects.



There is much that is confused in this dispute between Price and the
sentimentalists. Conscious states are properties of the perceiver, and
not of the perceived object, but the claim that colors, sounds, and
smells are essentially conscious states is not well supported. Nor
should the ideas of these properties be classified
as *sensations*, on the model of pleasure and pain. It is
noteworthy that, whereas no-one supposes that the sensations of
pleasure and pain can be predicated of whatever causes the pain, this
is not true of colors, tastes, and sounds. But if it is as absurd to
suppose that a body is colored as it is to suppose that what causes us
pain is itself in pain, why is the first identification so often made
and the second not? There must be some difference between the two
cases that explains this tendency, but any such difference casts doubt
on the claim that they should be regarded as being equally
sensations.



Suppose the sentimentalist were to switch to the more plausible
dispositional account of both secondary qualities and moral
properties. Colors, tastes etc. really are properties of
objects--it is just that they are dispositional and not
categorical, as we might at first be tempted to suppose. Similarly,
actions really are right and wrong, but these are dispositional,
rather than categorical, properties. Certain features of actions and
agents are apt to arouse feelings of approval or disapproval in
us.



If we adopt the dispositional account, it might seem that Price has
now lost any dialectical advantage. In both the perceptual and the
moral cases the theory lines up with the phenomenology. 
Broad (1971: 208) plausibly claims, however, that Price would also have rejected the dispositional theory of moral properties.
One of Price's principal objections to the sentimentalist
account is that it makes the truth of moral claims contingent on our
natures--and our natures might have been very different. On this
view, what we approve or disapprove of depends on 



> 
> 
> a *positive constitution* of our minds, or ... an
> *implanted* and *arbitrary* principle by which a
> *relish* is given us for certain moral objects and forms and
> aversion to others. (R 14) 
> 
> 
> 



This objection applies as much to the dispositional as to the
subjective account. Especially worrying for a theist like Price, there
is no reason to suppose on the sentimentalist view that God shares our
moral sentiments. Indeed, Hume had already drawn this conclusion in a
letter to Hutcheson (Hume [L], 38-40 = Volume I, Letter 16, 16
March 1740).



Indeed Price goes further and claims that, were sentimentalism true,
God would have an attitude of complete moral indifference to
everything that happens. For he knows that all actions and states are
*in themselves* neither right nor wrong, neither good nor bad;
nor, lacking our emotional nature, can he be supposed to make moral
discriminations based on feeling.



The subjective and the dispositional sentimentalist models are equally
vulnerable to Price's implanted sense complaint; on either
account the standard of correctness for our moral judgments is set by
our contingent human nature. Price, by contrast, insists that moral
principles are necessarily and not merely contingently true. What
makes them true is *solely* the *intrinsic* nature of
the actions or character that they characterize. To use a more modern
parlance, Price is a moral realist, who holds that there are
stance-independent moral facts.


### 2.3 Necessary moral principles



If there are necessary moral principles, it might seem that they must
be exceptionless. If lying is, in virtue of its nature, wrong, then
all lying is wrong. And the same will hold for any other principles.
But such moral rigorism seems deeply implausible. While some (most
notably Kant) have bitten the bullet, most of us believe that there
are circumstances in which it is permissible, or even required, to
lie. Price agrees. Principles can conflict and none automatically
trumps the others. Which principle should govern our actions will
depend on the circumstances. In some cases of conflict, it is clear
what morality demands. But in many cases it is not: "doubt
arises; and we may thus be rendered entirely incapable of determining
what we ought to chuse" (R 167). The lack of clarity here is
epistemic, not metaphysical: "Truth and right in all
circumstances, require one determinate way of acting" (R 167).
But since what that way is can be unclear, there can be disagreements
between right-minded people about what to do. None of this, however,
impugns our knowledge of the fundamental principles.



> 
> 
> The principles themselves, it should be remembered, are self-evident;
> and to conclude the contrary ... because of the obscurity
> attending several cases wherein a competition arises between the
> several principles of morality, is very unreasonable. It is not unlike
> concluding, that, ... because it may not in some instances be
> easy to determine what will be the effect of different forces,
> variously compounded and acting contrary to each other; therefore we
> can have no assurance what any of them acting separately will produce,
> or so much as know that there is any such thing as force. (R 168)
> 
> 
> 



Price has, in effect, anticipated Ross's celebrated distinction
between *prima facie* duties and duties proper, even down to
using the same analogy about conflicting forces to illustrate the
distinction.


### 2.4 Virtue


#### 2.4.1 Virtuous motivation



What is it to be virtuous? A virtuous act is one that is motivated by
the sense of duty--a recognition of what morality requires and
forbids. What of actions that are motivated by other concerns? While
Price denies any moral worth to actions not motivated by a sense of
duty, he seems to allow that, where motives are mixed, moral credit
should be given to the degree to which considerations of duty
motivate.



> 
> 
> But *instinctive benevolence* is no principle of virtue, nor
> are any actions flowing merely from it virtuous. ... All actions
> ... appear to have as much less moral value, as they are derived
> more from natural instinct, and less attended with reflexion on their
> reasonableness and fitness. (R 191)
> 
> 
> 



How is it that humans so often ignore the call of duty? The answer
lies in the other motivational forces in our nature, such as
self-love, desires, and the emotions, which can conflict with
dutifulness. But we are not helpless in the face of these impulses; we
can resist at least some of them at will, and we can learn to control
them better by developing our character. How our character develops is
to some extent under our control because personality traits can be
strengthened or weakened by practice. Since we are imperfectly
rational, we should strive to modify our desires and feelings so that
it is easier for us to do our duty.



But in what does our duty consist? Price distinguishes between what he
terms abstract and practical virtue, or what was later (by Prichard
and Ross) called objective and subjective duty. An agent's
objective duty is what she is morally required to do, given the actual
facts of the case; her subjective duty lies in what she should do,
given her *reasonable* beliefs about the facts of the case. It
is for succeeding or failing to do one's subjective duty that
one should be praised or blamed, for an imperfect agent cannot be
required to avoid all errors of fact.


#### 2.4.2 Supererogation



What is it to be *perfectly* virtuous? Is it sufficient simply
to perform all our duties, or is there something even better, as many
have supposed: meritorious acts of heroism or saintliness that exceed
what is morally required and are singled out for special praise? Price
maintains that there are no such supererogatory acts--acts that
go beyond the call of duty. Why? Price holds that any action must be
either right (i.e., required), or wrong, or indifferent.
Supererogatory actions do not fit this pattern. They are not required
but their performance is not morally indifferent. Rejecting the
supererogatory leads Price to a counter-intuitive conclusion. 



> 
> 
> To aim at acting *beyond* obligation, being the same with
> acting *contrary* to obligation; and doing *more* than
> is fit to be done, the same with *doing wrong*. (R 124)
> 
> 
> 



If we find this doctrine harsh, there are two possible responses. The
first is to add a further category to Price's tripartite
distinction. Price suggests that some may wish to deny that
"right" and "obligatory" are co-extensive.



> 
> 
> All right actions are not so in precisely the same sense; and it might
> ... be granted, that some things are right in such a sense as yet
> not to be our indispensable duty. (R 120)
> 
> 
> 



Price's only comment on this approach is that it would undermine
a symmetry between "right" and "wrong" as he
is using them. It allows cases where an action is right but not
required, but there are still no cases in which an action is wrong but
not forbidden. Price does not reject this approach but thinks it
unnecessarily complicated.



He prefers to retain his original tripartite structure, but to soften
any apparent harshness by further explanation. Many of our
obligations, such as that of being benevolent, are framed only in
general and vague terms. How and when we fulfill them is, to some
extent, up to us. Since it is unclear exactly how much is required of
us by way of kind deeds, a truly virtuous person will err on the side
of generosity. The praise we bestow on them is not, as the proponent
of supererogation supposes, because they exceeded the demands of duty,
but because they showed such scrupulous care to ensure that they did
not fall short of what was required of them. This solution has the
advantage of explaining why the heroic or saintly frequently claim
that they were, after all, only doing their duty, rather than claiming
that they were exceeding it.


#### 2.4.3 Promising



Most of Price's claims are defensible, and many have been
adopted by other prominent thinkers in the Intuitionist tradition. But
there is one issue on which he has generally, but not universally,
been held to have gone astray: namely, the source of our obligation to
keep our promises. Instead of taking it to be a distinct species of
duty, Price holds that "fidelity to promises is
*properly* a branch or instance of *veracity*" (R
155). We must distinguish, Price claims, between statements about the
present and statements about the future. Expressing an intention or a
resolution to act does not, Price allows, give rise to obligation.



> 
> 
> For when I say I intend to do such and such, I affirm only a present
> fact.--But to *promise*, is to declare that such a thing
> *shall* be done. ... In this case, it is not enough to
> acquit me from the charge of falsehood, that I *intend* to do
> what I promise, but it must be actually done, agreeably to the
> assurances given. (R 155)
> 
> 
> 



Price allows that I can confidently and reasonably make predictions
about events outside my control that subsequently turn out to be
false, without being guilty of *lying*. But in the case of
actions that lie within our power



> 
> 
> the falsehood must be known and wilful, and entirely imputable to our
> own neglect and guilt. (R 156)
> 
> 
> 



This view has been attacked on a number of counts. First, acts of
lying are datable; when someone lies they do so at a particular time,
in a particular place, and to a particular audience. While the
*content* of a false assertion may concern the future, the lie
occurs at the time of utterance. If someone fails to do what they said
she would, she does not lie at that later time, for at that later time
she asserts nothing. Nor does she lie when she says she will do it
because, *ex hypothesi*, she sincerely believed at that time
that she would. If the deed does not follow her words she may be
guilty of many things: weakness of will, or laziness, cowardice,
pusillanimity, depending on the circumstances. If she has led
someone to rely on her earlier assertion, she may be accused of breach
of faith, or going back on her word. But what she is not guilty of is
*lying*. She would only be guilty of that if she was not
expressing a sincere belief when she made the original assertion.



Second, Price's view fails to account for the fact that promises
are made *to* particular individuals. Suppose Shakira promises
Tom, in the presence of Miguel, that she will pick him up at the
airport when he returns from his journey. Miguel later discovers that
he is flying in to the airport at the same time as Tom and awaits
Shakira's arrival hoping for a ride. Each has taken Shakira at
her word and relied on her for transport home. On Price's
account, if Shakira does not show up (without an adequate excuse) then
she has lied to both of them, and hence both have the same cause for
complaint. However, Tom has a complaint against Shakira that
*Miguel* does not have, for Shakira's promise was to Tom
and not to Miguel. It is Tom that she has let down, and not Miguel.
Arguably, Miguel has *no* complaint against Shakira. He
reasonably believed that she would show up, but she had offered him no
assurances. Further, only Tom can let Shakira off her promise, while
Miguel has no such power.



There are, indeed, *lying* promises, but these are ones where
the promisor has, at the time he makes it, no intention of carrying it
out. If my promise is sincere but I fail (without adequate excuse) to
fulfill it I may be a scoundrel, but not a *lying*
scoundrel.



These are weighty criticisms, but they may be uncharitable to Price.
Though veracity is, of course, the virtue that concerns truth, Price
has a wider conception of what it involves than merely avoiding
lying.



> 
> 
> Under this head, I would comprehend impartiality and honesty of mind
> in our enquiries after truth, as well as a sacred regard to it in all
> we say; fair and ingenuous dealing; such an openness and simplicity of
> temper as exclude guile and prevarication, and all the contemptible
> arts of craft, equivocation and hypocrisy; fidelity to our
> engagements; sincerity and uprightness in our transactions with
> ourselves as well as others; and the careful avoiding of all secret
> attempts to deceive ourselves, and to evade or disguise the truth in
> examining our own characters. (R 154-5)
> 
> 
> 



This is a good description of the virtue of honesty (or
straightforwardness, or trustworthiness). And one might reasonably
describe someone who fails to keep their word as dishonest. Moreover,
guile and deception need not involve lying. Iago does not *lie*
when he leaves Desdemona's handkerchief for Othello to find. And
there is being "economical with the truth", and casuistry
of all kinds. Understood thus, there is nothing untoward in Price
grouping these desirable qualities together. But
"veracity", with its narrow implication of truth-telling,
does not happily cover this wide range of characteristics and Price
often forgets his official definition and equates honesty with
truthfulness.



Part of what Price is doing is to resolve a puzzle raised by Hume in
the *Treatise*.



> 
> 
> [S]ince the act of the mind, which enters into a promise, and produces
> its obligation, is neither the resolving, desiring, nor willing any
> particular performance, it must necessarily be the *willing* of
> that *obligation*, which arises from the promise. Nor is this
> only a conclusion of philosophy; but is entirely conformable to our
> common ways of thinking and of expressing ourselves, when we say that
> we are bound by our own consent, and that the obligation arises from
> our mere will and pleasure. The only question, then, is, whether there
> be not a manifest absurdity in supposing this act of the mind, and
> such an absurdity as no man cou'd fall into, whose ideas are not
> confounded with prejudice and the fallacious use of language.
> (1739-40: 516-7; III.ii.5)
> 
> 
> 



Hume's puzzle is: how can I, by a mere act of will, *create a
new* obligation? In making a promise, I would thereby declare that
I am creating an obligation to do something, that was previously
morally indifferent. I would somehow make it the case that I am now
under an obligation I was not under before. Yet nothing about the act
I promise to do has changed. How can mere words transform the moral
landscape?



Price agrees with Hume that obligations cannot be created simply by an
act of will, but denies that this is the correct conception of
promising. He first tackles this problem when defending his
anti-voluntarist account of obligation. On his view, which he takes
from Cudworth, each action has a nature in virtue of which it is
required, forbidden, or indifferent.



> 
> 
> No will ... can render *any thing* good and obligatory,
> which was not so antecedently, and from eternity. (R 50)
> 
> 
> 



If an act is morally indifferent, then no mere act of will can change
its moral status. Price considers the objection that the command of
God, or a sovereign, may do just that. Price replies:



> 
> 
> It is true, the doing of any indifferent thing may become obligatory,
> in consequence of a command from a being possessed of rightful
> authority over us: But ... in this case, the command produces a
> change in the circumstances of the agent, and that what, in
> consequence of it, becomes obligatory, is not the same with what
> *before* was indifferent. (R 51)
> 
> 
> 



As Price puts it, the "matter of the action" remains the
same, but it now falls under a moral law that it did not before. In
virtue of changed circumstances, what was previously indifferent can
become an instance of gratitude, or obedience to a lawful command or,
indeed, an instance of promise-keeping. In this last case we should
not suppose



> 
> 
> that our own will or breath alters the nature of things by making what
> is indifferent not so. ... All that the promise does, is,
> ... to cause that to be an *instance* of right conduct [in
> earlier editions, Price writes 'of a general and eternal duty]
> which was not so before. (R 51)
> 
> 
> 



Price's answer to Hume is that, though we cannot *create*
an obligation by our mere will and pleasure, we can *place
ourselves under* an obligation by what we do or say, including
when what we say expresses our will. On this central point, Price is
correct. As we have seen, Price holds that the species of obligation
under which I place myself in promising is veracity. 
It may be that the moral category of honesty or trustworthiness would
better capture what Price wants to say, but that is of comparatively
secondary importance.


## 3. Theology



Price's writings on theology and philosophy of religion are
extensive and complex. After a brief discussion of his views about
God's nature and the arguments for his existence, 
this section will
focus on those aspects of his views that bear on morality, and his
discussion of the credibility of miracles.


### 3.1 *A priori* Arguments for God's existence



Price appended to the *Review* a "Dissertation on the
Being and Attributes of the Deity", in which he largely follows
Samuel Clarke's *a priori* arguments to show that there
must be a first cause that is perfect in every respect. He begins with
a version of the well-known argument from contingency, which proceeds
from things that exist contingently to something that exists
non-contingently, i.e., necessarily. Price accepts the argument but
holds that previous writers have not properly explained the nature of
the necessity of God's existence. The necessity in question is
not what he terms "relative" or
"consequential" necessity, as when we say there must be a
cause of every effect. Rather,



> 
> 
> the impossibility of not existing implied in the *necessity* of
> God's existence is ... an impossibility appearing
> *immediately*, and carrying its own evidence with it; an
> impossibility in the *nature of the thing itself*. (R 287)
> 
> 
> 



Price then goes on, in short order, to deduce several conclusions.
First, that the "*necessity* of God's existence
implies that it is necessary ... to the very *conception*
of all other existence" (R 288). What can be conceived without a
divine ground can be conceived as existing alone. Such beings



> 
> 
> might be conceived to exist *without* him, which is the same as
> conceiving him not to exist, and consequently, with the
> *possibility* of his non-existence. (R 288)
> 
> 
> 



What exists necessarily can have no limits or imperfections. For what
is limited could have had different limits, and so the limited has
only contingent existence. Finally, and for our purposes most
importantly, a necessary being does not possess its properties, as
other things do, by *participation* in those properties as
something distinct from it. Suppose, for example, God were to be
omnipresent by existing *in* every part of space, then we could
conceive of infinite space *without* him. But if space were
distinct from him we would need an explanation of why he existed in
all of it, rather than in some part, or in none. The same, Price says,
is true of God's relation to all his attributes, which he must
possess



> 
> 
> in a manner peculiar to himself. He is intelligent, not by the
> *apprehension* of truth, but by *being* truth. (R
> 290)
> 
> 
> 



And so on, for all his other attributes.



> 
> 
> There can be numberless beings who are powerful, wise and benevolent;
> but there can be but *one* being of whose nature, power, wisdom
> and benevolence in necessary union and forming one idea, are the
> essential attributes. (R 295)
> 
> 
> 



Price did not publish this piece for some time, and remained
concerned that the "particular imperfection
of language" rendered him "incapable of stating [his view]
with sufficient correctness and clearness" (R 286). 
It is indeed rather puzzling. His view is clearly influenced by
the neo-Platonism which, presumably, he gets from Cudworth.
Necessary truths depend on the Forms, on their self-identity. The
Forms constitute a purely intelligible realm, and other things are
intelligible only in so far as they participate in the Forms. Since
the Forms are purely intelligible beings their mode of being, the manner in which they exist is by being
thought. That which thinks the Forms, namely God, is that in which
they are. They cannot exist independently, because their very being is
to be a part of his nature. And it is his own nature governs his
will.



Be that as it may, Price's account of God's nature enables
him to deal with a standard objection to those who reject the Divine
Command Theory of morality. If we conceive of morality as a set of
truths that are outside God's control, are we not demeaning
God's sovereignty, by supposing that there is something both
external to him and co-eternal with him? Price's answer is that
God's rectitude consists, not in obeying some principles that he
did not create, cannot change, and must accept, but in following his
own nature.


### 3.2 Natural Theology



Like Cleanthes in Hume's *Dialogues*, Price holds that
belief in a Designer is immediate and irresistible. "This
visible universe ... is *self-evidently*, an exhibition of
the power and wisdom of a powerful and wise cause" (R 285) But
what of his moral qualities? Although in his introduction to the
"Dissertation", Price claims that *a posteriori*
arguments also show the Designer to be good, in Chapter X of the
*Review*, Price strikes a cautious note. There may be much more
of good than bad in the works of that Designer, but we might wonder
whether that is sufficient grounds for drawing conclusions about the
Designer's moral character. For a malicious being could produce
happiness, and perhaps the Designer grants us happiness now only to
frustrate our expectations in order to increase our misery later by
contrast to our present state. Price himself thinks that, despite such
possibilities, we are justified in inferring God's goodness from
his creation but accepts that such inferences are open to cavil.
However, as a moral realist, Price does not need to rely on arguments
from the distribution of good and bad things in the world. For if
benevolence is, in itself better than malice, justice than injustice,
and so on, and if an intelligent mind must both recognize and be
guided by these thoughts, then we can know *a priori* that God
is morally perfect.



Nevertheless, it is a striking fact that virtue is not always
proportionately rewarded, nor vice punished. Price is more realistic
on this point than Butler who said "Self-love then, though
confined to the interest of the present world, does in general
perfectly coincide with virtue" (1729: Sermon 3, para. 8 [2017:
36]). Not only do the virtuous often suffer and the vicious flourish,
but the virtuous are open to peculiar psychological sufferings of
which the vicious know nothing. They may suffer from an over
scrupulous conscience, from guilt, and consciousness of their own
unworthiness.



> 
> 
> It can scarcely be denied with respect to wickedness, that it would
> very frequently be much better for a man, (I mean for his own present
> ease) to be *thoroughly* wicked than *partially* so. (R
> 259)
> 
> 
> 



So much is this the case that Price contends



> 
> 
> this world appears fitted more to be a school for the
> *education* of virtue, than a station of honour to it. (R
> 257)
> 
> 
> 



What may we infer from these rather dismal facts with respect to a
future life? If we are moral sentimentalists, nothing. But if we
accept moral realism then we know that a wise Designer will also be a
morally good one. From this we may conclude that there is some future
scene of life in which these imbalances between virtue and reward will
be rectified. We cannot, however, infer that this future life will be
endless, for the injustices of this life could be rectified in a
finite time.



> 
> 
> That we are to be delivered to from death to a new life that shall
> *never* end of *complete* happiness, this is unspeakably
> more than any arguments from distributive justice can teach us to
> expect. (R 263)
> 
> 
> 



It is revelation alone that can assure us of God's graciousness
in this respect.


### 3.3 Miracles



Price's illuminating discussion of Hume's notorious attack
on the credibility of miracles is informed both by his interest in
probability theory, and by his good sense. Hume's argument, in a
nutshell, is that there can never be sufficient reason to believe in a
violation of a law of nature because we know, *a priori*, that
any evidence from testimony for the occurrence of a miracle will be
outweighed by our evidence from long experience that such things do
not happen. Our confidence in the reliability of testimony and our
confidence in some generalization being a law of nature have the same
source: experience. But whereas we have often found testimony to be
false, the experiences on which our belief in a law of nature is
founded are exceptionless. If there were exceptions, we would conclude
that we were not dealing with a law of nature. So we always have more
evidence that a miracle did not occur than that it did. Hume presents
us with a characteristic fork. If what is reported would violate a law
of nature, then we should not give credence to the report. If what is
reported is merely uncommon, then we might have sufficient evidence to
believe it, but the event would not be miraculous.



Price disputes four claims, on which he thinks Hume's argument
rests.
The most important are the first three.


1. "That the credit we give to testimony, is derived
*solely* from experience"
2. "That a miracle is a fact *contrary* to
experience"
3. "That the previous improbability of a fact is a proof
against it, diminishing, in proportion to the degree of it, the proof
from testimony for it" (D 389).



Price's rebuttals are as follows.


1. Our confidence in the reliability of testimony rests, and should
rest, not only on the frequency with which testimony has been
confirmed balanced against the frequency with which it has been
disconfirmed, but also on our knowledge of the character(s) of those
bearing witness, and of people in general.


> 
> One action, or one conversation with a man, may convince us of his
> integrity and induce us to believe his testimony, though we have
> never, in a single instance, experienced his veracity. (D 399)
>
2. "A miracle is more properly an event *different* from
experience than *contrary* to it" (D 402). Testimony to
an unusual event, while it provides evidence for the occurrence of
that event, does not *contradict* our experience of what
happened before, or even conflict with it. We would continue to be as
justified as we were previously in believing that this kind of event
had not happened before. Prior uniform observation is not
*experiential* evidence against the occurrence of the unusual.
"[I]t can be no part of any one's experience, that the
course of nature will continue always the same" (D 402). Were
this not so, we could never have reason to believe that something we
previously took to be a law of nature was not in fact one.
3. Price argues that it is very common for "the slightest
testimony to overcome an almost infinite improbability" (D 406).
The prior probability of many common facts is extremely low, yet the
evidence of testimony is sufficient to confirm them. Take an example
where the prior probability can be calculated: the odds against any
particular distribution of cards in a game of Bridge are enormous. Yet
the testimony of the players as to what was in each hand is quite
sufficient to establish that as a fact. What is more, Price argues,
variations in the prior improbability of the event are irrelevant when
it comes to the weight of testimony. "The only causes of
falsehood in testimony are the intention to deceive, and the danger of
being deceived" (D 415). But the degree of prior improbability
does not increase or diminish either of these.


> 
> Improbabilities ... *as such*, do not affect the
> *capacity* of testimony to report truth. They ... should
> not be considered as a *counter-evidence* invalidating, in
> proportion to their degree, its reports.--But tho' this is
> true, it by no means follows, that they may not in many circumstances
> affect the *credit* of testimony, or cause us to question its
> veracity. (D 417)
>



As Hume pointed out, mankind are lovers of the marvelous, and
raconteurs delight in feeding that credulity. If someone reports a
truly astonishing event, especially if it redounds to the
narrator's credit, or supports some ideology she is keen to
promote, that may lead us "to question the faithfulness of a
report, and give just ground to suspect a design to misrepresent or
exaggerate" (D 420). Price points out, however, that this only
applies when the reporter is aware of the marvelous nature of their
tale. *Mere* coincidence does not diminish the evidential
weight of testimony.



> 
> 
> [W]ere a person to tell us that ... at the time of drawing a
> lottery, he happened to hear his age, the day of the month, and the
> date of the year drawn together, we should scarcely believe him,
> tho' we know that he was not more unlikely to hear these numbers
> drawn, than any other particular numbers. But if the same person was
> only to tell us the numbers themselves, and the coincidence which
> strikes us was entirely our own discovery, we should have just the
> same reason for believing his account, as if there had been no such
> coincidence. (D 422-3)
> 
> 
> 



The upshot is that, in Price's view, the debate should neither
focus on the abstract possibility of evidence for miracles, nor on
their prior improbability, but, rather, on the particular question of
whether the Apostles were either deceived or were themselves
deceivers. Price, needless to say, is confident of victory on this
ground, though others may demur.


## 4. Liberty



Price distinguishes four different sorts of liberty all of which, he
claims, have a common theme.



* *Physical liberty* is "that principle of
spontaneity, or self-determination, which constitutes us agents, or
which gives us a command over our actions, rendering them properly
ours, and not effects of the operation of any foreign cause" (P
21-2).
* *Moral liberty* "is the power of following, in all
circumstances, our sense of right and wrong, or of acting in
conformity to our reflecting and moral principles, without being
controuled by any contrary principles" (P 22)
* *Religious liberty* "is the power of exercising,
without molestation, that mode of religion which we think best"
(P 22)
* *Civil liberty* "is the power of a civil society
... to govern itself by its own discretion, or by laws of its own
making" (P 22).




The first two concern the issue of free will and moral responsibility;
the second two concern issues of political governance. Nevertheless,
Price contends, they are all forms of liberty because "there is
one general idea that runs through them all; ... the idea of
self-direction or self-government" (P 22)


### 4.1 Free will, rationality, and moral agency



Price distinguishes, in a way that anticipates Kant, two ways in which
my action may be free: the first, physical liberty, is freedom to
choose; the second is moral autonomy. Freedom of choice is required
for agency and hence for moral responsibility. But that freedom allows
us to act wrongly as well as rightly, to be irrational as well as
rational, to go astray as well as to go aright. When we go astray,
Price contends, by doing something we know we shouldn't, we feel
ourselves unfree, in that we have lost control. We lack self-mastery
or moral autonomy: we have succumbed to temptation, instead of obeying
the moral law. As with Kant, moral autonomy is the triumph of both
rationality and morality over countervailing desires, since we always
have most reason to fulfill our moral obligations. Price contends
also, in good Platonic fashion, that when we follow virtue we do what
we (really) want. It is fairly common to distinguish those parts of
one's personality with which one identifies, and that are taken
to be its central core, and those impulses that are seen as external,
alien, or even threatening. The metaphor of addiction or enslavement
is virtually irresistible in explaining this distinction: we are under
attack by passions which can take control of us if we are not careful,
so that we no longer do what *we* want to do, but what these
alien forces or siren voices tempt us to do. If we give in too often
we will have lost the battle and our autonomy; we will no longer be in
charge of our own lives, but succumb to what we reject, and even hate.
Some philosophers hold that the agent has considerable choice in
determining which parts of her personality are central and which
peripheral. Price claims, however, that the central core of our
identity is metaphysically fixed.



> 
> 
> [What] is most properly a *man's self* ... is
> ... not his passions, but his reason or his judgment, prescribing
> what is right, and prohibiting what is wrong. The conscience of a man
> is the man; the reflecting principle is our supreme principle. It is
> what gives our distinction as intelligent creatures; and whenever we
> act contrary to it, we violate our natures, and are at variance with
> ourselves. (Price 1816: 208, quoted in D.
> O. Thomas 1977: 170)
> 
> 
> 



In short, physical liberty is a necessary condition of the capacity to
direct one's actions at all; moral liberty is exercising that
agency to direct one's actions as normative reality
requires.


### 4.2 Determinism and agent-causation



There is much to suggest that Price is a libertarian who denies
psychological determinism and embraces agent-causation instead. It is
*we*, and not our psychological states, that determine our
actions. The self stands above the fray, as it were, and decides which
reasons or motives we will act on. The following passages are
typical.



> 
> 
> Determination requires an efficient cause. If that cause is the being
> himself, I plead for no more. If not, then it is no longer
> *his* determination; that is, *he* is no longer the
> determiner, but the motive, or whatever else any one will say to be
> the cause of the determination. To ask, what effects *our*
> determination, is the very same with asking who did an action, after
> being informed that such a one did it. (R 181-2)
> 
> 
> 
> [It is] very plain, that motives can have no concern in
> *effecting* [the agent's] determination ... What
> would be more absurd than to say, that our inclinations act upon us,
> or compel us; that our desires and fears *put* us into motion,
> or *produce* our volitions; that is, are *agents*? (R
> 183n)
> 
> 
> 



D. O. Thomas (1977: 160-2) points out, however, that there are
passages in Price in which he appears to embrace psychological
determinism, of which this is one of the most striking.



> 
> 
> Were we thoroughly acquainted with the heart of a man, the turn of his
> temper, and the make of his mind, we should never want experience to
> inform us, what he will do, or how far he is to be trusted (R 28).
> 
> 
> 



Solving these difficulties is beyond the scope of this entry, but we
might note that while causal determinism (whether physical or
psychological) entails that, in principle, all events are completely
predictable, including human actions, the entailment does not run the
other way. What is predictable need not be causally determined.
Consider God, the morally perfect agent. He will always act according
to the dictates of reason, and thus has moral freedom to the highest
degree. This need not preclude his having freedom of choice, however.
Price's view is that he has the *power*, the physical
liberty, to do or abstain, but his *character* is such that he
will not do the wrong thing. (R 206)



What of finite agents? In the passage from which the quotation comes,
Price is contrasting our belief that phenomena are regularly connected
with each other with a real understanding of why this is so.



> 
> 
> The whole meaning of accounting for a fact, implies something in the
> nature of objects that includes a connexion between them, or a fitness
> in certain ways to influence one another. ...While we only see
> one thing constantly attending or following another, without
> perceiving the real dependence and connexion ... we are
> necessarily dissatisfied. (R 27)
> 
> 
> 



Given this context, Price may be claiming simply that, were we to
understand the light in which an agent saw all the considerations
relevant to acting, we would know how he would choose. That may be
compatible with the agent's character being self-formed by his
choices.



Here are two difficulties for Price's claim that understanding
the light in which someone saw their action would enable us to predict
what they would do. First, it is questionable whether weak-willed
actions are fully intelligible. Although the agent has reasons for
what he does, they do not explain his making the worse rather than the
better choice. Second, if we are genuinely able to form and change our
characters through our choices, then there must be occasions on which
we act out of character. If there is real freedom of choice even God
might not know with complete certainty what we will do (though this view, known as Open Theism, might be unpalatable to
Price).


### 4.3 Political Liberty



Price's writings on religious and civil liberty are voluminous.
Many are largely of historical interest, as they deal with issues of
the day, rather than broad principles. The main claims of his social
and political philosophy are briefly summarised in what follows.


#### 4.3.1 Religious Liberty



Price's reasons for advocating complete freedom of religion are
numerous, but familiar. All religious tests for public office
encourage persecution of the nonconformists as well as hypocrisy, by
giving incentives for outward subscription to something not believed.
They interfere with conscience, which is a private matter between an
individual and his deity. Above all, they hinder the great
Enlightenment project of the onward march of reason and the
destruction of all forms of superstition. Toleration is insufficient,
for that implies that society recognizes one creed but tolerates
others. Full freedom should be extended to all religions, not just
different Christian denominations.


#### 4.3.2 Civil Liberty



Price's political philosophy is, broadly speaking, in line with
Locke's, but he follows it through to more radical conclusions.
The legitimacy of a government (though not of other hierarchical
distinctions) stems from the consent of the governed. Whereas in Locke
the people have a right to rebel only if there is a breach of the
social contract, for Price they retain the right to alter their form
of government as they wish. Direct democracy is the most desirable
form of government, but in larger states democracy has perforce to be
representative. However, those elected are to be more delegates than
representatives, subject to instructions from their constituents (P
25).



It is not clear how far Price thinks the franchise should be extended.
The logic of his position would seem to suggest universal suffrage,
but Price is no real advocate for it. He shares a common concern about
the qualifications of the uneducated and dependent to be voters.
Writing of the election of British Members of Parliament before the
Great Reform Act of 1832, Price complains not only of the small size
of the electorate, but also that voters are often drawn from the
"meanest persons", the "lowest of the people".
One worry was that, insofar as they were dependent on landowners or
employers, their vote would not be genuinely independent.
Price appears never to have suggested extending the suffrage to women,
perhaps because he thought them too ill educated and too dependent on
their husbands or other male relatives. Price, unlike his friend
Wollstonecraft, appears never to have questioned the status quo in
this respect.



Civil liberty, for Price, concerns the autonomy of a community or
state to make its own laws, free from outside interference. Important
as this is, especially in the context of the American Revolution, it
raises the question of what constitutes a distinct community or
society. Does any dissident group constitute a community with the
right to secede? This is an issue that has occasioned much violence
and bloodshed, including the secession of the Southern States in 1860
and, in our own day, Scottish, Basque, and Irish independence. The
omission of a discussion of this seriously weakens his political
philosophy.



Oddly, Price does not include the liberty of the citizen as well as
the liberty of a country in his original definition of civil liberty.
A country that governs itself can still be internally deeply
repressive. Price became aware of this deficiency, and expanded his
account in *Additional Observations* (P 76-100).



> 
> 
> A citizen is free when the power of commanding his own conduct and the
> quiet possession of his life, person, property and good name are
> secured to him by being his own legislator ... a government is
> free when constituted in such a manner as to give this security. And
> the freedom of a community or nation is the same among nations that
> the freedom of a citizen is among his fellow-citizens. (P 82)
> 
> 
> 



The best ways to secure a free government are the following:


1. all parts of the state should be represented in the governing
legislature
2. the representatives must be freely chosen by the electorate
3. the representatives must be independent of any outside source of
power
4. they should be subject to frequent re-election
5. they should be accountable to their constituents in all their
acts



These proposals may now appear fairly modest, but few societies match
up to them. For example, the power of corporate owners and lobbyists
in funding elections in the United States breaches clause 3. The
existence of dependent territories, such as Puerto Rico, breaches
clause 1. The existence of the House of Lords in the United Kingdom
breaches clauses 2 and 4. Revolutionary for the time, Price's
suggestions remain radical even today.


## 5. Influence



Although Price was influential in his lifetime in many areas, that
influence soon waned, and few of his works were reprinted after his
death. His immediate impact on discussion of the events surrounding
the American and French revolutions was large, but naturally faded as
those upheavals slipped into history. He died before the excesses of
the French revolution, which had been predicted by Burke. As a result
of the success of his predictions, Burke acquired an immense
reputation, while Price's was eclipsed. There is no doubt that
Price, along with others in the "Age of Reason",
exaggerated the degree to which people would pay attention to rational
principles and reasonable solutions. There seems little to suggest
that his writings had a long-term impact on political philosophy.
Nevertheless, liberal-democratic societies have embraced many of
Price's causes; in that sense, in the longer term, Price could
be seen as being on the side of history after all.



His influence on the Unitarian movement also faded. His version of
Arianism, in which Christ was seen as having most of the supernatural
attributes of the second person of the Trinity without actually being
God, gave way to the Socinian view, championed by Priestley, which
stressed the straightforward humanity of Jesus. His reputation in
actuarial work and demography suffered from his mistaken claim that
the British population was in decline. Even his beloved project of
reducing or eliminating the national debt by means of a sinking fund
fell out of favor.



His main legacy is, of course, in moral philosophy, but even here it
is unclear how much direct influence he had. Some of the themes in
*A Review*, especially issues to do with moral motivation and
responsibility, find distinct echoes in Kant, but that comes from
sympathy of outlook, rather than influence. And Price's
epistemology and metaphysics are wholly different from Kant's,
despite Hastings Rashdall's exaggerated claim that the
*Review* "contains the gist of the Kantian doctrine
without Kant's confusion" (1907: 81 fn 1). The main
features of Price's epistemology, and his pluralism about moral
principles, emerge again with the British Intuitionists who flourished
in the first half of the twentieth century. While we know that C. D.
Broad and Hastings Rashdall both rated Price very highly, 
there is
no direct evidence that Prichard, or even Ross (whose views most closely
resemble Price's) had read him, though it seems likely they
did.



Interest in Price was to some degree revived by books by Roland Thomas
(1924), Carl Cone (1952), Lennart Aqvist (1960), D. O. Thomas
(1977), and W. D. Hudson (1970). Since then there has been a steady
trickle of articles on aspects of Price's work, but no real
groundswell of interest, despite another revival in the fortunes of
Intuitionism towards the end of the twentieth century. In 1977 the
*Price-Priestley Newsletter* was founded; it morphed later into
*Enlightenment and Dissent*, which ceased publication in 2016.
However, resources for the study of Price have been greatly enhanced
by the untiring work of D. O. Thomas who not only edited Price's
political writings but, together with Bernard Peach, produced a
complete edition of Price's correspondence.