## 1. Issues from Hume's Predecessors




Hume inherits from his predecessors several controversies about
ethics and political philosophy.




One is a question of moral epistemology: how do human beings become
aware of, or acquire knowledge or belief about, moral good and evil,
right and wrong, duty and obligation? Ethical theorists and
theologians of the day held, variously, that moral good and evil are
discovered: (a) by reason in some of its uses (Hobbes, Locke, Clarke),
(b) by divine revelation (Filmer), (c) by conscience or reflection on
one's (other) impulses (Butler), or (d) by a moral sense: an emotional
responsiveness manifesting itself in approval or disapproval
(Shaftesbury, Hutcheson). Hume sides with the moral sense theorists:
we gain awareness of moral good and evil by experiencing the pleasure
of approval and the uneasiness of disapproval when we contemplate a
character trait or action from an imaginatively sensitive and unbiased
point of view. Hume maintains against the rationalists that, although
reason is needed to discover the facts of any concrete situation and
the general social impact of a trait of character or a practice over
time, reason alone is insufficient to yield a judgment that something
is virtuous or vicious. In the last analysis, the facts as known must
trigger a response by sentiment or "taste."




A related but more metaphysical controversy would be stated thus
today: what is the source or foundation of moral norms? In Hume's day
this is the question what is the ground of moral obligation (as
distinct from what is the faculty for acquiring moral knowledge or
belief). Moral rationalists of the period such as Clarke (and in some
moods, Hobbes and Locke) argue that moral standards or principles are
requirements of reason -- that is, that the very rationality of
right actions is the ground of our obligation to perform them. Divine
voluntarists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as Samuel
Pufendorf claim that moral obligation or requirement, if not every sort
of moral standard, is the product of God's will. The moral sense
theorists (Shaftesbury and Hutcheson) and Butler see all requirements
to pursue goodness and avoid evil as consequent upon human nature,
which is so structured that a particular feature of our consciousness
(whether moral sense or conscience) evaluates the rest. Hume sides with
the moral sense theorists on this question: it is because we are the
kinds of creatures we are, with the dispositions we have for pain and
pleasure, the kinds of familial and friendly interdependence that make
up our life together, and our approvals and disapprovals of these, that
we are bound by moral requirements at all.




Closely connected with the issue of the foundations of moral norms is
the question whether moral requirements are natural or conventional.
Hobbes and Mandeville see them as conventional, and Shaftesbury,
Hutcheson, Locke, and others see them as natural. Hume mocks
Mandeville's contention that the very concepts of vice and virtue are
foisted on us by scheming politicians trying to manage us
more easily. If there were nothing in our experience and no sentiments
in our minds to produce the concept of virtue, Hume says, no
lavish praise of heroes could generate it. So to a degree moral requirements have a natural origin. Nonetheless,Hume thinks natural impulses of humanity and dispositions to approve
cannot entirely account for our virtue of justice; a correct analysis
of that virtue reveals that mankind, an "inventive
species," has cooperatively constructed rules of property and
promise. Thus he takes an intermediate position: some virtues are
natural, and some are the products of convention. 




Linked with these meta-ethical controversies is the dilemma of
understanding the ethical life either as the "ancients" do,
in terms of virtues and vices of character, or as the
"moderns" do, primarily in terms of principles of duty or
natural law. While even so law-oriented a thinker as Hobbes has a good
deal to say about virtue, the ethical writers of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries predominantly favor a rule- or law-governed
understanding of morals, giving priority to laws of nature or
principles of duty. The chief exception here is the moral sense school,
which advocates an analysis of the moral life more like that of the
Greek and Hellenistic thinkers, in terms of settled traits of character
-- although they too find a place for principles in their ethics.
Hume explicitly favors an ethic of character along
"ancient" lines. Yet he insists on a role for rules of duty
within the domain of what he calls the artificial virtues.




Hume's predecessors famously took opposing positions on whether human
nature was essentially selfish or benevolent, some arguing that man
was so dominated by self-interested motives that for moral
requirements to govern us at all they must serve our interests in some
way, and others arguing that uncorrupted human beings naturally care
about the weal and woe of others and here morality gets its hold. Hume
roundly criticizes Hobbes for his insistence on psychological egoism
or something close to it, and for his dismal, violent picture of a
state of nature. Yet Hume resists the view of Hutcheson that all moral
principles can be reduced to our benevolence, in part because he
doubts that benevolence can sufficiently overcome our perfectly normal
acquisitiveness. According to Hume's observation, we are both selfish
and humane. We possess greed, and also "limited
generosity" -- dispositions to kindness and liberality
which are more powerfully directed toward kin and friends and less
aroused by strangers. While for Hume the condition of humankind in the
absence of organized society is not a war of all against all, neither
is it the law-governed and highly cooperative domain imagined by
Locke. It is a hypothetical condition in which we would care for our
friends and cooperate with them, but in which self-interest and
preference for friends over strangers would make any wider cooperation
impossible. Hume's empirically-based thesis that we are fundamentally
loving, parochial, and also selfish creatures underlies his political
philosophy.




In the realm of politics, Hume again takes up an intermediate
position. He objects both to the doctrine that a subject must
passively obey his government no matter how tyrannical it is and to
the Lockean thesis that citizens have a natural right to revolution
whenever their rulers violate their contractual commitments to the
people. He famously criticizes the notion that all political duties
arise from an implicit contract that binds later generations who were
not party to the original explicit agreement. Hume maintains that the
duty to obey one's government has an independent origin that parallels
that of promissory obligation: both are invented to enable people to
live together successfully. On his view, human beings can create a
society without government, ordered by conventional rules of
ownership, transfer of property by consent, and promise-keeping. We
superimpose government on such a pre-civil society when it grows large
and prosperous; only then do we need to use political power to enforce
these rules of justice in order to preserve social cooperation. So the
duty of allegiance to government, far from depending on the duty to
fulfill promises, provides needed assurance that promises of all sorts
will be kept. The duty to submit to our rulers comes into being
because reliable submission is necessary to preserve order. Particular
governments are legitimate because of their usefulness in preserving
society, not because those who wield power were chosen by God or
received promises of obedience from the people. In a long-established
civil society, whatever ruler or type of government happens to be in
place and successfully maintaining order and justice is legitimate,
and is owed allegiance. However, there is some legitimate recourse for
victims of tyranny: the people may rightly overthrow any government
that is so oppressive as not to provide the benefits (peace and
security from injustice) for which governments are formed. In his
political essays Hume certainly advocates the sort of constitution
that protects the people's liberties, but he justifies it not based on individual natural rights or contractual obligations but based on the
greater long-range good of society.


## 2. The Passions and the Will


 

According to Hume's theory of the mind, the passions (what we today
would call emotions, feelings, and desires) are impressions rather
than ideas (original, vivid and lively perceptions that are not copied
from other perceptions). The direct passions, which include desire,
aversion, hope, fear, grief, and joy, are those that "arise
immediately from good or evil, from pain or pleasure" that we
experience or think about in prospect (T 2.1.1.4, T 2.3.9.2); however
he also groups with them some instincts of unknown origin, such as the
bodily appetites and the desires that good come to those we love and
harm to those we hate, which do not proceed from pain and pleasure but
produce them (T 2.3.9.7). The indirect passions, primarily pride,
humility (shame), love and hatred, are generated in a more complex
way, but still one involving either the thought or experience of pain
or pleasure. Intentional actions are caused by the direct passions
(including the instincts). Of the indirect passions Hume says that
pride, humility, love and hatred do not directly cause action; it is
not clear whether he thinks this true of all the indirect
passions.




Hume is traditionally regarded as a compatibilist about freedom and
determinism, because in his discussion in the *Enquiry concerning
Human Understanding* he argues that if we understand the
doctrines of liberty and necessity properly, all mankind consistently
believe both that human actions are the products of causal necessity
and that they are free. In the *Treatise*, however, he
explicitly repudiates the doctrine of liberty as "absurd... in
one sense, and unintelligible in any other" (T 2.3.2.1). The two
treatments, however, surprisingly enough, are entirely consistent. Hume construes causal necessity
to mean the same as causal connection (or rather, *intelligible*
causal connection), as he himself analyzes this notion in his own
theory of causation: either the "constant union and conjunction
of like objects," or that together with "the inference of
the mind from the one to the other" (ibid.). In both works he
argues that just as we discover necessity (in this sense) to hold
between the movements of material bodies, we discover just as much
necessity to hold between human motives, character traits, and
circumstances of action, on the one hand, and human behavior on the
other. He says in the *Treatise* that the liberty of
indifference is the negation of necessity in this sense; this is the
notion of liberty that he there labels absurd, and identifies with
chance or randomness (which can be no real power in nature) both in the
*Treatise* and the first (epistemological) *Enquiry*. Human
actions are not free in this sense. However, Hume allows in the
*Treatise* that they are sometimes free in the sense of
'liberty' which is opposed to violence or constraint. This is the
sense on which Hume focuses in EcHU: "*a power of acting or
not acting, according to the determinations of the will;*"
which everyone has "who is not a prisoner and in chains"
(EcHU 8.1.23, Hume's emphasis). It is this that is entirely compatible
with necessity in Hume's sense. So the positions in the two works are
the same, although the polemical emphasis is so different --
iconoclastic toward the libertarian view in the *Treatise*, and
conciliatory toward "all mankind" in the first
*Enquiry*.




Hume argues, as well, that the causal necessity of human actions is
not only compatible with moral responsibility but requisite to it. To
hold an agent morally responsible for a bad action, it is not enough
that the action be morally reprehensible; we must impute the badness of
the fleeting act to the enduring agent. Not all harmful or forbidden
actions incur blame for the agent; those done by accident, for example,
do not. It is only when, and because, the action's cause is some
enduring passion or trait of character in the agent that *she*
is to blame for it.


## 3. The Influencing Motives of the Will




According to Hume, intentional actions are the immediate product of
passions, in particular the direct passions, including the instincts.
He does not appear to allow that any other sort of mental state could,
on its own, give rise to an intentional action except by producing a
passion, though he does not argue for this. The motivating passions,
in their turn, are produced in the mind by specific causes, as we see
early in the *Treatise* where he first explains the distinction
between impressions of sensation and impressions of reflection:



> An impression first strikes upon the senses, and makes us
> perceive heat or cold, thirst or hunger, pleasure or pain, of some
> kind or other. Of this impression there is a copy taken by the mind,
> which remains after the impression ceases; and this we call an idea.
> This idea of pleasure or pain, when it returns upon the soul, produces
> the new impressions of desire and aversion, hope and fear, which may
> properly be called impressions of reflection, because derived from it.
> (T 1.1.2.2)




Thus ideas of pleasure or pain are the causes of these motivating
passions. Not just any ideas of pleasure or pain give rise to
motivating passions, however, but only ideas of those pleasures or
pains we believe exist or will exist (T 1.3.10.3). More generally,
the motivating passions of desire and aversion, hope and fear, joy and
grief, and a few others are impressions produced by the occurrence in
the mind either of a *feeling* of pleasure or pain, whether
physical or psychological, or of a *believed idea* of pleasure
or pain to come (T 2.1.1.4, T 2.3.9.2). These passions, together with
the instincts (hunger, lust, and so on), are all the motivating
passions that Hume discusses. 




The will, Hume claims, is an immediate effect of pain or pleasure (T
2.3.1.2) and "exerts itself" when either pleasure or the
absence of pain can be attained by any action of the mind or body (T
2.3.9.7). The will, however, is merely that impression we feel when
we knowingly give rise to an action (T 2.3.1.2); so while Hume is not
explicit (and perhaps not consistent) on this matter, he seems not to
regard the will as itself a (separate) cause of action. The
causes of action he describes are those he has already identified: the
instincts and the other direct passions.



Hume famously sets himself in opposition to most
moral philosophers, ancient and modern, who talk of the combat of
passion and reason, and who urge human beings to regulate their
actions by reason and to grant it dominion over their contrary
passions. He claims to prove that "reason alone can never be a
motive to any action of the will," and that reason alone
"can never oppose passion in the direction of the will" (T
413). His view is not, of course, that reason plays no role in the
generation of action; he grants that reason provides information, in
particular about means to our ends, which makes a difference to the
direction of the will. His thesis is that reason *alone* cannot
move us to action; the impulse to act itself must come from
passion. The doctrine that reason alone is merely the "slave of
the passions," i.e., that reason pursues knowledge of abstract
and causal relations solely in order to achieve passions' goals and
provides no impulse of its own, is defended in the
*Treatise*, but not in the second *Enquiry*, although in the
latter he briefly asserts the doctrine without argument. Hume gives three
arguments in the *Treatise* for the motivational
"inertia" of reason alone.




The first is a largely empirical argument based on the two rational
functions of the understanding. The understanding discovers the
abstract relations of ideas by demonstration (a process of comparing
ideas and finding congruencies and incongruencies); and it also
discovers the causal (and other probabilistic) relations of objects
that are revealed in experience. Demonstrative reasoning is never the
cause of any action by itself: it deals in ideas rather than
realities, and we only find it useful in action when we have some
purpose in view and intend to use its discoveries to inform our
inferences about (and so enable us to manipulate) causes and
effects. Probable or cause-and-effect reasoning does play a role in
deciding what to do, but we see that it only functions as an
auxiliary, and not on its own. When we anticipate pain or pleasure
from some source, we feel aversion or propensity to that object and
"are carry'd to avoid or embrace what will give us" the
pain or pleasure (T 2.3.3.3). Our aversion or propensity makes us seek
the causes of the expected source of pain or pleasure, and we use
causal reasoning to discover what they are. Once we do, our impulse
naturally extends itself to those causes, and we act to avoid or
embrace them. Plainly the impulse to act does not arise from the
reasoning but is only directed by it. "'Tis from the prospect of
pain or pleasure that the aversion or propensity arises..."
(ibid.). Probable reasoning is merely the discovering of causal
connections, and knowledge that A causes B never concerns us if we are
indifferent to A and to B. Thus, neither demonstrative nor probable
reasoning alone causes action.




The second argument is a corollary of the first. It takes as a premise the conclusion just reached, that reason alone cannot produce an impulse to act. Given that, can reason prevent action or resist passion in controlling the will? To stop a volition or retard the impulse of an existing passion would require a contrary impulse. If reason alone could give rise to such a contrary impulse, it would have an original influence on the will (a
capacity to cause intentional action, when unopposed); which,
according to the previous argument, it lacks. Therefore reason
alone cannot resist any impulse to act. Therefore, what offers resistance to our passions cannot be reason of itself. Hume later proposes that when we restrain
imprudent or immoral impulses, the contrary impulse comes also from
passion, but often from a passion so "calm" that we
confuse it with reason.




The third or Representation argument is different in kind. Hume offers
it initially only to show that a *passion* cannot be opposed by
or be contradictory to "truth and reason"; later (T
3.1.1.9), he repeats and expands it to argue that volitions and
actions as well cannot be so. One might suppose he means to give
another argument to show that reason alone cannot provide a force to
resist passion. Yet the Representation Argument is not
empirical, and does not talk of forces or impulses. Passions (and
volitions and actions), Hume says, do not refer to other entities;
they are "original existence[s]," (T 2.3.3.5),
"original facts and realities" (T3.1.1.9), not mental representations of other things. Since Hume here understands
representation in terms of copying, he says a passion has no
"representative quality, which renders it a copy of any other
existence or modification" (T 2.3.3.5). Contradiction to truth
and reason, however, consists in "the disagreement of ideas,
consider'd as copies, with those objects, which they represent"
(ibid.). Therefore, a passion (or volition or action), not having this
feature, cannot be opposed by truth and reason. The
argument allegedly proves two points: first, that actions cannot be reasonable or unreasonable; second, that "reason cannot immediately prevent or produce any action by contradicting or approving of it" (T3.1.1.10). The point here is
not merely the earlier, empirical observation that the rational
activity of the understanding does not generate an impulse in the
absence of an expectation of pain or pleasure. The main point is that, because
passions, volitions, and actions have no content suitable for
assessment by reason, reason cannot assess prospective motives or
actions as rational or irrational; and therefore reason cannot, by so
assessing them, create or obstruct them. By contrast,
reason *can* assess a potential opinion as rational or
irrational; and by endorsing the opinion, reason will (that is, we
will) adopt it, while by contradicting the opinion, reason will
destroy our credence in it. The Representation Argument, then, makes a
point *a priori* about the relevance of the functions of the
understanding to the generation of actions. Interpreters disagree
about exactly how to parse this argument, whether it is sound, and its
importance to Hume's project.




Hume allows that, speaking imprecisely, we often say a passion is
unreasonable because it arises in response to a mistaken judgment or
opinion, either that something (a source of pleasure or uneasiness)
exists, or that it may be obtained or avoided by a certain means. In
just these two cases a passion may be called unreasonable, but strictly
speaking even here it is not the passion but the judgment that is so.
Once we correct the mistaken judgment, "our passions yield to our
reason without any opposition," so there is still no combat of
passion and reason (T 2.3.3.7). And there is no other instance of
passion contrary to reason. Hume famously declaims, "'Tis not
contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the
scratching of my finger. 'Tis not contrary to reason for me to
chuse my total ruin, to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian or
person wholly unknown to me. 'Tis as little contrary to reason to
prefer even my own acknowledg'd lesser good to my greater, and have a
more ardent affection for the former than for the latter."
(2.3.3.6)




Interpreters disagree as to whether Hume is an instrumentalist or a
skeptic about practical reason. Either way, Hume denies that reason
can evaluate the ends people set themselves; only passions can select
ends, and reason cannot evaluate passions. Instrumentalists
understand the claim that reason is the slave of the passions to allow
that reason not only discovers the causally efficacious means to our
ends (a task of theoretical causal reasoning) but also requires us to
take them. If Hume regards the failure to take the known means to
one's end as contrary to reason, then on Hume's view reason has a
genuinely practical aspect: it can classify some actions as
unreasonable. Skeptical interpreters read Hume, instead, as denying
that reason imposes any requirements on action, even the requirement
to take the known, available means to one's end. They point to the
list of extreme actions that are not contrary to reason (such as
preferring one's own lesser good to one's greater), and to the
Representation Argument, which denies that any passions, volitions, or
actions are of such a nature as to be contrary to reason. Hume never
says explicitly that failing to take the known means to one's end is
either contrary to reason or not contrary to reason (it is not one of
the extreme cases in his list). The classificatory point in the
Representation Argument favors the reading of Hume as a skeptic about
practical reason; but that argument is absent from the moral
*Enquiry*.


## 4. Ethical Anti-rationalism



Hume claims that moral
distinctions are not derived from reason but rather from
sentiment. His rejection of ethical rationalism is at least
two-fold. Moral rationalists tend to say, first, that moral properties
are discovered by reason, and also that what is morally good is in accord
with reason (even that goodness consists in reasonableness) and what is morally
evil is unreasonable. Hume rejects both theses. Some of his arguments
are directed to one and some to the other thesis, and in places it is unclear which he means to attack.




In the *Treatise* he argues against the epistemic thesis (that
we *discover* good and evil by reasoning) by showing that
neither demonstrative nor probable/causal reasoning has vice and
virtue as its proper objects. Demonstrative reasoning discovers
relations of ideas, and vice and virtue are not identical with any of
the four philosophical relations (resemblance, contrariety, degrees in
quality, or proportions in quantity and number) whose presence can be
demonstrated. Nor could they be identical with any other abstract
relation; for such relations can also obtain between items such as
trees that are incapable of moral good or evil. Furthermore, were
moral vice and virtue discerned by demonstrative reasoning, such
reasoning would reveal their inherent power to produce motives
in all who discern them; but no causal connections can be
discovered *a priori*. Causal reasoning, by contrast, does
infer matters of fact pertaining to actions, in particular their
causes and effects; but the vice of an action (its wickedness) is not
found in its causes or effects, but is only apparent when we consult
the sentiments of the observer. Therefore moral good and evil are not
discovered by reason alone.




Hume also attempts in the *Treatise* to establish the other
anti-rationalist thesis, that virtue is not the same as reasonableness
and vice is not contrary to reason. He gives two arguments for this. The first, very short, argument he claims follows directly from the Representation
Argument, whose conclusion was that passions, volitions, and actions
can be neither reasonable nor unreasonable. Actions, he observes, *can* be laudable or
blamable. Since actions cannot be reasonable or against reason, it
follows that "[l]audable and blameable are not the same with
reasonable or unreasonable" (T 458). The properties are not
identical.




The second and more famous argument makes use of the conclusion
defended earlier that reason alone cannot move us to act. As we have
seen, reason alone "can never immediately prevent or produce any
action by contradicting or approving of it" (T 458). Morality
-- this argument goes on -- influences our passions and
actions: we are often impelled to or deterred from action by our
opinions of obligation or injustice. Therefore morals cannot be
derived from reason alone. This argument is first introduced as
showing it impossible "from reason alone... to distinguish
betwixt moral good and evil" (T 457) -- that is, it is
billed as establishing the epistemic thesis. But Hume also says that,
like the little direct argument above, it proves that "actions
do not derive their merit from a conformity to reason, nor their blame
from a contrariety to it" (T458): it is not the reasonableness
of an action that makes it good, or its unreasonableness that makes it
evil.




This argument about motives concludes that moral judgments or
evaluations are not the products of reason alone. From this many draw
the sweeping conclusion that for Hume moral evaluations are not
beliefs or opinions of any kind, but lack all cognitive content. That
is, they take the argument to show that Hume holds a non-propositional
view of moral evaluations -- and indeed, given his
sentimentalism, that he is an emotivist: one who holds that moral
judgments are meaningless ventings of emotion that can be neither true
nor false. Such a reading should be met with caution, however. For
Hume, to say that something is not a product of reason alone is not
equivalent to saying it is not a truth-evaluable judgment or
belief. Hume does not consider all our (propositional) beliefs and
opinions to be products of reason; some arise directly from sense
perception, for example, and some from sympathy. Also, perhaps there
are (propositional) beliefs we acquire via probable reasoning but not
by such reasoning *alone*. One possible example is the belief
that some object is a cause of pleasure, a belief that depends upon
prior impressions as well as probable reasoning.




Another concern about the famous argument about motives is how it could be
sound. In order for it to yield its conclusion, it seems that its premise that
morality (or a moral judgment) influences the will must be construed to
say that moral evaluations *alone* move us to action,
without the help of some (further) passion. This is a controversial
claim and not one for which Hume offers any support. The premise that
reason alone cannot influence action is also difficult to interpret.
It would seem, given his prior arguments for this claim (e.g. that the
mere discovery of a causal relation does not produce an impulse to
act), that Hume means by it not only that the faculty of reason or the
activity of reasoning alone cannot move us, but also that the
conclusions of such activity alone (such as recognition of a relation
of ideas or belief in a causal connection) cannot produce a motive. Yet it is
hard to see how Hume, given his theory of causation, can argue that no
mental item of a certain type (such as a causal belief) can possibly
cause motivating passion or action. Such a claim could not be supported
*a priori*. And in *Treatise* 1.3.10, "Of the
influence of belief," he seems to assert very plainly that some
causal beliefs do cause motivating passions, specifically beliefs
about pleasure and pain in prospect. It is possible that Hume only
means to say, in the premise that reason alone cannot influence
action, that reasoning processes cannot generate actions as their
logical conclusions; but that would introduce an equivocation, since
he surely does not mean to say, in the other premise, that moral
evaluations generate actions as their logical conclusions. The
transition from premises to conclusion also seems to rely on a
principle of transitivity (If A alone cannot produce X and B produces
X, then A alone cannot produce B), which is doubtful but receives no
defense.




Commentators have proposed various interpretations to avoid these
difficulties. One approach is to construe 'reason' as the
name of a process or activity, the comparing of ideas (reasoning), and
to construe 'morals' as Hume uses it in this argument to
mean the activity of moral discrimination (making a moral
distinction). If we understand the terms this way, the argument can
be read not as showing that the faculty of reason (or the beliefs it
generates) cannot cause us to make moral judgments, but rather as
showing that the reasoning process (comparing ideas) is distinct from
the process of moral discrimination. This interpretation does not
rely on an assumption about the transitivity of causation and is
consistent with Hume's theory of causation.


## 5. Is and ought




Hume famously closes the section of the *Treatise* that argues
against moral rationalism by observing that other systems of moral
philosophy, proceeding in the ordinary way of reasoning, at some point
make an unremarked transition from premises whose parts are linked
only by "is" to conclusions whose parts are linked by
"ought" (expressing a new relation) -- a deduction
that seems to Hume "altogether inconceivable"
(T3.1.1.27). Attention to this transition would "subvert all the
vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of
vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor
is perceiv'd by reason" (ibid.).




Few passages in Hume's work have generated more interpretive
controversy.




According to the dominant twentieth-century interpretation, Hume says
here that no ought-judgment may be correctly inferred from a set of
premises expressed only in terms of 'is,' and the vulgar
systems of morality commit this logical fallacy. This is usually
thought to mean something much more general: that no ethical or indeed
evaluative conclusion whatsoever may be validly inferred from any set
of purely factual premises. A number of present-day philosophers,
including R. M. Hare, endorse this putative thesis of logic, calling
it "Hume's Law." (As Francis Snare observes, on this
reading Hume must simply assume that no purely factual propositions
are themselves evaluative, as he does not argue for this.) Some
interpreters think Hume commits himself here to a non-propositional or
noncognitivist view of moral judgment -- the view that moral
judgments do not state facts and are not truth-evaluable. (If Hume has
already used the famous argument about the motivational influence of
morals to establish noncognitivism, then the is/ought paragraph may
merely draw out a trivial consequence of it. If moral evaluations are
merely expressions of feeling without propositional content, then of
course they cannot be inferred from any propositional premises.) Some
see the paragraph as denying ethical realism, excluding values from
the domain of facts.




Other interpreters -- the more cognitivist ones -- see the
paragraph about 'is' and 'ought' as doing none of the
above. Some read it as simply providing further support for Hume's
extensive argument that moral properties are not discernible by
*demonstrative* reason, leaving open whether ethical
evaluations may be conclusions of cogent probable arguments. Others
interpret it as making a point about the original discovery of virtue
and vice, which must involve the use of sentiment. On this view, one
cannot make the initial discovery of moral properties by inference
from nonmoral premises using reason alone; rather, one requires some
input from sentiment. It is not simply by reasoning from the abstract
and causal relations one has discovered that one comes to have the
ideas of virtue and vice; one must respond to such information with
feelings of approval and disapproval. Note that on this reading it is
compatible with the is/ought paragraph that once a person has the
moral concepts as the result of prior experience of the moral
sentiments, he or she may reach some particular moral conclusions by
inference from causal, factual premises (stated in terms of
'is') about the effects of character traits on the
sentiments of observers. They point out that Hume himself makes such
inferences frequently in his writings.


## 6. The Nature of Moral Judgment




On Hume's view, what is a moral evaluation? Four main interpretations
have significant textual support. First, as we have seen, the
nonpropositional view says that for Hume a moral evaluation does not
express any proposition or state any fact; either it gives vent to a
feeling, or it is itself a feeling (Flew, Blackburn, Snare,
Bricke). (A more refined form of this interpretation allows that moral
evaluations have some propositional content, but claims that for Hume
their essential feature, as evaluations, is non-propositional.) The
subjective description view, by contrast, says that for Hume moral
evaluations describe the feelings of the spectator, or the feelings a
spectator would have were she to contemplate the trait or action from
the common point of view. Often grouped with the latter view is the
third, dispositional interpretation, which understands moral
evaluations as factual judgments to the effect that the evaluated
trait or action is so constituted as to cause feelings of approval or
disapproval in a (suitably characterized) spectator (Mackie, in one of
his proposals). On the dispositional view, in saying some trait is
good we attribute to the trait the dispositional property of being
such as to elicit approval. A fourth interpretation distinguishes two
psychological states that might be called a moral evaluation: an
occurrent feeling of approval or disapproval (which is not truth-apt),
and a moral belief or judgment that is propositional. Versions of
this fourth interpretation differ in what they take to be the content
of that latter mental state. One version says that the moral
judgments, as distinct from the moral feelings, are factual judgments
about the moral sentiments (Capaldi). A distinct version, the moral
sensing view, treats the moral beliefs as ideas copied from the
impressions of approval or disapproval that represent a trait of
character or an action as having whatever quality it is that one
experiences in feeling the moral sentiment (Cohon). This last view
emphasizes Hume's claim that moral good and evil are like heat, cold,
and colors as understood in "modern philosophy," which are
experienced directly by sensation, but about which we form
beliefs.


## 7. Sympathy, and the Nature and Origin of the Moral Sentiments



 Our moral evaluations of persons and their character traits, on
Hume's positive view, arise from our sentiments. The virtues and vices
are those traits the disinterested contemplation of which produces
approval and disapproval, respectively, in whoever contemplates the
trait, whether the trait's possessor or another. These moral
sentiments are emotions (in the present-day sense of that term) with a
unique phenomenological quality, and also with a special set of
causes. They are caused by contemplating the person or action to be
evaluated without regard to our self-interest, and from a common or
general perspective that compensates for certain likely distortions in
the observer's sympathies, as explained in
 Section 8.
 Approval (approbation) is a pleasure, and disapproval
(disapprobation) a pain or uneasiness. The moral sentiments are
typically calm rather than violent, although they can be intensified
by our awareness of the moral responses of others. They
are types of pleasure and uneasiness that are associated with the
passions of pride and humility, love and hatred: when we feel moral
approval of another we tend to love or esteem her, and when we
approve a trait of our own we are proud of it. Some interpreters
analyze the moral sentiments as themselves forms of these four
passions; others argue that Hume's moral sentiments tend to
cause the latter passions. We distinguish which
*traits* are virtuous and which are vicious by means of our
feelings of approval and disapproval 
toward the traits; our approval of *actions* is derived from
approval of the traits we suppose to have given rise to them. We can
determine, by observing the various sorts of traits toward which we
feel approval, that every such trait -- every virtue -- has
at least one of the following four characteristics: it is either
immediately agreeable to the person who has it or to others, or it is
useful (advantageous over the longer term) to its possessor or to
others. Vices prove to have the parallel features: they are either
immediately disagreeable or disadvantageous either to the person who
has them or to others. These are not definitions of
'virtue' and 'vice' but empirical
generalizations about the traits as first identified by their effects
on the moral sentiments.




In the *Treatise* Hume details the causes of the moral
sentiments, in doing so explaining why agreeable and advantageous
traits prove to be the ones that generate approval. He claims that the
sentiments of moral approval and disapproval are caused by some of the
operations of sympathy, which is not a feeling but rather a
psychological mechanism that enables one person to receive by
communication the sentiments of another (more or less what we would
call empathy today).




Sympathy in general operates as follows. First, observation of the
outward expression of another person's "affection"
(feeling or sentiment) in his "countenance and
conversation" conveys the idea of his passion into my mind. So
does observing the typical cause of a passion: for example, viewing
the instruments laid out for another's surgery will evoke ideas
in me of fear and pain. We at all times possess a maximally vivid and
forceful impression of ourselves. According to Hume's
associationism, vivacity of one perception is automatically
transferred to those others that are related to it by resemblance,
contiguity, and cause and effect. Here resemblance and contiguity are
primary. All human beings, regardless of their differences, are
similar in bodily structure and in the types and causes of their
passions. The person I observe or consider may further resemble me in
more specific shared features such as character or
nationality. Because of the resemblance and my contiguity to the
observed person, the idea of his passion is associated in my mind with
my impression of myself, and acquires great vivacity from it. The sole
difference between an idea and an impression is the degree of
liveliness or vivacity each possesses. So great is this acquired
vivacity that the idea of his passion in my mind becomes an
impression, and I actually experience the passion. When I come to
share in the affections of strangers, and feel pleasure because they
are pleased, as I do when I experience an aesthetic enjoyment of a
well-designed ship or fertile field that is not my own, my pleasure
can only be caused by sympathy (T 2.2.2-8,
3.3.1.7-8). Similarly, Hume observes, when we reflect upon a
character or mental quality knowing its tendency either to the benefit
or enjoyment of strangers or to their harm or uneasiness, we come to
feel enjoyment when the trait is beneficial or agreeable to those
strangers, and uneasiness when the trait is harmful or disagreeable to
them. This reaction of ours to the tendency of a character trait to
affect the sentiments of those with whom we have no special
affectionate ties can only be explained by sympathy.




We greatly approve the artificial virtues (justice with respect to
property, allegiance to government, and dispositions to obey the laws
of nations and the rules of modesty and good manners), which (Hume
argues) are inventions contrived solely for the interest of
society. We approve them in all times and places, even where our own
interest is not at stake, solely for their tendency to benefit the
whole society of that time or place. This instance confirms that
"the reflecting on the tendency of characters and mental
qualities, is sufficient to give us the sentiments of approbation and
blame" (T 3.3.1.9). The sympathy-generated pleasure,
then, *is* the moral approbation we feel toward these traits of
character. We find the character traits -- the causes --
agreeable because they are the means to ends we find agreeable as a
result of sympathy. Hume extends this analysis to the approval of most
of the natural virtues. Those traits of which we approve naturally
(without any social contrivance), such as beneficence, clemency, and
moderation, also tend to the good of individuals or all of society. So
our approval of those can be explained in precisely the same way, via
sympathy with the pleasure of those who receive benefit. And since
the imagination is more struck by what is particular than by what is
general, manifestations of the natural virtues, which directly benefit
any individual to whom they are directed, are even more apt to give
pleasure via sympathy than are the manifestations of justice, which
may harm identifiable individuals in some cases though they contribute
to a pattern of action beneficial to society as a whole (T
3.3.1.13).


## 8. The Common Point of View




As we saw, the moral sentiments are produced by sympathy with those
affected by a trait or action. Such sympathetically-acquired feelings
are distinct from our self-interested responses, and an individual of
discernment learns to distinguish her moral sentiments (which are
triggered by contemplating another's character trait "in
general") from the pleasure or uneasiness she may feel when
responding to a trait with reference to her "particular
interest," for example when another's strength of character makes
him a formidable opponent (T 3.1.2.4).




However, the sympathetic transmission of sentiments can vary in
effectiveness depending upon the degree of resemblance and contiguity
between the observer and the person with whom he sympathizes. I
receive the sentiments of someone very much like me or very close to
me in time or place far more strongly than I do those of someone
unlike me or more remote from me in location or in history. Yet the
moral assessments we make do not vary depending upon whether the
person we evaluate resembles us in language, sex, or temperament, or
is near or far. Indeed, our moral assessments of people remain stable
even though our position with respect to them changes over time.
Furthermore, sympathy only brings us people's actual sentiments or
what we believe to be their actual sentiments; yet we feel moral
approval of character traits that we know produce no real happiness
for anyone, because, for example, their possessor is isolated in a
prison. To handle these objections to the sympathy theory, and to
explain more generally how, on a sentiment-based ethical theory, moral
evaluations made by one individual at different times and many
individuals in a community tend to be fairly uniform, Hume claims that
people do not make their moral judgments from their own individual
points of view, but instead select "some common point of view,
from which they might survey their object, and which might cause it to
appear the same to all of them" (T 3.3.1.30). At least with
respect to natural virtues and vices, this common point of view is
composed of the intimate perspectives of the various individuals who
have direct interactions with the person being evaluated. To make a
moral evaluation I must sympathize with each of these persons in their
dealings with the subject of my evaluation; the blame or praise I give
as a result of this imaginative exercise is my genuine moral
assessment of the subject's character. In that assessment I also
overlook the small external accidents of fortune that might render an
individual's trait ineffectual, and respond to traits that render a
character typically "fitted to be beneficial to society,"
even if circumstances do not permit it to cause that benefit (T
3.3.1.20). Thus I acquire by sympathy the pleasure or uneasiness that
I imagine people
*would* feel were the trait able to operate as it ordinarily
does. "Experience soon teaches us this method of correcting our
sentiments, or at least, of correcting our language, where the
sentiments are more stubborn and inalterable" (T 3.3.1.16).


## 9. Artificial and Natural Virtues




The standard object of moral evaluation is a "quality of
mind," a character trait. (As we have seen, for Hume evaluation
of an *action* is derived from evaluation of the inner quality
we suppose to have given rise to it.) The typical moral judgment is
that some trait, such as a particular person's benevolence or
laziness, is a virtue or a vice. A character trait, for Hume, is a
psychological disposition consisting of a tendency to feel a certain
sentiment or combination of sentiments, ones that often move their
possessor to action. We reach a moral judgment by feeling approval or
disapproval upon contemplating someone's trait in a disinterested way
from the common point of view. So moral approval is a favorable
sentiment in the observer elicited by the observed person's
disposition to have certain motivating sentiments. Thus moral
approval is a sentiment that is directed toward sentiments, or the
dispositions to have them.




In the *Treatise* Hume emphasizes that "our sense of
every kind of virtue is not natural; but ... there are some
virtues, that produce pleasure and approbation by means of an artifice
or contrivance, which arises from the circumstances and necessities of
mankind" (T 3.2.1.1). He divides the virtues into those that are
natural -- in that our approval of them does not depend upon any
cultural inventions or jointly-made social rules -- and those
that are artificial (dependent both for their existence as character
traits and for their ethical merit on the presence of conventional
rules for the common good), and he gives separate accounts of the two
kinds. The traits he calls natural virtues are more refined and
completed forms of those human sentiments we could expect to find even
in people who belonged to no society but cooperated only within small
familial groups. The traits he calls artificial virtues are the ones
we need for successful *im*personal cooperation; our natural
sentiments are too partial to give rise to these without
intervention. In the *Treatise* Hume includes among the
artificial virtues honesty with respect to property (which he often
calls equity or "justice," though it is a strangely narrow
use of the term), fidelity to promises (sometimes also listed under
"justice"), allegiance to one's government, conformity to
the laws of nations (for princes), chastity (refraining from
non-marital sex) and modesty (both primarily for women and girls), and
good manners. A great number of individual character traits are listed
as natural virtues, but the main types discussed in detail are
greatness of mind ("a hearty pride, or self-esteem, if
well-concealed and well-founded," T 3.2.2.11), goodness or
benevolence (an umbrella category covering generosity, gratitude,
friendship, and more), and such natural abilities as prudence and wit,
which, Hume argues, have a reasonably good claim to be included under
the title moral virtue, though traditionally they are not. Hume does
not explicitly draw a distinction between artificial and natural
virtues in the moral *Enquiry*.




In the *Treatise* Hume argues in turn that the virtues of
material honesty and of faithfulness to promises and contracts are
artificial, not natural virtues. Both arguments fall into at least two
stages: one to show that if we suppose the given character trait to
exist and to win our approval without help from any cooperative social
arrangement, paradoxes arise; and another, longer stage to explain how
the relevant convention might have come into being and to refute those
with a different genetic story. He also explains the social
construction of the other artificial virtues and what social good they
serve.


## 10. Honesty with respect to Property


### 10.1 The Circle




Hume offers a rather cryptic argument to show that our approval of
material honesty must be the product of collaborative human effort
(convention). When we approve an action, he says, we regard it merely
as the sign of the motivating passion in the agent's "mind and
temper" that produced it; our evaluation of the action is derived
from our assessment of this inner motive. Therefore all actions deemed
virtuous derive their goodness only from virtuous motives --
motives we approve. It follows from this that the motive that
originally "bestows a merit on any action" can never be
moral approval of that action (awareness of its virtue), but must be a
non-moral, motivating psychological state -- that is, a state
distinct from the "regard to the virtue" of an action
(moral approval or disapproval) (T 3.2.1.4). For if the
virtue-bestowing motive of the action were the agent's sense that the
act would be virtuous to do -- if that were why he did it, and why
we approved it -- then we would be reasoning in a vicious circle:
we would approve of the action derivatively, because we approve of the
agent's motive, and this motive would consist of approval of the
action, which can only be based on approval of a motive... The basis of
our approval could not be specified. For every virtue, therefore, there
must be some non-moral motive that characteristically
motivates actions expressive of that virtue, which motive, by eliciting
our approval, makes the actions so motivated virtuous. The virtue of an
action of this species would be established by its being done from this
non-moral motive, and only then could an agent also or alternatively be
moved so to act by her derivative concern for the virtue of the act.
However, Hume observes that there *is* no morally approved (and
so virtue-bestowing), non-moral motive of honest action. The only
approved, reliable motive that we can find for acts of
"equity" is a moral one, the sense of virtue or "regard to
the honesty" of the actions. The honest individual repays a loan not
(merely) out of self-interest or concern for the well-being of the
lender (who may be a "profligate debauchee" who will reap
only harm from his possessions), but from a "regard to justice,
and abhorrence of villainy and knavery" (T 3.2.1.9, 13). This,
however, is "evident sophistry and reasoning in a
circle..." Now nature cannot have "establish'd a
sophistry, and render'd it necessary and unavoidable...";
therefore, "the sense of justice and injustice is not deriv'd
from nature, but arises artificially... from education, and human
conventions" (T 3.2.1.17). Whatever, exactly, the logic of this
argument is supposed to be, Hume's intent is to show that if we imagine
equity to be a natural virtue we commit ourselves to a sophistry, and
therefore honesty is instead man-made.




Hume offers an account of the genesis of the social convention that
creates honesty with respect to property, and this is meant
to cope in some way with the circularity he identifies. How it does so
is a matter of interpretive controversy, as we will see.


### 10.2 The Origin of Material Honesty




Hume next poses two questions about the rules of ownership of property
and the associated virtue of material honesty: what is the artifice by
which human beings create them, and why do we attribute moral goodness
and evil to the observance and neglect of these rules?




By nature human beings have many desires but are individually
ill-equipped with strength, natural weapons, or natural skills to
satisfy them. We can remedy these natural defects by means of social
cooperation: shared strength, division of labor, and mutual
aid in times of individual weakness. It occurs to people to form a
society as a consequence of their experience with the small family
groups into which they are born, groups united initially by sexual
attraction and familial love, but in time demonstrating the many
practical advantages of working together with others. However, in the
conditions of moderate scarcity in which we find ourselves, and given
the portable nature of the goods we desire, our untrammeled greed and
naturally "confined generosity" (generosity to those dear
to us in preference to others) tends to create conflict or undermine
cooperation, destroying collaborative arrangements among people who
are not united by ties of affection, and leaving us all materially
poor. No remedy for this natural partiality is to be found in
"our natural uncultivated ideas of morality" (T 3.2.2.8);
an invention is needed.




Hume argues that we create the rules of ownership of property
originally in order to satisfy our avidity for possessions for
ourselves and our loved ones, by linking material goods more securely
to particular individuals so as to avoid conflict. Within small groups
of cooperators, individuals signal to one another a willingness to
conform to a simple rule: to refrain from the material goods others
come to possess by labor or good fortune, provided those others will
observe the same restraint toward them. (This rule will in time require
more detail: specific rules determining who may enjoy which goods
initially and how goods may be transferred.) This signalling is not a
promise (which cannot occur without another, similar convention), but
an expression of conditional intention. The usefulness of such a custom
is so obvious that others will soon catch on and express a similar
intention, and the rest will fall in line. The convention develops
tacitly, as do conventions of language and money. When an individual
within such a small society violates this rule, the others are aware of
it and exclude the offender from their cooperative activities. Once the
convention is in place, justice (of this sort) is defined as conformity
with the convention, injustice as violation of it; indeed, the
convention defines property rights, ownership, financial obligation,
theft, and related concepts, which had no application before the
convention was introduced. So useful and obvious is this invention that
human beings would not live for long in isolated family groups or in
fluctuating larger groups with unstable possession of goods; their
ingenuity would quickly enable them to invent property, so as to reap
the substantial economic benefits of cooperation in larger groups in
which there would be reliable possession of the product, and they would
thus better satisfy their powerful natural greed by regulating it with
rules of justice.




Greed, and more broadly, self-interest, is the motive for inventing
property; but we need a further explanation why we think of justice
(adherence to the rules of ownership) as virtuous, and injustice (their
violation) as vicious. Hume accounts for the moralization of property
as follows. As our society grows larger, we may cease to see our own
property violations as a threat to the continued existence of a stable
economic community, and this reduces our incentive to conform. But
when we consider violations by others, we partake by sympathy in the
uneasiness these violations cause to their victims and all of society. Such
disinterested uneasiness, and the concomitant pleasure we feel on
contemplating the public benefits of adherence, are instances of moral
disapproval and approval. We extend these feelings to our own behavior as a
result of general rules. This process is "forwarded by the
artifice of politicians" (T 3.2.2.25), who assist nature by
cultivating widespread esteem for justice and abhorrence of injustice in order to
govern more easily. Private education assists in this further artifice.
Thus material honesty becomes a virtue.


### 10.3 The Motive of Honest Actions




Does this account resolve the circularity problem? Is there any
non-moral motive of honest action? Some interpreters say yes, it is
greed redirected, which removes the circle. But this presents two
difficulties: first, our greed is not in fact best satisfied by just
action in every case, and second, Hume denies that this motive is
approved. Some interpret Hume as coping with the first difficulty by
supposing that politicians and parents deceive us into thinking,
falsely, that every individual just act advances the interests of the
agent; or they claim that Hume himself mistakenly thought so, at least
in the *Treatise* (see Baron, Haakonssen, and Gauthier). Others
claim that Hume identifies a non-moral motive of honest action (albeit
an artificial one) other than redirected greed, such as a disposition
to treat the rules of justice as themselves reason-giving (Darwall) or
having a policy of conforming to the rules of justice as a system
(Garrett). Still others say there is no non-moral motive of honest
action, and Hume escapes from the circle by relaxing this ostensibly
universal requirement on virtuous types of behavior, limiting it to
the naturally virtuous kinds. These interpreters either claim that
there is no particular motive needed to evoke approval for conformity
to the rules of property -- mere behavior is enough (Mackie)
-- or that we approve of a motivating form of the moral sentiment
itself, the sense of duty (Cohon).




Hume's genetic account of property is striking for its lack of
patriarchal assumptions about the family, its explicit denial that the
creation of ownership does or can depend on any promise or contract,
and its concept of convention as an informal practice of mutual
compromise for mutual advantage that arises incrementally and entirely
informally, without the use of central authority or force.


## 11. Fidelity to Promises




Fidelity is the virtue of being disposed to fulfill promises and
contracts. Hume has in mind promises made "at arm's length"
that parties undertake to promote their own interest, not affectionate
exchanges of favors between friends. While he identifies the same circularity
puzzle about the approved motive of fidelity that he tackles at length
in connection with honesty, in the case of fidelity he concentrates on a
different conundrum that arises with the misguided attempt to analyze
fidelity as a non-conventional (natural) virtue. Unlike Hobbes and
Locke, who help themselves to the concept of a promise or contract in
their imagined state of nature, Hume argues that the performative
utterance "I promise" would be unintelligible in the
absence of background social conventions, and that the moral obligation
of a promise is dependent upon such conventions as well.




Suppose the practice of giving and receiving promises did not depend
on a socially-defined convention. In that case, what could we mean by
the utterances we use to make them, and what would be the origin of our
obligation to fulfill them? Where the words are used
(uncharacteristically) in a way that does not *purport* to
reveal the agent's will (as when the person is joking or play-acting), we do not think a promise is really being
made; we only take a speaker to have promised, and so to be bound to
perform, if he understands the words he uses, in particular as
purporting to obligate him. Thus for effective use there must be some
act of the speaker's mind expressed by the special phrase "I
promise" and its synonyms, and our moral obligation results from
this act of the mind. (This seems to be Hobbes's assumption in
*Leviathan*, where the implicit signs of covenant -- as
distinct from the explicit ones -- are clear signs of the person's
will.) The requisite mental act or mental state, though, could not be
one of mere desire or resolution to act, since it does not follow from
our desiring or resolving to act that we are morally obligated to do
so; nor could it be the volition to act, since that does not come into
being ahead of time when we promise, but only when the time comes to
act. And of course, one can promise successfully (incur obligation by
promising) even though one has no intention to perform; so the mental
act requisite to obligation is not the intention to perform. The only likely act of
mind that might be expressed in a promise is a mental act of
*willing to be obligated* to perform the promised action, as
this conforms to our common view that we bind ourselves by choosing to
be bound.




But, Hume argues, it is absurd to think that one can actually bring
an obligation into existence by willing to be obligated. What makes an
action obligatory is that its omission is disapproved by unbiased
observers. But no act of will within an agent can directly change a previously
neutral act into one that provokes moral disapproval in observers
(even in the agent herself). Sentiments are not subject to such
voluntary control. Even on a moral rationalist view the thesis would be 
absurd: to create a new obligation would be to change the abstract
relations in which actions and persons stand to one
another, and one cannot do this 
by performing in one's own mind an act of willing such a relation to
exist. Thus, there is no such act of the mind. Even if people in their
natural (pre-conventional) condition "cou'd perceive each other's
thoughts by intuition," they could not understand one another to
bind themselves by any act of promising, and could not be obligated
thereby. Since the necessary condition for a natural obligation of
promises cannot be fulfilled, we may conclude that this obligation is
instead the product of group invention to serve the interests of
society.




Promises are invented in order to build upon the advantages afforded
by property. The invention of mere ownership suffices to
make possession stable. The introduction of transfer by consent permits some trade, but so far only simultaneous swapping of visible
commodities. Great advantages could be gained by all if people could
be counted on to provide goods or services later for benefits given
now, or exchange goods that are distant or described generically. But
for people without the capacity to obligate themselves to future
action, such exchanges would depend upon the party who performs second doing so
out of gratitude alone; and that motive cannot generally be
relied on in self-interested transactions. However, we can devise better
ways to satisfy our appetites "in an oblique and artificial manner..."
(T 3.2.5.9). First, people can easily recognize that additional kinds
of mutual exchanges would serve their interests. They need only
express this interest to one another in order to encourage everyone to
invent and to keep such agreements. They devise a form of words to
mark these new sorts of exchanges (and distinguish them from the
generous reciprocal acts of friendship and gratitude). When someone
utters this form of words, he is understood to express a resolution to
do the action in question, and he "subjects himself to the penalty of
never being trusted again in case of failure" (T 3.2.5.10), a penalty
made possible by the practice of the group, who enforce the
requirement to keep promises by the simple expedient of refusing to
contract with those whose word cannot be trusted . This "concert or
convention" (ibid.) alters human motives to act. One is moved by
self-interest to give the promising sign (in order to obtain the other
party's cooperation), and once one has given it, self-interest demands
that one do what one promised to do so as to insure that people will
exchange promises with one in the future. Some interpreters say that
this enlightened self-interest remains the only motive for keeping
one's promise, once the practice of promising has been created. But
Hume says the sentiment of morals comes to play the same role in
promise-keeping that it does in the development of honesty with
respect to property (T 3.2.5.12); so there is evidence he thinks the
moral sentiment not only becomes "annex'd" to
promise-keeping but further motivates it. In larger, more anonymous
communities, a further incentive is needed besides the fear of
exclusion; and a sentiment of moral approval of promise-keeping arises
as the result of sympathy with all who benefit from the practice,
aided by a "second artifice," the well-meaning
psychological manipulation of the people by parents and politicians,
which yields a near-universal admiration of fidelity and shame at
breaking one's word (T 3.2.5.12). This may provide a moral motive for
promise-keeping even in anonymous transactions.


## 12. Allegiance to Government




A small society can maintain a subsistence-level economy without any
dominion of some people over others, relying entirely on voluntary
compliance with conventions of ownership, transfer of goods, and
keeping of agreements, and relying on exclusion as the sole means of
enforcement. But an increase in population and/or material
productivity, Hume thinks, tends to stimulate a destabilizing rate of
defection from the rules: more luxury goods greatly increase the
temptation to act unjustly, and more anonymous transactions make it
seem likely that one will get away with it. Though people are aware
that injustice is destructive of social cooperation and so ultimately
detrimental to their own interests, this knowledge will not enable
them to resist such strong temptation, because of an inherent human
weakness: we are more powerfully drawn to a near-term good even when
we know we will pay for it with the loss of a greater long-term
good. This creates the need for government to enforce the rules of
property and promise (the "laws of nature," as Hume
sometimes rather ironically calls them, since on his view they are not
natural). This is the reason for the invention of government. Once in
power, rulers can also make legitimate use of their authority to
resolve disputes over just what the rules of justice require in
particular cases, and to carry out projects for the common good such
as building roads and dredging harbors.




Hume thinks it unnecessary to prove that allegiance to government is
the product of convention and not mere nature, since governments are
obviously social creations. But he does need to explain the creation of
governments and how they solve the problem he describes. He speculates
that people who are unaccustomed to subordination in daily life might
draw the idea for government from their experience of wars with other
societies, when they must appoint a temporary commander. To overcome
the preference for immediate gain over long-term security, the people
will need to arrange social circumstances so that the conformity to
justice is in people's immediate interest. This cannot be done with
respect to all the people, but it can be done for a few. So the people
select magistrates (judges, kings, and the like) and so position them
(presumably with respect to rank and wealth) that it will be in those
magistrates' immediate interest not only to obey but to enforce the
rules of justice throughout society. Hume is vague about the incentives 
of the magistrates, but apparently they are so pleased with their own
share of wealth and status that they are not tempted by the possessions
of others; and since they are "indifferent... to the
greatest part of the state," they have no incentive to assist
anyone in any crimes (T3.2.7.6). Thus the magistrates' most immediate
interest lies in preserving their own status and wealth by protecting
society. (Perhaps more directly, they stand to lose their favored
status if they are found by the people not to enforce the rules of
justice.)




It is possible for the people to agree to appoint magistrates in spite
of the incurable human attraction to the proximal good even when
smaller than a remote good, because this predilection only takes
effect when the lesser good is immediately at hand. When considering
two future goods, people always prefer the greater, and make decisions
accordingly. So looking to the future, people can decide now to
empower magistrates to force them to conform to the rules of justice
in the time to come so as to preserve society. When the time comes to
obey and individuals are tempted to violate the rules, the long-range
threat this poses to society may not move them to desist, but the
immediate threat of punishment by the magistrates will.




We initially obey our magistrates from self-interest. But once
government is instituted, we come to have a moral obligation to obey
our governors; this is another artificial duty that needs to be
explained. On Hume's view it is independent of the obligation of promises.
We are bound to our promises and to obey the magistrates' commands on
parallel grounds: because both kinds of conformity are so manifestly beneficial for 
all. Governors merely insure that the rules of justice are generally
obeyed in the sort of society where purely voluntary conventions would
otherwise break down. As in the case of fidelity to promises, the
character trait of allegiance to our governors generates sympathy with
its beneficiaries throughout society, making us approve the trait as a
virtue.




The duty of allegiance to our present governors does not depend upon
their or their ancestors' divine right to govern, Hume says, nor on
any promise we have made to them or any contract that transfers rights
to them, but rather on the general social value of having a
government. Rulers thus need not be chosen by the people in order to
be legitimate. Consequently, who is the ruler will often be a matter
of salience and imaginative association; and it will be no ground for
legitimate rebellion that a ruler was selected arbitrarily. Rulers
identified by long possession of authority, present possession,
conquest, succession, or positive law will be suitably salient and so
legitimate, provided their rule tends to the common good. Although
governments exist to serve the interests of their people, changing
magistrates and forms of government for the sake of small advantages
to the public would yield disorder and upheaval, defeating the purpose
of government; so our duty of allegiance forbids this. A government
that maintains conditions preferable to what they would be without it
retains its legitimacy and may not rightly be overthrown. But
rebellion against a cruel tyranny is no violation of our duty of
allegiance, and may rightly be undertaken. 




Hume does advocate some forms of government as being preferable to
others, particularly in his *Essays*. Governments structured by
laws are superior to those controlled by the edicts of rulers or ruling
bodies ("That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science").
Representative democracy is superior to direct democracy, and
"free" (popular) governments are more hospitable to trade
than "absolute" governments (ibid.). Hume speculates that a
perfect government would be a representative democracy of
property-holders with division of powers and some features of
federalism ("Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth"). He defends
his preferences by arguing that certain forms of government are less
prone to corruption, faction (with the concomitant threat of civil
war), and oppressive treatment of the people than others; that is, they
are more likely to enforce the rules of justice, adjudicate fairly, and
encourage peace and prosperity.




Hume famously criticizes the social contract theory of political
obligation. According to his own theory, our duty to obey our
governors is not reducible to an instance of our duty to fulfill
promises, but arises separately though in a way parallel to the
genesis of that duty. Hume denies that any native citizen or subject
in his own day has made even a tacit promise to obey the government,
given that citizens do not think they did any such thing, but rather
think they are born to obey it. Even a tacit contract requires that
the will be engaged, and we have no memory of this; nor do governments
refrain from punishing disloyalty in citizens who have given no tacit
promise.


## 13. The Natural Virtues




In the *Treatise* Hume's principle interest in the natural
virtues lies in explaining the causes that make us approve them. The
mechanism of sympathy ultimately accounts for this approval and the
corresponding disapproval of the natural vices. Sympathy also explains
our approval of the artificial virtues; the difference is that we
approve of those as a result of sympathy with the cumulative effects
produced by the general practice of the artificial virtues on the
whole of society (individual acts of justice not always producing
pleasure for anyone); whereas we approve each individual exercise of
such natural virtues as gratitude and friendship because we sympathize
with those who are affected by each such action when we consider it
from the common point of view. As we saw, he argues that the traits of
which we approve fall into four groups: traits immediately agreeable
to their possessor or to others, and traits advantageous to their
possessor or to others. In these four groups of approved traits, our
approval arises as the result of sympathy bringing into our minds the
pleasure that the trait produces for its possessor or for others (with
one minor exception). This is especially clear with such
self-regarding virtues as prudence and industry, which we approve even
when they occur in individuals who provide no benefit to us observers;
this can only be explained by our sympathy with the benefits that
prudence and industry bring to their possessors.




According to Hume, different levels and manifestations of the passions
of pride and humility make for virtue or for vice. An obvious and
"over-weaning conceit" is disapproved by any observer (is
a vice) (T 3.3.2.1); while a well-founded but concealed self-esteem is
approved (is a virtue). Hume explains these opposite reactions to such
closely related character traits by means of the interplay of the
observer's sympathy with a distinct psychological mechanism he calls
comparison. The mechanism of comparison juxtaposes a
sympathetically-communicated sentiment with the observer's own
inherent feeling, causing the observer to feel a sentiment opposite to
the one she observes in another (pleasure if the other is suffering,
pain if the other is pleased) when the sympathetically-communicated
sentiment is not too strong. A person who displays excessive pride
irritates others because, while others come to feel this person's
pleasant sentiment of pride (to some degree) via sympathy, they also
feel a greater uneasiness as a result of comparing that great pride
(in whose objects they do not believe) with their own lesser pride in
themselves; this is why conceit is a vice. Self-esteem founded on an
accurate assessment of one's strengths and politely concealed from
others, though, is both agreeable and advantageous to its possessor
without being distressing to others, and so is generally
approved. (Thus the professed preference of Christians for humility
over self-esteem does not accord with the judgments of most
observers.) Although excessive pride is a natural vice and self-esteem
a natural virtue, human beings in society create
the *artificial* virtue of good breeding (adherence to customs
of slightly exaggerated mutual deference in accordance with social
rank) to enable us each to conceal our own pride easily so that it
does not shock the pride of others.




Courage and military heroism are also forms of pride. Though the
student of history can see that military ambition has mostly been
disadvantageous to human society, when we contemplate the
"dazling" character of the hero, immediate sympathy
irresistibly leads us to approve it (T 3.3.2.15).




Our approval of those traits that may be grouped together under the
heading of goodness and benevolence, such as generosity, humanity,
compassion, and gratitude, arises from sympathy with people in the
individual's "narrow circle" of friends and associates,
since, given natural human selfishness, we cannot expect people's
concerns to extend farther (T 3.3.3.2). By adopting the common point of
view we correct for the distortions of sympathy by entering into the
feelings of those close to the person being evaluated even if they are
remote from us. The vice of cruelty is most loathed because the
suffering of the person's victims that reaches us via sympathy readily
becomes hatred of the perpetrator.




Although natural abilities of the mind are not traditionally
classified as moral virtues and vices, the difference between these
types of traits is unimportant, Hume argues. Intelligence, good
judgment, application, eloquence, and wit are also mental qualities
that bring individuals the approbation of others, and their absence is
disapproved. As is the case with many of the traditionally-recognized
virtues, the various natural abilities are approved either because they
are useful to their possessor or because they are immediately agreeable
to others. It is sometimes argued that moral virtues are unlike natural
abilities in that the latter are involuntary, but Hume argues that many
traditional moral virtues are involuntary as well. The sole difference
is that the prospect of reward or punishment can induce people to act
as the morally virtuous would (as justice requires, for example), but
cannot induce them to act as if they had the natural abilities.


## 14. Differences between the *Treatise* and the Moral *Enquiry*




Late in his life Hume deemed the *Enquiry concerning the Principles
of Morals* his best work, and in style it is a model of elegance
and subtlety. His method in that work differs from that of the
*Treatise*: instead of explicating the nature of virtue and vice
and our knowledge of them in terms of underlying features of the human
mind, he proposes to collect all the traits we know from common sense
to be virtues and vices, observe what those in each group have in
common, and from that observation discover the "foundation of
ethics" (EPM 1.10). The conclusions largely coincide with those
of the *Treatise*. Some topics in the *Treatise* are
handled more fully in the moral *Enquiry*; for example Hume's
account of the motive to just action is enriched by his discussion
of a challenge from a "sensible knave." However, without
the detailed background theories of the mind, the passions, motivation
to action, and social convention presented in the *Treatise*,
and without any substitute for them, some of the conclusions of the
moral *Enquiry* stand unsupported.




In the latter work, Hume's main argument that reason alone is not
adequate to yield moral evaluations (in Appendix 1) depends on
his having demonstrated throughout the book that at least one
foundation of moral praise lies in the usefulness to society of the
praised character trait. We use reason extensively to learn the effects
of various traits and to identify the useful and pernicious ones. But
utility and disutility are merely means; were we indifferent to the
weal and woe of mankind, we would feel equally indifferent to the
traits that promote those ends. Therefore there must be some sentiment
that makes us favor the one over the other. This could only be
humanity, "a feeling for the happiness of mankind, and resentment
of their misery" (EPM App. 1.3). This argument presupposes that
the moral evaluations we make are themselves the expression of
sentiment rather than reason alone. (The alternative position would be
that while of course we do feel approval and disapproval for vice and
virtue, the judgment as to which is which is itself the deliverance of
reason.) So Hume appends some arguments directed against the hypothesis
of moral rationalism. One of these is an enriched version of the
argument of Treatise 3.1.1 that neither demonstrative nor causal
reasoning has moral distinctions as its proper object, since moral vice
and virtue cannot plausibly be analyzed as either facts or relations.
He adds that while in our reasonings we start from the knowledge of
relations or facts and infer some previously-unknown relation or fact,
moral evaluation cannot proceed until all the relevant facts and
relations are already known. At that point, there is nothing further
for reason to do; therefore moral evaluation is not the work of reason
alone but of another faculty. He bolsters this line of argument by
expanding his *Treatise* analogy between moral and aesthetic
judgment, arguing that just as our appreciation of beauty awaits full
information about the object but requires the further contribution of
taste, so in moral evaluation our assessment of merit or villainy
awaits full knowledge of the person and situation but requires the
further contribution of approbation or disapprobation. He also offers
the argument that since the chain of reasons why one acts must finally
stop at something that is "desirable on its own account...
because of its immediate accord or agreement with
sentiment..." (EPM App.1.19), sentiment is needed to account
for ultimate human ends; and since virtue is an end, sentiment and not
reason alone must distinguish moral good and evil.




In the moral *Enquiry* Hume omits all arguments to show that
reason alone does not move us to act; so the Representation
Argument about the irrelevance of reason to passions and actions is absent.
Without it he has no support for his direct
argument that moral goodness and evil are not identical with
reasonableness and unreasonableness, which relies on it for its key
premise; and that too is absent from EPM. On the whole in EPM Hume
does not appeal to the thesis that reason cannot produce motives in
order to show that morals are not derived from reason alone, but
limits himself to the epistemic and descriptive arguments showing that
reason alone cannot discern virtue and vice in order to reject ethical
rationalism in favor of sentimentalism. However, at Appendix I.21 he
does assert (without support) that "Reason, being cool and disengaged,
is no motive to action," and perhaps this is intended to be a premise
in a revised version of the famous argument that reason cannot produce
motives but morals can, though what he writes here is tantalizingly
different from that argument as it appears repeatedly in
the *Treatise*.




Why did Hume omit the more fundamental arguments for the
motivational inertia of reason? He may have reconsidered and rejected
them. For example, he may have given up his undefended claim that
passions have no representative character, a premise of the
Representation Argument on which, as we saw, some of his fundamental
anti-rationalist arguments depend. Or he may have retained these views
but opted not to appeal to anything so arcane in a work aimed at a
broader audience and intended to be as accessible as possible. The
moral *Enquiry* makes no use of ideas and impressions, and so no
arguments that depend on that distinction can be offered there,
including the Representation Argument. Apparently Hume thought he could
show that reason and sentiment rule different domains without using
those arguments.




Thus, not surprisingly, the causal analysis of sympathy as a mechanism
of vivacity-transferal from the impression of the self to the ideas of
the sentiments of others is entirely omitted from the moral
*Enquiry*. Hume still appeals to sympathy there to explain the
origin of all moral approval and disapproval, but he explains our
sympathy with others simply as a manifestation of the sentiment of
humanity, which is given more prominence. He is still concerned about the objection that sympathetically-acquired sentiments vary with spatial and temporal distance from the
object of evaluation while moral assessments do not; so he addresses it in the moral *Enquiry* as well,
and resolves it by appealing once again to the common point of view.
In the *Enquiry* he places more emphasis on sympathy with the interests of the whole of society, in part achieved by conversation using shared moral vocabulary,
as a way to correct our initial sentiments to make them genuinely moral (Taylor 2002). He also attends more explicitly to the role of reason and reflection in moral evaluation. Some interpreters see him as offering an account of how to arrive at reliable moral judgment superior to that in the *Treatise* (Taylor 2015). 




The distinction between artificial and natural virtues that
dominates the virtue ethics of the *Treatise* is almost entirely
absent from the moral *Enquiry*; the term 'artificial'
occurs in the latter only once in a footnote. Gone are the paradoxes of
property and promises intended to prove that particular virtues are
devised on purpose; also missing is what some commentators think Hume's
most original contribution to the theory of justice, his account of
convention. Yet Hume briefly sketches part of the same 
quasi-historical account of the origin of justice that he gives in the
*Treatise*; and while the emphasis has shifted, Hume not only
tries to show that justice has merit only because of its beneficial
consequences, but that "public utility is the *sole*
origin of justice" -- were we not to find it useful (and in
some conditions we might not) we would not even have such a thing (EPM
3.1.1). While any explanation of this shift and these omissions is
merely speculative, here it seems that Hume does not change his mind
about the arguments of the *Treatise* but chooses to lead the
reader to the same conclusions by more subtle and indirect means while
avoiding provocative claims.




In the moral *Enquiry* Hume is more explicit about what he
takes to be the errors of Christian (or, more cautiously, Roman
Catholic) moralists. Not only have they elevated craven humility to
the status of a virtue, which he hints in the *Treatise* is a
mistake, but they also favor penance, fasting, and other
"monkish virtues" that are in fact disapproved by all
reasonable folk for their uselessness and disagreeableness, and so are
in fact vices.