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Investigating Morality with David Hume

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Abstract

Scholars are divided over the character of Hume’s moral theory: Is he a value-free social scientist or a moral sentiment theorist? This essay examines Book III of Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature in order to understand the character of his moral investigations. I argue that Hume has a distinctive and insufficiently appreciated approach to morality that is both phenomenological and investigative. Political science must start with everyday moral opinion, but tensions within opinion compel us to search for moral foundations. Yet morality is not what it seems – a good in itself – but is a requirement for the successful functioning of society as a means for addressing deeply rooted problems in the human condition. Hume’s final analysis of morality must thus be sought in his treatment of the natural virtues. Through his investigation of morality, Hume offers us a political science more compelling than either positivism or moral sentiment theory.

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Notes

  1. See A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic (New York: Dover Publications, 1946); together with Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), Chapters 2–5.

  2. John Gunnell, The Descent of Political Theory: The Genealogy of an American Vocation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), chapter 10, especially 245.

  3. Steven Salkever, “ ‘Cool Reflection’ and the Criticism of Values,” American Political Science Review 74 (March 1980): 70–77.

  4. David Fate Norton, David Hume: Common-Sense Moralist, Skeptical Metaphysician (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982); Donald Livingston, Hume’s Philosophy of Common Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984); Annette Baier, A Progress of Sentiments: Reflections on Hume’s Treatise (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991); Rachel Cohon, Hume’s Morality: Feeling and Fabrication (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); David Fate Norton and Jacqueline Taylor, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Hume, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

  5. Robert P. George, In Defense of Natural Law (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1999), 17; Robert Pippin, Hegel’s Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical Life (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 135. See also Cohon on “our common reading of Hume’s meta-ethics” in Hume’s Morality, chapter 1 (see previous note).

  6. Russell Hardin, David Hume: Moral and Political Theorist (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 6–7.

  7. Sharon Krause, Civil Passions: Moral Sentiment and Democratic Deliberation (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008); Michael Frazer, The Enlightenment of Sympathy: Justice and the Moral Sentiments in the Eighteenth Century and Today (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

  8. Krause, Civil Passions, 12, 96–97 (see previous note).

  9. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), Introduction, 7 n1. Subsequent citations to the Treatise will be to Book.Part.Section.Paragraph. Italics in quotations are original unless otherwise noted.

  10. Because my reading of Hume’s dialectical treatment of morality requires following his argument in some detail, in this essay I focus on the Treatise and omit the Enquiry into the Principles of Morals, although a full account of Hume’s thought would require a consideration of the relationship of Hume’s two accounts of morality.

  11. See Frederick Whelan, Hume and Machiavelli: Political Realism and Liberal Thought (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2004); and Paul Rahe, New Modes and Orders in Early Modern Political Thought, vol. 2 of Republics Ancient and Modern (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994).

  12. In addition to the two works cited in note 11, see also Frederick Whelan, Order and Artifice in Hume’s Political Philosophy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985); Ralph Lerner, The Thinking Revolutionary: Principle and Prudence in the New Republic (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987); John Danford, David Hume and the Problem of Reason: Recovering the Human Sciences (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990); Neil McArthur, Hume’s Political Theory: Law, Liberty, and the Constitution of Government (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007); and Andrew Sabl, Hume’s Politics: Coordination and Crisis in the History of England (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2012).

  13. Hume, Treatise, 1.4.7.12 (see note 9 above).

  14. Livingston, Hume’s Philosophy of Common Life (see note 4 above); Danford, David Hume and the Problem of Reason (see note 12 above); and Baier, A Progress of Reason (see note 4 above), all provide insightful commentary on this point. I explore this theme in greater length in Hume and the Politics of Enlightenment (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

  15. Hume, Treatise, 1.4.7.5, 6 (see note 9 above).

  16. For a similar point about Adam Smith, see Charles Griswold, Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 52. As Griswold notes, because there is no “Archimedean point” for Smith, his ethical inquiries must start “from more or less common premises implicit in our ordinary self–understanding.”

  17. Hume, Treatise, 3 epigraph (see note 9 above).

  18. For the source and political connotations of the epigraph, see Paul Russell, The Riddle of Hume’s Treatise: Skepticism, Naturalism, and Irreligion (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2008), chapter 7.

  19. Hume, Treatise, 3.1.1.1 (see note 9 above).

  20. Ibid., 3.1.1–2.

  21. Ibid., 3.1.2.2.

  22. Ibid., 3.1.1.5

  23. Ibid., 3.1.2.3.

  24. Ibid., 3.1.2.4.

  25. See Krause, Civil Passions, 12; and Frazer, The Enlightenment of Sympathy, 11 (see note 7 above for both sources).

  26. Hume, Treatise, 3.1.2.2 (see note 9 above).

  27. Ibid., 3.1.2.6–10.

  28. Ibid., 3.1.2.7–9.

  29. Ibid., 3.1.2.9.

  30. Ibid., 3.1.1.1.

  31. Ibid., 3.2.1.13.

  32. Ibid., 3.2.1.11.

  33. Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 9.

  34. Hume, Treatise, 3.2.1.9 (see note 9 above).

  35. Ibid., compare 3.2.1.9 with 3.2.1.7.

  36. Ibid., 3.2.1.13; cf. 3.2.6.9.

  37. Ibid., 3.2.1.17.

  38. Stated less metaphorically, social artifices must serve human interests and needs that precede those artifices both temporally and analytically. To say that a social practice is “artificial but not arbitrary” is only possible if there is some standard for the practice outside of the practice: for Hume that standard is the (so far as we know) permanent human interests. Thomas Spragens provides helpful discussion of this point in “David Hume’s ‘Experimental’ Science of Morals and the Natural Law Tradition”; see The Ethical Dimension of Political Life, ed. Francis Canavan (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1983), 107–24.

  39. Krause, Civil Passions, 97 (see note 7 above), building on Korsgaard, Sources of Normativity, 65–66 (see note 17 above).

  40. Hume, Treatise, 3.2.2.2 (see note 9 above).

  41. Baier, A Progress of Sentiments, 227 (see note 4 above).

  42. Hume, Treatise, 3.2.2.12 (see note 9 above). Compare Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans. Harvey Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 125; Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. Harvey Mansfield (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 14–15; and Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1994), 57.

  43. Hume, Treatise, 3.2.2.13 (see note 9 above).

  44. Ibid., 3.2.1.9–13.

  45. Ibid., 3.2.2.25.

  46. Ibid., 3.2.2.6.

  47. Ibid., 3.2.1.19.

  48. See especially Knud Haakonssen, The Science of the Legislator: The Natural Jurisprudence of David Hume and Adam Smith (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1981); and Natural Law and Moral Philosophy: From Grotius to the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1996); together with Livingston, Hume’s Philosophy of Common Life; and Baier, A Progress of Sentiments (see note 4 above for both sources).

  49. Rousseau’s appeal to the legislator and civic religion is meant to solve a similar difficulty: Jean–Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, ed. and trans. Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 70–71.

  50. Friedrich Hayek, “The Legal and Moral Philosophy of David Hume,” in Hume: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. V.C. Chappell (New York: Doubleday, 1966).

  51. Hume, Treatise, 3.2.2.3 (see note 9 above).

  52. Ibid., 3.2.2.9.

  53. Ibid., 3.2.2.10.

  54. David Gauthier, “David Hume, Contractarian,” Philosophical Review 88 (1979): 3–38.

  55. Hume, Treatise, 3.2.2.10 (see note 9 above).

  56. Compare Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, 44–48 (see note 23 above). Jeremy Waldron gets Hume wrong on this point in “The Advantages and Difficulties of the Humean Theory of Property,” Social Philosophy & Policy 11 (Summer 1994): 85–123.

  57. Hume, Treatise, 3.2.11.3 (see note 9 above).

  58. Ibid., 3.2.2.13.

  59. Ibid.

  60. Ibid., 3.2.2.24. See, for example, Cohon, Hume’s Morality, chapter 6 (see note 4 above).

  61. Hume, Treatise, 3.2.10.4 (see note 9 above).

  62. David Hume, Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and the Principles of Morals, 3rd ed., ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge and P.H. Nidditch (Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1975), 282–83.

  63. David Gauthier, “Artificial Virtues and the Sensible Knave,” Hume Studies 18 (1992): 401–27. Gauthier cites Hume, Treatise, 3.2.2.22 (see note 9 above).

  64. Hume, Treatise, 3.2.2.22 (see note 9 above).

  65. Ibid.

  66. Cohon comes close to suggesting that her improved version of Hume offers something like a categorical imperative when she writes that a sense of honor “provides a motive to perform each and every honest act, and to refrain from each and every dishonest one.” See Hume’s Morality, 179 (see note 4 above). But Cohon does not confront the problem that preserving the polity that makes justice possible may well require actions contrary to the rules of justice themselves (Hume, Treatise 3.2.2.22), or that justice between states is for Hume less obligatory than it is between individuals (Treatise 3.2.11.3). (see note 9 above for both sources). It is this problem that forces Hume to transcend the perspective of justice as he understands it toward a broader conception of political prudence.

  67. Baier, A Progress of Sentiments, 248 (see note 4 above), referring to Hume, Treatise, 3.2.8.1–2 (see note 9 above).

  68. Hardin, David Hume: Moral and Political Theorist, 8 (see note 6 above).

  69. As Sabl points out; Hume’s Politics, 307 n3 (see note 12 above). To be clear, I agree with Hardin that Hume does not offer a categorical imperative, but I disagree with his implication that this means that Hume’s political science is purely descriptive. Gauthier’s despairing conclusion that Hume’s society has no moral foundation may well stem from a similar expectation that morality must mean something like a categorical imperative. See his remark that Hume’s problem might be solved if morality were a fundamental human concern, not merely instrumental to interest or the like: “Artifical Virtues,” 423 (see note 29 above).

  70. Cf. Hume, Treatise, 1.4.7.13 (see note 9 above).

  71. Hume, Treatise 3.2.8.1–2 (see note 9 above). Compare the same historical moment in The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings, ed. and trans. Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 167–73.

  72. This moment helps answer the recurring criticism that the account of justice in the Treatise deals only with external property and not with rights against murder, bodily harm, and so on; see Baier, The Cautious Jealous Virtue: Hume on Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010), chapter 4; Sharon Krause, “Hume and the (False) Luster of Justice.” Political Theory 32 (2004): 628–55, especially 639; and Sabl, Hume’s Politics, 96–97 (see note 12 above). Baier speculates that Hume recognized his error and expanded his view of justice in the decade after the Treatise. But already in the Treatise human beings learn that “life and limb” are “the most considerable of all goods” when the original commercial society disintegrates into a war of each against all (Hume, Treatise, 3.2.2.2) (see note 9 above). I take this to mean that individuals now realize what was implicit in the conventions of justice all along: personal rights are as important as property rights (see note 9 above). From the beginning Hume was concerned to protect individuals against arbitrary power, as his civil libertarian praise of the English constitution in “Of the Liberty of the Press” reveals: Essays Moral Political and Literary, ed. Eugene Miller (Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Fund, 1985), 12.

  73. Hume, Treatise, 3.2.8.5 (see note 9 above).

  74. I am not sure if Krause would count this claim as “intrinsically normative”: Krause, Civil Passions, 97 (see note 7 above). However we characterize Hume’s position, though, one of his key claims is that while justice is almost always indispensable, there are clear exceptions when the goals or ends of the social practice trump the rules of justice. See Enquiries, 186–87 (see note 62 above).

  75. See John Stuart Mill’s remarks in Essays on Ethics, Religion, and Society, vol. 10 of Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. J.M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), 80 note q; and Frazer, The Enlightenment of Sympathy, 12 (see note 7 above).

  76. Hume, Essays, 118 (see note 35 above).

  77. Hume, Treatise, 3.2.10.15, emphasis added (see note 9 above).

  78. Ibid., 3.2.10.16.

  79. Hume, Essays, 118 (see note 35 above).

  80. See, among others, Hardin, David Hume: Political and Moral Theorist, 126–29 (see note 6 above); McArthur, Hume’s Political Theory, 133–35 (see note 12 above); and Sabl, Hume’s Politics, 149–50 (see note 12 above), as well as Thomas Merrill, “The Rhetoric of Rebellion in Hume’s Constitutional Thought,” Review of Politics 67 (2005): 257–82.

  81. Hume, Treatise, 3.2.9.3 (see note 9 above).

  82. Ibid., 3.2.9.2.

  83. Ibid., 3.2.10.16.

  84. Ibid., 3.2.2.10.

  85. Ibid., 3.2.10.16.

  86. Ibid., 3.2.10.1.

  87. Ibid., 3.3.1.12.

  88. Ibid., 3.3.2, 3.

  89. Ibid., 3.3.2.8.

  90. Ibid., 3.3.2.14.

  91. Ibid., 3.3.3.3.

  92. Ibid., 3.3.3.5.

  93. Ibid., 3.3.4.3.

  94. Ibid., 3.3.4.4.

  95. Ibid., 3.3.4.4.

  96. See Ibid., 3.3.3.3.

  97. Baier, A Progress of Sentiments, 280 (see note 4 above) referring to Hume, Treatise, 2.3.3.4 (see note 9 above). In the Essays, Hume’s skeptic similarly concludes that human excellence and happiness is to be found in “a passion for learning” combined with “great strength of mind.” Hume, Essays, 168 (see note 35 above).

  98. Hume, Treatise, 3.3.4.4 (see note 9 above).

  99. Ibid., 3.2.10.16.

  100. Baier offers insightful remarks about the irreducibility of judgment to any artifice or rule for Hume: “We cannot fully spell out any rules or standards that determine our judgments, and so we could not, even if we wanted to, construct anything else to our judging for us.” A Progress of Sentiments, 281 (see note 4 above).

  101. Hume offers an apparently different account of virtue in the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, where he argues that the sentiment of humanity offers the only possible foundation of morals; see 273–75 (see note 62 above). For discussion, see Ryan Hanley, “David Hume and the ‘Politics of Humanity,’ ” Political Theory 39 (April 2011): 205–33. I leave aside here the question of whether or how the Treatise and the Enquiry are compatible on this point.

  102. Hume, Treatise, 3.1.1.1 (see note 9 above).

  103. Ibid., 1.4.7.13; 2.3.10.1; 3.3.4.4–5.

  104. Ibid., 3.3.6.6.

  105. For Hume’s preference for public spirit over individual moral virtue, see Essays, 25–26 (see note 35 above).

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Merrill, T. Investigating Morality with David Hume. Polity 48, 82–108 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1057/pol.2015.36

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