David Hume

An Enquiry Concerning the Principles

of Morals
“reason is, and ought to be, the
slave of the passions.” -Hume
 DAVID HUME
• Biography

– Born on April 26, 1711 in a tenement

on the north side of the Lawnmarket
in Edinburgh
– Son of Joseph Home of Chirnside and
Katherine Falconer
– Changed his name in 1734 because
the English had difficulty
pronouncing ‘Home’ in the Scottish
manner
– Throughout his life, he, who never
married, spent time occasionally at
his family home at Ninewells by
Chirnside, Berwickshire
 Preliminaries
• moral assessments involve our emotions, and not
our reason.
• We can amass all the reasons we want, but that
alone will not constitute a moral assessment.
• We need a distinctly emotional reaction in order
to make a moral pronouncement.
• Reason might be of service in giving us the
relevant data, but, in Hume’s words, “reason is,
and ought to be, the slave of the passions.”
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals

• SECTION I: Of the General Principles of Morals

-Those who have denied the reality of moral
distinctions, maybe ranked among the
disingenuous disputants; nor is it conceivable ,
that any human creature could ever seriously
believe, that all characters and actions were
alike entitled to the affection and regard of
everyone. (CE p. 262)
 An Enquiry Concerning the Principles
of Morals
• Let a man’s insensibility be ever so great, he
must often be touched with the images of
right and wrong; and let his prejudices be ever
so obstinate, he must observe that others are
susceptible of like impressions.

• Leave him alone until he comes to his senses

 Where are morals derived from?

• From Reason? • From Sentiment?

• from a chain of • From immediate feeling
argument and induction and finer internal
• whether like all soud sense?
judgment of truth and • whether, like the the
falsehood, they should perception of beauty
be the same to every and deformity, they be
rational intelligent being founded entirely on the
particular fabric and
constitution of the
human species
 Where are morals derived from?

• The ancient The modern philosophers,

philosophers affirm that although they talk
virtue is in conformity about the beauty of
to reason yet seem to virtue and deformity of
consider morals as vice yet they account
deriving their existence for these distinctions by
from TASTE and metaphysical reasoning
SENTIMENT and deductions from
from the most ABTRACT
PRINCIPLE OF
UNDERSTANDING
 Where are morals derived from?

• Hume favors the sentiments

• Truth is disputable but TASTE is not
• Judgment is a product of sentiment
Moral distinctions, it maybe said, are discernible
by pure reason, else, whence the many
disputes that reign in common life…(CE p. 262)
 Moral speculation…
• The end of moral speculation is to to teach us
our duty
• Through the proper representations of the
deformity of vice and beauty of virtue,
• beget correspondent habits and engage us to
avoid vice and embrace virtue
 In terms of morality (CE, p. 263)
The role of Reason
• Discovers truths
• Reach the foundation of
ethics
• Identify the categories
• Find the universal principles
from which everything is
derived
The role of the Sentiments
• Animates one to move to
wards virtue and avoid vice
• The final verdict comes
from an internal sense of
feeling, which nature has
made universal in all human
being
• Ask a man why he uses exercise; he will
answer, because he desires to keep his health.
If you then enquire why he desires health, he
will readily reply, because sickness is painful .
If you push our enquiries farther, and desire a
reason why he hates pain, it is impossible he
can give any. This is an ultimate end, and is
never referred to any other object. (CE, p. 286)