Hume on Morality

James Braille from TPM Online

To understand Hume’s writings on morality, we must attend to the title of his masterpiece, A Treatise of Human Nature. His goal is not to present a system of rules from which right and wrong can be calculated. Rather, it is to give an account of human nature within which our status as moral agents can be explicated.

Hume (1711-1776) is sometimes misleadingly described as a moral skeptic, despite his powerful criticisms of those, such as Thomas Hobbes, who cast doubt on the veracity of moral distinctions. On the contrary, by locating morality within a general picture of human nature, Hume aimed to provide a solid foundation for moral practice.

Hume sees no problem with moral discourse itself, but only with certain theoretical accounts of it. A comparison with his treatment of causation is illustrative. He sees no intrinsic error in making causal statements such that a caused b. Rather, he opposes a specific philosophical theory of the nature of causation, namely that it involves mind-independent necessary connections between events. So he leaves causal discourse as it is, and offers an alternative theory of causation to replace the offending one. Likewise, he replaces a false theory of the nature of morality (namely rationalism) with a naturalistic account, in which our capacity for moral judgement is regarded as a reflective extension of various capacities common to other animals, and explicable without appeal to supernatural agency.

The structure of Hume’s theory of mind can be simply stated. Every mental state (‘perception’) is either an idea (i.e., thought) or an impression. Impressions are either primary (sense-data and bodily sensations) or secondary. These latter are the passions, which are dependent on primary impressions, being ultimately caused by painful or pleasurable sensations, or the thought of such.

Within the secondary impressions, Hume distinguishes direct and indirect passions. The main direct passions are joy and grief, hope and fear, desire and aversion. Notice that they are grouped in pairs, each being a matched form of pleasure or pain. For example, joy and grief are experienced, respectively, when the prospect of pleasure or pain looks certain; hope and fear are responses to uncertain outcomes.

Hume devotes much of Book 2 of the Treatise to the indirect passions of pride and humility, together with love and hatred. Notice again the pairing along the pleasure-pain axis. While the direct passions concern events, the indirect passions are about people. Pride and humility can only be adopted towards oneself, being attitudes of high and low self-esteem, whereas love and hatred consist in holding another in high or low regard. Hume makes this point by saying that the object of pride or humility is oneself, and that of love or hatred is someone else. Pride can be caused by any character trait, physical quality, or possession that is a source of pleasure to those who encounter it. Hume takes pride as a virtue rather than a vice, in a deliberate subversion of the Christian morality of his day. His moral psychology is explicitly hedonist, since the virtues are character traits which are pleasing or useful (either to oneself or others), when considered from the ‘steady and general’ point of view.

Another important element in Humean psychology is sympathy, the mechanism by which passions or opinions can be communicated, transforming one’s idea of another’s inner state into an impression similar to the communicated state. Consider how you feel upset when someone relates a painful experience to you. Notice how your self-esteem is affected by others’ attitudes to you. However, Hume sees sympathy only as a preliminary stage n moral assessment, since it operates partially, functioning more strongly when the person concerned is close to you, particularly through a causal relationship such as kinship.

Given the empiricist axiom that nothing is ‘present to the mind’ but impressions and ideas, Hume faces the task of accounting for our capacity to regard certain character traits (and subsequent actions) as virtuous or vicious. His thesis is that moral judgements are ultimately derived from the passions. However, unlike some more recent forms of subjectivism with which he is often confused, Hume never equates moral judgements with the experience, report or expression of such passions. Rather, he argues that they result from the correction of these initial personal and partial responses, by reason and imagination.

Hume’s main target is moral rationalism, which claimed that moral judgement (and conduct) is the product of reason alone, with the passions intrinsically opposed to moral autonomy. His most powerful arguments derive from general considerations about motivation. Firstly, he argues that neither reason nor passion alone is sufficient to cause action. Both are necessary, playing different but compatible roles, within which passion has priority. He encapsulates this thesis by saying that reason is the slave of the passions.

Secondly, he suggests that much of what is attributed to reason really comes from the passions. What we wrongly interpret as reason overruling the passions (such as when duty triumphs over desire) is really a case of a calm passion vetoing a violent one. While calm passions can have a great motivational force, the agent doesn’t notice them because they are so well-integrated into her character.

This line of thought has important consequences for the nature of morality, since moral judgements are intrinsically motivational. That is, one cannot see something as morally obligatory without feeling an impulse, however weak, to do it. Hume’s conclusion follows simply: Since moral considerations can motivate us to action, and mere acknowledgement of facts cannot, then moral judgements cannot result from reason alone.

It is against this background that we can understand Hume’s notorious remark that '‘Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.' (Treatise 267) Here Hume is merely saying that no principle of abstract reasoning is violated by such a preference. He’s not implying that anyone making these bizarre choices would not be subject to critique. For example, it is surely impossible to prefer the global destruction to a grazed digit, without making some factual error. For example, does one expect to survive the destruction of the world? Is one not part of it? Likewise, he wouldn’t deny that anyone making such a choice would be suffering from a derangement of the passions, such as advanced megalomania.

I now turn to the infamous passage where Hume argues that no matter how gruesome an event is witnessed, reason can detect no fact in which vice consists:

'Take any instance allow’d to be vicious: Wilful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. In which-ever way you take it, you find only certain passions, motives, volitions and thoughts. There is no other matter of fact in the case. The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object. You never can find it, till you turn your reflection into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you, towards this action...' (Treatise 301)

Hume is not denying that I would be horrified to witness a murder. Rather, he’s saying that reason, by itself, couldn’t generate this response. If I encountered this scene as an abstract disembodied intellect, with sympathy disengaged, I would only see ‘matters of fact’, provoking no moral outrage. It is only when I view the situation as a full human being, with heart as well as head, that this would be felt.

Reason can revise a passionate response by identifying empirical error or faulty reasoning at its causal basis, or by reminding one that it is an unreliable strategy to base character assessments on immediate emotional reactions. Alongside reason, imagination enables us to step back from our personal situation, from what we do feel about some situation, and consider what we would feel from different possible perspectives. In recognising the potentially misleading effects of untreated sympathy, we are motivated to revise our immediate judgements, and to act upon these revisions. These considerations make it clear that reason is the ‘slave’ of the passions in the sense of being a wise counselor, not a dogsbody. It is an indispensable, though inevitably junior partner in the creation of the rationally refined sentiments that constitute moral judgements.

Hume is just as aware as Kant of the unreliability of the passions. However, unlike Kant, his response is not to exclude them from moral judgement, but to acknowledge their importance, and allow them to be refined by the dialectic with reason and imagination, generating the calm passions of moral approval or disapproval. Hume is optimistic about a high degree of convergence among those who can adopt this ‘steady and general’ point of view.

This brief outline has not touched on many important aspects of Hume’s moral theory, such as his attack on egoism, or his brilliant and subtle treatment of the artificial virtues. It will have done its purpose if it encourages readers to go to Hume’s own works, and read them in their entirety. Only then will a clear picture of his moral theory emerge.

James Baillie is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Portland

Suggested reading
A Treatise of Human Nature, Dvaid Hume, ed. David Fate Norton & Mary Norton (Oxford University Press)
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, David Hume, ed. Tom Beauchamp (Oxford University Press)
Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Hume on Morality, James Baillie (Routledge)