Download David Hume How is Hume similar to Kant? Like Kant, Hume rejects

How is Hume similar to Kant?
Like Kant, Hume rejects self-interest as the source of moral action
What makes Hume different to Kant?
But unlike Kant Hume views our emotions – our natural sympathy for others – as the real origin of
our morality.
Because of its emphasis on the development of certain character traits Hume’s moral theory is
more in line with the agent centred virtue ethics than with the act-centred approach of Kant. As
with Plato and Aristotle, Hume is interested in the virtues of a good person, and what the origins
of this virtue are. His answer to the question why should I be moral is one based on our natural
sympathy, which gives most of us the fundamental desire to be moral.
What role does reason have in Hume’s morality?
Hume was a famous sceptic and as such was sceptical about the role reason had in informing our
moral decisions and would have rejected Kant’s strict account of the rational origins of morality.
Hume puts forward an account that says we can’t reason about our ends, about the things we
want or what our goals should be. We can only reason about the means. This is because our ends,
the things we want, are determined by our ‘passions’, which are non-rational motivators that we
have no control over. For Hume it’s a truth about human psychology that we begin with our
passions (our wants and desires) and use reason to work out how to satisfy these passions. We
cannot work the other way round – we cannot use reason to shape our wants and desires.
Hume believes there is a non-rational source of morality. So how for Hume can we build up our moral
theory?
For Hume we must build up our moral theory on the basis of the preferences and natural dispositions that
human beings happen to hold in common, and particularly on those qualities that wee find in people that we
approve of.
What does Hume reject about moral judgements and what is a moral judgement for him?
Hume argues that when we make a moral judgement we are not talking about some feature of the world ‘out
there’ that is good or right or virtuous. If we think carefully about the moral judgements we make then we
discover that they are derived only from a feeling inside us. When someone does something kind, or
generous or courageous, we have a general feeling of approval for such behaviour. So for Hume morality isn’t
really a rational judgement at all; it’s more of a gut feeling.
For Hume what is the origin or basis of morality?
For Hume morality is simply based on our (and everyone else’s) reactions to people’s behaviour, and it is
these reactions that tell us that tell us whether someone is virtuous or not.
What does Hume say about sympathy?
Sympathy lies at the heart of Hume’s moral philosophy. He thinks of it as a kind of moral trigger that all
of us possess. Sympathy is the connection we have with other people, and our appreciation of their
pains and pleasures. Our natural disposition for sympathy motivates us to be moral, and make it difficult
for us to treat people as mere objects or as means. For example most of us just couldn’t walk on
someone lying on the pavement. However, he does recognise that our sympathy diminishes in
proportion to the (emotion and physical) distance to us of the people concerned. So we may feel less
concerned about an earthquake that happened thousands of miles away than about a car accident a
friend was in.
Hume recognises that sympathy competes with self-interest as a motivator for action. However he
believes that sympathy overcomes self-interest in most cases. This tension between sympathy and
self-interest is brought out in Hume’s discussion of the ‘sensible knave’ in his book “Enquiry”.
What does Hume mean by this?
A knave is someone who is a bit of a scoundrel, a cheat who will try to get away with whatever he can. The
sensible knave accepts, for example, that ‘honesty is the best policy’ but there are many exceptions and
the knave, who is motivated purely by self-interest, will take advantage of all those exceptions in order to
get what they want.
In Laclos’ scandalous novel of sexual intrigue, “Dangerous Liaisons”, one of the main
characters is a scheming and amoral aristocrat called Valmont (the kind of ‘sensible
knave’ that Hume might have had in mind. For the most part, Valmont is a viscous and
nasty piece of work; he has no interest in virtue and is driven only by hedonistic selfinterest. Yet on the surface he displays all the virtues he needs to get by as a
respected aristocrat. At one point in the book he gives money to the poor and finds it
astonishing that charity could be a source of pleasure – which suggests to him that
virtuous people are really hedonists like him. Such behaviour seems to be a problem for
Hume’s belief that sympathetic feelings overcome self-interested ones, because it
seems that the rewards gained by a sensible knave who plays the system like Valmont
are greater than those gained by someone who is disposed to be selfless. But for Hume
these gains are merely apparent and such a person’s virtue will remain a barrier to their
happiness. Such people “will discover that they themselves are the greater dupes and
have sacrificed the invaluable enjoyment of a character for the acquisition of
worthless toys and gewgaws”.
What are the two kinds of virtues for Hume and what impact do they have on morality?
Hume thought there were basically two kinds of virtue based on two sets of qualities that we value in people.
The first set is clustered around how useful someone’s behaviour is (the pain and pleasures it generates)
which Hume calls UTILITY.
The second set is based on whether someone’s behaviour pleases us, which Hume calls AGREEABILITY.
These qualities may either be extended to ourselves, or to other people. This is the principle that Hume
believes governs morality: that we value those qualities that are ‘useful or agreeable to the person himself or
others’. Qualities that are neither useful nor agreeable to ourselves or others are not virtues.