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A Philosopher in his Closet: Reflexivity and Justification in Hume's Moral Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Michael B. Gill
Michael B. Gill*
Affiliation:
Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA
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Extract

When a man of business enters into life and action, he is more apt to consider the characters of men, as they have relation to his interest, than as they stand in themselves; and has his judgement warped on every occasion by the violence of his passion. When a philosopher contemplates characters and manners in his closet, the general abstract view of the objects leaves the mind so cold and unmoved, that the sentiments of nature have no room to play, and he scarce feels the difference between vice and virtue. History keeps in a just medium betwixt these extremes, and places the objects in their true point of view. The writers of history, as well as the readers, are sufficiently interested in the characters and events, to have a lively sentiment of blame or praise; and, at the same time, have no particular interest or concern to pervert their judgment.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , June 1996 , pp. 231 - 255
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1996

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References

1 Hume, David ‘Of the Study of History’ in Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, Miller, Eugene F. ed. (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics 1985), 567-8Google Scholar. Hereafter abbreviated as ‘Essays.’ I should mention (as David Fate Norton has pointed out to me) that Hume did not think this essay was particularly good, writing for instance in a letter to Adam Smith, ‘In that [1748] Edition [of ‘Essays moral & political’], I was engag'd to act contrary to my Judgement in retaining the 6th & 7th Essays ('Of Love and Marriage’ and ‘Of the Study of History’), which I had resolv’ d to throw out, as too frivolous for the rest, and not very agreeable neither in that trifling manner’ (The Letters of David Hume, Greig, J.Y.T. ed. [Oxford: Oxford University Press 1932), 168)Google Scholar. Hereafter abbreviated as ‘Letters.’ In what follows I hope to show that whatever Hume's reservations about ‘Of the Study of History’ as a whole, he always held to the view proposed there of ‘a philosopher contemplat[ing] characters and manners in his closet.’

2 Letters, 32-3

3 See also Hume, David Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals, Selby-Bigge, L.A. ed., Nidditch, P.H. rev. (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1975), 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Hereafter abbreviated as ‘E.’

4 Hume, David A Treatise of Human Nature, Selby-Bigge, L.A. ed., Nidditch, P.H. rev. (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1978), 620Google Scholar. Hereafter abbreviated as ‘T.’

5 Baier, Annette A Progress of Sentiments (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press 1991)Google Scholar. Hereafter abbreviated as ‘Baier.’

6 Korsgaard, Christine ‘The Sources of Normativity,’ in The Tanner Lectures (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press 1994)Google Scholar. Hereafter abbreviated as ‘Korsgaard.’

7 Norton has informed me that this typographical break appears in the first edition of the Treatise and that it is reasonable to suppose that Hume himself requested it. I trust, though, that we can detect a significant shift in tone between the first and second paragraphs of T. 619, irrespective of whether it was Hume or the printers who decided to place the extra space there.

8 Hutcheson, Francis An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, 4th ed. (London 1738)Google Scholar; reprinted (Gregg International Publishers 1969), 109.

9 Hutcheson's Inquiry, 109

10 In both the Treatise (T. 621) and the Enquiries (E. 10) Hume tells us that he is presenting a somewhat ‘hideous’ view of human nature. The Oxford English Dictionary gives as its second definition of ‘Hideous': ‘Terrible, distressing, or revolting to the moral sense … .’ So if we take Hume to have something like this meaning in mind — and the dates of the O.E.D.'s examples of usage (1692, 1863) suggest that he might have — there is even more reason to doubt that he was concerned in his philosophical works to strengthen our confidence in morality. (Thanks to Norton for pointing this out to me.)

11 In ‘On Why Hume's “General Point of View” Isn't Ideal-and Shouldn't Be’ (Social and Political Philosophy 11 (1994) 202-28), Geoffrey Sayre-McCord contends that Hume ‘hopes his theory succeeds not just in explaining moral thought but also in justifying it’ (203). In arguing for this, Sayre-McCord points to those features of Hume's general point of view that give us reason to endorse it over other possible moral standards. The general point of view, he shows, enables us to talk intelligibly to one another and promotes harmonious social life; it provides a stable, accessible, and univocal moral ground, and conduces to the happiness of those who adopt it. I believe Hume did think that the happiness of and harmony among members of society were perhaps the most important ends of human life. And so I think it is not inconsistent with his theory to judge a moral standard based on its accessibility, stability, and mutual intelligibility, since these features all promote harmony and happiness. But it seems to me that when Hume discusses these features of the general point of view it is only towards the end of explaining why this standard developed. I cannot hear Hume's attempt to justify or condemn moral standards in general. As I will explain in what follows, I think that when Hume condemns or praises he does so by pointing out that certain things thwart and other things promote ends of ours. So I don't think Hume would quarrel with Sayre-McCord's ‘justification’ of the general point of view — at least not to the extent that Sayre-McCord attempts to show that the general point of view promotes harmony and happiness. But I don't think that such justification was Hume's project.

12 See Baier, 199-203.

13 See Hume, David The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to The Revolution in 1688 in six volumes (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics 1983), volume 1, chapter viii, pp. 333-4Google Scholar. Hereafter abbreviated as ‘History,’ followed first by the volume number written in Arabic numerals, then by the chapter number written in small Roman numerals, and lastly by the page numbers of the 1983 Liberty Classics edition.

14 To try to convince would-be knaves that even from an egoist perspective injustice is a loser we might tell them the story of Robert Carre (see below), in which someone's successful knavery still made him more miserable than he would have been if he had remained just. (In the concluding paragraph of section V. I return briefly to the question of what to say to those whose hearts do not rebel against unjust maxims.)

15 But compare Postema, Gerald J. ‘Hume's Reply to the Sensible Knave’ (History of Philosophy Quarterly 5 [1988] 23–40)Google Scholar for a reading of Hume's conception of the ‘enjoyment of character’ that is more in line with Baier's view of Humean normativity. I find Postema's discussion illuminating in many ways, but I think he overstates his case when he argues that Hume's knave ‘has no character at all’ (Postema, 35). It is true, as Postema instructively illustrates, that for Hume one could never develop what we would recognize as human character without being raised in a social setting in which others ‘affirmed’ one's existence (Postema, 27, 35). But I do not think that this shows that Hume thought one cannot eventually come to develop a character that plans regular deception of others.

16 I won't examine Hume's essays here, but I believe that in them Hume tends to condemn religious fanaticism for the same type of reasons. See, for instance, ‘Of Parties in General’ (Essays, 59-62﹜ and ‘Superstition and Enthusiasm’ (Essays, 77-8).

17 See History 1, iii, 152 and History 3, xxxvii, 435 for similar comments concerning the Norman invasion of 1066 and Mary's Catholic persecution, respectively.

18 See History 5, xlvii, 68; I, 164; !vii, 442; lix, 493-4. On other sincere but dangerous fanatics, see History 5, xlvi, 27-8; Iii, 244 and notes, 575; History 6, lxii, 142.

19 See for instance History 1, viii, 333-4.

20 Korsgaard claims this test is also Hume's own, citing his remark that ‘the moral sense “must certainly acquire new force, when reflecting on itself, it approves of those principles, from whence it is deriv'd, and finds nothing but what is great and good in its rise and origin'” (Korsgaard, 60).1 have discussed the problems with this reading in section II.

21 Kant writes, ‘Do we not think it a matter of the utmost necessity to work out for once a pure moral philosophy completely cleansed of everything that can only be empirical and appropriate to anthropology? That there must be such a philosophy is already obvious from the common Idea of duty and from the laws of morality’ (Kant, Immanual The Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Paton, H.J. trans. [New York: Harper Torchbooks 1964], 57)Google Scholar. The Humean will deny the accuracy of Kant's analysis of the ‘common Idea’ of morality, maintaining that for many people the legitimacy of morality does not depend upon its holding ‘not merely for men, but for all rational beings as such — not merely subject to contingent conditions and exceptions, but with absolute necessity’ (Kant, 76; see also 79, 92-4).

22 There is one passage in the Enquiries in which Hume seems to say that an account of morality, however true, should be rejected if it has the harmful consequence of causing people to lose confidence in the obligatoriness of morality. He writes,’ And though the philosophical truth of any proposition by no means depends on its tendency to promote the interests of society; yet a man has but a bad grace, who delivers a theory, however, true, which, he must confess, leads to a practice dangerous and pernicious. Why rake into those comers of nature which spread a nuisance all around? Why dig up the pestilence from the pit in which it is buried? The ingenuity of your researches may be admired, but your systems will be detested; and mankind will agree, if they cannot refute them, to sink them, at least, in eternal silence and oblivion. Truths which are pernicious to society, if any such there be, will yield to errors which are salutary and advantageous’ (E. 278-9). One could, I suppose, make heavy weather out of this passage, contending that it embodies Hume's views on the relationship between explanation and justification. In response, I would question how seriously Hume took the possibility that there could be some truth that ought to yield to error. I would, that is, want to place emphasis on the phrase ‘if any such there be’ in the last sentence. I would also point to his statement that ‘the philosophical truth of any proposition by no means depends on its tendency to promote the interests of society.’ Lastly, I would say that if Hume really did think that there could be a truth so pernicious that we ought to prefer error, then I wish he hadn't. But even if that were the case, I still do not think it would be appropriate to foist onto Hume a justificatory position on the basis of this one comment.

23 Simon Blackburn has pointed out that an umpire who knows that the underlying justification of the rules is to make the sport more competitive will still have no compunction about making a call that ruins the competitive edge of a particular game, even if only good consequences will result from making another, less accurate call. The lawyer of Korsgaard's story is in a position similar to that of the umpire, and it seems to me that she is just as likely as the umpire to make the right call. See Blackburn's ‘Kant versus Hume on Practical Reasoning’ (unpublished ms.).

24 Hume himself addresses the claim that his explanations will undermine our practice of moralizing. He points out that this is as implausible as the claim that ‘modern philosophy’ should or could threaten our practice of judging secondary properties. He writes, ‘Vice and virtue, therefore, may be compared to sound, colours, heat, and cold, which, according to modem philosophy, are not qualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind: and this discovery in morals, like that other in physics, is to be regarded as a considerable advancement of the speculative sciences; though, like that too, it has little or no influence on practice. Nothing can be more real, or concern us more, than our own sentiments of pleasure and uneasiness; and if these be favourable to virtue, and unfavourable to vice, no more can be requisite to the regulation of our conduct and behaviour’ (T. 469; see also E. 297 and Essays, 166). Someone who thought that the colors of a beautiful painting were mind-independent might be shaken by the findings of ‘modem philosophy.’ But the problem would lie not in her judgment that the painting is beautiful but in her meta-theory about what color is. And while modem philosophy might demolish her aesthetic meta-theory, the painting will almost certainly still look beautiful to her. Likewise, if the lawyer thinks morality is mind-independent, then Hume's account will undermine her meta-ethical theory. But her first-order moral judgment may not be affected.

25 Someone who believes that morality depends upon the existence of a rationally necessary end bears more than a surface resemblance to one who believes that if there is no God everything is permitted. If this latter person comes to believe that God does not exist, then he might very well suffer a crisis about the normativity of morality in general. But that does not prove that either God exists or morality is a normative failure.

26 More practically gripping than the problem of whether we ought to act morally, I would think, are the problems of determining which course of action is moral and of steeling ourselves to act as we already know we ought to.

27 This kind of appeal to self-interest, I think, is all Hume believes we can make to ‘the sensible knave'; nothing else ‘will to him appear satisfactory and convincing’ (E. 283).

28 Thanks to Simon Blackburn, Richard Dean, Thomas E. Hill, Jr., David Fate Norton, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Gerald Postema, and an anonymous reader for the Canadian Journal of Philosophy for many helpful comments on this paper.