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Hume, Spencer and the Standard of Morals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

J.Martin Stafford
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Extract

Philosophy has often been represented by its detractors, and even sometimes by its practitioners, as a subject which, unlike the natural sciences, exhibits a degree of progress far from commensurate with its long history. Many of the questions entertained by the ancients are still very much alive: answers proffered are put forward very tentatively, seldom meet with universal acceptance, and frequently give rise to controversy even more prolific than that which they were intended to lay low.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 58 , Issue 223 , January 1983 , pp. 39 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1983

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References

1 See especially N. Kemp Smith, The Philosophy of David Hume (London: Macmillan, 1941); also J. Laird, Hume's Philosophy of Human Nature (London: Methuen, 1932); W. T. Blackstone, Francis Hutcheson and Contemporary Ethical Theory (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1965) and Henning Jensen, Motivation and Moral Sense in Francis Hutcheson's Ethical Theory (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971).

2 In the Treatise, but not in the Enquiry, sympathy is reduced to more general psychological principles. Compare page 317 of the Treatise (‘ When any affection…’) to the end of page 318 with the note on page 219 of the Enquiry. For details of editions see 7 and 21 below.

3 A. G. N. Flew, Evolutionary Ethics (London: Macmillan, 1967), 59. Hereafter referred to as Flew. If the hardback collected edition is consulted, all page numbers should be increased by 216.

4 Antony Flew, ‘ Three Questions About Justice in the Treatise’, Philosophical Quarterly 26, No. 102 (1976), 7.

5 The term ‘ evolutionary’ , when applied to Hume's writings should not be understood in a full-blooded Darwinian sense with all its connotations of natural selection. It is none the less appropriate if used simply to suggest that a phenomenon is undergoing development.

6 In his brief autobiography, frequently reprinted in editions of and selections from his works, he expressed the view that it is ‘ … of all my writings, historical, philosophical, or literary, incomparably the best …’ .

7 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, P. H. Nidditch (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 484. Hereafter referred to as T.

8 T 485

9 T 486

10 Over-simple in that while the biological family must have preceded the development of society, it is hardly plausible that pre-social families were as structured as socialized ones.

11 In this respect, those who postulated a pre-social state of nature were closer to the truth than Hume; though it was not as they imagined, nor was it term-inated by a contract.

12 T 489.

13 T 490, italics mine.

14 T 492-493.

15 T 580, punctuation slightly amended.

16 T 578-589. The earlier passage here alluded to is on page 500, and the same point is made on page 214 of the second Enquiry (see 21 below).

17 T619.

18 Frederick Watkins, Hume's Theory of Politics (Edinburgh: Nelson, 1951), xv.

19 See Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie (eds) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 205–211.

20 See Thomas Reid, Works, 6th edn, Sir William Hamilton (ed.), 2 vols (Edinburgh: 1863), 596.

21 David Hume, Enquiries…, 3rd edn, revised by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 272. Hereafter referred to as E. Universal philanthropy is claimed also on pages 227, 230, 271 and 273.

22 David Hume, Philosophical Works, T. H. Green and T. H. Grose (eds), 4 vols (London: Longmans, Green &Co., 1874–1875; reprinted Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1964), Vol. III, 216–217.

23 E 324.

24 E 328.

25 E 333.

26 David Hume, Philosophical Works (see n. 22 above), Vol. III, 266–267.

27 Or, conversely, to see Hume as a precursor of evolutionary theorists. According to Duncan Forbes, Comte saluted Hume as t h e founder of t h e law of the Temporal or Active Evolution. See his ‘ Hume and the Scottish Enlightenment’ , in S. C. Brown (ed.), Philosophers of the Enlightenment (Sussex: Harvester Press, 1979), 108, note 2.

28 Herbert Spencer, First Principles, 5th edn (London: Williams and Norgate, 1893), 360.

29 T 484.

30 Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Ethics, 2 vols (London: Williams and Norgate, 1897–1900), Vol. I, 466. Hereafter referred to as P. of E.

31 P. of E. Vol. I, 185. Cf. Edward Westermarck, The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, 2nd edn (London: Macmillan, 1912–1917), Vol. II, 743, where in summary of his observations he remarks on the far greater scope of altruism among civilized races than among savages.

32 P. of E. Vol. I, 183.

33 P. of E. Vol. I, 184.

34 See E 183-185 and T 491-493.

35 P. of E. Vol.I, 243–244

36 P. of E. Vol. I, 246.

37 Flew, 65 (see n. 3 above).

38 Flew, 2.

39 Flew, 13-14.

40 Flew, 48.

41 See for example The Man v. the State (London: Williams and Norgate, 1884); Vol.III of the Essays Scientific, Political and Speculative (London: Williams and Norgate, 1891) and relevant chapters (easily identified by their titles) of The Principles of Ethics (see 30 above).

42 Joseph Needham, Time: the Refreshing River (London: Allen &Unwin, 1943). 56.

43 See especially Chs XV and XVI of The Data of Ethics in Vol. I of The Principles of Ethics.

44 Flew, 43-44.

45 Spencer, Essays …(see n. 41 above), Vol. I, 10 and 60.

46 L. T. Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution, 4th edn (London: Chapman and Hall, 1923), viii.