Term Paper on "David Hume's Treatise"

Term Paper 20 pages (7194 words) Sources: 1

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Hume -- Morals

Crasto

In today's world, the purveyors of what is right and wrong often bandy about the words Morals and Morality. The issues of morality are brought up when modern life as we see it progressing becomes untenable for those of an earlier generation, who are uncomfortable with how this progress manifests itself. To take one contemporary example, when motion pictures first came about in the late nineteenth century, participating in the movie making process was considered anathema. Not only would respectable women not want to participate, even prostitutes thought it beneath their sense of morality to act, so much so that men had to portray the roles of women. If one fast-forwards to the present times, it's not difficult to see that movie-making and acting epitomizes glamour, fame and fortune. And any numbers of people are willing to debase themselves in different ways just to have a chance at Hollywood stardom. One often hears that the increasingly popular reality programming on television contains would-be actors looking for exposure that will launch their careers.

There is then the question of moral equivalence or moral relativism. Can what was immoral in years past be considered as moral today, in keeping with the times? On the opposite end of this argument are the moral absolutists who believe that the core of a moral being is immutable. As a follow-up to this, one needs to ask an additional question: what constitutes morality. And what is moral behavior? What aspects of our lives, internal or external, does morality cover? Consider honesty. Is honesty a moral trait that needs to be preserved? Clearly, the notion of honesty has to stand the test of time. And under what circumstances is dishonesty allowed, if at all. Would honesty then give way to pragmatism, if a set of circumstances necessitated it?

The more one considers the issue of morals and morality, the more one realizes that the issues surrounding it are not cut-and-dry.

Many philosophers have come up with different principles of morality. One of these, David Hume's treatise "Of Morals" is the subject of this essay.

It would be both premature and presumptuous to aver that there exists a universal set of moral codes that is the beacon for every human being. The natural extension and corollary to this would be a religion that would be universally accepted. This is clearly not true. Even within Christianity, fractions arose because its adherents could not conform to a set of precepts.

The philosopher, David Hume, in his work "Treatise of Human Nature" (Hume, 1740) attempted to articulate formalisms for morality. Book 3 of this work is titled "Of Morals." The first part is relevant to this essay. Section 1 is titled, "Of virtues and vice in general." Section II is titled, "Moral distinctions deriv'd from a moral sense." For this essay, a portion from the two sections has been selected for in-depth analysis. It includes four paragraphs from section 2 of Part 1 in "Of Morals." This section deals with Hume attempting to trace the origins of morality in nature to 1) prove his thesis; 2) show that reason cannot be used to qualify morality because it leads to several confounding situations.

But a general summary of the two sections is necessary in order to provide a backdrop of Hume's thesis against which the key section will be analyzed. From the outset, Hume, perhaps having thought about, and found that, the issue of morality is non-trivial makes a declaration giving us a notion that this is not an easy topic, or things don't seem as black and white as might superficially appear.

He starts out by informing the reader that in trying to propose "abstruse" ideas to someone who might be opposed to it there are several dangers. The intent of the proposal should be to convince one's opponent of the correctness of the idea (over anything the opponent might believe or be a proponent of himself (or herself). This means that the proponent has to be thoroughly convinced of this idea and have a complete understanding of this idea and its consequences.

The main point that Hume tries to make is that morality is a combination of that which comes from within and its action from outside an individual. Superficially, Hume's theory on morals appears mainly to be action-oriented. But a closer perusal reveals that the outward actions mirror the inward. For Hume, actions fall into two categories, those that arise from virtue and those that arise from vice.

Throughout the two sections in "Of Morals," Hume's depiction of actions (moral or otherwise) includes a cascade that involves three key entities: the one who extends (vice or virtue), the one who is the recipient of this extension, and the third is the spectator. The action creates a feeling of well-being or "agreeableness" in the spectator. This feeling is one of moral approval. For example, if one performs an act of charity towards another individual and this person is aided by this act of charity; the observer of this act will then categorize this as a moral event. If an act that is motivated by vice is witnessed, then this act is classified, by the spectator as an amoral event.

Even the above has to be further classified; Hume defines virtuous acts as natural and artificial. And interestingly, the acts that are natural are also intangible; and while the morality as the giver-receiver-spectator triumvirate is concerned is not in doubt, the type of morality certainly is. For example, Hume defines the virtues of kindness, reticence and philanthropy as natural. Justice, sexual purity, loyalty and keeping promises are considered artificial.

Consider the role of each of these virtues in modern life. The first are specifically internal and define how a person behaves. It is very interesting that Hume considers the next few as artificial. One who reads about the artificial virtues might aver that a sense of justice, loyalty and/or chastity are traits that are internal to an individual; they can also be enforced by entities outside the individual. The outside effect might come from another individual or these might be constraints put on a person by culture and society. Certainly, one might consider that some aspects of natural virtue, such as philanthropy might be forced (taxation and social security might be an example). But forced philanthropy is an oxymoron and can more likely be considered as usurpation, and, in some extreme circumstances, theft.

The giver-recipient-spectator chain can also be sub-classified in other ways. The spectator, for instance, does not have to actually be an eye-witness to a moral (or otherwise) act. The morality of a virtuous act comes from the seal of approval by the spectator even if he or she has heard of this moral act indirectly. Hume also avers that the giver (or extender of a moral act) can be considered as a spectator if, while witnessing his (or her) own acts of morally motivated virtue, he (or she) perceives the act as a moral event.

Since the giver, recipient and the spectator can be interchangeable and further classified, Hume goes on to formalize the triumvirate of moral virtue as belonging to either one of four categories. These depend on who benefits (and by how much) from actions motivated by moral virtue: Those that are useful to others; those that are useful to themselves; those that are perceived as useful to others and those that are perceived to be useful to oneself. The last two appear to be superfluous, but the feeling of agreeableness is to be considered as the results of moral action, then they have to be considered.

This thus raises the important question of how the last two of the four categories might be viewed in modern times. Perceptions are about feeling good about oneself, even if they are not based in truth. Even here, one might aver, that there are gray areas. Unless perceptions result in delusions that might cause a harmful or (vice-driven) action against oneself or the recipient of an event, very often, perceptions or feel good events motivate people to share in the good feeling. Alternatively, they might force people to pursue natural or artificial moral virtues. The notion of usefulness that is borne from truth or facts and usefulness borne from perceptions will become evident when one considers how Hume categorizes moral virtues. In the first (useful to others) Hume includes, truth, justice, charity, loyalty and fidelity; in the second (usefulness to self) are included industry, perseverance and patience; in the third (perceived useful to others) are charm, eloquence and wit; and the fourth category (perceived usefulness to self) includes, pride, humor and self-esteem. Hume also declares that moral events can fall into more than one of these categories.

One of the confounding instances that can be perceived as refuting the above is: what conclusions does one draw if two spectators observing an action draw diametrically opposing conclusions. In this case, does the feeling of well being… READ MORE

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