Ethics

Ethics Study Guide Hume’s position in ethics, which is based on his empiricist theory of the mind, is best known for asserting four theses: 1. Reason alone cannot be a motive to the will, but rather is the “slave of the passions.” 2. Morals are not derived from reason. 3. Morals are derived from the moral sentiments: feelings of approval and disapproval felt by spectators who contemplate a character trait or action. 4. While some virtue and vices are natural, others, such as justice, are artificial. There is much debate about what Hume intends by each of these theses and how he argues for them. They are best understood in the context of Hume’s meta-ethical theory and his ethic of virtue and vice. In the first thesis Hume said that reason is and ought to be a slave of the passions. By this, Hume means that reason’s role in guiding actions is limited to its utility in aiding the fulfillment of desire in responding to the passions of the self. Hume means that arguments alone do not move people; one must have an emotional pull toward actualizing the results of one’s reasoning. For Hume, the ultimate basis of morality was the act of feeling. We act on our moral positions because we are born with a psychological predisposition toward empathy with other persons because we are made uncomfortable by their suffering. Hume thought that we have a natural inclination to be moral in situations were being moral conflicts with self-interest.

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