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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
informative
slow-paced
I didn’t think this was anywhere near as strong as Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. The book seemed to meander a lot. Generally his ethics can be summed up in a few words: Utility/Usefulness to society and Sentimentality. The four cardinal virtues and vices of antiquity aren’t precursors to morality but rather are end results of the natural human tendency toward utility and sentimentality, according to Hume. I agree with this but where the book goes astray in providing a clear message about application. I don’t think it is clear and is completely subjective in how one perceives utility and sentimentality and maybe Hume thought the same but I couldn’t tell from this book.
As usual, I appreciated Hume’s insights, yet it doesn’t stand up to his Treatise. I enjoyed the conclusion, appendices I and II, and the ending dialogue, but the meat of the book was tough to get through. His general method was to present a quality we generally agree is good, maybe give an example from history, and say it really is good because it’s agreeable and/or useful. Needless to say I didn’t find it very convincing. The arguments in the rest of the book were more solid.
I agree that passions are necessary for moral preferences, and that ethics can’t be derived from pure reason. I agree that self-interest is not sufficient to explain why we care about others.
I loved the daoist/epicurean sentiment at the very end: “And in a view to pleasure, what comparison between unbought satisfaction of conversation, society, study, even health and the common beauties of nature, but above all the peaceful reflection on one’s own conduct: What comparison, I say, between these, and the feverish, empty amusements of luxury and expence? These natural pleasures, indeed, are really without price; both because they are below all price in their attainment, and above it in their enjoyment.”
I agree that passions are necessary for moral preferences, and that ethics can’t be derived from pure reason. I agree that self-interest is not sufficient to explain why we care about others.
I loved the daoist/epicurean sentiment at the very end: “And in a view to pleasure, what comparison between unbought satisfaction of conversation, society, study, even health and the common beauties of nature, but above all the peaceful reflection on one’s own conduct: What comparison, I say, between these, and the feverish, empty amusements of luxury and expence? These natural pleasures, indeed, are really without price; both because they are below all price in their attainment, and above it in their enjoyment.”
informative
medium-paced
Never mind that he liked dirty pics. He was right-on on so many things.
Rather than nailing down his definitions, Hume begins with what he says are observations of fact. From this is drawn a moral theory based on sentiments. We feel something is a virtue or vice, despite the fact that reason will often judge more specifically afterwards. In fact, reason alone will never lead to a clear moral theory. What exactly is virtuous seems to come down, mostly, to utility. Our moral sentiments can't all be clearly explained according to utility, but for all intents and purposes, it works. Also, from simple observation we find that people act from altruism all the time and we need not stoop to "verbal argument" in order to accept that.
I don't know enough about Hume to say too much, but I was surprised that I found Hume's theorizing to be so middle-class, so bourgeois. I suppose it's all part of the Enlightenment return to passive reason and the abandonment of superstition and religious enthusiasm. Because of this, it feels like he oversimplifies humanity when he says things like, "Well of course nobody would give their life to a cause. That's just crazy." Real virtue is setting up your vanity to pay off psychologically in a way that also makes you look like the soul of wit and good manners among your peers. Blech (It's entirely possible/probable that I represent the later Romantic backlash against the Enlightment. I find Don Quixote admirable, for instance.). Moral heroes always have a tinge of craziness to them, I would hold. But Hume avoids that by saying that these moral exemplars merely made large additions of utility to their society. He makes observations that certainly seem correct, like how we care much more about the abilities that increase our pride in ourselves than the ones that increase our moral/selfless virtues. But still, I can't help thinking that his job isn't complete. His observations come together in a way that leaves a pretty vague picture of many important moral concepts.
I don't know enough about Hume to say too much, but I was surprised that I found Hume's theorizing to be so middle-class, so bourgeois. I suppose it's all part of the Enlightenment return to passive reason and the abandonment of superstition and religious enthusiasm. Because of this, it feels like he oversimplifies humanity when he says things like, "Well of course nobody would give their life to a cause. That's just crazy." Real virtue is setting up your vanity to pay off psychologically in a way that also makes you look like the soul of wit and good manners among your peers. Blech (It's entirely possible/probable that I represent the later Romantic backlash against the Enlightment. I find Don Quixote admirable, for instance.). Moral heroes always have a tinge of craziness to them, I would hold. But Hume avoids that by saying that these moral exemplars merely made large additions of utility to their society. He makes observations that certainly seem correct, like how we care much more about the abilities that increase our pride in ourselves than the ones that increase our moral/selfless virtues. But still, I can't help thinking that his job isn't complete. His observations come together in a way that leaves a pretty vague picture of many important moral concepts.
Hume's moral philosophy, though preferable to the childish and ridiculous approach of his contemporary Kant, is incredibly tedious reading when compared to his other work, and far less philosophically astute or argumentatively valid.
The whole project is a bit strange. He seems to accept much of what Hobbes argued, but then reduce what Hobbes thought was the foundation and basis of ethics to simply a prerequisite for morality to exist. Then he argues the famous case re: shared sentiment, etc., which I surely need not explicate.
The broader problems with this book (its perhaps unwarranted optimism concerning human nature, etc.) are only part of the issue. The big problem, for me, is that Hume thinks that this enquiry is essentially something like an empirical enquiry. So he's always relying on appeals to common sense, on appeals to pretty easily refutable and narrowly specific cases, on appeals to examples from earlier philosophy and poetry.
It is pretty unfair and hard to blame Hume for not being able to, in the 18th century, perform really anything like empirical scientific research into morality and human nature. But this book, unlike his other work, does not lay any real sort of groundwork or basis for future research in cognitive science, psychology, or neuroscience, in which Hume surely would have been working were he alive today. It, instead, consists mostly of pretty baseless speculation. The approach is interesting, and maybe influential, but ultimately futile.
He gives up a lot of the more philosophical argument in his other work for valid reasons, partly because he thinks morality is necessarily intuitive in some way, but the result, given what has transpired in the time that has passed since then, is that this book seems more like an oddity than brilliant philosophy.
The whole project is a bit strange. He seems to accept much of what Hobbes argued, but then reduce what Hobbes thought was the foundation and basis of ethics to simply a prerequisite for morality to exist. Then he argues the famous case re: shared sentiment, etc., which I surely need not explicate.
The broader problems with this book (its perhaps unwarranted optimism concerning human nature, etc.) are only part of the issue. The big problem, for me, is that Hume thinks that this enquiry is essentially something like an empirical enquiry. So he's always relying on appeals to common sense, on appeals to pretty easily refutable and narrowly specific cases, on appeals to examples from earlier philosophy and poetry.
It is pretty unfair and hard to blame Hume for not being able to, in the 18th century, perform really anything like empirical scientific research into morality and human nature. But this book, unlike his other work, does not lay any real sort of groundwork or basis for future research in cognitive science, psychology, or neuroscience, in which Hume surely would have been working were he alive today. It, instead, consists mostly of pretty baseless speculation. The approach is interesting, and maybe influential, but ultimately futile.
He gives up a lot of the more philosophical argument in his other work for valid reasons, partly because he thinks morality is necessarily intuitive in some way, but the result, given what has transpired in the time that has passed since then, is that this book seems more like an oddity than brilliant philosophy.
the fact that at some point in my degree I will have to read this again brings me sorrow like no other