Hume Virtue Ethics

Hume’s Ethical Project

Goal: Explain morality using empirical observation of human nature

Morality

Ethics should describe how people actually make moral judgment

“Morality is more property felt than judged of.”

Morality

Part of human psychology and social life

The Role of Sentiment

• Moral approval and disapproval come from feelings, not reason

• Virtue

• Vice

• “Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions”

Virtue

Trait that produces pleasurable sentiment of approval in observers

Vice

Trait that produces painful sentiment of disapproval

Virtue as Character Trait

Virtue = stable disposition of character

Praised because it is useful or agreeable

To oneself (prudence, cheerfulness)

To others (benevolence, justice)

Moral evaluation depends on human response, not divine command or abstract reason

Classification of Virtues

1. Natural virtues

2. Artificial virtues

Both promote human happiness and social cooperation

Natural Virtue

Arise directly from human nature (kindness, generosity)

Artificial virtues

depends on social convention ( justice, fidelity, property respect)

The Standard of Virtue

• The ‘common point of view’

• We judge traits by imagining their effects on society as a whole

• Moral judgments are sympathetic and shared

• “ We fix on some steady and general points of view, from which we may survey our object”

Sympathy and Moral Judgment

• Sympathy

• Central mechanism for moral evaluation

• Explains how we care about others happiness and adopt a social moral perspective

Hume’s influence

• Modern virtue ethics revival

• Influenced moral sentimentalists and moral psychology