Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- PART ONE WHICHCOTE AND CUDWORTH
- PART TWO SHAFTESBURY
- PART THREE HUTCHESON
- PART FOUR DAVID HUME
- 15 David Hume's New “Science of Man”
- 16 Hume's Arguments against Moral Rationalism
- 17 Hume's Associative Moral Sentiments
- 18 Hume's Progressive View of Human Nature
- 19 Comparison and Contingency in Hume's Account of Morality
- 20 What Is a Humean Account, and What Difference Does It Make?
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
16 - Hume's Arguments against Moral Rationalism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- PART ONE WHICHCOTE AND CUDWORTH
- PART TWO SHAFTESBURY
- PART THREE HUTCHESON
- PART FOUR DAVID HUME
- 15 David Hume's New “Science of Man”
- 16 Hume's Arguments against Moral Rationalism
- 17 Hume's Associative Moral Sentiments
- 18 Hume's Progressive View of Human Nature
- 19 Comparison and Contingency in Hume's Account of Morality
- 20 What Is a Humean Account, and What Difference Does It Make?
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Like Hutcheson, Hume claims that morality originates not in reason alone but at least partly in sentiment. In this chapter, I do not present a detailed, comprehensive account – much less a defense – of Hume's arguments against moral rationalism. Instead, I sketch in very broad brushstrokes the overall structure of Hume's arguments against moral rationalism and how they fit with the parts of his philosophy that, in the next three chapters, I will examine more closely. There are three reasons I am covering this part of Hume's view so quickly. First, the secondary literature already contains a number of excellent discussions on this topic. Second, many of Hume's anti-rationalist arguments cover the same ground as Hutcheson's arguments in The Moral Sense, which I discussed in Chapter 12. And third, I think the other parts of Book III of the Treatise contain Hume's most important contributions to the philosophical developments I am charting in this study.
Almost all of Hume's arguments against moral rationalism fall into one of three categories: arguments based on the idea that reason alone cannot motivate, which I will, following Korsgaard (1986), call “arguments from motivational skepticism about practical reason”; arguments based on the idea that reason alone cannot provide the content necessary for moral judgments, which I will, once again following Korsgaard, call “arguments from content skepticism about practical reason”; and arguments based on the idea that sentimentalism constitutes a better explanation than rationalism of the observable moral phenomena.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006