Aesthetics and Morals in the Philosophy of David Hume (Routledge Studies in Eighteenth Century Philosophy) 9780415955881, 0415955882

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Aesthetics and Morals in the Philosophy of David Hume

The book has two aims. First, to examine the extent and significance of the connection between Hume’s aesthetics and his moral philosophy; and, second, to consider how, in light of the connection, his moral philosophy answers central questions in ethics. The first aim is realized in chapters 1 to 4. Chapter 1 examines Hume’s essay ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’ to understand his search for a ‘‘standard’’ and how this affects the scope of his aesthetics. Chapter 2 establishes that he treats beauty in nature and art and moral beauty as similar in kind, and applies the conclusions about his aesthetics to his moral thought. Chapter 3 solves a puzzle to which this gives rise, namely, how individuals both accept general standards that they also contravene in the course of aesthetic and moral activity. Chapter 4 takes up the normative aspect of Hume’s approach by understanding moral character through his view of moral beauty. The second aim of the book is realized in chapters 5 to 7 by entertaining three objections against Hume’s moral philosophy. First, if morality is an immediate reaction to the beauty of vice and the deformity of virtue, why is perfect virtue not the general condition of every human individual? Second, if morality consists of sentiments that arise in the subject, how can moral judgments be objective and claim universal validity? And third, if one can talk of ‘‘general standards’’ governing conduct, how does one account for the diversity of moral systems and their change over time? The first is answered by showing that like good taste in aesthetics, ’right taste’ in morals requires that the sentiments are educated; the second, by arguing against the view that Hume is a subjectivist and a relativist; and the third (chapter 6), by showing that his approach contains a view of progress left untouched by any personal prejudices Hume himself might harbor. The book concludes in chapter 7 by showing how Hume’s view of philosophy affects the scope of any normative ethics. Timothy M. Costelloe is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at The College of William and Mary, USA.

Routledge Studies in Eighteenth Century Philosophy

Naturalization of the Soul Self and personal identity in the eighteenth century Raymond Martin and John Barresi Hume’s Aesthetic Theory Taste and sentiment Dabney Townsend Thomas Reid and Scepticism His reliabilist response Philip de Bary Hume’s Philosophy of the Self A.E. Pitson Hume, Reason and Morality A legacy of contradiction Sophie Botros Aesthetics and Morals in the Philosophy of David Hume Timothy M. Costelloe

Aesthetics and Morals in the Philosophy of David Hume

Timothy M. Costelloe

First published 2007 by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business # 2007 Timothy M. Costelloe Typeset in Times New Roman by Taylor & Francis Books Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Costelloe, Timothy M. Aesthetics and morals in the philosophy of David Hume / Timothy M. Costelloe. p. cm. – (Routledge studies in eighteenth century philosophy ; 6) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Hume, David, 1711-1776. 2. Aesthetics, Modern–18th century. 3. Ethics, Modern–18th century. I. Title. B1499.A4C67 2007 170.92–dc22 2006033282 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978–0–415–95588–1

For Michael and Doreen Costelloe, without whom nothing would have been possible.

Contents

Preface Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations

x xv xvi

1

General rules and ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’

1

2

Aesthetic beauty and moral beauty

23

3

Antinomy and error

37

4

Reflection and character

53

5

Beauty and moral life

74

6

Progress and prejudice

95

7

Philosophy and moral life

106

Notes Bibliography Index

111 125 134

Preface

When the first book-length study of Hume’s aesthetics appeared in 1952, its author, Teddy Brunius, could remark that the subject had ‘‘not been investigated to any great degree.’’ As the bibliography in Dabney Townsend’s recent Taste and Sentiment shows, the intervening half century has witnessed a surge of interest in Hume’s approach to beauty and related matters.1 Aestheticians, Hume scholars, and students of eighteenth-century thought in general have come to see the aesthetics as a branch of Hume’s philosophy worthy of study in its own right as well as an integral part of his overall system. The scholarly literature is wide ranging and commentators have come to address a variety of issues, which, until quite recently, were regarded as tangential to Hume’s better known views on epistemology, metaphysics, morals, history, and politics. These include assessing the place of Hume’s approach in the history of aesthetics, deciphering its origins in the philosophical traditions of both Britain and the Continent, and tracing its influence through the end of the eighteenth century and beyond. Others have addressed Hume’s treatment of aesthetic standards; his understanding of tragedy; and his contribution to the art of criticism. Much attention has been devoted in particular to deciphering the form and content of Hume’s only self-contained presentation of his approach to aesthetics, the celebrated essay ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste.’’2 While the literature is large and varied, however, the books by Brunius and Townsend, accompanied by a handful of articles, represent the only systematic effort to inquire into and document possible links between Hume’s aesthetics and other parts of his philosophy. While one should be cautious in making too strong a claim in this regard, there is good reason to ask after such connections, especially with respect to his moral philosophy, where Hume’s writings are replete with the language of eighteenth-century aesthetics, and in the course of which he routinely draws parallels between beauty and deformity in art and nature, on the one hand, and the beauty and deformity of conduct and character, on the other. Hume does not do this systematically, however, and the reader is left to assemble some coherent whole out of the parts provided; according to some commentators, moreover, Hume’s interest in and knowledge of the arts was neither extensive nor central to his

Preface

ix

philosophy.3 Given that these parts are both numerous and noteworthy, however, this task seems worth the effort, both to gain a clearer view of the connections between aesthetic and moral beauty, and to consider what light they cast on Hume’s approach to moral phenomena. Indeed, while there have been few systematic attempts to track the relation between natural and moral beauty in Hume’s thought, the parallel is generally assumed, and most would agree with J.L. Mackie’s remark that since Hume ‘‘explicitly compares ‘moral beauty’ . . . with beauty in ‘the finer arts’; we are therefore justified in using, for example, his essay ‘Of the Standard of Taste,’ to throw light on his view of morality.’’4 The aim of the present study is to take this suggestion seriously and make some contribution to an ongoing area of interest in aesthetics and Hume studies. My way into the subject, in chapter one, is predictably but unavoidably through ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste,’’ Hume’s much praised, sometimes maligned essay, which, despite its modest aim and even more modest length, has inspired a bewildering array of scholarly disagreement. While it would be naive to think that one more interpretive effort could settle the matter, the approach developed here has the advantage of recognizing a significant lacuna in the literature, which, once filled, sheds light on what Hume hopes to achieve in the essay. Hume, that is, explicitly characterizes the search for a standard in terms of discovering a general rule, and asking first (by way of the Treatise and Enquiries) what he means by this term clarifies the kind of standard he aims to discover. Hume’s distinction between general rules in their ‘‘first’’ and ‘‘second influence’’ shows him to be working with the idea that such rules are abstractions, which, when framed in the course of philosophical reflection, explain the phenomenon under investigation. In aesthetic matters, this explanation focuses on the ‘‘fit’’ between subject and object, where good taste involves grasping the relation of parts to whole and understanding the end of the art work in question. In ‘‘fixing’’ the standard of taste in this manner, Hume abridges and expresses in philosophical form the concrete judgments individuals make about beauty. This standard is expressed ideally in the figure of the critic or ‘‘true judge.’’ Hume’s approach to beauty, then, involves explaining conduct by showing in what aesthetic judgment consists, and having thus fixed a standard, recommending some judgments as constituting good taste while rejecting others as constituting bad. Armed with a coherent view of Hume’s philosophical approach to beauty in art and nature, chapter two asks whether the same elements are present in his approach to beauty in morals. The chapter begins by establishing that Hume treats aesthetic and moral beauty as similar in kind, emphasizing how both consist of sentiments aroused in an observer capable of being affected in a certain manner where approbation and disapprobation follow on agreeableness and utility. On the strength of these parallels, the lessons drawn from interpreting ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’ are applied to Hume’s moral philosophy. This yields three important conclusions that mirror his treatment of aesthetics. First, in searching for a ‘‘principle of morals,’’ Hume

x

Preface

frames a philosophical rule in its second influence that explains moral distinctions by abridging the order of common life and fixing a standard for moral judgment; second, in discovering this rule or standard for correct conduct, Hume at once specifies how one ought to behave if one wants to achieve excellence in moral judgment; and third, this standard is manifest in what can be termed the moral expert, an ideal figure who plays the same role in morals as does the true judge in matters of taste. The central claim defended in the first two chapters, then, is that Hume’s ‘‘standard of taste’’ and ‘‘principle of morals’’ explain their respective phenomena by making explicit what people ordinarily do when they make aesthetic and moral judgments; in so doing, philosophy expresses these judgments ideally, and this constitutes criteria or models in terms of which conduct can be said to be right or wrong, good or bad. The standard is descriptive in so far as it explains taste and morals, and normative in so far as it directs people’s conduct to the right and the good. One apparent difficulty with this position, however, is that it places individuals in the unlikely position of living a life in which they accept and orient towards standards that they systematically contravene in the course of aesthetic and moral activity. Chapter three addresses this puzzle by showing how, on Hume’s view, individuals can engage in what they take to be correct conduct, while also accepting that there are standards that undermine and repudiate the value they take that conduct to express. Ordinary reason, that is, falls into what Kant famously titles an Antinomy of Taste: beauty is taken to have a purely subjective basis and involve objective standards that allow some judgments to be accepted as right and others rejected as wrong. As a number of commentators have suggested, this antinomy is precisely what Hume articulates in ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’; in so doing he shows how individuals both accept standards of the sort fixed by enquiring into the nature of aesthetic and moral phenomena, while denying those very standards when they make judgments about beauty and morals at the level of common life. One important difference between Kant’s and Hume’s antinomy of taste, however, lies in the solutions they offer. For Kant, philosophy corrects the error by guiding reason in its practical application. On Hume’s view, this is quite impossible since when philosophy goes beyond experience it imposes conjectures and hypotheses upon the world; kept within its proper bounds, philosophy is best equipped to explain or, in Hume’s terminology, anatomize phenomena by making explicit the implicit order of common life. At the same time, as the ideal nature of the true judge and moral expert shows, Hume also takes these standards to have normative force; reflecting upon their actions allows individuals to improve their conduct by bringing it into greater conformity with the standard in question. Chapter four takes up this normative dimension of Hume’s thought by exploring his concept of character. A fundamental barrier to assessing the role of character in Hume’s thinking is that he speaks of it in terms of ‘‘motives,’’ ‘‘dispositions,’’ ‘‘traits,’’ ‘‘qualities,’’ ‘‘intentions,’’ and the like, in

Preface xi a way that suggests he is endorsing some realist view in which character has independent existence beyond the individual who displays them. This stands in stark contrast to Hume’s criticism of the same kind of reasoning that he clearly rejects in his discussion of personal identity and in his various remarks on philosophical doctrines such as the Cartesian conception of substance that substitute speculation and hypothesis for real existence and matter of fact. He describes these latter ideas as fictions of one sort or another, but apparently endorses a view of character that employs the same brand of metaphysical reasoning. The central question in interpreting Hume’s position then appears to be how to reconcile what we can call his metaphysical view of character with the rejection of the very same in his discussion of substance and self. This attempt at reconciliation, however, is itself a speculative solution, which appeals to entities as mysterious as the ones it purports to explain. For this reason, I propose, it is more appropriate to reject the realist solution entirely and explain Hume’s approach to character by appealing to elements of his aesthetics: traits of character are equivalent to secondary qualities that arise as sentiments in an observer who views the object in question. In the same way as beauty is not mysteriously ‘‘in’’ an object, so traits of character are not mysteriously ‘‘in’’ persons. Character, rather, consists of sentiments aroused in an observer by the agreeableness and utility of conduct, which become the basis for ascribing virtues and vices to people according to extant moral standards. Character is thus the result of engaging in certain sorts of conduct, and since this does not require any appeal to entities beyond experience, the putative tension between it and Hume’s criticism of speculative metaphysics falls away. In addition, this approach shows how Hume’s view of character is tied conceptually to three elements of his moral philosophy emphasized in earlier chapters. It reflects, first, his view that concrete knowledge of how to behave comes only from the practice of making judgments; second, that character is formed on the basis of sentiments arising from the beauty and deformity of conduct; and shows, third, that Hume derives the normative dimension of this thought from discovering a general rule for aesthetic and moral judgment. Thus far, focusing on Hume’s aesthetics will have shed light on important aspects of his moral thought – elucidating the role of general rules, the search for principles, the place of models in making judgments, the antinomical nature of reason, and, in his view of character, provided a context for the normative dimension of his thought. Chapters five and six draw on these insights to emphasize three specific areas where Hume’s thought contributes to understanding the nature of moral life itself. This is achieved by entertaining three objections that might be raised against Hume’s moral philosophy as it has emerged over the course of the study. First, if morality is an immediate reaction to the beauty of vice and the deformity of virtue, why is perfect virtue not the general condition of every human individual? Second, if morality consists of sentiments that arise in the subject, how can moral judgments be objective and claim universal validity? And third, if it is

xii

Preface

indeed possible to talk of general standards that govern conduct, how does one account for the apparent diversity of moral systems and the fact that morals change and apparently improve over time? The two former questions are the subject matter of chapter five. The first – why virtue is realized only imperfectly – is addressed by way of the relationship between taste and education. The fact that there is a natural fit between an object or conduct and the appropriate sentiment, and that everybody has the capacity for good taste and virtue, does not alone guarantee that the correct sentiment will be aroused. Correct sentiments, and the approbation and disapprobation following upon them, come only with the proper education so that, like good taste in judgments of beauty in nature and art, right taste in morals requires working up the raw materials provided by nature into an appropriate form. The sentiments are educated, in part, by reference to those ‘‘best models’’ represented by the true judge, ideals or visions of perfection, which, although they represent standards that can never be fully realized, function to regulate the shape and direction of individual conduct. While the first objection resolves into the issue of education, the second – whether moral sentiments arising in the subject can be objective and claim universal validity – occupies the latter part of chapter five, and moves the discussion towards Hume’s view of standards. We have seen that for Hume the standard in aesthetic matters is given in terms of the fit between subject and object, and involves grasping the relation of parts to whole and understanding the end of a given work of art. What, then, is the equivalent criterion for good judgment in the case of morals? This question is answered by considering the charges often raised against Hume that he is a subjectivist and a relativist: his sentimentalism, critics propose, undermines the objectivity and generality of value. A Humean response to the issue, however, demonstrates that standards are real in so far as they constitute the criteria in terms of which conduct and character are judged beautiful or deformed; moral judgments are then ‘‘objective’’ because there are independent grounds for knowing how one ought to behave and for deciding whether an action is right or wrong. A Humean response to the charge of relativism, on the other hand, shows that standards are general because the same virtues are admired (and vices despised) universally. This is not to say that moral practices are uniform, since – as Hume argues in his dialogue over the fictional land of Fourli (EPM, 324–43) and demonstrates in the History of England – what constitutes a given virtue varies across cultures and within the same culture through time. Yet it is still possible to fix standards in the philosophical sense proposed in earlier chapters, by articulating the pre-reflective order of common life and discovering the principle of morals in utility and agreeableness. This makes it clear that for Hume it is nonsense to speak of morality abstractly, since the colors of virtue and vice derive their peculiar shade from being stained by the social and historical context in which they are situated.

Preface xiii Having responded to these two objections, Hume’s view of morals still faces the third charge, namely, that like any philosophy that seeks standards of conduct, at best it is unable to account for the fact of moral progress, and at worst commits the elementary mistake of taking one empirical manifestation of ostensibly universal sentiments and generalizing it to humankind in general. In both his aesthetics and morals, Hume has been charged with making such a move, and found guilty of harboring the sorts of cultural prejudices that routinely attend it; for many this is exemplified by the infamous footnote in ‘‘Of National Characteristics’’ where Hume writes that he finds ‘‘negroes to be naturally inferior to the whites’’ (E 209n10). Chapter six considers this and related charges in order to ask whether Hume’s approach to morals contains a view of progress that transcends his own prejudices, including his lapse into the language of racism. Hume holds that on both an individual and national level, sentiments are subject to reflection and correction of the sort considered in the earlier discussion of aesthetics and moral judgment, a process through which they can be educated and thus improve over time; again, the best models express an ideal to which improvement orients and tends. At the same time, it is important to emphasize that this view has its origins in Hume’s philosophy rather than in his prejudices; there is no basis to conclude – as some commentators have – that the latter are implied by the former or that his philosophical views are undermined by his own poor judgment. This is not to exonerate Hume for his remarks concerning the natural inferiority of negroes, but to underscore the cogency of his approach to morals; indeed, the fact that his comment is a prejudice means that it is without foundation and thus amenable to reflection and correction, and this actually confirms the philosophical point Hume is making: in morals as in aesthetics, educating one’s taste is a task and, given the force of custom and impotence of reason, progress can be slow and failure a possibility. Moreover, there are many passages where Hume is highly critical of other contemporary practices such as slavery, colonialism, the excesses of monarchial government and religious intolerance, and indeed any institutional arrangement that robs individuals of their liberty. On the basis of these passages, the footnote can be cast in a somewhat different light; it is no less egregious, but does appear to be an isolated case of poor judgment, such that one can expect that were Hume writing at the beginning of the twenty-first century, he would have corrected it and condemned racial prejudice to the same degree that he does much of the superstition and bigotry of his own time. While, as the foregoing overview illustrates, the central focus of the book is to investigate connections between aesthetics and morals in Hume’s thought, an ever-present theme is that philosophical investigation cannot proceed without reflecting upon the nature of that investigation itself. As a number of commentators have observed, for Hume the practice of philosophy at once reveals the conditions for its own possibility. This finds expression, famously, in Hume’s mitigated scepticism, the final resting place for the

xiv Preface philosopher who has reached the furthest possible extent of philosophical inquiry by understanding that human reason – the very instrument through which philosophers undertake their inquiries – is both limited and unreliable. The eye of reason can penetrate only so far into the depths of ultimate reality and claims to the contrary are one more example of faith in speculation rather than the surety that comes from being grounded in experience and matter of fact. At the heart of this view lies an insight into the relationship between philosophy and common life, and, in particular, the degree to which philosophical inquiry can direct or guide conduct. The picture that emerges from the present study and provides occasion for some reflections in the concluding chapter, is that in matters of beauty and deformity, no less than in metaphysics or epistemology, philosophers should ‘‘sit down contented’’ with the conclusion that they can go no further than explaining phenomena in terms of principles derived from experience. To do more is to risk imposing conjectures and hypotheses on the world. This does not undermine claims made in earlier chapters that philosophy is one source of aesthetic and moral improvement, but shows that moral distinctions have their source only in the concrete activities of a community, which philosophy abridges in its explanations. In the final analysis, Hume observes, even philosophy’s own attempt at self-knowledge is frustrated by the limits of reason and one realizes that philosophical conviction does not follow from recognizing and accepting the best argument, but is a species of belief that depends on ‘‘taste and sentiment.’’ This does not herald the end of philosophy or its dissolution into irrationalism, but it does mean that, like the practices that constitute the aesthetic and moral life, philosophy is a task that can never be fully realized.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Peter Kivy, Manfred Kuehn, Rudolf Makreel, and Kirk Pillow, all of whom read the manuscript in its entirety and offered invaluable criticism and suggestions for improvements. I am indebted, in particular, to Donald Livingston for his long-standing encouragement, advice, and support, and for his work on Hume, which continues to be an inspiration. Adam Potkay made suggestions that helped clarify issues of style and organization, as did comments made by anonymous reviewers for Routledge Press. I am also grateful to Kate Reeves and her careful copy-editing eye, which found glitches in the manuscript I had long ceased to see. Initial work for the book was undertaken at Phillips-Universita¨t Marburg under the auspices of the Collegium Philosophiae Transatlanticum Seminar, and I would like to express my thanks to my fellow participants for their collegiality and interest in my work, and to Burkhardt Tu¨schling and Manfred Baum, in particular, both for the opportunity to participate and for financial support in the form of a Deutsche Forschungsgemeinsschaft (DFG) Visiting Research Fellowship. Completion of the book was made possible by two summer grants from The College of William and Mary and release from teaching and administrative duties that allowed me to accept an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship at Maximilians-Universita¨t Munich in the fall of 2003. I am grateful to Gu¨nter Zo¨ller of the Philosophy Department in Munich for his ongoing support and hospitality. A version of chapter three appeared as ‘‘Hume, Kant, and the ‘Antinomy of Taste,’’’ Journal of the History of Philosophy 41, 2 (April 2003), 165–85; and chapter five as ‘‘Beauty, Morals, and Hume’s Conception of Character,’’ History of Philosophy Quarterly 21, 4 (October 2004), 397– 415. I would like to express my thanks to the editors and publishers of those journals for permission to reproduce material. For the beauty or deformity of the final product, I am alone responsible.

Abbreviations

DNR

E EHU

EPM

H

L NHR

ST

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, in Principal Writings on Religion, ed. J.C.A. Gaskin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). Essays:Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Classics, 1987). Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Tom Beauchamp (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). Citations are given according to section and paragraph, and are followed by page numbers referring to Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge, third edition, with text revised and notes by P.H. Nidditch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975) (SBN). Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. Tom Beauchamp (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). Citations are given according to section and paragraph, and are followed by page numbers in Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge, third edition, with text revised and notes by P.H. Nidditch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975) (SBN). The History of England, From the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688, based on the edition of 1778, with the author’s last corrections and improvements, 6 vols, ed. William B. Todd (Indianapolis, Indiana: Liberty Classics, 1983). The Letters of David Hume, ed. J.Y.T. Greig, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969). The Natural History of Religion, in Principal Writings on Religion, ed. J.C.A. Gaskin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste,’’ in Essays:Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Classics, 1987), 226–49.

Abbreviations T

xvii

A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. David Fate Norton and Mary Norton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). Citations are given according to book, part, section, and paragraph, and are followed by page numbers referring to A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge, second edition, with text revised and notes by P.H. Nidditch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978) (SBN).

1

General rules and ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’

The goal of this first chapter is to examine Hume’s ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’ with a view to understanding what he means by the term ‘‘standard,’’ the function it performs in ‘‘regulating’’ aesthetic judgment, and, subsequently, the role he assigns to the critic or ‘‘true judge’’ in matters of taste. This interpretation has important implications for understanding Hume’s aesthetics and, as will become clear in subsequent chapters, his approach to morals as well. I begin with the central features of Hume’s approach to aesthetics before focusing on the distinction he draws between general rules in their ‘‘first’’ and ‘‘second influence.’’ The latter, it transpires, are abstractions, which, when framed in the course of philosophical reflection, explain the phenomenon under investigation; in ‘‘fixing’’ the standard of taste, Hume thus abridges and expresses in philosophical form the concrete judgments individuals make about beauty. Hume’s approach to beauty then explains conduct by showing in what aesthetic judgment consists, and having fixed a standard, recommending some judgments as constituting good taste while rejecting others as constituting bad.

Hume’s approach to aesthetics Before turning to the concept of general rules and Hume’s essay on taste, it is necessary to be clear about the main features of his approach to aesthetics. Hume’s scattered references to architecture and painting notwithstanding, he gives little specific attention to the fine arts, and his forays into criticism in the Essays and History of England are concerned largely with the stylistic conventions of literary composition and the classical tradition of eloquence.1 When Hume writes of ‘‘beauty,’’ however, he clearly speaks the language of what is anachronistically termed eighteenth-century aesthetics, a tradition, which, as a number of commentators have documented, finds its immediate inspiration in the work of John Locke, the Abbe´ JeanBaptiste Dubos, Joseph Addison, and Francis Hutcheson.2 There are three general elements that characterize Hume’s approach and together these inform what he means when he speaks of judgments in the sphere of aesthetics: a certain manner of conception in which sentiments or feelings arise

2

General rules and ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’

in an individual with the capacity to be affected by objects that give rise subsequently to pleasure or pain, approbation or disapprobation. Hume holds, first, that beauty and deformity are matters of human sentiment rather than essential facts about objects themselves, a view he expresses, following Locke, in terms of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities.3 ‘‘Beauty and deformity,’’ Hume says, ‘‘[no] more than sweet and bitter, are not qualities in objects, but belong entirely to the sentiment, internal or external’’ (ST 235).4 Beauty is not a quality that resides in an object so judged, but a feeling that arises in an individual as a result of the relationship formed between that individual and the world. As Hume says in the Treatise, ‘‘Tho’ it shou’d be question’d, whether beauty be not something real . . . it is not, properly speaking, a quality in any object, but merely a passion or impression in the soul’’ (T 2.1.8.6, SBN 301). For although it is generally ‘‘supposed,’’ he observes in ‘‘The Sceptic,’’ that the ‘‘agreeable quality . . . [lies] in the object, not in the sentiment,’’ a ‘‘little reflection’’ is sufficient to reveal that such a view is mistaken and that the beauty of a circle does not lie ‘‘in any part of the line whose parts are all equally distant from a common center. It is only the effect which that figure produces upon the mind’’ (E 165, first emphasis in original, second added; see also EPM Appx. 1.14, SBN 291–92). The beauty of a poem, he writes a few paragraphs later, lies ‘‘in the sentiment or taste of the reader’’ (E 166). Second, and a corollary to the first point, Hume maintains that human beings are constituted in such a way that certain objects affect them; for this reason, he is sometimes seen as holding a ‘‘causal’’ theory of taste, the view that there is some decipherable causal connection linking objects with the sentiments they elicit.5 ‘‘The mind of man is so formed by nature,’’ he remarks in the first Enquiry, ‘‘that, upon the appearance of certain characters, dispositions, and actions, it immediately feels the sentiments of approbation or blame; nor are there any emotions more essential to its frame and constitution’’ (EHU 8.35, SBN 102). ‘‘Certain qualities in objects,’’ moreover, as Hume writes in ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste,’’ are ‘‘fitted by nature’’ to produce perceptions of sense in ‘‘external’’ sentiment and these qualities give rise to ‘‘particular feelings’’ of ‘‘internal’’ sentiment (ST 235). As one has external senses through which physical objects take on their familiar shapes, textures, sounds, and smells, so there is an ‘‘internal’’ sense through which objects are perceived as beautiful. As a lemon is bitter or honey sweet to the taste-buds, so a particular arrangement of parts, a configuration of paint on canvas, or words in a poem are beautiful to the spectator or reader concerned. Individuals do not simply react to their environment, but perception is partly a function of the ‘‘human frame’’: beauty is conferred by the ‘‘passion alone, arising from the original structure and formation of human nature’’ (E 163). ‘‘Beauty is such an order and construction of parts,’’ Hume writes in the Treatise, ‘‘as either by the primary constitution of our nature, by custom, or by caprice, is fitted to give a pleasure and satisfaction to the soul’’ (T 2.1.8.2, SBN 299). Hence ‘‘easy

General rules and ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’

3

and unconstrained postures and motions are always beautiful’’ (EPM 5.38, SBN 224), and since all individuals share the same ‘‘fabric of . . . the mind’’ (E 164), in principle at least, the sentiments of beauty should be similar in each case. Third, Hume argues that beauty and deformity arise because the object of which these sentiments are predicated is a source of pleasure or pain, or expresses utility. Indeed, ‘‘pleasure and pain . . . are not only necessary attendants of beauty and deformity, but constitute their very essence,’’ an opinion to which ‘‘we shall make no scruple to assent,’’ Hume declares, once ‘‘we consider, that a great part of beauty . . . is deriv’d from the idea of convenience and utility’’ (T 2.1.8.2, SBN 299). On some occasions Hume treats pleasure/pain and utility as two separate principles. Thus with regard to the former, ‘‘a figure, which is not justly balanced, is ugly; because it conveys the disagreeable ideas of fall, harm, and pain’’ (EPM 6.28, SBN 245). Or, discussing the direct passions, he observes how ‘‘a suit of fine cloaths produces pleasure from their beauty’’ (T 2.3.9.4, SBN 439); ‘‘sunshine or the prospect of well-cultivated plains . . . communicates a secret joy and satisfaction’’ (EPM 6.22, SBN 243–44); and ‘‘beauty of all kinds gives us a peculiar delight and satisfaction; as deformity produces pain’’ (T 2.1.8.1, SBN 298). Similarly, in the case of utility, ‘‘the eye is pleased with the prospect of corn-fields and loaded vine-yards; horses grazing, and flocks pasturing: But flies the view of briars and brambles, affording shelter to wolves and serpents’’ (EPM 2.9, SBN 179). Utility makes an object more beautiful than it would otherwise be, even if design with a view to use produces ‘‘disproportion or seeming deformity’’ (EPM 5.1, SBN 212). In general, however, Hume takes pain/pleasure and utility as one, or at least as inseparable parts of a single principle. Since utility itself presupposes a conception of beauty, it should already be a source of pleasure and its opposite a source of uneasiness: to be useful means to be beautiful. ‘‘A machine, a piece of furniture, a vestment, a house well contrived for use and conveniency, is so far beautiful,’’ Hume observes, ‘‘and is contemplated with pleasure and approbation’’ (EPM 2.10, SBN 179). Similarly, the shape of an animal is beautiful because it conveys the utility of strength or agility, the beauty of a palace is derived from both form and function, and a pillar slender at its top and wider at its base gives pleasure because it conveys the convenience of security rather than the inconvenience of danger that attends the opposite arrangement. ‘‘From innumerable instances of this kind,’’ Hume writes, ‘‘. . . we may conclude that beauty is nothing but a form, which produces pleasure, as deformity is a structure of parts, which conveys pain’’ (T 2.1.8.2, SBN 299).

General rules As already indicated, Hume’s ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’ has generated a steady stream of commentary since its composition and publication in 1757.

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Writing in 1938, S.G. Brown could declare with confidence that the essay ‘‘has always been recognized as an important document, from the time of its publication . . . through the critical debates of the neo-classic period of English letters . . . [to] contemporary scholars who are concerned with the problems of taste, imagination, rules, and genius in the Age of Johnson.’’6 Since that time, the rate of critical attention has reflected and kept pace with the growing interest in Hume and his aesthetics. While the essay stands as Hume’s only self-contained treatment of aesthetic matters, the attention it has received is still remarkable when one considers that it occupies so small a space in his corpus and that its composition was an accident of circumstance rather than a self-conscious attempt to make good on the proposed work ‘‘Of Criticism’’ promised in the Treatise. As Hume reports in a letter to his publisher William Strahan, ‘‘a new Essay on the Standard of Taste’’ was composed to replace two other essays – ‘‘On Suicide’’ and ‘‘On the Immortality of the Soul’’ – that had been published, but, given their subject matter, judiciously withdrawn by Hume himself (L 252–54). If not for these circumstances, ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’ might not have been written at all. The outlines of Hume’s essay are well known. It begins with the observation that ordinary language implies a general standard, which the philosophical mind naturally seeks out (ST 228–29). Hume then raises the objection that ‘‘beauty is not a quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them.’’ From this observation he draws the relativist conclusion that ‘‘each mind perceives a different beauty’’ (ST 230), a philosophical prejudice he then confounds by suggesting that there are ‘‘general rules’’ that govern the appropriateness of aesthetic judgments (ST 235). These rules, he says, are to be met with most clearly in the person of the critic or true judge (ST 241). This conclusion is immediately challenged as premature, however, with Hume himself raising a series of ‘‘embarrassing’’ questions that threaten to throw the whole endeavor ‘‘back into the same uncertainty, from which, during the course of the essay, we have endeavoured to extricate ourselves’’ (ST 241). Hume responds to this threat by acknowledging the co-existence of both ‘‘peculiarities of manners’’ and uniformity of sentiments, an impossible juxtaposition that is clarified as the essay comes to a close (ST 242ff.). The conclusion of the essay thus marks the end point at which Hume has generated and overcome a series of contradictions in an explication of the standard of taste, the proposed existence of which motivated the essay in the first place. Although there is much debate over how to interpret the form and content of the essay, a good deal of recent scholarship has focused on what many have seen as Hume’s perplexing strategy of characterizing the standard as a rule, but discovering it finally in the conclusion that the ‘‘joint verdict of such [true judges], wherever they are to be found, is the true standard of taste and beauty’’ (ST 241, emphasis added). While disagreement on this matter still remains, there seems to be consensus on two basic issues. First, commentators who focus on Hume’s characterization of the

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standard in terms of a rule generally regard it as an inductive generalization, inferred from empirical observation about what has pleased and displeased across time and place.7 The text of the essay clearly provides some prima facie evidence for this view. Hume says of ‘‘rules of composition,’’ for example, that they are not ‘‘fixed by reasonings a priori,’’ but are ‘‘general observations, concerning what has been universally found to please in all countries and in all ages,’’ and are ‘‘discovered to the author either by genius or observation’’ (ST 231). So the ‘‘same Homer, who pleased at ATHENS and ROME two thousand years ago,’’ Hume observes later, ‘‘is still admired at PARIS and at LONDON. All the changes of climate, government, religion, and language, have not been able to obscure his glory’’ (ST 233).8 If principles governing our sentiment of beauty cannot be derived a priori, then it is reasonable to conclude that, in Hume’s view, they must be empirical generalizations of the ‘‘common sentiments of human nature’’ (ST 231). Second, many interpret the standard of taste as having some practical value. On this view, Hume’s primary aim is to discover a normative standard that can be employed to guide judgment and settle disputes over taste and beauty when they arise.9 Again, Hume appears to make such a claim in the course of the essay. In the case of the ‘‘bad critic,’’ for example, who refuses to ‘‘submit to his antagonist’’ (ST 236), it seems as if the standard can be ‘‘applied to the present case,’’ as Hume puts it, such that the critic ‘‘must conclude . . . that the fault lies in himself’’ (ST 236). Hume also says that ‘‘general rules of beauty are of use [and] . . . drawn from established models, and from the observation of what pleases and displeases’’; these ‘‘avowed patterns of composition’’ are discovered by those of delicate taste and stand as criteria for deciding whether the opinion of critics is informed or should be rejected as mere pretension (ST 235). Commentators, however, make both these claims – one concerning the empirical nature of the standard, and the other regarding its practical use – without paying due attention to the fact that Hume characterizes the ‘‘standard’’ in terms of ‘‘a rule, by which the various sentiments of men may be reconciled’’ (ST 229), ‘‘rules of art’’ (ST 231), ‘‘general rules of beauty,’’ and ‘‘general rules or avowed patterns’’ (ST 235), which are founded on experience and ‘‘fix’’ what ‘‘has been universally found to please in all countries and in all ages’’ (ST 231). Since Hume explicitly equates the standard with a general rule, it seems prudent to ask what he means by this latter term before drawing any conclusions about the nature of the standard he aims to discover.10 Hume’s most elaborate discussion of general rules is to be found in the Treatise where he characterizes them as the source of one ‘‘unphilosophical species of probability.’’ These rules are ‘‘unphilosophical’’ because they give rise to false judgments. ‘‘We rashly form [general rules] to ourselves,’’ Hume writes, and they become ‘‘the source of what we properly call PREJUDICE’’; that, for example, ‘‘an Irishman cannot have wit, and a Frenchman cannot

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have solidity.’’ Such judgments are ‘‘errors’’ since they go against ‘‘sense and reason’’ and are persistently made despite evidence to the contrary (T 1.3. 13.7, SBN 146). Why are such judgments made, we might ask, if they are clearly mistakes without basis in experience or matter of fact? Hume’s answer to this question is found in his distinction between two ‘‘influences’’ of general rules, which have their origin in the imagination and judgment, respectively. Hume begins by observing that unphilosophical judgments are one kind of reasoning from cause and effect, and, like all such reasoning, they are subject to the tendency that ‘‘when we have been accustom’d to see one object united to another, our imagination passes from the first to the second, by a natural transition, which precedes reflection, and which cannot be prevented by it.’’ Custom operates with ‘‘full force’’ when the object presented is the same as that experienced in the past, but still ‘‘operates to an inferior degree’’ when the object is merely similar or ‘‘resembling.’’ ‘‘A man, who has contracted a custom of eating fruit by use of pears or peaches,’’ Hume observes, ‘‘will satisfy himself with melons, where he cannot find his favourite fruit; as one, who has become a drunkard by the use of red wines, will be carry’d almost with the same violence to white, if presented to him.’’ As the resemblance grows weaker, Hume emphasizes, ‘‘the probability diminishes; but still has some force as long as there remains any traces of the resemblance’’ (T 1.3.13.8, SBN 147). Were it always possible to distinguish sameness from mere resemblance, our ideas would be free of error since they could be traced back to experience and the genuine operations of the understanding. Sometimes, however, the ‘‘superfluous’’ circumstances surrounding a causal relationship influence the imagination in such a way that we arrive at the ‘‘conception of the usual effect’’ even though features ‘‘essential’’ to the relationship are wanting. The force of habit and custom ‘‘gives a biass [sic] to the imagination,’’ and we are led to the corresponding idea as if the necessary circumstances were extant (T 1.3.13.9, SBN 148). Hume offers the example of a man in a cage suspended from a high tower who ‘‘cannot forbear trembling when he surveys the precipice below him, tho’ he know himself to be perfectly secure from falling, by his experience of the solidity of the iron, which supports him; and tho’ the ideas of fall and descent, and harm and death, be deriv’d soley from custom and experience.’’ Despite having no experiential basis for his fear, the ‘‘circumstances of depth and descent strike so strongly upon him,’’ Hume writes, ‘‘that their influence cannot be destroy’d by the contrary circumstances of support and solidity, which ought to give him a perfect security.’’ The man concludes that his life is at risk (T 1.3.13.10, SBN 148). This effect is what Hume calls the ‘‘first influence’’ of general rules. Such rules arise from the natural proclivity of the imagination to associate an effect with a cause even though the latter provides insufficient grounds for doing so.11 The ‘‘imagination naturally carries us to a lively conception of the usual effect,’’ he observes, ‘‘tho’ the object be different in the most

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material and most efficacious circumstances from that cause’’ (T 1.3.13.12, SBN 150). While the tendency to follow general rules of this kind is natural and unavoidable, Hume also points to a ‘‘second influence’’ of general rules, formed not upon the imagination, but on ‘‘the more general and authentic operations of the understanding.’’ When we ‘‘review’’ the act of the mind based on the imagination, and compare it to rules of this kind, ‘‘we find it to be of an irregular nature,’’ Hume says, ‘‘and destructive of all the most establish’d principles of reasonings; which is the cause of our rejecting it’’ (T 1.3.13.12, SBN 150). Since the possibility of error is an inherent feature of human beings, we must ‘‘in every reasoning form a new judgment, as a check or controul on our first judgment or belief; and must enlarge our view to comprehend a kind of history of all the instances, wherein our understanding has deceiv’d us, compar’d with those, wherein its testimony was just and true’’ (T 1.4.1.1, SBN 180). Individuals can thus reflect upon beliefs, judgments, and conduct and correct mistakes when they have been made. The man in the cage can replace his ‘‘imaginary danger’’ of falling – a rule of the first influence with its source in the imagination – with cognizance of his ‘‘real safety’’ – a rule of the second influence with its source in the understanding. ‘‘A man, brought to the brink of a precipice,’’ Hume writes in the second Enquiry, cannot look down without trembling; and the sentiment of imaginary danger actuates him, in opposition to the opinion and belief of real safety. But the imagination here is assisted by the presence of a striking object; and yet prevails not, except it also be aided by novelty, and the unusual appearance of the object. Custom soon reconciles us to heights and precipices, and wears off these false and delusive terrors. (EPM 5.14, SBN 217) So once the two influences of general rules are ‘‘set in opposition to each other,’’ the second, being based on sense and reason rather than the fancies of the imagination, implies the ‘‘condemnation’’ of the first. This does not mean that correction always takes place, however, or that the correction will endure: national prejudices do not necessarily disappear even though their erroneous nature is recognized and their source discovered. The imagination resists correction and memories fade. ‘‘Thus a drunkard,’’ Hume writes by way of illustration, ‘‘who has seen his companion die of a debauch, is struck with that instance for some time, and dreads a like accident for himself: But as the memory of it decays away by degrees, his former security returns, and the danger seems less certain and real’’ (T 1.3.13.2, SBN 144). Similarly, as Hume recounts in the story of the hump-back of Paris who rented out his hump for signing contracts during the ‘‘rage of the Mississippi’’ – the wild financial speculation in the Mississippi Company set up to exploit French colonies in the United States – the usefulness of his deformity and his newfound fortune could not render his person beautiful. ‘‘The imagination is

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influenced by associations of ideas,’’ Hume remarks, ‘‘which, though they arise at first from the judgment, are not easily altered by every particular exception that occurs to us’’ (EPM 4.7, SBN 207). Moreover, ‘‘sometimes the one [influence of general rules], sometimes the other prevails,’’ Hume contends, ‘‘according to the disposition and character of the person. The vulgar are commonly guided by the first, and wise men by the second’’(T 1.3.13.12, SBN 149–50). Finally, Hume considers even corrective general rules to be a source of error, when they are ‘‘extended beyond the principle, whence they first arise.’’ In such instances ‘‘the imagination is influenced by the association of ideas; which, though they arise at first from the judgment, are not easily altered by every particular exception that occurs to us’’ (EPM 4.7, SBN 207). The main difference, then, between the two influences of general rules is that the first involves erroneous judgments arising from the wayward tendency of the imagination, while the second, to use Thomas Hearn’s phrase, is ‘‘corrective, reflective and directive.’’12 Rules in their second influence have the power to correct the ‘‘generalizing propensity of the imagination,’’ and indicate how, if judgments are to be justified, one ought to behave.13 Hume himself offers an example of this in the form of the eight ‘‘general rules, by which we ought to regulate our judgment concerning causes and effects’’: causes and effects are contiguous; causes are prior to their effects; there must be a constant relation between them; like causes produce like effects; different causes producing the same effect share a common quality; the difference in effects proceeds from the feature they share; the increase or decrease of an object following on the increase or decrease of its cause arises from a compound of different effects; and, finally, an extant object that does not produce its usual effect depends upon the assistance of some other principle. Since these eight rules are ‘‘form’d on the nature of our understanding, and on our experience of its operations in the judgments we form concerning objects,’’ reflection reveals them to be ‘‘more extensive and constant,’’ and thus the correct criteria for regulating our behavior. Any inference that contradicts these rules is a general rule in its first influence, which the wise come to recognize as an ‘‘exception’’ arising from the ‘‘more capricious and uncertain’’ nature of the imagination (T 1.3.13.11, SBN 149). In this way, Hume maintains, it is possible to ‘‘fix some general rules’’ by which we may know that given objects ‘‘really are’’ causes or effects to each other (T 1.3.15.2, SBN 173). What, then, is the status of ‘‘fixing’’ rules in this manner? What sort of rules are they, and what relationship do they have to judgments of cause and effect that they ‘‘ought to regulate’’? One way to articulate what Hume has in mind here is to compare his notion of general rules with Michael Oakeshott’s discussion of ‘‘concrete’’ activity and the rules that ‘‘abridge’’ it. There is a tendency, Oakeshott observes, to think of all knowledge as essentially propositional, and, consequently, to see rules and principles as determining an ‘‘end for activity in advance of the activity itself.’’ In actuality,

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however, rules are ‘‘abridgments’’ or ‘‘abstracts of some concrete activity,’’ derived through reflection on the activity in question. Conduct in turn requires know-how, which is given not in the propositional content of rules, but only in the activity itself. ‘‘A cook is not a man who first has a vision of a pie and then tries to make it,’’ Oakeshott writes, he is a man skilled in cookery, and both his projects and his achievements spring from that skill. . . . ‘‘Good’’ English is not something that exists in advance of how English is written (that is to say, English literature); and the knowledge that such and such is sloppy, ambiguous construction, or is ‘‘bad grammar,’’ is not something that can be known independently and in advance of knowing how to write the language.14 It is always possible to express such knowledge propositionally and present it formally as a set of rules or principles abstracted from conduct. Since the rules are distilled from practices themselves, the knowledge thus presented takes a pure or ideal form: recipes in cookery books depict perfect dishes, as an English grammar presents the key for flawless composition. Rules thus represent how one ought to behave in order to pursue an activity successfully – to cook or write well – and as such they can function as a set of directions or a ‘‘guide’’ to conduct. At the same time, they are always post hoc summaries of the activity in question, and although they can guide conduct, such abstract knowledge will never substitute for the concrete know-how of engaging in the practice itself: one does not become a skilled chef through reading cookery books, or a great writer by studying grammar, but in and through the practices of cooking and writing, respectively. Rules are rarely if ever instantiated in their ideal form, both because they represent a vision of perfection that is largely unobtainable, and, more importantly, because the skill that constitutes fine cookery or producing great literature is not given in the rules, but in the practice of cooking and writing well. This is why simply following recipes often terminates in unpalatable dishes, as the mechanical application of a grammar produces mediocre prose. The artistry and creativity that distinguish greatness cannot be captured in propositional knowledge, because it is part and parcel of knowing how to do something, which is achieved through pursuing the activity itself. Rules, then, on Oakeshott’s view, cannot be separated from the activity in which they are instantiated, although they can be revealed through reflection and expressed in propositional form as rules governing conduct. Hume expresses the same idea when he speaks of general rules, a point that has been intimated by some of his interpreters. John Passmore, for example, identifies general rules with formulating regularities of thought. Understood in this way, Passmore comments, Hume’s account of ‘‘general rules’’ would then run thus: there is such a thing as orderly, or systematic, or philosophical thinking; when we

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General rules and ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’ examine the nature of that thinking we discover regularities in it which can be formulated as rules . . . On this showing, the ‘‘rationality’’ of general rules consists in their making possible consistent and orderly thinking. To reject the rules, therefore, is not merely to refuse to accept Hume’s ‘‘recommendation’’; it involves the rejection of any sort of orderly thinking. There is no alternative set of rules which could with equal force be formulated.15

Bennett Helm seems to have the same sort of distinction in mind when he characterizes general rules in terms of ‘‘natural’’ and ‘‘philosophical relations.’’ The conflict between contradictory judgments, Helm observes, is a conflict between two general rules – the general rule that is implicit in natural disposition or ‘‘custom’’ of the mind to infer one idea from another (call this a ‘‘natural general rule’’), and a general rule ‘‘by which we ought to regulate our judgment’’ (T [SBN] 149), a general rule that we endorse (call this a ‘‘philosophical general rule’’).16 Townsend discusses rules of taste in similar terms. ‘‘One does not produce rules . . . and then conform taste to them,’’ he observes. ‘‘Rather, what operate as the implicit rules for taste are drawn directly from experience.’’17 Finally, R.W. Serjeantson has emphasized that Hume ‘‘regarded the task of the working philosopher to be the formulation of general rules, maxims, or principles by which to explain natural, and . . . moral and political, phenomena.’’18 Understood along these lines, Hume can be seen as emphasizing the fact that all rules, whether they arise from the imagination or the understanding, have a customary use; both influences involve that natural transition from cause to effect, which ‘‘precedes reflection and cannot be prevented by it.’’ We find, as Hume says in his discussion of belief, ‘‘that the understanding or imagination can draw inferences from past experience, without reflecting on it; much more without forming any principle concerning it, or reasoning upon that principle’’ (T 1.3.8.13, SBN 104). General rules thus reflect customary ways of doing things and are transparent because always inseparable from the activities they organize and govern; they constitute the knowhow or skill embodied in concrete activities. On the one hand, in common life, the ‘‘views and sentiments, which are essential to any action of the mind, are so implicit and obscure,’’ Hume says, ‘‘that they often escape our strictest attention, and are not only unaccountable in their causes, but even unknown in their existence’’ (T 1.3.15.11, SBN 175; see EPM 9.2, SBN 269). On the other hand, while implicit and inseparable from the activities they govern, these rules can be made explicit by reflecting or ‘‘reasoning upon’’ them.19 Such reasoning enables an individual to recognize the ‘‘exceptions’’ produced by general rules in their first influence and correct errors of judgment by following general rules in their second. While both sets of rules are followed from habit and custom, only by reflection can they

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become known and can rules in their first influence be corrected by rules in their second. Following the latter, individuals will make correct judgments. Since everybody has the capacity for reflection and correction, this process might be thought of as ordinary reflection: as in the case of the man in the cage, the process of attending to and assuaging a groundless fear is a routine part of common life. As Hume says, ‘‘review and reflection’’ is often required to revise the ‘‘first opinion’’ received from the ‘‘judgments of our senses’’ (T 1.2.4.23, SBN 47), which make errors such as taking a stick in water to be bent, or objects of the ‘‘same’’ size to be equidistant. Such reflection and correction are ‘‘vulgar’’ or ‘‘popular,’’ however, since it takes things ‘‘according to their first appearance,’’ and is to be distinguished from the ‘‘refined’’ reflections of the philosophically curious who ‘‘want to learn the foundations’’ of our common inferences (see EHU 8.13, SBN 86; T 1.3.14.4–6, SBN 157). ‘‘A peasant,’’ Hume writes, can give no better reason for the stopping of any clock or watch than to say that it does not commonly go right: But an artist easily perceives, that the same force in the spring or pendulum has always the same influence on the wheels; but fails of its usual effect, perhaps by reason of a grain of dust, which puts a stop to the whole movement. From the observation of several parallel instances, philosophers form a maxim, that the connexion between all causes and effects is equally necessary, and that its seeming uncertainty in some instances proceeds from the secret opposition of contrary causes. (EHU 8.13, SBN 87) Thus while the ‘‘reason of the mere vulgar’’ assumes that we ‘‘can give no reason for our most general and refined principles, beside our experience of their reality’’ (T Intro. 9, SBN xviii), those with a ‘‘tincture of philosophy’’ cultivate reflection of a peculiarly philosophical sort that takes account of what vulgar reasoning overlooks or in which it has no interest. For though there are ‘‘many obvious distinctions . . . which fall within the comprehension of every human creature . . . the finer and more philosophical distinctions are no less real and certain, though more difficult to comprehend’’ (EHU 1.14, SBN 14). Philosophy differs from other reflection in its task of ‘‘ordering and distinguishing . . . the operations of the mind’’ through ‘‘a superior penetration, derived from nature, and improved by habit and reflexion’’ (EHU 1.13, SBN 13); or, as Philo declares in the Dialogues on Natural Religion, the larger experience we acquire, and the stronger reason we are endowed with, we always render our principles the more general and comprehensive; and . . . what we call philosophy is nothing but a more regular and methodological operation of the same kind. To philosophize on such subjects is nothing essentially different from reasoning on

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General rules and ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’ common life; and we may only expect greater stability, if not greater truth, from our philosophy, on account of its exacter and more scrupulous method of proceeding. (DNR 36)

‘‘Those who have a propensity to philosophy,’’ as Hume expresses the same point in the second Enquiry, ‘‘will still continue their researches; because they reflect, that . . . philosophical decisions are nothing but the reflections of common life, methodized and corrected’’ (EHU 12.25, SBN 162, emphasis added). Philosophy, on this view, is a particular application of the general capacity to express formally the principles that organize common life. The difference is that whereas ordinary reflection enables individuals to correct errors of judgment, philosophy corrects by discovering principles, which, as in the case of the clock that will not go, explain the phenomenon in question. Hume is often explicit about characterizing his inquiries in such terms, and regularly frames his discoveries in terms of principles, maxims, or general rules. He characterizes the goal of the Treatise as unearthing the ‘‘principles of human nature’’ (T Intro. 6, SBN xvi; T 1.1.1.12, SBN 7), for instance, and in the course of Book I deciphers the ‘‘universal principles’’ guiding the imagination (T 1.1.4.1, SBN 10); frames the ‘‘maxim’’ that the mind confuses ideas (T 1.2.5.19, SBN 60); discovers the ‘‘principle’’ that impressions communicate their force and vivacity to ideas (T 1.3.8.2, SBN 98); and ‘‘establish[es] as a general rule that whatever ideas place the mind in the same disposition or in similar ones, are very apt to be confounded’’ (T 1.4.2.32, SBN 203).20 Thus when Hume delineates the eight rules by which we ought to judge of cause and effect, he is reflecting upon and making explicit what people do implicitly and as a matter of course when they make correct judgments about causal connection. This set of rules or ‘‘logic,’’ as Hume also describes it, is already supplied ‘‘by the natural principles of our understanding’’ (T 1.3.15.11, SBN 175), but is given expression as a set of philosophical rules in their second influence: these follow on philosophical reflection, and present in propositional form directions for how one ought to behave if one is to judge correctly about cause and effect. These rules are at once, in Oakshott’s sense, abridgments or abstractions from a concrete activity (making judgments about cause and effect) since they contain, in abbreviated form, the know-how that can only be exhibited in the activity itself. Two things follow from this. First, producing philosophical general rules that abridge an activity means to have understood and explained that activity. Articulating the eight rules of cause and effect constitutes a philosophical explanation of causal reasoning, since it represents the successful ‘‘ordering and distinguishing’’ of those implicit principles that govern the everyday practice of causal judgment. The rules reflect ‘‘our experience of the reality’’ of principles that order common life, but without going beyond experience and ‘‘imposing conjectures and hypotheses on the world’’ (T Intro.

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9, SBN xviii). Second, since philosophical general rules are abridgments, they are by definition post hoc summaries of the activity they abridge, which they present in ideal form because in practice judgments are not unassailable and mistakes are routinely made. This means, in turn, that knowing the rules does not guarantee that mistakes will not be made, and simply learning and applying the rules is not sufficient for mastering the activity in question. Propositional knowledge has some pedagogic value, but – as with culinary skill and English prose – only by engaging in the activity can one learn how and when to apply the rules, and actively acquire the skill or know-how that constitutes concrete knowledge.21 In the case of regulating judgments about cause and effect, then, knowledge of Hume’s eight rules will be of some use, but will never substitute for the experience of judging, reflecting upon mistakes, and making appropriate corrections that provide the know-how or wisdom that constitutes good judgment. It would be a mistake to think of propositional knowledge as the source of causal reasoning, since that is to be found only in the activity of making judgments itself.

General rules and ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’ Having clarified the concept of ‘‘general rules,’’ we are now in a position to see how this helps in understanding ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste.’’ In his aesthetics, it transpires, Hume follows the same logic of explanation as he employs in discussing rules of cause and effect. In the aesthetic realm, general rules of the first influence may lead individuals to make incorrect judgments that constitute a lack of taste, as in the case of those who take lesser poets like Ogilby over Milton, or Bunyan over Addison (ST 230–31). Such judgments follow from ignoring what sense and reason dictate about what should be the case. ‘‘It is well known that, in all questions, submitted to the understanding,’’ Hume writes, prejudice is destructive of sound judgment, and perverts all operations of the intellectual faculties: It is no less contrary to good taste; nor has it less influence to corrupt our sentiment of beauty. It belongs to good sense to check its influence in both cases; and in this respect . . . reason, if not an essential part of taste, is at least requisite to the operations of this latter faculty. (ST 240) ‘‘Delicacy of taste,’’ by contrast, involves having a sensibility to the beauty and deformity of a work or object, of being ‘‘sensibly touched’’ as much by the ‘‘masterly strokes’’ that elicit an ‘‘exquisite relish and satisfaction’’ as by the ‘‘negligences or absurdities with disgust and uneasiness’’ (E 4). The rules governing such judgments, however, are still abridgments of practice that show how one ought to proceed. In this sense, delicacy of taste is analogous to judgment in relations of cause and effect, except correct aesthetic

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judgment – rules by which one ought to judge of beauty and deformity – are formed not on the faculty of understanding, but on that of taste: In all the nobler productions of genius, there is a mutual relation and correspondence of parts; nor can either the beauties or blemishes be perceived by him, whose thought is not capacious enough to comprehend all those parts, and compare them with each other, in order to perceive the consistence and uniformity of the whole. Every work of art has also a certain end or purpose, for which it is calculated; and is to be deemed more or less perfect, as it is more or less fitted to attain this end. (ST 240) The two influences of general rules here stand opposed to one another, since they produce contradictory judgments; but like the wise man who judges correctly of cause and effect, good taste consists in overcoming the natural weakness of the faculties and the ‘‘faint and dubious perception of beauty’’ that prevails in pre-reflective life (ST 243). It involves following general rules in their second influence that have their basis in experience, and which, grasped through reflection, correct the first influence of general rules that otherwise produces errors of judgment or bad taste. The second influence of general rules implies the condemnation of rules formed rashly and prior to reflection. Following such rules consistently would make one’s judgment unassailable, a picture of perfection Hume captures in the figure of the critic or true judge, one in whom judgment is always marked by ‘‘Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice’’ (ST 241). Such characters are rare, Hume observes, because most people labor under one imperfection or another, and they represent an ideal – perfection – towards which one should aim in order to achieve good taste. So what does Hume’s ‘‘standard’’ amount to? Or, to frame the question in different terms, how does treating the standard as a general rule illuminate what Hume aims to discover in ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’? Clearly, since the true judge is ‘‘so rare a character,’’ the standard cannot be reduced to actual empirical judgments of what pleases and displeases: generalizing from imperfect judgments could never yield the ‘‘true standard’’ that Hume seeks to discover. The standard, rather, as a general rule in its second influence, is an abstraction from actual practice that articulates how one ought to judge if one is to judge correctly in matters of beauty. As in the case of rules by which to judge of cause and effect, Hume frames a principle that abridges and gives formal expression to the rules that order the activity of judging things beautiful. The standard is thus a philosophical rule in its second influence, which shows that a person of good taste is one who takes an unprejudiced view of the object and with the assistance of reason grasps the relation of parts to whole and understands the end of the art work in question. ‘‘In all the nobler productions of genius,’’ Hume writes,

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15

there is a mutual relation and correspondence of parts; nor can either the beauties or blemishes be perceived by him, whose thought is capacious enough to comprehend all those parts, and compare them with each other, in order to perceive the consistence and uniformity of the whole. Every work of art has also a certain end or purpose, for which it is calculated; and it is to be deemed more or les perfect, as it is more or less fitted to attain this end. (ST 240) What constitutes good judgment varies depending on the work and the details of the activity: a speech will be judged eloquent if it persuades and a historical narrative fine if it instructs; a poem, on the other hand, is deemed excellent when it engages the passions and pleases the imagination. Since human beings share a common nature, however, within a given culture the ‘‘general principles of taste are uniform’’ and variations in judgment arise due to one or more of the imperfections that make the true judge so rare. The standard governing any art can always be discovered by abstracting from the practice and expressing it in the form of a ‘‘standard of taste.’’ Hume makes this point in his well-known recounting of the episode from Don Quixote, when Sancho tells a story of his kinsmen who could detect the taste of leather and iron in the hogshead of wine: It is with good reason, says SANCHO to the squire with the great nose, that I pretend to have a judgment in wine: This is a quality hereditary in our family. Two of my kinsmen were once called to give their opinion of a hogshead, which was supposed to be excellent, being old and of a good vintage. One of them tastes it; considers it; and after mature reflection pronounces the wine to be good, were it not for a small taste of leather, which he perceived in it. The other, after using the same precautions, gives also his verdict in favour of the wine; but with the reserve of a taste of iron, which he could easily distinguish . . . On emptying the hogshead, there was found at the bottom, an old key with a leathern thong tied to it. (ST 234–35) The kinsmen are people of good taste with respect to wine, a fact shown in their detection of leather and iron. Their expertise is given in the experience and practice of oenological criticism, reflecting upon their judgments and correcting mistakes, thus gaining skill or delicacy of taste in their chosen endeavor. Hume refers to the skill as a hereditary quality, but the conduct that constitutes good taste still conforms to rules in their second influence that correct errors and overcome prejudice to which individuals incline through the first influence of general rules. While these rules are implicit and inseparable from the activity they govern, however, they can be formulated explicitly, abstracted from the activity, and held as the standard against

16

General rules and ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’

which any judgment in wine criticism must be held. Thus, as Hume says, ‘‘to produce . . . general rules or avowed patterns of comparison is like finding the key with the leather thong’’ (ST 235, emphasis added): formulating the rules of good taste with respect to wine (detecting the taste of leather and iron, for example) is analogous to the philosophical task of formulating rules that govern conduct. Both are general rules in their second influence that reveal those patterns of composition that constitute good taste. For beauty, Hume writes, ‘‘is felt, more properly than perceived,’’ but ‘‘if we reason concerning it, and endeavour to fix its standard, we regard a new fact, to wit, the general taste of mankind, or some such fact, which may be the object of reasoning and enquiry’’ (EHU 12.33, SBN 165). ‘‘Fixing’’ the standard at the hogshead of wine shows good taste to consist in the detection of leather and iron; fixing the standard in matters of taste involves showing that beauty consists in grasping the relation of parts to whole and understanding the end of the art work in question. As with the rules of cause and effect, two things follow from discovering a standard in this sense. First, Hume explains the activity of aesthetic judgment; expressing the standard represents the successful ‘‘ordering and distinguishing’’ of those implicit principles that govern aesthetic life by showing in what a judgment of good taste consists. The rules also reflect ‘‘our experience of the reality’’ of principles that order common life, and do so without going beyond experience and ‘‘imposing conjectures and hypotheses on the world.’’ It also means, second, that since philosophical general rules are abridgments expressing an ideal, the rules will rarely if ever be instantiated, and, moreover, are not themselves a sufficient condition for acquiring taste – realizing the standard – in making aesthetic judgments. Again, as with regulating judgments about cause and effect, propositional knowledge of the standard will be of some use, but can never substitute for the experience and practice of making judgments, reflecting upon them, and correcting mistakes one discovers. This process alone provides the knowhow or wisdom that constitutes good judgment. As Hume remarks, ‘‘nothing tends further to encrease and improve this talent [of delicacy], than practice in a particular art, and the frequent survey or contemplation of a particular species of beauty’’ (ST 237). It would be a mistake then to think of propositional knowledge as the source of aesthetic reasoning, which is to be found only in the activity of judging things beautiful. With these observations in mind, we can return to the two claims noted at the outset, and upon which interpreters of Hume’s essay generally agree: that the standard is empirical and that it has normative value. First, it should be clear that the standard is empirical in so far as it is derived from and does not go beyond experience. Given that the standard is a general rule, however, it cannot be simply an inductive principle drawn from actual judgments, since these are, as emphasized above, largely imperfect, and perfect judgment is rarely, if ever, met with in experience. The standard, rather, is an abstraction from the activity itself and presents in propositional

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form what good taste would consist in were individuals free of the imperfections in their natures. The standard is thus derived from experience, but cannot be reduced to it. Second, in so far as they articulate judgments one ought to make with respect to beauty and deformity, the rules have more than descriptive content and thus perform a normative function. Following them has pedagogic value and, as such, they can be thought of as guides to conduct; taste can, in some degree, be learned and taught. At the same time, it is important to realize that, since general rules express in ideal propositional form the concrete activities of common life, they are rarely, if ever, instantiated and can never substitute for engaging in the activities themselves. One becomes a man of eloquence, or an accomplished historian, poet, or wine critic, by practicing the respective craft and striving to achieve perfection according to the standards that govern it. Philosophy and the general rules it articulates, then, can be a partial and provisional guide to conduct, but never its source. Its primary purpose in the aesthetic realm, on Hume’s view, is to explain in what good judgment and taste consists.

The role of Hume’s critic In this latter part of the chapter, I want to show how the above treatment of general rules clarifies Hume’s notion of the critic or true judge, and the role he assigns this figure in ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste.’’ As noted earlier, much of the interpretive focus on this aspect of the essay stems from the fact that Hume initially characterizes the standard as a rule and discovers it finally in the joint verdict of true judges. Broadly speaking, there are two schools of thought on this issue, both of which attempt to reconcile what Jeffrey Wieand has aptly called Hume’s ‘‘two standards of taste.’’22 In the first and most widespread interpretation, commentators side with Hume’s emphasis on the critic and identify the standard with the joint verdict of true judges.23 On the face of it, this seems the most plausible way of understanding the essay, explaining as it does Hume’s own shift from rule to joint verdict. The critic, after all, is somebody ‘‘practice[d] in a particular art’’ (ST 237), as Hume says, an advisor in aesthetic matters, so that it would be reasonable to take the joint verdict of such people as ‘‘the true standard of taste and beauty.’’ The clarification of general rules developed above, however, speaks in favor of a second way of reconciling Hume’s two standards, to focus, that is, on Hume’s initial characterization of the standard as a rule, but to see it as manifest in the joint verdict of true judges who employ it to settle disputes over beauty when they arise.24 If, as the current argument suggests, the standard is a philosophical rule in its second influence that abridges concrete activity, then the judgments of critics cannot constitute the standard in question; it is not created by particular judges, but presupposed and expressed in their activity of judging things beautiful. The true judge thus personifies general rules that express know-how contained in concrete activities,

18

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and, because the standard itself represents perfection that few attain, this figure is best interpreted as ideal: a perfect manifestation of the rules that govern aesthetic judgment and find expression as general rules in their second influence.25 ‘‘So rare a character’’ Hume himself comes close to expressing this second way of reconciling the two standards of taste view in his observation that ‘‘a true judge in the finer arts is observed, even during the most polished ages, to be so rare a character’’ (ST 241). There is, of course, a practical problem of how the judgments of such individuals become so widely and uniformly disseminated such that they could become the standard, one of the concerns Hume express in his ‘‘embarrassing’’ questions: ‘‘But where are such critics to be found?’’ he asks, ‘‘By what marks are they to be known? How distinguish them from pretenders?’’ (ST 241). The more important philosophical point these questions are intended to make, however, is that the actual judgments of critics are not tied conceptually to the standard the essay seeks; the questions are only ‘‘embarrassing’’ if the standard is identified with actual judgments. Hume does not deny that some individuals do achieve excellence – Sancho’s kinsmen and presumably Hume’s own attempts at criticism are cases in point – though even here they approximate the ideal without achieving it: no kinsman detects both leather and iron, and Hume’s literary taste is less delicate that it could be.26 Hume expresses the same view when he speaks of ‘‘fiction’’ and an ‘‘imaginary standard.’’ He points out that the addition or removal of minute parts to or from a body is something that cannot be measured by any sensible means; knowing that a change has taken place, however, we imagine, that two figures, which were equal before, cannot be equal after this removal or addition, [and] we therefore suppose some imaginary standard of equality, by which the appearances and measuring are exactly corrected, and the figures reduc’d entirely to that proportion. (T 1.2.4.24, SBN 48) This ‘‘very natural’’ but fictional standard, moreover, is not limited to objects of external perception. It is central to the science of geometry, Hume argues, and ‘‘is the same in many other subjects.’’ ‘‘A musician finding his ear become every day more delicate,’’ Hume continues, and correcting himself by reflection and attention, proceeds with the same act of the mind, even when the subject fails him, and entertains a notion of a compleat tierce or octave, without being able to tell whence he derives his standard. A painter forms the same fiction with regard to colours. A mechanic with regard to motion. To the one light and shade; to the

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other swift and slow are imagin’d to be capable of an exact comparison and equality beyond the judgments of the senses. (T 1.2.4.24, SBN 48–49) In both cases, it is possible that nobody will actually conform to the standard, but that does not mean that standards do not exist and govern in what excellence, albeit imperfectly realized, consists. As Hume says, ‘‘though the beauties of writing had never been methodized, or reduced to general principles; though no excellent models had everbeen acknowledged; the different degrees of taste would still have subsisted, and the judgment of one man been preferable to another’’ (ST 236, emphasis added). Good judges do not create or constitute standards, but presuppose and conform to them. As James Shelley puts it succinctly, the verdicts of true judges are ‘‘nothing but the verdicts of our perceptually better selves.’’27 Without presupposing perfect standards in terms of which to evaluate the course of one’s progress, the pursuit of artistic excellence would make no sense. The true judge represents standards that – though rarely if ever attained – can be seen as necessary conditions for the possibility of judgments of artistic beauty. ‘‘Questions of fact’’ and ‘‘questions of sentiment’’ In addition to the rarity of actual true judges, Hume emphasizes the ideal nature of the true judge in the distinction he draws between ‘‘questions of fact’’ and ‘‘questions of sentiment.’’ There is often dispute, he observes, over whether a particular person has the characteristics of the true judge and whether, subsequently, they deserve the epithet ‘‘ideal.’’ When such disputes arise, however, people acknowledge that there is indeed a standard while also accepting that others have tastes that depart from it; Hume begins the essay by noting ‘‘the great variety of Taste, as well as of opinion, which prevails in the world’’ (ST 226). Individuals vary with respect to the degree of taste they have achieved, and Hume suggests a number or reasons why this might be the case. Some lack the necessary practice, others are unable to shake prejudice, and still others suffer from ‘‘some defect or perversion in the faculties’’ (ST 243). Variation can be also be explained by age (ST 244) or one’s cultural attachments (ST 245). From all these sources, Hume observes, individuals or peoples are distinguished by ‘‘peculiarities of manner’’ (ST 245), and it is according to our ‘‘humour and disposition’’ that such mundane matters as preferring one author to another or taking one person over another as a friend come about (ST 244). All this undeniable diversity of taste, it is important to realize, falls under the heading matters of fact. The variation is explicable as the many features that distinguish one person from another: that one person takes wine and another beer, reads German literature over French, prefers large dogs to small, and the like, are all facts explicable, in turn, by reference to other facts: that the man in question is English, has an aversion to affectation, is

20

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prone to take long solitary walks, and so on. Indeed, not only do individuals differ widely in their likes and dislikes, but they disagree about what counts as a ‘‘good’’ explanation for a given behavior. Is a category of race more relevant than one of gender, nationality than class, class than upbringing? As Hume explains elsewhere (T 1.3.1–2), matters of fact are characterized by the logical possibility of contradiction; people can and do disagree in their judgments and this is what constitutes the diversity of everyday life. Whereas matters of fact are defined by diversity, and disagreement does not give rise to any logical contradiction, disagreement of the same sort in sentiments involves denying standards that everyone accepts, which results in what Hume calls ‘‘palpable absurdities’’: the man who puts Ogilby over Milton or Bunyan over Addison, ‘‘would be thought to defend no less an extravagance, than if he had maintained a mole-hill to be as high as TENERIFE, or a pond as extensive as the ocean’’ (ST 230–31). As Peter Kivy expresses this point, ‘‘there are bounds of rationality to be trespassed’’ such that ‘‘someone who finds Rembrandt garish or Van Gogh subdued is slightly ‘off the rails,’ not merely of a different opinion.’’28 There might well be people who take Ogilby over Milton as there are those who take molehills for mountains, but ‘‘no one pays attention to such a taste; and we pronounce without scruple the sentiment of these pretended critics to be absurd or ridiculous’’ (ST 231). Such people are in error: they are either defective in some measure or do not understand what they are saying. The upshot of Hume’s distinction is that there is a fundamental difference between sentiments and matters of fact. Sentiments aim at some universal standard, which can, Hume proposes, be sought out and ‘‘fixed’’; for this reason the judgments they involve can be correct or incorrect. Matters of fact, by contrast, involve no such standard; there is no right and wrong when it comes to preferring beer over wine, German literature over French, or large dogs over small; ‘‘vainly, would we, in such cases,’’ Hume says, ‘‘endeavour to enter the sentiments of others, and divest ourselves of those propensities, which are natural to us’’ (ST 244). In such cases, of course, disagreements are sometimes reconciled, but more often than not people ‘‘agree to disagree’’ and the matter ends there. Agreement does not come about and, moreover, there is no need for it to come about. Judgments in matters of fact represent personal expressions of what gratifies: they fall under what Kant later calls das Angenehme, the ‘‘agreeable’’; they do not make universal claims that command the assent of everybody else, but present an individual liking, which, without risk of self-contradiction, can be juxtaposed to likings of a completely different sort.29 Exactly the same point applies to Hume’s true judge. That somebody deserves the title of true judge is an empirical question and, as emphasized above, standards do not disappear even though people of such character are rarely if ever found. The reason for this is that any actual judge who expresses a view about a work of art is expressing a judgment that falls under the agreeable; the judgment is not an ‘‘aesthetic judgment of taste’’ in

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Kant’s sense because it does not command universal assent.30 This is readily confirmed by noting that disputes occur among critics themselves, not to mention the fact that disagreements arise between non-experts who are often ignorant or disdainful of the experts in any given case. Hume’s critic need not be sought among such actual personages because he or she is an ideal figure who personifies the universal sentiments that critics themselves presuppose and that can be expressed as a philosophical general rule or standard. Thus the ‘‘embarrassing’’ questions raised as unwelcome objections by Hume to his own argument turn out to be nugatory because the answers they demand are matters of fact. The attempt to distinguish the critic from his uncultivated counterpart mistakenly assumes that there is a standard to be discovered where none exists. The standard is of a different sort, an ideal presupposed by and expressed in judgments of critic and noncritic alike. People, of course, can disagree over whether a particular person in fact has the ‘‘good sense and delicate imagination’’ to qualify as a true judge; but this only shows, again, that aesthetic judgments do not depend upon such people or the judgments they make.

Conclusion The interpretation of Hume’s ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’ offered in this chapter has been developed in response to a significant lacuna in the interpretive literature the essay has inspired. Commentators have not paid sufficient attention to the fact that Hume himself characterizes the standard in terms of a general rule, and have thus overlooked the possibility that clarifying this concept could shed light on the kind of standard Hume aims to discover. Hume’s distinction between general rules in their first and second influence reflects the important difference between true judgments that conform to sense and reason, and errors that follow from the free associative power of the imagination. Through reflection, the second influence of general rules can correct the first, and in making this explicit – by ‘‘fixing’’ the rules of cause and effect, or ‘‘discovering’’ a standard of taste – Hume produces philosophical rules in their second influence that both abridge concrete activity and explain in what true judgment consists. Having understood Hume’s search for a standard in this sense, it becomes clear how the true judge is ideal, a personification of general rules and a model, which, if followed, would always lead to correct judgment. Critics themselves, it transpires, conform to the standard in question; their judgments are manifestations or expressions of standards presupposed by everybody, and explicitly accepted by those with sufficient experience and an educated taste. While this first chapter has been concerned with general rules primarily as a way of understanding Hume’s search for a standard in aesthetics, it also speaks to his view of philosophical inquiry more generally; as such, the conclusions drawn from concentrating on ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’ are potentially useful for shedding light on other parts of his thought. If the

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task of criticism is to frame general rules that abridge and explain human conduct, why should the same form of inquiry not organize Hume’s overall approach to epistemology (as in the eight rules of cause and effect), or his writing on history, politics, or, the subject pertinent to the current study, in morals? Hume’s moral philosophy is of particular interest in this regard, since, as a number of commentators have pointed out, his search for a ‘‘principle of morals’’ has much in common with the search for a standard of taste. Hume’s writing on morals is replete with aesthetic language, and there are clear parallels to be drawn between beauty, taste, and a true judge in nature and art, and the same phenomena in the sphere of morals. Gaining a clear understanding of Hume’s essay on taste is worthwhile in itself, but the real value of clarifying ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’ lies in the interpretive inroads it opens up into Hume’s philosophical system and, as I hope to show in subsequent chapters, into his treatment of morals in particular.

2

Aesthetic beauty and moral beauty

We have seen that when Hume speaks of ‘‘discovering’’ a standard of taste, his interest is focused primarily on making explicit and explaining the implicit order of everyday life. The standard constitutes a philosophical explanation of aesthetic judgment, which at once abridges the concrete activity of engaging in the practice of judging things beautiful. This is manifest in the figure of the true judge, a model of perfection that shows how one ought to behave if one wishes to become a person of taste. The aim of this second chapter is to show that Hume follows a similar line of thinking in his approach to morals, an area of his philosophy replete with aesthetic language. I begin by considering the parallels between moral beauty and beauty in art and nature, before applying the interpretation of the essay on taste developed in chapter one to the form and content of his moral thought. Doing so reveals three things. First, that Hume’s search for a principle of morals is a philosophical rule in its second influence that explains moral distinctions by abridging the order of common life. Second, that by discovering in what correct conduct consists, Hume at once specifies how one ought to behave if one wants to achieve excellence in moral judgment. This standard for correct judgment is manifest, third, in what might be termed the moral expert, an ideal figure who plays a comparable role in the case of moral judgment as does the true judge in matters of taste.

Natural beauty and moral beauty Three points of comparison As we saw in the first chapter, Hume understands beauty and deformity, and judgments pertaining to them, in terms of a sentiment or feeling that arises on the basis of a fit between perceiver and perceived, the origin of which can be traced to the principles of pleasure and pain. Hume also assumes that these features of natural and artistic beauty are also to be found in the moral evaluation of conduct. Hume writes that the ‘‘sense of morals is a principle inherent in the soul’’ (T 3.3.6.3, SBN 619); he speaks of the ‘‘sense of beauty and deformity in action, composition, and external

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Aesthetic beauty and moral beauty

objects’’ (T 2.1.2.3, SBN 276; see T 1.3.10.1, SBN 118); and observes that beauty and deformity of all kinds, ‘‘whether survey’d in an animate or inanimate object,’’ (T 2.1.8.1, SBN 298) give rise to pleasure and pain: to have the sense of virtue, is nothing but to feel a satisfaction of a particular kind from the contemplation of a character. The very feeling constitutes our praise or admiration . . . The case is the same as in our judgments concerning all kinds of beauty, and tastes, and sensations. Our approbation is imply’d in the immediate pleasure they convey to us. (T 3.1.2.3, SBN 471, latter emphasis added) Hume draws this parallel between natural and moral beauty often and as a matter of course. ‘‘A building, whose doors and windows were exact squares,’’ he says for example, ‘‘would hurt the eye by that very proportion; as ill adapted to the figure of a human creature.’’ ‘‘What wonder then,’’ he continues, completing the analogy, ‘‘that a man, whose habits and conduct are hurtful to society, and dangerous or pernicious to every one who has an intercourse with him, should, on that account, be an object of disapprobation, and communicate to every spectator the strongest sentiment of disgust and hatred?’’ (EPM 5.1, SBN 212–13). Again, ‘‘in judging the beauty of animal bodies, we always carry in our eye the economy of a certain species; and where the limbs and features observe that proportion, which is common to the species, we pronounce them handsome and beautiful.’’ So, he concludes, ‘‘In like manner we always consider the natural and usual force of the passions, when we determine concerning virtue and vice; and if the passions depart very much from the common measures on either side, they are always disapprov’d as vicious’’ (T 3.2.1.18, SBN 483). In addition to drawing the parallel in these general terms, Hume makes various remarks that directly reflect the three elements of his account of beauty outlined above. First, like natural beauty and deformity, moral beauty does not reflect qualities in objects themselves, but consists of sentiments in the subject that arise as a result of observing certain conduct or characters. ‘‘Vice and virtue . . .’’ Hume writes, ‘‘may be compared to sounds, colours, heat, and cold, which, according to moral philosophy, are not qualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind’’ (T 3.1.1.26, SBN 469). That an action is pronounced criminal or vicious is ‘‘but to feel, on our part, some sentiment of blame or approbation’’ and, Hume continues, ‘‘this doctrine will become still more evident, if we compare moral beauty with natural, to which in many particulars it bears so near a resemblance.’’ For ‘‘in all decisions of taste or external beauty . . . we . . . proceed to feel a sentiment of complacency or disgust, according to the nature of the object, and disposition of our organs’’ (EPM Appx. 1.13, SBN 291). Moral distinctions arise according to ‘‘principles which make us feel a satisfaction or uneasiness from the survey of any character’’ (T 3.1.2.3, SBN 471; see also T 3.2.8.8, SBN 546–47 and T 3.3.1.30, SBN 591). Further, speaking of the

Aesthetic beauty and moral beauty

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passions, Hume observes ‘‘that in order to produce an affection of any kind, ‘tis only requisite to present some good or evil’’ (T 2.3.9.1, SBN 438), and while considering whether moral distinctions might be derived from reason, he describes moral good and evil as belonging ‘‘only to actions of the mind.’’ They are ‘‘deriv’d from our situation with regard to external objects,’’ existing ‘‘only betwixt internal actions’’ and not amongst external objects themselves (T 3.1.1.21, SBN 464–65). Or again, in a well-known passage in which he expresses his position most clearly, Hume remarks: You can never find it [vice], till you turn your reflexion into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you, towards this action. Here is a matter of fact; but ‘tis the object of feeling not of reason. So that when you pronounce any action or character to be vicious, you mean nothing, but that from the constitution of your nature you have a feeling or sentiment of blame from the contemplation of it. Vice and virtue, therefore, may be compar’d to sounds, colours, heat and cold, which, according to modern philosophy, are not qualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind. (T 3.1.1.26, SBN 468–69, emphasis added) Hume repeats the same point later in ‘‘The Sceptic,’’ remarking how ‘‘there is a sympathy or conformity between the mind and its objects.’’ For ‘‘with the qualities of beautiful and deformed, desirable and odious . . . the mind feels a sentiment of delight and uneasiness, approbation or blame, consequent to that survey; and this sentiment determines it [the mind] to affix the epithet beautiful or deformed, desirable or odious‘‘ (E 164–65). Second, as with the contemplation of natural objects, there is a ‘‘fit’’ between human beings and particular actions and characters that allows moral distinctions to arise; we are structured in such a way that sentiments are formed under appropriate circumstances.1 As a natural object or a work of art possesses qualities of utility that produce feelings of pleasure or displeasure leading individuals to judge them beautiful or deformed, so a particular action or the character of a person gives rise to pleasure or pain, and this occasions approval or disapproval on the part of the spectator. ‘‘There is no spectacle so fair and beautiful as a noble and generous action; nor any which gives us more abhorrence than one that is cruel and treacherous’’ (T 3.1.2.1, SBN 470), and it is the ‘‘general survey or view of any action or quality in the mind . . . [which] gives rise to our approbation or blame’’ (T 3.3. 5.1, SBN 614); ‘‘to have a sense of virtue, is to feel a satisfaction of a particular kind from the contemplation of a character’’ (T 3.1.2.3, SBN 471). Similarly, in the second Enquiry, Hume remarks how ‘‘in every judgment of beauty, the feelings of the person affected enter into consideration, and communicate to the spectator similar touches of pain or pleasure. What wonder, then,’’ he asks rhetorically, ‘‘if we can pronounce no judgment concerning the character and conduct of men, without considering the

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tendencies of their actions, and the happiness and misery which thence arises to society?’’ (EPM 5.38, SBN 224–25). As sweet and bitter arise from an external sense, and aesthetic judgments from an internal sense of beauty, so moral judgments are a function of an internal ‘‘moral’’ sense (T 3.1.2). Indeed, the very concept of a moral sense means, in Hutcheson’s words, ‘‘to receive any Idea from the Presence of an Object which occurs to us, independent of our Will.’’2 Hume concurs in this: ‘‘it is requisite,’’ he says, ‘‘that there should be some sentiment which it [virtue] touches, some internal taste or feeling, or whatever you please to call it, which distinguishes moral good and evil, and which embraces the one and rejects the other’’ (EPM Appx. 1.20, SBN 294). ‘‘We must at last acknowledge,’’ moreover, ‘‘that . . . crime or immorality is no particular fact or relation, which can be the object of the understanding, but arises entirely from the sentiment of disapprobation, which, by the structure of human nature, we unavoidably feel on the apprehension of barbarity or treachery’’ (EPM Appx. 1.16, SBN 292–93). It is on account of this capacity or structure that the social virtues ‘‘have a natural beauty and amiableness, which . . . recommends them to the esteem of uninstructed mankind, and engages their affections’’ (EPM 5.4, SBN 214), and, in like manner, explains how the ‘‘prejudice resulting from them [faults and imperfections], immediately strikes our eye, and gives us the sentiment of pain and disapprobation’’ (EPM 6.1, SBN 233), just as ‘‘the beauty of our person, of itself, and by its very appearance, gives pleasure, as well as pride; and its deformity, pain as well as humility’’ (T 2.1.5.1, SBN 285).3 Third, the beauty or deformity of actions and characters arises either because it is a source of pleasure/pain or because it expresses utility. Hume categorizes beauty of all kinds – ‘‘in action, composition, and external objects’’ – as calm impressions of reflection, which ‘‘arise originally’’ and ‘‘without any introduction make their appearance in the soul’’ (T 2.1.1.1–3, SBN 275–76). As in the case of artistic and natural beauty, Hume sometimes specifies these principles when discussing moral distinctions: he says, for instance, that ‘‘utility, resulting from the social virtues, forms at least, a part of their merit, and is one source of that approbation and regard so universally paid to them’’ (EPM 2.8, SBN 179), and he presents utility as a ‘‘source of moral sentiments,’’ saying that ‘‘everything, which contributes to the happiness of society, recommends itself directly to our approbation and good-will’’ (EPM 5.17, SBN 219). On other occasions, by contrast, pleasure is emphasized above what is useful, and along with pain, is identified with good and evil. There is ‘‘nothing common to natural and moral beauty . . . but this power of producing pleasure’’ (T 2.1.8.3, SBN 300), and moral good and evil are known, Hume writes, as ‘‘particular pains or pleasures,’’ so that the impression of pleasure or uneasiness is sufficient to explain virtue and vice (T 2.3.2.3, SBN 471; see T 2.3.9.8, SBN 439). As with natural beauty, Hume ultimately takes both principles together as parts of a single explanatory principle. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Book III of

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the Treatise and, even more clearly, in his recasting of the same argument in the second Enquiry. The latter work is so structured that the account of moral distinctions moves progressively through an argument where a moral excellence is held to exist only on account of its being useful or agreeable to oneself or others.4 Animate and inanimate objects For Hume, then, there is no difference in kind between the beauty of natural and artistic objects, on the one hand, and the beauty of conduct and character, on the other. Beauty arises from a single origin and whether its manifestations are in nature, art, or human conduct, it can be accounted for by way of the same principles. This is not to say that natural beauty and moral beauty are identical, however, and Hume himself recognizes that the approach is not without its complications. This is clear when he draws attention to the fact that animate and inanimate objects occasion qualitatively different sentiments. Hume addresses this question in T 3.1–2, and offers three examples to show how sentiments of moral beauty differ from those of natural beauty. In the first, he compares the case of a tree, which generates a sapling, with a parent who produces a child. As Hume points out, if the sapling grows and ‘‘at last overtops and destroys the parent tree,’’ the charge of parricide would be quite inappropriate in a way that the same attribution would be fitting if a child murdered its parent. Though the relations be the same, Hume argues, namely, that a man ‘‘causes’’ the death of parent as a sapling ‘‘causes’’ the destruction of a tree, the causes turn out to be different: ‘‘‘Tis a will or choice, that determines a man to kill to his parent; and they are the laws of matter and motion, that determine a sapling to destroy the oak, from which it sprung’’ (T 3.1.1.24, SBN 467). Terms such as ‘‘ingratitude’’ or ‘‘parricide’’ can only be applied to the actions of human beings, and the discovery of relations alone, Hume concludes, is insufficient to explain the difference between the two cases; moral distinctions require recourse to ‘‘sentiment’’ and the notion of ‘‘internal sense.’’5 Hume’s second example does not concern inanimate objects per se, but the logic of his argument is the same. He notes that although animals are comparable to human beings with respect to their cognitive structure – understanding, association of ideas, the role of experience, and the like – they cannot be charged, except metaphorically, with the crime of incest. While in the ‘‘human species [incest] is criminal,’’ Hume observes, ‘‘. . . the very same action, and the same relations in animals have not the smallest moral turpitude or deformity’’ (T 3.1.1.25, SBN 467). Again, since animals are indeed ‘‘susceptible of the same relations, with respect to each other, as the human species’’ (T 3.1.1.25, SBN 468), the relations themselves cannot account for moral distinctions. Moral distinctions, rather, are presupposed by reason, and their origin must be sought in the different sentiments that arise in each case.

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The third example follows from an objection that Hume raises to his view that the principles of pleasure and pain can explain the origin of moral distinctions. If the principle can account for the origin of morality, he reasons, then ‘‘any object, whether animate or inanimate, rational or irrational, might become morally good or evil, provided it can excite a satisfaction or uneasiness’’ (T 3.1.2.4, SBN 471). For ‘‘a good composition of music and a bottle of good wine equally produce pleasure; and, what is more, their goodness is determin’d merely by the pleasure.’’ ‘‘But,’’ Hume then asks, ‘‘shall we say upon that account that, the wine is harmonious, or the music of a good flavour?’’ Clearly, the answer to this question is in the negative; the pleasure in each case is distinct, a fact reflected in the specific vocabulary through which the different pleasures are expressed. Similarly, ‘‘an inanimate object, and the character of sentiments of any person may, both of them, give satisfaction . . . [but we] ascribe virtue to the one and not to the other.’’ So, analogously, the pleasure derived from witnessing conduct subsequently judged moral will be ‘‘pleasure’’ of a ‘‘peculiar kind’’: sometimes the sentiments attached to ‘‘interest’’ are confounded with those attaching to morals, but ‘‘they are, in themselves, distinct’’ (T 3.1.2.4, SBN 472).6 In the second Enquiry Hume again raises the issue of different sentiments, repeating the case of the sapling, as well as introducing a further example concerning virtue and utility. ‘‘We ought not to imagine,’’ he says, ‘‘because an inanimate object may be useful as well as a man, that therefore it ought also . . . to merit the appellation virtuous.’’ Hume emphasizes how the ‘‘sentiments, excited by utility, are, in the two cases, very different,’’ since ‘‘the one is mixed with affection, esteem, approbation, &c., and not the other.’’ The same is true in the case of ‘‘an inanimate object,’’ he continues, which ‘‘may have good colour and proportions as well as a human figure. But can we ever be in love with the former?’’ Once again, Hume points out that there is a ‘‘numerous set of passions and sentiments, of which thinking rational beings are, by the original constitution of nature, the only proper objects: and though the very same qualities be transferred to an insensible, inanimate being, they will not excite the same senses.’’ Finally, Hume notes that the appellation of ‘‘virtue’’ applied to plants on account of their ‘‘beneficial qualities of herbs and minerals’’ is ‘‘an effect of the caprice of language.’’ ‘‘For though there be a species of approbation attending even inanimate objects, when beneficial, yet this sentiment is so weak, and so different from that which is directed to beneficent magistrates or statesmen; that they ought not be ranked under the same class or appellation’’ (EPM 5.1n17, SBN 213n1).7

Reflection and the principle of morals Having seen how Hume considers aesthetic and moral beauty to be similar in kind, we can now return to ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’ and draw on two of its central features to elucidate Hume’s moral philosophy. As in his

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approach to beauty, Hume distinguishes between the two influences of rules to show that while individuals can correct errors of judgment to improve their characters, philosophers abridge the order of common life to explain in what morals consists. In doing so he also shows how people ought to behave if they want to make correct moral judgments. Like beauty in art and nature, moral beauty presupposes a certain fit between object and perceiver; ‘‘that which renders morality an active principle,’’ Hume writes, ‘‘and constitutes virtue or happiness, and vice our misery . . . depends upon some internal sense or feeling, which nature has made universal in the whole species’’ (EPM 1.9, SBN 172–73). Also like aesthetic judgments, however, moral judgments are often based on the imagination rather than on good sense and experience, and, as such, they take the form of rules in their first influence, which are likely to be erroneous. ‘‘If any false opinion, embraced from appearances, has been found to prevail,’’ Hume writes, ‘‘as soon as farther experience and sounder reasoning has given us juster notions of human affairs, we retract our first sentiment, and adjust anew the boundaries of moral good and evil’’ (EPM 2.17, SBN 180). Though the fit between conduct and the capacity to be affected after a particular manner is natural, the correct sentiment does not arise automatically; reflection is required to frame rules in their second influence that can subsequently correct mistaken judgments and direct conduct in the right way. ‘‘In order to judge aright of a composition of genius,’’ Hume writes in ‘‘Of the Delicacy of Taste,’’ ‘‘there are so many views to be taken in, so many circumstances to be compared, and such a knowledge of human nature requisite, that no man, who is not possessed of the soundest judgment, will ever make a tolerable critic in such performances’’ (E 6). Thus, ‘‘in order to pave the way for such a sentiment, and give a proper discernment of its object, it is necessary . . . that much reasoning should precede, that nice distinctions be made, just conclusions drawn, distinct comparisons formed, complicated relations examined, and general facts fixed and ascertained.’’ Some species of beauty are wholly adventitious, Hume emphasizes, and ‘‘on their first appearance command our affection and approbation.’’ In ‘‘many orders of beauty,’’ however, ‘‘. . . it is requisite to employ much reasoning, in order to feel the proper sentiment; and a false relish may frequently be corrected by argument and reflection. There are just grounds to conclude,’’ Hume adds, ‘‘that moral beauty partakes much of this latter species, and demands the assistance of our intellectual faculties, in order to give a suitable influence on the human mind’’ (EPM 1.9, SBN 172–73). Actions may strike the imagination with an immediacy that produces belief in a certain state of affairs, just as objects strike the eye as equal in size before the distance between them is taken into account. Correction is required to remove ‘‘inequalities of our internal emotions and perceptions,’’ then, much as ‘‘it preserves us from error, in the several variations of images, presented to our external senses’’ (EPM 5.41, SBN 227). The effect of contiguity, for example, means that a ‘‘small benefit done to ourselves, or

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our near friends, excites more lively sentiments of love and approbation than a great benefit done to a distant commonwealth: But still we know here,’’ Hume points out, ‘‘as in all the senses, to correct these inequalities by reflection, and retain a general standard of vice and virtue’’ (EPM 5.42n25, SBN 229n1). Pre-reflective rules in their first influence guide the ‘‘rude, untaught savage,’’ for example, who ‘‘regulates chiefly his love and hatred by the ideas of private utility and injury, and has but faint conceptions of a general rule or system of behaviour’’ (EPM 9.8n57, SBN 274–75n1). For the same reason, general rules in their first influence lead us to the unfounded judgment that all Irishmen are witless and all Frenchmen flighty (T 1.3.13.7, SBN 146); we have a natural tendency to extend general rules uncritically ‘‘beyond the principle whence they first arise’’ (EPM 4.7, SBN 207). General rules in their second influence are thus formed ‘‘against the reposing any assurance in those momentary glimpses of light, which arise in the imagination from a feign’d resemblance and contiguity’’ (T 1.3.9.6, SBN 110). Wisdom prevails when practice is based upon the tribunal of reason rather than faculty of imagination, and like highwaymen and travelers, who overcome individual passions for the sake of commerce and order, people pay ‘‘homage to general rules’’ (EPM 9.8n57, SBN 275n1). On this basis, Hume observes, we have been convinced by ‘‘history and experience’’ to reject the practice of tyrannicide; we can also change our minds about the beneficence of princes when it is discovered that they squander their wealth on the idle and prodigal, and we have come to regard refinement as a source of industry, civility, and arts, where it was previously rejected as a cause of faction and ‘‘total loss of liberty’’ (EPM 2.19–21, SBN 180–81). While ordinary reflection may correct prejudices of this sort, however, many remain, and, though arbitrary and unsound, continue for generations on the strength of custom alone; for general rules give rise to errors when they are ‘‘extended beyond the principle, whence they first arise,’’ and notwithstanding the exception, ‘‘the general rule prevails’’ (T 2.1.9.13, SBN 309). Such are the ‘‘laws of chastity’’ that apply to women even after they are beyond child-bearing age (EPM 4.7, SBN 207), for instance; the royal prejudice against female sovereigns despite their ‘‘nearer degrees of consanguinity’’ (H II, 197) and the transmission of honor and esteem through the male rather than female line ‘‘even tho’ the mother shou’d be possesst of a superior spirit and genius.’’ Strictly speaking, these are mistakes based on the associative principles of the imagination, and, as a result, the practices and institutional arrangements to which they give rise are not the most conducive to achieving the desired ends: prejudicial judgments about the inherent inadequacy of female sovereigns or the questionable talents of daughters when compared to sons will not always produce the best ruler, and the practice could and should be corrected in the light of experience and sound judgment. This would become clear were the practices made an object of reflection; practice could then be corrected in light of experience, sense, and reason.

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Although many practices may never become the object of ordinary reflection and correction, however, they can still become the object of philosophical reflection and explanation. Reflection of this sort produces philosophical rules in their second influence, which articulate those implicit principles that govern the everyday practice of moral judgment. As with beauty in art and nature, so in the sphere of morals the philosophically curious ‘‘want to learn the foundations’’ of our common inferences, and ‘‘give some satisfactory theory and explication’’ of the sentiments that are ‘‘everyday experienced of praise and blame’’ (EPM Appx. 4.22, SBN 322). Hume fulfills this task by revealing the ‘‘principles, which make us feel a satisfaction or uneasiness from the survey of any character’’ (T 3.1.2.3, SBN 471); finding ‘‘general principles, upon which all our notions of morals are founded’’ (T 3.1.2.6, SBN 473); or, as he puts in the second Enquiry, unearthing ‘‘the foundation of ethics’’ by ‘‘find[ing] those universal principles, from which all censure and approbation is ultimately derived’’ (EPM 1.10, SBN 174; see also EHU 1.15 and 8.7, SBN 15 and 83–84). As in the case of aesthetic judgment, producing philosophical general rules that abridge the activity of moral judgment means to have understood that activity. Articulating the principles of morals – by tracing judgment to pleasure and pain, approbation and disapprobation – constitutes a philosophical explanation of morals; it represents the successful ‘‘ordering and distinguishing’’ of those implicit principles that govern the everyday practice of moral judgment. This reflects ‘‘our experience of the reality’’ of principles that order common life, but without going beyond experience and ‘‘imposing conjectures and hypotheses on the world.’’ At the same time, philosophical general rules are abridgments, post hoc summaries of the activity they abridge, which they present in ideal form. Philosophical rules thus show how one ought to behave if one aims to achieve excellence in moral judgment. The philosopher at once explains conduct and – as in the case of aesthetic judgment – discovers a standard of morals in terms of which correct conduct can be assessed. The philosophical rules Hume generates have both explanatory and normative force. The philosopher, then, can be either metaphysician or moralist and, Hume’s claim that they cannot appear together notwithstanding, he often combines both characters in the same work.8 He recommends the ‘‘catalogue of virtues’’ (EPM 3.3, SBN 184 passim) as easily as he condemns the vices of the ‘‘monkish’’ (EPM 9.3, SBN 270), and those under the spell of religious enthusiasm and superstition are favorite targets of Hume’s deprecating comments. This dual role of the philosopher is best expressed in the analogy Hume draws between the metaphysician and the anatomist, on the one hand, and the painter and the practical moralist or ethicist, on the other.9 The metaphysician is comparable to the anatomist who carries ‘‘his attention to the inward structure of the human body’’ and ‘‘presents to the eye the most hideous and disagreeable details’’ (EHU 1.8, SBN 10). He seeks those general principles that, in the moral sphere, explain the origin of

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virtue and vice in censure and approbation. The practical moralist, by contrast, paints ‘‘pictures of human life in various attitudes and situations; and inspire[s] us with different sentiments, of praise or blame, admiration or ridicule, according to the qualities of the object, which they set before us’’ (EHU 1.8, SBN 9–10). Like the painter, he gives advice, appeals to our sentiments, and recommends one course of action while condemning another. Hume sees the two tasks as distinct, but mutually supporting; an ‘‘anatomist ought never to emulate the painter’’ (T 3.3.6.6, SBN 620) though the latter will be more successful if he possesses an ‘‘accurate knowledge’’ of human nature (EHU 1.8, SBN 9–10). Or, as Hume expresses it in the concluding paragraph of the Treatise, the art of painting requires knowledge of anatomy. ‘‘We must have an exact knowledge of the arts,’’ he writes, ‘‘their situation and connexion, before we can design with any elegance or correctness. And thus the most abstract speculations concerning human nature, however cold and unentertaining, become subservient to practical morality; and may render this latter science more correct in its precepts, and more persuasive in its exhortations’’ (T 3.3.6.6, SBN 621.) While Hume recognizes the mutual relationship between painting and anatomy, he consistently identifies himself as an anatomist: his primary task does not fall under the heading of ‘‘practical philosophy’’ and its moralizing attempt to ‘‘influence our passions and actions, and go beyond the calm and indolent judgments of the understanding’’ (T 3.1.1.5, SBN 457). He is interested more in the ‘‘speculative, than the practical part of morals,’’ where the primary aim is not ‘‘to recommend generosity and benevolence, or to paint, in their true colours, all the genuine charms of the social virtues’’ (EPM 2.5, SBN 177–78; see T 3.3.6.6, SBN 620–21), but to seek the secret springs and principles from which moral distinctions originate. While Hume cannot help influencing the passions as a result of his framing philosophical rules in their second influence, he proceeds with the disinterested eye of the speculative metaphysician.

The moral expert Given, as argued thus far, that Hume’s moral philosophy can be understood along the same lines as his search for a standard of taste, the two important conclusions drawn with respect to the latter can be applied to the former. First, as emphasized above, since philosophical general rules are abridgments, they are by definition post hoc summaries of the activity they abridge. Knowing the rules does not guarantee that mistakes will not be made, and simply learning and applying the rules is an insufficient basis for mastering the activity in question. Propositional knowledge has some pedagogic value, but only by engaging in the activity can one learn when and how to apply the rules and acquire the skill or know-how that constitutes concrete knowledge. In the case of regulating judgments about morals, then, knowing the principles upon which morality is based will be of some use,

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but can never substitute for the experience of making judgments, reflecting upon them, and appropriately correcting mistakes that one has made. This, as we shall see in chapter four, is expressed in Hume’s conception of character as a ‘‘practical’’ matter, the outcome of engaging in conduct that elicits moral approbation or disapprobation, praise or blame. Second, and the issue to be taken up in the remainder of the current chapter, framing philosophical rules in their second influence represents an empirical standard in the sense that they are derived from and do not go beyond experience; the standard is discovered by examining the sorts of judgments that individuals make in the course of their moral reasoning. Discovering the principles of morals involves following a ‘‘simple method,’’ as Hume writes in the second Enquiry: to ‘‘analyze the complication of mental qualities, which form what, in common life, we call PERSONAL MERIT.’’ Since this is a ‘‘question of fact, not of abstract science,’’ he continues, ‘‘we can expect success, by following the experimental method, and deducing general maxims from a comparison of particular instances’’ (EPM 1.10, SBN 174). As the discussion of Hume’s aesthetics made clear, however, the general maxim or standard that is subsequently discovered cannot simply be the result of induction from actual judgments; like the true judge in matters of taste, individuals capable of perfect judgment are rarely, if ever, met with in experience. The standard, rather, is as an ideal expression of the practice, and thus an abstraction from the activity itself that presents in propositional form what good moral judgment would consist in were individuals free of the imperfections of their nature – self-interest, prejudice, passions, and the like. The standard of morals, then – like the standard of taste – is derived from experience, but cannot be reduced to it. We have already seen how, in Hume’s aesthetics, this standard is personified by the critic or true judge, an ideal figure or model in which the five characteristics that constitute good judgment are manifest: strong sense, delicate sentiment, practice, comparison, and freedom from prejudice.10 This figure shows how one ought to behave if one wants to achieve excellence in aesthetic judgment. In Hume’s moral philosophy, the same idea is represented by what might be called the moral expert, an ideal figure who personifies the same characteristics of good judgment and thus represents how one ought to behave if one wants to achieve excellence in moral judgment. Since the standard is a philosophical rule in its second influence that abridges concrete activity, the moral expert personifies general rules that express the know-how contained in concrete activities. The standard is presupposed by and expressed in actual moral judgments, and thus represents the perfection that few if any attain. The moral expert is ideal because a personification of the rules that, if followed, would always render a judgment correct and be the mark of a person of good character. Hume expresses this idea most clearly in his distinction between ‘‘particular’’ and ‘‘steady and general points of view’’; the latter allow an individual to correct the effects of contiguity and overcome the ‘‘continual

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fluctuations’’ of our sentiments by taking up the position of an ‘‘impartial’’ or ‘‘judicious spectator.’’11 As Hume writes: every particular man has a peculiar position with regard to others; and ‘tis impossible we cou’d ever converse together on any reasonable terms, were each of us to consider characters and persons, only as they appear from his peculiar point of view. In order, therefore, to prevent those continual contradictions, and arrive at a more stable judgment of things, we fix on some steady and general points of view; and always, in our thoughts, place ourselves in them, whatever may be our present situation. (T 3.3.1.15, SBN 581–82) Hume expresses the same point in the second Enquiry, observing that we every day meet with persons who are in a situation different from us, and who could never converse with us were we to remain constantly in that position and point of view, which is peculiar to ourselves. The intercourse of sentiments, therefore in society and conversation, makes us form so general and unalterable standard, by which we may approve or disapprove of characters and manners. (EPM 5.42, SBN 229) Indeed, we generally assume that such a general point of view exists and that good judgment requires us to adopt it. When praising virtue, as Hume emphasizes, one assumes that the audience will concur; everybody understands denouncing one’s enemy, by contrast, to involve the ‘‘language of self-love,’’ which arises from the peculiar circumstances that underlie antagonism and rivalry. In the former case, a man must ‘‘depart from his private and particular situation, and must choose a point of view, common to him with others: He must move some universal principle of the human frame, and touch a string, to which all mankind have an accord and symphony’’ (EPM 9.6, SBN 272; see also EPM 9.8, SBN 274). Here, moral sentiments form the ‘‘party of human kind against vice and or disorder, its common enemy’’ (EPM 9.9, SBN 275). While this moral expert is ideal in the sense argued, it should not, as Geoffrey Sayre-McCord has rightly emphasized, be seen as a figure who enjoys an ‘‘impossible omniscience’’ or ‘‘angelic equi-sympathetic engagement with all of humanity.’’ This does not mean that Hume’s figure is not ideal in any sense, however, only that, as Sayre-McCord points out, Hume’s standard is ‘‘more human in scope and more accessible in practice than any set by an Ideal Observer.’’12 There is no reason why this figure cannot be ‘‘fully informed, entirely objective and not self-interested,’’ as Elizabeth Radcliffe puts it, so that ‘‘virtue and vice themselves do not depend on actual human sentiments, but on the projected sentiments of an ideal spectator.’’13 The moral expert is at once ideal and accessible, because when

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painted in the most amiable colors, the figure inspires virtue, brings individuals ‘‘nearer to that model of perfection which it describes,’’ and thus directs and reforms conduct (EHU 1.3, SBN 7). Hume expresses this idea most clearly in the composite sketch of Cleanthes at the end of the second Enquiry, in whom the qualities approved for their utility or agreeableness unite in a single vision of perfection. Here are to be found, in perfect proportion, honor and humanity, quick penetration and knowledge of men and business, wit and good manners, tranquility of soul and greatness of mind. Each stroke of the brush combines to form a composite sketch of a figure that ‘‘a philosopher might select . . . as a model of perfect virtue’’ (EPM 9.2, SBN 267–70).14 While Cleanthes is a vision of perfection – a ‘‘model of a praiseworthy character, consisting of all the most amiable moral virtues’’ (EPM 5.10, SBN 216) – history is replete with actual heroes who at different times and places instantiate and approximate the model most fully. ‘‘Give instances,’’ Hume says, ‘‘in which these [virtues] display themselves after an eminent and extraordinary manner: You readily engage the esteem and approbation of all your audience, who never so much as enquire in what age and country the person lived, who possessed these noble qualities’’ (EPM 5.10, SBN 216). Hume discovers such ‘‘models’’ at various times and places in whom particular virtues or sets of virtues are realized to an extraordinary, albeit imperfect, degree. Epamindondas, for example, the Greek general and statesman, stands for ‘‘perfect merit’’ among the ancients; in him ‘‘all the virtues are found united; force of body, eloquence of expression, vigour of mind, contempt of riches, gentleness of disposition, and what is chiefly to be regarded, courage and conduct in war’’ (EPM 6.26n31, SBN 245n1). Ceasar and Cato, on the other hand, represent love and esteem, respectively, as Cicero’s Offices portray prudence, magnanimity, temperance, and decency. Epictetus, by contrast, personifies ‘‘firm temper and a sound understanding,’’ as the judgments of Solomon and David epitomize wisdom (see EPM Appx. 4.6–15, SBN 316–20). Since the moral expert is an ideal figure, like the true judge in ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste,’’ he will rarely if ever be met with in experience. Even the eminent will have vice mixed with their virtue. Hannibal, for instance, was a general of great courage, confidence, boldness, and prudence; a man, on Livy’s reckoning, immune to the fatigue of body and mind, indifferent to the gratification of ‘‘voluptuous appetites,’’ and oblivious to heat and cold, night and day: but even in him, Hume reports, such ‘‘VIRTUES were balanced by great VICES: Inhuman cruelty; perfidy more than punic; no truth, no faith, no regard to oaths, promises, or religion.’’ Likewise, Alexander the Sixth, Hume points out, citing Guicciardini’s portrait of the ruler in his History of Italy, combined prudence, a talent for persuasion, diligence and dexterity, with ‘‘no faith, no religion, insatiable avarice, exorbitant ambition, and a more than barbarous cruelty’’ (EPM Appx. 4.17–18, SBN 320–21).

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At the other extreme, one could conceive of an anti-Cleanthes, a figure lacking in all virtue and personifying perfect vice. Such a ‘‘creature, absolutely malicious and spiteful, were there any such in nature, must be worse than indifferent to the images of vice and virtue,’’ Hume observes. ‘‘All his sentiments must be inverted, and directly opposite to those, which prevail in the human species.’’ As with the vision of moral perfection, there are those in history who approximate it: Nero, for example, murderer of his own mother; Timon the ‘‘manhater’’ (EPM 5.40, SBN 226); and Henry VIII of England, of whom Hume writes that a ‘‘catalogue of his vices would comprehend many of the worst qualities incident to human nature: Violence, cruelty, profusion, rapacity, injustice, obstinacy, arrogance, bigotry, presumption, caprice’’ (H III, 322). Such perfect malice, however, is an unrealizable ‘‘ideal’’ – not in any normative sense, of course, but because an abstraction from conduct that is rarely if ever to be met with in experience. For ‘‘Absolute, unprovoked, disinterested malice has never perhaps place in any human breast,’’ Hume writes, ‘‘or if it had, must there pervert all sentiments of morals, as well as the feelings of humanity’’ (EPM 5.40, SBN 227). Human nature and experience speak against the existence of an individual ‘‘totally indifferent to the well or ill-being of his fellow-creatures’’ (EPM 5.43, SBN 230). Timon loved Alcibiades; Nero acted from fear and resentment; and even Henry VIII was not ‘‘at intervals altogether destitute of virtues: He was sincere, open, gallant, liberal,’’ Hume writes, ‘‘and capable at least of a temporary friendship and attachment’’ (H III, 322).

Conclusion In this chapter we have seen how, in important respects, Hume’s approach to morals parallels his view of beauty in nature and art. Hume takes moral and aesthetic beauty to be similar in kind, and, as with aesthetic judgment in ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste,’’ his moral philosophy articulates principles that explain the origin of virtue and vice. He achieves this by framing rules that abridge the concrete activity in which people engage when they approve or disapprove of conduct. This gives rise to a standard of morals as the same procedure gives rise to a standard of taste in aesthetics. Further, as this latter standard is manifest in the figure of the true judge – a model of perfection that shows how one ought to behave if one wishes to become a person of taste – so the moral expert is an ideal figure who represents how one ought to behave if one wants to become a person of good moral taste. In discovering in what correct conduct consists, Hume the anatomist at once provides criteria for how one ought to behave if one wants to achieve excellence in moral judgment. This is manifest in the moral expert, an ideal figure comparable to the true judge in matters of taste who embodies the standard and shows in what correct judgment consists.

3

Antinomy and error

In the first two chapters we have seen how Hume’s ‘‘standard of taste’’ and ‘‘principle of morals’’ are philosophical explanations of their respective phenomena that make explicit what people ordinarily do when they engage in the practice of aesthetic and moral judgment; philosophy expresses these judgments ideally, and this constitutes a model in terms of which conduct can be said to be good or bad, right or wrong. The standard is descriptive in so far as it explains taste and morals, and normative in so far as it directs people’s conduct to the right and the good. One apparent oddity of this position, however, is that while the standard is derived from the extant structure everyday life, that structure is rarely instantiated in the order that it abridges; the standard, that is, has a pure or ideal character. There is no conceptual difficulty in generating an ideal from imperfect conditions as long as we keep in mind that Hume’s standard is an abstraction from concrete activity and a perfect expression of it. Indeed, as a practical matter, we are often aware of the gap between what we ought to do and what we actually do. The issue here, rather, is how to reconcile the fact that philosophical explanation proceeds by deriving standards from common life while individuals can and do systematically fail in making correct judgments. As we shall see in chapter five, Hume accounts for this partly by emphasizing that the sentiments stand in need of education. As we shall see in the present chapter, however, he also does so by showing how an individual can simultaneously hold irreconcilable positions in their moral and aesthetic judgments. Hume recognizes certain contradictions in human reason, which explain how people can at once accept that there are standards of judgment while also denying the same when it comes to actual conduct. As such, Hume anticipates what Kant later refers to as ‘‘antinomies,’’ pairs of contradictory but equally unassailable propositions, which arise from the demands made by reason that the understanding discover unconditioned conditions for phenomena beyond experience. Thus, as Manfred Kuehn observes, Hume discovers ‘‘a fundamental class of contradictions that were neither accidental nor created by his analysis, but were essential characteristics of the human mind.’’1 The particular case for present purposes concerns the more specific idea that Hume presents an antinomy of taste.

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A number of commentators have detected Hume’s presence in the third Critique,2 and while the historical and philosophical connections are difficult to decipher, they generally agree that some comparison between the two works is appropriate, especially in light of the structural similarities between Hume’s argument in ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’ and Kant’s ‘‘Antinomy of Taste’’ as it appears in the ‘‘Analytic of the Beautiful.’’3 As Kivy writes, Hume saw the problem of taste as Kant was to see it some years later, as the resolution of a dilemma which had, on one of its horns, the commonsensical notion that about taste there is no disputing, and on the other the (to Hume) equally self-evident precept that, as he put it, ‘‘where objects so disproportioned are compared together . . . The principle of the natural equality of tastes is then totally forgot.’’4 Following this suggestion, ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’ can be understood as reflecting Hume’s view that aesthetic judgments involve two propositions that embody contradictory tendencies of human reason to take beauty as having a purely subjective basis in sentiment and at once to involve objective standards that allow some judgments to be accepted as right and others rejected as wrong. If this is Hume’s view, it offers a solution to the puzzle of how ideal standards, albeit derived from practice, do not necessarily influence individual contact. It is possible that standards exist and are recognized by everybody as the basis for correct judgment, even while the same individuals confound such standards when they make judgments about the beautiful. As we shall see, there are good reasons for understanding Hume’s essay in terms of a Kantian antinomy, and accepting it as a solution to the puzzle.

Kant’s conception of antinomy As is well known, Kant introduces the notion of antinomy in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft to characterize the second manifestation of the tendency within pure reason itself to make ‘‘pseudo-rational inferences’’ (vernu¨nftelnden Schlu¨sse).5 Together with the Paralogisms and the Ideal of Pure Reason, his treatment of it forms the Transcendental Dialectic. All three inferences, Kant argues, are errors of reason that can be traced back to the three formal syllogisms already elucidated in the Analytic of Concepts (A73/B98– A74/B99). Since they ‘‘consist in treating the subjective conditions of thinking as being knowledge of the object‘‘ (A396), Kant calls them ‘‘illusions’’: being syllogisms which ‘‘contain no empirical premises . . . we conclude from something which we know to something else of which we have no concept, and to which . . . we yet ascribe objective reality’’ (A339/B397). The defining characteristic of the Antinomies, in particular, is that they involve an ‘‘antithetic’’ in which equally valid and unassailable propositions compete for ascendancy, a process in which ‘‘no one assertion can establish

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superiority over another’’ (A420/B448). Since this antithetic ‘‘treats only of the conflict of the doctrines of reason with one another and the causes of this conflict,’’ Kant writes, ‘‘the transcendental antithetic is an enquiry into the antinomy of pure reason, its causes and outcome’’ (A421/B448). The conflict – and the subsequent inquiry – arises, then, because despite sound arguments provided by the logic of the hypothetical syllogism, reason unwisely endeavors to extend a concept ‘‘freed’’ from the understanding ‘‘beyond the limits of the empirical.’’ It thus seeks what it cannot possibly hope to find, namely, the ‘‘absolutely unconditioned’’ (ostensibly) contained in the ‘‘conditioned,’’ the latter being the name Kant gives to the regressive synthesis of objective appearances (A409/B436; A417/B444). The contradiction characteristic of this antithetic comes from the two different ways in which the absolutely unconditioned can be conceived: either as part of a series leading back to a first cause, or as the totality of a series, in which case the regress is infinite. The first gives rise to the ‘‘dogmatic’’ content of the theses, the second to the ‘‘empiricism’’ of the antitheses; together, as the outcome of an attempt to carry the synthesis of intuitions and concepts beyond the world of sense, they form a system of ‘‘transcendental ideas’’ or ‘‘cosmical concepts’’ (Weltbegriffe) (A420/B448). As his explicit references suggest (KGS 5, 341, 344–45), Kant has this earlier treatment in mind when he comes to formulate the Antinomy of Taste in the third Critique. Since Kant ultimately solves the latter conflict by reference to a ‘‘purely intelligible’’ rather than a ‘‘sensible’’ condition, it seems to follow the model of the second and third ‘‘dynamical’’ (rather than ‘‘mathematical’’) Antinomies as they are presented in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (A529/B557–A532/B560).6 There are differences, however: most obviously that the Antinomy of Taste seems to lack the logical structure of its counterparts in the first Critique;7 that it does not concern itself with traditional metaphysical themes where thesis and antithesis represent positions taken by disputants in actual philosophical debates;8 and that the introduction of a supersensible substrate as part of the solution has made commentators suspicious that the argument in the third Critique presents an antinomy in name only. In addition – and significant for the comparison with Hume – the Antinomy of Taste is largely a reformulation of various proverbial expressions. Kuehn emphasizes the importance of this latter point, noting that a central component of Kant’s general conception of antinomy is that the contradictions are themselves symptomatic of a ‘‘more fundamental conflict . . . between certain laws or principles of the mind.’’9 In the first Critique this is reflected in the fact that conflicts arise because the assertions of both sides spring from the unavoidable tendency for human thought to seek the unconditioned in the synthesis of appearances, a goal which can never be attained. In the Antinomy of Taste, on the other hand, the ‘‘fundamental conflict’’ appears on a more mundane level. The conflict does indeed involve ‘‘principles’’ (Prinzipien) – albeit of the ‘‘critique of taste’’ rather than taste

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itself10 – and is a manifestation of the peculiar character of a judgment of taste to have a basis in the subject while simultaneously making a claim to universal validity (KGS 5, 337).11 Yet Kant generates both thesis and antithesis not – as in the first Critique – from philosophical claims about ultimate reality, but from two ‘‘commonplaces’’ (Gemeinorte) about taste. Like the aphorisms (Grundsa¨tzen) he refers to in the Anthropology (204–5; 222), these have achieved the status of proverbs (Sprichwo¨rter). In the third Critique, the antinomy arises between two ordinary, commonly held assumptions: on the one side stands the assumption that ‘‘everyone has his own taste‘‘ and, on the other, the view that ‘‘there is no disputing about taste.’’ Whereas the former, employed by those lacking taste (Geschmackslose) and wishing to avoid censure (Tadel), takes judgments to involve ‘‘no right to other people’s necessary consent’’ (notwendige Beistimmung), the latter assumes the very opposite, namely, that judgments of taste do have the right ‘‘to speak validly for everyone.’’ These two Gemeinorte are necessary but not sufficient conditions, however, to generate the contradiction required for an antinomy. The commonplaces do involve different claims concerning the ‘‘merely subjective’’ as opposed to ‘‘objective’’ basis of judgments about the beautiful, but they represent how individuals quarrel (streiten) rather than engage in genuine dispute (disputieren). Disputation is impossible, Kant claims, because the necessarily subjective character of aesthetic judgments means there are no grounds (Beweisgru¨nden) upon which to resolve disagreements by ascertaining the correctness of one judgment over another. In other words, since there is no common criterion to which they both appeal, the quarrel between the terms can be resolved simply by ‘‘agreeing to disagree.’’ Kant can only formulate the antinomy fully, then, by finding another term that contradicts the claim that ‘‘everyone has his own taste.’’ This he discovers in the ‘‘missing’’ proposition assumed by the other two and ‘‘which everyone has in mind,’’ namely, that ‘‘one can quarrel about taste (though one cannot dispute about it).’’ This promises ‘‘hope’’ of agreement, implying in turn that we can expect ‘‘to count on the judgment’s having bases that do not have merely private validity and hence are not merely subjective.’’ This clearly contradicts the first commonplace because it assumes and denies the idea of standards to which people must appeal. Thus, on a somewhat more circuitous path than that taken in the first Critique, Kant arrives at the Antinomy of Taste consisting of a thesis stating that judgment has subjective validity (not based on concepts) and the antithesis that it has universal validity (that it is based on concepts) (KGS 5, 338).

Common sense and Hume’s Antinomy of Taste Both in the first and third Critique, then, Kant’s notion of antinomy involves showing how reason gives rise to contradictions with a necessarily antithetic character that are manifestations, in turn, of a more fundamental

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conflict between principles of human thought. So if, as Kivy suggests, Hume’s ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’ really does articulate a similar confrontation, the essay would need to contain a description of two equally valid, unassailable, but contradictory propositions that arise naturally from a tendency in human reason itself. Needless to say, since Hume himself does not formulate his argument in terms of a Kantian antinomy, there are likely to be important elements in the latter that do not appear in the former. Most notably, the propositions in a Humean antinomy will be closer to what might be termed pre-theoretical intuitions than to the purely rational principles identified by Kant.12 Such undeniable differences notwithstanding, if one excludes Kant’s emphasis on the rational principles of antinomy and his appeal to the supersensible, one finds in Hume’s ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’ not only clear parallels to Kant’s formulation of the Antinomy of Taste but, as Henry Allison calls it, the latter’s ‘‘‘formal’ resolution [of the Antinomy] through the clarification of the sense of ‘concept’ appealed to by both parties.’’13 Accordingly, we can focus on Hume’s concept of ‘‘common sense’’ in order to show how what might be termed its naive and sceptical aspects compose an argumentative structure similar to the one Kant presents in the third Critique. The term ‘‘naive’’ is intended to emphasize Hume’s observation that the diversity of taste leads people to conclude that no general standards exist, and ‘‘sceptical’’ to echo his view that questioning or reflecting upon common life shows the opposite to be the case. The antinomy in ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’ consists of these two equally justifiable but contradictory claims. As we have seen already, part of Hume’s explanandum in his essay is the ‘‘great variety of Taste, as well as of opinion, which prevails in the world,’’ a fact, he adds, ‘‘too obvious not to have fallen under every one’s observation’’ (ST 226). To the uncritical eye, everyday life appears to be characterized exclusively by such diversity – and dispute – concerning particular tastes. As Hume presents it, given that the same object may be both sweet and bitter depending on the ‘‘disposition of the organs,’’ the proverb de gustibus non est disputandum makes it ‘‘fruitless to dispute concerning tastes.’’ There is a natural tendency for human reason to take diversity at face value; the sheer variety of taste provides indisputable evidence that judgments about the beautiful can be reduced to matters of individual liking. It is then ‘‘very natural and even quite necessary,’’ Hume contends, to extend the proverb concerning taste from the bodily to the mental. In its naive aspect, ‘‘common sense,’’ though ‘‘often at variance with philosophy . . . is found, in one instance at least, to agree in pronouncing the same decision,’’ namely, that in matters of taste there is no dispute. Unreflective reason and sceptical philosophies alike draw such a conclusion, and by ‘‘passing into a proverb,’’ Hume says, it ‘‘seems to have attained the sanction of common sense’’ (ST 230). People, that is, simply ‘‘agree to disagree’’ about taste and that is the end of the matter.

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While this conclusion drawn from observing diversity is natural and necessary, it is at once contradicted by a second influence of common sense. ‘‘[T]here is certainly a species of common sense,’’ Hume observes, that ‘‘opposes’’ the tendency of its naive counterpart to sanction errors of judgment; or ‘‘at least serves to modify and restrain it’’ (ST 230). This sceptical variety contradicts its naive counterpart. The proverbial truth that denies the possibility of dispute is opposed by another that demonstrates the nonsense of treating dissimilar phenomena as equal. It is this species of common sense that lies behind Hume’s observation that it would be as much an ‘‘extravagance’’ to place Ogilby and Milton on the same footing as to assert that mole-hills are as big as mountains or ponds as wide as the ocean (ST 230–31). The taste of such people can be dismissed summarily and while there is often room for disagreement in certain cases, no one could possibly ‘‘agree to disagree’’ with somebody who took mole-hills as mountains or lesser poets over greater, because that would be to ignore accepted standards governing reasonable, informed judgments about geographical features and authors, respectively. Hume, of course, does not make these observations within an architectonic of the sort constructed by Kant, and his thought cannot yield specific distinctions – ‘‘dispute’’ as opposed to ‘‘quarrel,’’ for example – that are fundamental for Kant’s presentation. Considered at an appropriate level of generality, however, Hume’s treatment of common sense in ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’ does parallel Kant’s later formulation very closely. Two points of comparison should make this clear. First – and this is what makes the difference between Kant’s formulation of the antinomies in the first and third Critiques noteworthy – Hume’s focus on two influences of common sense shows how judgments can take quite contradictory forms: on the one hand, individuals take diversity of opinion as evidence that there is no disputing about taste while they also assume that the results of some artistic endeavors are better than others. This means, in turn, that standards do exist and some judgments can be ruled out as absurd. In its naive aspect, then, common sense observes diversity and concludes that disputes in matters of taste are impossible; as such it denies a common standard. At the same time, on the other hand, the sceptical aspect of common sense undermines the purely individual basis of taste by showing certain judgments to be ridiculous; as such, it affirms a common standard. Like Kant’s ‘‘commonplaces’’ about taste, these contradictory opinions are manifest as proverbial expressions that people accept as true.14 Considered in this way, Hume can be seen as articulating the same contradiction that Kant expresses in terms of ‘‘concepts.’’ There is, on the one side, the notion that judgments have a purely subjective validity (the thesis that they are not based on concepts), while on the other, the assumption that judgments have a universal basis that lifts them beyond the private and merely subjective to which the thesis condemns them (the antithesis that they are based on concepts). Conversely, one might translate Kant into

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Humean language, in which case his first and third propositions about taste would involve the naive assumption that diversity makes disputes over taste impossible (thesis), and the sceptical one that judgments depend upon common standards (antithesis), respectively. Whether the language is that of transcendental idealism or Humean skepticism, the problematic being articulated is apparently the same. The second point of comparison concerns the distinction Hume draws between relations of ideas and matters of fact. Propositions of the first kind are ‘‘discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is any where existent in the universe,’’ as he puts in it the second Enquiry, whereas those of the second kind depend on experience and their opposite can be conceived without contradiction (EHU 4.1–2). The argument Hume develops in ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’ draws upon a similar conceptual distinction, which he expresses in the later work as ‘‘questions of sentiment’’ and ‘‘questions of fact.’’15 Questions of fact are ‘‘disputable questions’’ about which individuals disagree and, in the absence of agreement, accept that others are simply of a different but equally valid view. ‘‘Whether any particular person be endowed with good sense and a delicate imagination, free from prejudice, may often be the subject of dispute, and be liable to great discussion and enquiry,’’ Hume writes, But that such a character is valuable and estimable will be agreed in all by mankind. Where these doubts occur, men can do no more than in other disputable questions . . . they must acknowledge a true and decisive standard to exist somewhere, to wit, real existence and matter of fact; and they must have indulgence to such as differ from them in their appeals to this standard. (ST 242) Hume thus acknowledges that people differ in their judgments, and that those with good manners will more often than not indulge the peculiarities of their friends and acquaintances. The important point, however, is that differences are so many empirical matters of fact. They are comparable to what Kant calls ‘‘likings’’ and, as such, can be juxtaposed to each other without risk of logical contradiction; people can and do disagree in their opinions and this is what gives rise to the diversity of everyday life. Sentiments, by contrast, are of quite a different logical order. Hume, as many have noted, is sometimes lax about his use of terminology, but as Eugene Miller points out in an editorial note to the Essays, Hume clearly uses ‘‘the term sentiment . . . synonymously with taste to refer to a special feeling of approbation or disapprobation that arises from the contemplation of objects, characters, or actions. Taste, or sentiment in this latter sense, underlies judgments of beauty and moral worth’’ (E 5n2).16 Sentiments are comparable to relations of ideas since they can be judged right or wrong according to general standards; as such – like the propositions of Euclidian

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geometry, for example – they cannot be intelligibly denied without absurdity or contradiction. Further, since judgments of beauty are based on sentiments, they are different in kind from judgments which refer to mere likings. Whereas the latter are matters of fact that can be juxtaposed to one another without fear of contradiction, disagreement of the same sort in sentiments is simply unintelligible. To deny a judgment of taste – rather than a mere liking – is to contradict standards that everyone knows to be the case; to do this terminates in the ‘‘palpable absurdities’’ of holding Ogilby over Milton or taking Tenerife to be a mole-hill. Again, there are individuals who put lesser writers over greater, as there are those who confuse mountains with mole-hills, but since they are either defective in some measure or do not understand what they are saying, their views can be summarily dismissed. In ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’ Hume relies on this conceptual distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact to show that because likings and judgments of beauty refer to different orders of existence, one can talk of diversity and ‘‘decisive standards’’ without fear of self-contradiction. This is exactly the argument he makes in elucidating common sense. Naive common sense refers to those things about which people can (and more often than not do) disagree; and since different matters of fact do not contradict one another, this accounts for the ‘‘great variety of Taste, as well as of opinion, which prevails in the world.’’ These opinions do not make claims about objective reality, but refer only to the subject who utters them. Since there are no criteria in terms of which one might be correct or incorrect, they can compete with one another indefinitely and without resolution ever being reached. Sentiments, by contrast, correspond to the sceptical aspect of common sense. They are comparable to knowledge claims and, since they presuppose general or rational standards, they are open to public evaluation. For this reason the judgments of some people are ‘‘palpable absurdities’’: such taste can be dismissed out of hand because it does not conform to what everyone knows to be the case. In formulating the Antinomy in the third Critique Kant relies upon a similar distinction. Kant’s well-known terms for these logically distinct classes of phenomena are judgments about ‘‘the agreeable’’ (das Angenehme) and aesthetic judgments of taste, respectively. In Kant’s view the dialectical tendency of human reason arises because commonplaces about taste expressing these two logical orders conflict: when the appeal to one’s own ‘‘taste’’ contradicts the assumption that the judgment can be made into a universal rule. People can and do have different ‘‘likings’’ for what they find agreeable, and as long as the disagreement remains at this level no dialectical conflict arises; in Kant’s terminology, they quarrel but do not dispute about their claims. In matters of taste, by contrast, where judgments claim to be universally valid, no such disagreement is possible. As Kant points out, ‘‘To say, This flower is beautiful, is tantamount to a mere repetition of the flower’s own claim to every one’s liking. The agreeableness of its smell, on the other hand, gives it no claim whatever: its smell delights (ergo¨tzen)

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one person, it makes another dizzy’’ (KGS 5, 282). This is what Hume says when he observes how people can show a preference for Ogilby over Milton. Such likings, though not as ‘‘good’’ as the next, do not involve the parties in genuine contradiction because no claim to common standards (universality) is being made. Aesthetic judgments proper, on the other hand, in so far as they are claims of taste rather than opinion, are based on feelings (Gefu¨hle). One can be ‘‘correct’’ or ‘‘incorrect’’ about the beauty of a flower or the excellence of Milton because such judgments presuppose and demand assent from everyone. Here there is genuine dispute because judgments refer to common standards and – like Sancho’s kinsmen at the hogshead of wine – the taste of one man can be applauded as ‘‘good’’ and another dismissed as ‘‘bad.’’

Solutions to the Antinomy So far, we have seen that when compared at an appropriate level, Hume and Kant are in general agreement about the tendency of human thought to become involved in a dialectical process in which contradictory propositions compete for ascendancy. This is only part of the story, however, since, as Kant presents it, the antinomies also demand a solution;17 and on this point there are fundamental differences in the way Hume and Kant approach their subject matter and, specifically, how each regards the nature and use of reason.18 One striking characteristic that Kant himself emphasizes in his conception of antinomy is the ‘‘natural’’ origin of the pseudo-inferences it involves. As he expresses it in the first Critique, all three arise through a ‘‘necessary syllogism’’ (notwendigen Vernunftschluß), and are ‘‘sophistications not of men but of pure reason itself’’ (A339/B397). Kant says of the cosmological ideas in general that they ‘‘rest on an empty and merely fictitious concept of the manner in which the object of these ideas is given to us,’’ so that rational cosmology appears as a ‘‘bedazzling but false illusoriness’’ (blendenden aber falschen Scheine) (A408/B435); he also describes an antinomy in particular as ‘‘an entirely natural antithetic . . . into which reason of itself quite unavoidably falls’’ (von selbst und zwar unvermeidlich gera¨t) (A407/B434, emphasis added; see also A462/B490). Arising from the ‘‘very nature of reason,’’ he says later in the Dialectic, it is no ‘‘mere artificial illusion such as at once vanishes upon detection, but a natural and unavoidable illusion (natu¨rlichen und unvermeidlichen Schein) . . . which can never be eradicated’’ (niemals vertilgt werden kann) (A421–22/B449–50).19 Indeed, the illusions are so intransigent that ‘‘even the wisest of men cannot free himself from them’’ (A339/B397), Kant says, and they form so integral and unavoidable a part of human cognition that even loosening their grip (wenn man nicht mehr durch ihn hintergangen wird) would not eradicate (vertilgen) them or put an end to their deceptive (ta¨uschen) ways (A422/B450).20 If the dialectic comes from so natural and unavoidable a source, and the antithetic it produces is so intractable, in what sense, one might ask, can the

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antinomies be ‘‘solved’’? How can the sceptical method ‘‘guard us against groundless beliefs’’ (A486/B514)? Part of Kant’s answer to this question is contained in his view that, intransigent as they are, the Antinomies can at least be rendered ‘‘harmless’’ (unscha¨dlich) and so will cease to ‘‘beguile’’ (betru¨gen) (A422/B450). Kant’s solution depends upon showing that the contradictions are actually ‘‘deceptive appearances’’ of a specifically dialectic sort (A423/B451). Indeed, since this is largely a product of the way he has formulated them, it really amounts to reemphasizing the point he has already made: what characterizes the solution is the attempt to distinguish a merely logical contradiction – what he elsewhere calls the ‘‘conflict of mutually clashing notions’’ (Verbindung einanderwiderstreitender Begriffe) (KGS 7, 162) – from a dialectic of pure reason proper. As Kant himself notes (A529/B557), this strategy depends upon the distinction between a ‘‘mathematical’’ and ‘‘dynamical’’ series. Kant introduces these terms briefly as a comment on the Table of Categories (B110), but comes back to them more fully in the Dialectic. In the latter context he describes the difference between them in the following way: In the mathematical connection of the series of appearances no other than a sensible condition is admissible, that is to say, none that is not itself a part of the series. On the other hand, in the dynamical series of sensible conditions, a heterogeneous condition, not itself a part of the series, but purely intelligible, and as such outside the series, can be allowed. (A530/B558–A531/B559) As Allison has emphasized, this distinction is a ‘‘function of Kant’s understanding of the difference between the conceptions of a totality or whole underlying the two types of antinomy.’’21 Kant attempts to clarify these conceptions when he distinguishes between ‘‘world’’ and ‘‘nature’’ as different viewpoints from which to grasp the synthesis of appearances (A418/ B446–A420/B448). Viewed mathematically, Kant says, the former ‘‘signifies the . . . sum total of appearances’’ (a world of sense), whereas seen dynamically, as nature, it presents the ‘‘unity in the existence of appearances’’ (a world apart from any experience) (A419/B447).22 Thus, as Allison again puts it, The salient difference between these two conceptions of a whole or totality is simply that the former is self-contradictory whereas the latter is not. The concept of a complete set or totality of spatiotemporal items, that is, a ‘‘world,’’ is self-contradictory because such a totality . . . both purports to be an empirical concept and involves a requirement (completeness) that conflicts with the conditions of possible experience.23 This ‘‘self-contradictory’’ character of the mathematical regress, combined with the fact that all the members of the series are (homogeneous) appearances,

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enables Kant to solve the first two Antinomies by showing that the arguments of both thesis and antithesis are untrue. Thus the first two (mathematical) Antinomies are solved by transforming the analytical opposition of the form p&~p into a dialectical one; Kant accomplishes this task by discovering a third term through which both might be dismissed as false (A499/B527). In the dynamical antinomies, by contrast, the concept underlying the conflict is neither self-contradictory nor does the series contain a sensible member. Thus the solution to the second and third (dynamical) Antinomies is achieved by appealing to transcendental idealism itself. Since thesis and antithesis are actually making claims which refer to ontologically distinct levels, outside and within experience, respectively, removing the apparent contradiction shows that they ‘‘may both alike be true’’ (A532/ B560). This demonstration of their dialectic character constitutes a solution to the Antinomies: The solution of an antinomy can be arrived at only through the possibility that two seemingly conflicting propositions are in fact not contradictory but are consistent, even though it would surpass our cognitive power to explain how the concept involved is possible. From here it also becomes possible to grasp that this illusion [Schein] is also natural and unavoidable for human reason, and why it is and remains so [es sei und bleibe] even though it ceases to beguile [betru¨gt] once the seeming contradiction has been solved. (KGS 5, 340, translation altered) Thus Kant’s presentation (KGS 5, 340–41) of the conflict in terms of an ‘‘aesthetic power of judgment that merely reflects’’ (Third and Fourth Moments of the Analytic of the Beautiful), points towards transcendental idealism as a solution, and this is manifest as the purely intelligible ‘‘supersensible substrate of appearances.’’ Following the strategy of the earlier Critique, then, Kant’s ‘‘formal’’ resolution to the Antinomy of Taste is to show not that thesis and antithesis are false, but that the contradictory maxims take the same term in different but compatible ways: the conflict arises because the determinate and indeterminate senses of ‘‘concept’’ become confused in the juxtaposition of the ‘‘commonplaces’’ about taste.24 ‘‘For what gives rise to this antinomy,’’ Kant says, ‘‘is [the fact] that we treat the concept presupposed by the universal validity of a judgment as if that concept had the same meaning in the two conflicting judgments, and yet opposed predicates are asserted of it’’ (KGS 5, 340). As in the Critique of Pure Reason, the Antinomy is solved by transforming a contradiction into a dialectic illusion in which the principles ‘‘may both be true’’ (KGS 5, 341). Reason is roused from its euthanasia by showing the whole affair to be ‘‘quarrelling about nothing’’ (A501/B529). How does Kant’s solution to the Antinomy of Taste, then, differ from that proposed by Hume in ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’? Kuehn, for one,

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implies that Hume has no solution. ‘‘[I]t is not surprising,’’ he says, ‘‘that Hume makes no attempt to resolve the conflict and simply lets the profounder and more philosophical sceptic’’ point to the ‘‘utterly irreducible character’’ of the contradiction between reason and sense. Thus it ‘‘should be obvious,’’ Kuehn writes, that Hume’s choice between ‘‘false reason and none at all,’’ is an ‘‘observation of what is commonly done’’ and not a ‘‘philosophical solution.’’25 Coleman suggests the same, taking Hume to be ‘‘recommending carelessness and inattention as a solution to the contradiction resulting from natural illusion.’’ She concludes that ‘‘the purpose of Hume’s true philosophy, like Kant’s transcendental philosophy, is to detect, not to remove, the mind’s natural illusion.’’26 Kivy, by contrast, suggests a way in which Hume resolves his Antinomy of Taste, namely, by seeing ‘‘that if relativism in taste seems an unimpeachable fact, so, too, does the existence of critical standards.’’27 Thus ‘‘since each individual’s judgement of any given work of art is a matter of ‘sentiment,’ that is to say ‘emotion’ rather than ‘thought,’’’ Kivy proposes, the resolution of the ‘‘antinomy’’ of taste, for Hume, becomes an affair of reducing matters of sentiment to matters of ‘‘fact’’; for if there were no ‘‘facts’’ to adjudicate, on which we all could at least potentially agree, the ‘‘principle of the natural equality of tastes,’’ i.e., de gustibus non est disputandum, must remain unchallenged.28 Thus, as Kivy expresses his view elsewhere, Hume’s solution involves answering ‘‘the question of the relation . . . between aesthetics and rationality,’’ and reaching the conclusion both that ‘‘our aesthetic nature and our rational nature are bound together,’’ and also that ‘‘an ‘anything goes’ attitude towards aesthetic distinctions is not compatible with rationality.’’29 Hume, that is, solves the antinomy by showing that there are ‘‘facts’’ or common standards about which it would make no sense to disagree. Following Kivy’s suggestion, we can see in what sense Hume resolves the antinomy and how it differs markedly from the path followed by Kant. Hume’s antinomy, it should be recalled, consists in the contradiction between diversity and standards, and is manifest as two proverbs which distinguish the naive from the sceptical influence of common sense. Further, since the antinomy arises on this ordinary level, there is no vantage point within common life itself from which the self-contradiction might be viewed. Indeed, given that the antinomy is natural and constitutive of everyday life, even if individuals could reflect upon and correct their judgments it would hardly prevent the contradiction from reoccurring. The task of clarification – the solution to the Antinomy of Taste – must fall to the ‘‘careful eye’’ of the philosopher who reflects upon the inherent order of everyday life and, methodizing the initial judgments and discovering principles or rules from them, resolves the contradiction by laying bare the logic of the antithetic that composes it. Philosophical reason, that is, methodizes

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and corrects the reflections of common life by rendering that life an intelligible and coherent whole. It produces philosophical general rules that fix the standard and thus explains in what aesthetic judgment consists. Hume resolves his Antinomy of Taste by revealing the error underlying the conflicting proverbs. This error arises because the two logically distinct orders of phenomena – matters of fact, on one side, and sentiment, on the other – are confused. The origin of the antinomy resides in the tendency of human reason to take the empirical diversity of taste to reflect disagreement in sentiments when they are actually disagreements in fact. As a result, prereflective reason concludes that there is no disputing over taste while continuing to assume that common standards exist. From this arises the double standard where the principle of equality of taste is forgotten and the principle of variety is not. In common life the latter is asserted over the former and human reason falls into the contradiction manifest as the naive and sceptical aspects of common sense. It is quite possible, however, that both propositions be entertained at once, a phenomenon explained by the nature of reason itself. The force of this conclusion can felt by considering a fundamental way in which Hume’s solution to the antinomy differs from the one offered by Kant. In three respects, at least, the two are quite close. First, Kant routinely emphasizes the natural and unavoidable character of the illusions that lead reason into its antithetic confusions. Although the illusion can be rendered harmless and will cease to beguile, its transcendental character means that deception remains nonetheless. Like Hume, that is, Kant accepts error and illusion as an incorrigible condition of everyday life. Second, Kant argues that the dialectic of reason is not apparent in everyday life, but only when a ‘‘reflective and enquiring being (nachdenkenden und forschenden Wesen) . . . devote[s] a certain amount of time to the examination of his own reason’’ (A475/B504). There is a distinction to be drawn between ‘‘speculative reason, by which we endeavour to explain their [actions’] coming into being, [and] . . . reason in so far as it is itself the cause of producing them’’ (A550/B578). Moreover, these two levels are by no means compatible; the explanatory endeavor contradicts the requirements of common life so that faced with ‘‘practical interests,’’ Kant says, the ‘‘play of merely speculative reason’’ dissolves ‘‘like a dream’’ (A475/B504; see also Anthropology, 207). Third, Kant also recognizes a certain impotence that philosophy can never overcome. For ‘‘all the difficulties commonly found in these questions,’’ he declares while discussing the nature of the soul, . . . by means of which . . . men seek to gain credit for a deeper insight into the nature of things than any to which the ordinary understanding can properly lay claim, rest on a mere delusion by which they hypostatize what exists merely in thought, and take it as a real object existing, in the same character, outside the thinking subject. (A384)

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Philosophy itself, on this view, is hampered by the intractable play of reason and its principles. At best, it can clarify certain errors or, as Kant describes the task of the Transcendental Analytic, undertake the task of ‘‘correcting and securing of judgment, by means of determinate rules, in the use of pure understanding.’’ Being unable to ‘‘enlarge the sphere of the understanding,’’ he says, critique has the ‘‘merely negative task’’ of ‘‘guard[ing] against the errors of judgment (lapsus judicii) in the employment of the few pure concepts of understanding that we possess’’ (A135/B174). Given the attitude Kant expresses towards illusion and hypostatization, one might conclude – with Sadik Al-Azm – that the whole dialectic of the first Critique is ‘‘irrelevant’’ to explaining how human beings have knowledge about the world.30 For even if one is inclined to underplay the apparent naturalism in Kant’s treatment of reason, there is certainly justification for seeing a clear distinction between pre-reflective life and philosophical reflection, and the view that belief in such illusions is independent and prior to the unpalatable and non-practical truths the philosopher is inclined to discover. At this point, however, where Hume and Kant are in apparent agreement in mapping the limits of philosophical reflection, Coleman’s en passant remark concerning the difference between the two approaches becomes important, namely, that the Kantian dialectic aims at certainty. Although Kant’s treatment of antinomy points to the limits of reason and impotence of philosophy, this nod to scepticism does not lead him to abandon the search for a genuine solution or give up on the idea that ‘‘a clear exposition of the dialectic which lies within our concept itself would soon yield us complete certainty how we ought to judge in reference to a such a question’’ (A482/B510; see A484/B512). Kant discovers the conditions of human knowledge, one might say, but this does not limit the role philosophy can play in the rounds of everyday life. Philosophy still ‘‘promises a secure foundation for our highest expectations in respect of those ultimate ends towards which all the endeavours of reason must ultimately converge’’ (A463/B491); and having achieved this he expects that ‘‘a lasting and peaceful reign of reason (ruhiges Regiment der Vernunft) over understanding and the senses would thereby be inaugurated’’ (A465/B493). Thus, as Al-Azm puts it in his study of the Antinomies, the final ‘‘layer’’ of Kant’s solution consists in ‘‘turning dogmatic assertions from presumed synthetic propositions about the world into ‘regulative principles’ or rules of procedure.’’31 This is most fully expressed in the first Critique where the solution to the Antinomy of Pure Reason concludes with Kant’s ‘‘conversion’’ (verwandeln) of a dialectical into a doctrinal principle (A516/B544). From presenting the antithetic of reason and demonstrating the ‘‘invalidity [of the rule of reason] as a constitutive principle of appearances,’’ that is, Kant draws a conclusion regarding the ‘‘empirical employment of the regulative principle of reason.’’ As in his presentation of the Dialectic in general, Kant sees this conversion as a movement of pure reason itself (A542/

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B570).32 That movement shows that since reason cannot supply any constitutive principle, it is valid only in terms of the ‘‘continuation and magnitude of a possible experience.’’ Thus, for Kant, the regulative principle of reason represents the discovery of a ‘‘rule, postulating what we ought to do in the regress, but not anticipating what is present in the object as it is in itself, prior to all regress‘‘ (A509/B537). Thus in achieving the speculative task of ‘‘provoking’’ reason and then exposing its conflict as merely dialectic, Kant claims to discover normative rules for the direction of conduct: For not only will this critical solution destroy the illusion which set reason at variance with itself, but will replace it by teaching (Sinn) which, in correcting the misinterpretation that has been the sole source of the conflict, brings reason into agreement with itself . . . for in respect to the object of experience this [principle] can have no greater influence on the extension and correction of knowledge than as it actively proves itself in the widest possible empirical employment of our understanding. (A516/B544–A517/B545, translation altered) This is reflected famously in Kant’s subsequent discussion of freedom where the speculative use of reason to explain the physiological basis of actions gives way to ‘‘practical’’ reason as the cause of their production. Reason in its ‘‘practical bearing’’ represents a ‘‘law of reason,’’ as Kant expresses it in his discussion of lying, ‘‘whereby we regard reason as a cause that irrespective of . . . empirical conditions [defective education, bad company, etc.] could have determined, and ought to have determined, the agent to act otherwise’’ (A555/B583). Not only does the critical solution explain the possibility of moral conduct in terms of transcendental freedom, but by showing what reason demands in its practical manifestation, it indicates the direction in which action should be directed: one ought not lie. This view of philosophy is particularly clear in the Groundwork, where Kant presents the categorical imperative as a ‘‘principle’’ which common human reason ‘‘does not think abstractly in a universal form but which it actually has before its eyes and uses as the norm of its appraisals.’’ A philosopher, therefore, who relies on common understanding like everybody else is as likely as the next man to ‘‘confuse his judgment by a mass of considerations foreign and irrelevant to the matter and deflect it from the straight course.’’ Surely, then, Kant is forced to conclude, moral matters should be left to common reason, and philosophy only brought in to codify moral rules and, at most, provide a ‘‘new path of investigation and instruction.’’33 Kant cannot accept this conclusion, however; for human reason is ‘‘easily seduced,’’ and stands in need of science ‘‘not in order to learn from it but in order to provide access and durability for its precepts.’’ This weakness, Kant contends, gives rise to a ‘‘natural dialectic, that is, a propensity to rationalize against those strict laws of duty and to cast doubt upon their validity . . . and, where possible, to make them better suited to our wishes

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and inclinations, that is, to corrupt them at their basis and to destroy all their dignity.’’ Thus common human reason is impelled, not by some need of speculation . . . but on practical grounds themselves, to go out of its sphere and to take a step into the field of practical philosophy, in order to obtain there information and distinction regarding the source of its principle and the correct determination of this principle in comparison with maxims based on need and inclination. (KGS 4, 405)

Conclusion For Kant, then, while philosophy provides a critique of reason, solving the Antinomies does not generate a critique of philosophy itself. On the contrary, it serves to underline the constructive role philosophy can play in correcting errors into which human reason is liable to fall. Hume’s solution to the Antinomy of Taste, by contrast, is restricted by the corrective role of philosophy, by producing, that is, rules in their second influence, which abridge the order governing judgments of beauty. Hume’s antinomy is the work of the anatomist who dissects and explains a particular feature of common life. Hume shows that individuals are capable of holding two contradictory propositions about the nature of beauty – that it has a subjective basis that reduces all judgments to the status of opinion or likings, and also an objective basis because judgments can be referred to accepted standards in terms of which they can be rendered right or wrong. Hume’s solution offers a philosophical correction by explaining the error and at once showing it to be an incorrigible feature of everyday life. There is no contradiction, then, between the practice of aesthetic judgment, on the one hand, and, on the other, fixing the standard which few if any people attain. To go beyond this solution to the Antinomy of Taste and, as Kant does, make recommendations about how one ought to behave is to extend the scope of philosophical reason beyond its appropriate limits; to go beyond experience and impose ‘‘conjectures and hypotheses on the world.’’ As we have seen, Hume does not banish normative judgments from his philosophy, but delivering them is the task of the practical moralist, who, in the role of the painter, recommends certain conduct by presenting the world through a palate that appeals to our sentiments and moves us to some conduct rather than another. While this falls outside the descriptive task of fixing standards for moral and aesthetic judgments, discovering those standards at once provides criteria that make normative judgments possible. This finds expression most clearly in Hume’s view of character, and it is to this concept and the role it plays in his approach to morals, that we now turn.

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Reflection and character

Although some commentators disagree with the attempt to place Hume in the classical tradition of Aristotle and Cicero, the fact that character looms large in his moral thought makes him a good candidate for being a virtue ethicist of a certain sort.1 Sometimes Hume uses ‘‘character’’ in ways that seem tangential to the main concerns of his moral philosophy. Such are his discussion of ‘‘national characters,’’ where he seeks to explain why people from the same nation share a ‘‘peculiar set of manners’’ (E 197), or his various references to philosophical character, best exemplified in the sketches of Epicurean, Stoic, Platonist, and Sceptic he offers in the Essays.2 Hume also considers the ‘‘characters’’ of soldier and priest, which, although encompassing variations according to the circumstances of time and place, can be sketched with some precision. The uniformity of moral causes that explains them produces a corresponding uniformity of characteristics associated with individuals in the respective professions. The uncertainty of a soldier’s life makes him lavish, generous, and brave, Hume observes, while that of a priest makes him ‘‘in most points, opposite to that of a soldier; as is the way of life, from which it is derived’’ (E 199). The concept of character relevant to the present discussion, however, is rather different to these descriptions of types, tied conceptually, as it is, to three elements of Hume’s moral philosophy discussed in previous chapters. First, Hume’s concept of character reflects his view that concrete knowledge of how to behave comes only from the practice of making judgments, reflecting upon them, and correcting errors once discovered. Second, character is the point at which the qualities that constitute virtue and vice – the sentiments arising from the beauty and deformity of conduct – come together to form one’s moral being in the world. Character formation shows how we are responsible for our actions, which determine, in turn, the ‘‘figure which a man makes in life’’ (EPM Appx. 4.5, SBN 316; see T 3.3.4.1, SBN 607). Third, character constitutes the normative dimension of Hume’s moral thought, derived from producing philosophical rules in their second influence. While searching for principles reflects the anatomical Hume, in his conception of character he is able to paint the virtues in various colors and recommend some conduct above another. The catalogue of virtues thus

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recommends and directs action; it shows how one ought to behave if one wants to become virtuous, somebody, as we say colloquially, of good character. These three elements combine in what I call the practical concept of character, which, as this fourth chapter will make clear, explains the central role character plays in Hume’s moral philosophy.

The ‘‘metaphysical’’ view of character His many references to character notwithstanding, Hume never develops the concept in any systematic way, and while a number of readers have remarked on its prominent place in Hume’s writing, few have committed themselves to working out the details of his view. A central difficulty facing those who have is to reconcile the fact that the terminology Hume chooses when he mentions character seems to undermine, or flatly contradict, his treatment of other phenomena – personal identity or self, in particular – that he roundly rejects as figments of the enthusiastic philosophical mind. When Hume refers to character, he speaks the language of ‘‘motives,’’ ‘‘dispositions,’’ ‘‘traits,’’ and ‘‘qualities,’’ which involve ‘‘intentions’’ that must be ‘‘durable’’ if they are to be tied to the person in morally relevant ways. One swallow does not a summer make, as Aristotle says, and character, we assume, involves a regular and continued connection between motives and actions. As Hume observes: ‘Tis not enough, that the action arise from the person, and have him for its immediate cause and author. This relation alone is too feeble and inconstant to be a foundation for these passions [of love or hatred]. It reaches not the sensible and thinking part, and neither proceeds from anything durable in him, nor leaves anything behind it; but passes in a moment, and is as if it had never been. On the other hand, an intention shows certain qualities, which remaining after the action is perform’d, connect it with the person, and facilitate the transition of ideas from one to the other. (T 2.2.3.4, SBN 349) Similarly, as Hume writes in the second Enquiry, ‘‘Actions are by their very nature temporary and perishing; and where they proceed not from some cause in the character and disposition of the person who performed them, they can neither redound to his honour, if good; nor infamy, if evil’’ (EHU 8.29, SBN 98). It is always the ‘‘tendencies of actions and characters, not their real accidental consequences [that] are alone regarded in our moral determinations or general judgements.’’ For ‘‘Why is this peach-tree said to be better than that other,’’ Hume asks, but because it produces more or better fruit? And would not the same praise be given it, though snails or vermin had destroyed the peaches,

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before they came to full maturity? In morals too, is not the tree known by the fruit? And cannot we easily distinguish between nature and accident, in the one case as well as in the other? (EPM 5.41n24, SBN 228n1) Hume also speaks of moral virtues ‘‘display[ing] themselves’’ in the ‘‘model of a praiseworthy character’’ (EPM 5.10, SBN 216), and of character being ‘‘disfigured’’ only when a person’s ‘‘disposition gives a propensity’’ for the disagreeable passions, to which we are all prone, to affect us (EPM 7.2n35, SBN 251n1). The question we must answer is what Hume means to convey when he speaks in such terms and especially whether talk of durable qualities that remain, causes in the character, virtues displayed, and the like, commit him to some ontological view in which traits of character have a peculiar kind of existence in or as some underlying state or substance. This would be a strange position for Hume to take, however, given his unambiguous rejection of similar reasoning in the case of personal identity and the doctrines of substance propounded by Descartes and Spinoza (T 1.4.5). Thus, as Jane McIntyre puts it, these commonplace observations – that character traits endure and can exist without being continuously exercised – are hardly unproblematic in the context of the Treatise. As is well known, Hume rejected the view that the self is a substance, arguing instead that the self is a collection of perceptions . . . Yet Hume also maintained that actions derive their moral significance from their connections with thinking beings endowed with persisting mental qualities.3 How can Hume conceive of character in terms of real substantial existence, when he has already rejected such a view as a philosophical mistake? In order to develop a view of character that rescues Hume from this apparent contradiction, it is necessary first to see exactly what he must deny about character if he is to remain consistent with his approach to personal identity. For reasons that will become clear, we can think of the view he rejects as the metaphysical view of character, although a word of caution is required on the use of the term in this context. While Hume is critical of various speculative doctrines in both philosophy and religion, he does not disparage metaphysics per se, nor does he deny the importance of the ‘‘abstruse’’ reasoning that underlies it. He rejects, instead, abstract or ‘‘false’’ metaphysics of the sort that arises ‘‘either from the fruitless efforts of human vanity . . . or from the craft of popular superstitions’’ that ‘‘cover and protect’’ its practitioners (EHU 1.11, SBN 11). ‘‘True’’ metaphysics, by contrast, is pursued by Hume himself and involves the anatomical inquiry displayed in his treatment of beauty in art, nature, and morals: to consult experience in order to reveal the organizing principles of human nature and

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social practices, which, in the run of common life, are implicit and obscure. Hume is not against metaphysics in this sense, but takes issue with doctrines that are purely speculative, without basis in experience or foundation in the understanding. For Hume to reject the metaphysical view of character, then, does not mean he rejects metaphysics as a subject of inquiry. The metaphysical view of character is premised on what Hume would consider a false or speculative proposition, which in this case amounts to an unacknowledged commitment to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. It arises from a category mistake of the sort described by Gilbert Ryle: looking for the university above and beyond the buildings that compose it, or seeking esprit de corps on the field of play as something separate from the members of the team. Philosophically, Ryle observes, logical errors of this sort have produced the powerful ‘‘myth of the ghost in the machine,’’ according to which mental phenomena are held to have a life different in kind and distinct from the body they putatively occupy. ‘‘As the human body is a complex organized unit,’’ the erroneous reasoning runs, ‘‘so the human mind must be another complex organized unit, though one made of a different sort of stuff and with a different sort of structure.’’4 This is precisely the sort of error Hume identifies in his treatment of personal identity. ‘‘For my part,’’ Hume writes in a well-known passage from the Treatise, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other . . . I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. When my perceptions are remov’d for any reason, as by sound sleep; so long I am insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist . . . I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement. (T 1.4.6.3–4, SBN 252) Although we might be tempted to think of the self as a thing separate and different in kind from the perceptions that compose it, on closer investigation it is impossible to find any identifiable thing that could be the source of an impression. The self, Hume is forced to conclude, is an idea that arises from the imagination and the natural propensity to confuse relation between diverse objects with the identity of a single object through time. This we do in accord with the logic of rules in their first influence, prereflectively and ‘‘before we are aware’’ of doing so. Although we ‘‘incessantly correct ourselves by reflexion,’’ Hume observes, neither ordinary nor philosophical correction can fully rectify the mistake. Unable to resist the ‘‘absurdity, we feign the continu’d existence of the perceptions of our senses, to remove the interruption; and run into the notion of a soul, and self, and

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substance, to disguise the variation’’ (T 1.4.6.7, SBN 254). To take the self as having an existence independently of particular perceptions is a mistake like the one involved in assuming a university to be separate from the buildings that compose it. Unlike Ryle’s example, however, Hume suggests that the mistake is natural, and while ordinary reflection might identify the vulgar conception, it cannot eradicate the error it involves. Yet it can be corrected philosophically, by explaining that personal identity consists of perceptions and the propensity of the imagination to confuse diversity with identity. It is important to emphasize that Hume is not here recommending that we reform our language. He does not deny that we can speak of the self as existing, that we have a self, and can talk about it in perfectly coherent ways. There are, however, different senses of ‘‘existence,’’ and, as Hume points out, it is not only possible that ‘‘an object may exist, and yet be no where,’’ but such a maxim characterizes the manner after which ‘‘the greatest part of beings do and must exist.’’ It is quite reasonable, he continues, to understand ‘‘objects and perceptions, so far from requiring any particular place, [being] absolutely incompatible with it’’ (T 1.4.5.10, SBN 235–36). The mistake, rather, lies in taking all existence to involve temporal and spatial location, which leads to the erroneous conclusion that self exists in some substantial form. ‘‘All this absurdity,’’ as Hume remarks in discussing the ‘‘endless cavils’’ over the materiality of the soul, ‘‘proceeds from endeavouring to bestow a place on what is utterly incapable of it; and that endeavour again arises from our inclination to compleat an [sic] union, which is founded on causation, and a contiguity of time, by attributing to the objects a conjunction in place’’ (T 1.4.5.14, SBN 238–39). It would clearly be a philosophical mistake, then, to endorse and legitimate the vulgar view with some purely speculative doctrine of substance, rather than correcting the error – as Hume does – by discovering its source in the imagination. Philosophical reflection, that is, uncovers the error by tracing its source to the imagination and showing how two different senses of existence are being confused: we assume traits to have temporal or spatial location by virtue of being qualities that inhere in some enduring substance. Again, this does not mean that we cannot talk of traits existing, or of people having characters, but we are in error if we draw from this everyday locution any metaphysical conclusions about the substantial nature of character.5 Yet this is precisely what Hume would be committed to if he held the metaphysical view of character. He would be subject to the fallacy of taking character as separate and different in kind from the activities that compose it, even though, on closer investigation, it is impossible to identify anything that could be the source of the relevant impression. An erroneous view of character would thus be given philosophical respectability by turning it into a something – a psychological state, perhaps, or metaphysical substance – from which actions mysteriously flowed or by which they were putatively caused. The terms Hume uses to describe character – motives, dispositions, character traits, durable qualities, and the like – would then exist autonomously

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or somehow reside ‘‘in’’ human beings, waiting to be displayed on appropriate occasions. Despite the fact that Hume diagnoses the error behind the metaphysical view and explicitly rejects the picture of self that is based upon it, there is a tendency for commentators to understand him as adopting it in his approach to character. Terence Penelhum, for example, maintains that Hume’s character traits ‘‘must be real, settled features of the make-up of persons . . . and the names of these character traits . . . are therefore names of actual dispositions that people have.’’6 Richard Dees says that character ‘‘points to a set of qualities and dispositions found in . . . agents that tend to make them act in certain ways,’’7 and Clarence Shole´ Johnson ‘‘summarizes’’ the ‘‘main features of Hume’s theory of moral responsibility’’ by saying that a condition of ascribing moral responsibility to persons is that their actions be intentional or deliberate. Intentional or deliberate actions proceed from individual character; they are individual character-assertions. Therefore to hold a person responsible for his action is to hold him responsible for an expression of his character.8 Having confused different senses of existence and endorsed the vulgar view oneself, it is easy to attribute the same mistake to Hume: to assume, as Johnson maintains, for example, that he is concerned with ‘‘virtuousness itself, as a moral quality . . . that both inheres in a person and would causally direct that person’s significant actions whether or not there are spectators.’’9 This view transforms intentions into ‘‘mental items’’ independent of action, and actions into ‘‘particular instantiations of character.’’10 Having embarked upon this course of reasoning, a pseudo-problem quickly follows: since knowledge of character depends upon knowledge of a person’s intention, Johnson’s logic runs, one is forced to ask ‘‘how we establish that a person’s action is intentional’’ and how one can be ‘‘certain of the nature of an agent’s intentions.’’11 In its extreme form, the metaphysical view involves an unwarranted reductionism of the sort reflected in John Bricke’s comment that, ‘‘though I cannot defend the contention adequately here, it seems to me that Hume assumes that these long-term causal conditions are in fact physiological states of the brain.’’12 This view seems to have become a standard reading for a number of commentators,13 and while it coincides with the vulgar conception of character, its absurdity and incoherence becomes apparent when brought under the critical eye of the philosopher. Two further considerations, moreover, speak against understanding Hume as endorsing the metaphysical view. First, the mere use of locutions such as ‘‘durable qualities,’’ ‘‘principles,’’ ‘‘traits,’’ and ‘‘fixed and established character’’ does not commit Hume to holding it. The evidence for Hume’s putative interest in ‘‘states of the brain’’ comes, no doubt, from his various references to ‘‘animal spirits,’’ ‘‘traces,’’ and ‘‘cells,’’ and especially his mention of ‘‘an imaginary dissection of the brain’’ (T 1.2.5.20, SBN 60).14 Yet

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the mere existence of such phrases hardly forms a sound basis for such an inference, even if, as John Wright emphasizes, Hume’s methodology has some historical link to eighteenth-century medical theory.15 In fact, seen in its proper context, it is clear that the dissection passage is an analogy Hume draws, an experiment designed to contradict and test his own principle that ‘‘we must in the end rest contented with experience’’ rather than seek out ‘‘secret causes [and] operations.’’ Hume imagines the objections of a wouldbe critic: ‘‘Twill probably be said,’’ he says, ‘‘that my reasoning makes nothing to the matter in hand, and that I explain only the manner in which objects affect the senses, without endeavouring to account for their real nature and operations’’ (T 1.2.5.25, SBN 63). ‘‘I answer this objection,’’ Hume replies, ‘‘by pleading guilty, and by confessing that my intention never was to penetrate into the nature of bodies, or explain the secret causes of their operations’’ (T 1.2.5.26, SBN 64). Only when Hume assumes the perspective of a critical interlocutor and allows himself reluctantly to consider the ‘‘secret causes of . . . operations’’ does he attempt his imaginary dissection of the brain. There is no more reason to see hidden meaning in ‘‘animal spirits’’ or ‘‘decaying traces’’ than there is to read contemporary philosophical concerns into Hume’s metaphor of anatomy more generally. He also talks of bile and the spleen, but no commentator has reduced character or passion to states of those phenomena.16 Second, Hume pays considerable attention to language and the meaning of terms, and makes various remarks about the bewitching effects of natural language and conceptual confusions arising from them.17 In addition, he is often careful to distinguish phenomenological experience from the discourse of philosophical explanation, and holds apart the sorts of terms, the confusion of which gives rise to the metaphysical view in the first place. One clear example of this is his treatment of ‘‘distinctions of reason.’’ One might ‘‘consider the figure and colour [in the piece of white marble] together,’’ Hume says, ‘‘. . . but still view them in different aspects, according to the resemblances, of which they are susceptible’’ (T 1.1.7.18, SBN 25). This is ‘‘an abstraction without a separation’’ (T 1.2.4.12, SBN 43), however, and in experience the marble remains intact. To take its aspects as literally distinct would be nonsense, and to hold causes and conduct apart in the manner demanded by the metaphysical view of character is to commit Hume to a position of just this sort. Attempt at a realist solution As we have seen, Hume’s criticism of purely speculative doctrines and the entities they treat poses a difficulty for interpreting his conception of character, since – when understood as the metaphysical view described above – it is contrary to the doctrines he explicitly rejects elsewhere. Why would Hume do this? Why argue against such a view in the case of personal identity while propounding it in his conception of character? One way of answering this

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question is to reconcile the two contradictory positions. The question of character then resolves, as McIntyre expresses it, into seeing ‘‘whether Hume’s analyses of the self and causation can accommodate the view of character required by his moral philosophy’’; to see whether character can be ‘‘treat[ed] . . . realistically while maintaining the view that self is a collection of perceptions.’’18 The assumption here, of course, is that Hume is a realist about character, that he is committed – to use Michael Dummett’s characterization of the position – to the ‘‘belief that statements of the disputed class possess an objective truth-value, independently of our means of knowing it: they are true or false in virtue of a reality existing independently of us.’’ Traits, dispositions, and the like then ‘‘genuinely have a reference,’’ and character becomes a mental or physical state (or is reducible to such a state) existing independent of and prior to the conduct in question.19 This is how McIntrye interprets Hume’s view that actions ‘‘derive their moral significance from their connections with thinking beings endowed with persisting mental qualities.’’ If one understands Hume along these lines, the most obvious way to resolve the contradiction between his (purportedly) realist view of character and his non-realist view of personal identity, is to search his work for an alternative to the metaphysical concept of substance that can accommodate the (purportedly) realist language of stable dispositions and enduring traits. This is what McIntyre proceeds to do. ‘‘Though he [Hume] cannot explain these features of persons as states of an underlying mental substance,’’ she contends, ‘‘it should not be concluded that Hume can therefore provide no account of character traits. Hume’s realism about character must be integrated, however, into his overall metaphysical and epistemological position.’’20 McIntyre attempts to achieve this by drawing on Hume’s account of power and the passions in Book II of the Treatise in order to show that ‘‘on a Humean view, character is the structured set of relatively stable passions that give rise to a person’s actions.’’21 There are at least three difficulties with such an approach, however. First, as McIntyre acknowledges, Hume himself does not make any explicit connection between passions and character traits, and the account of the former has to be ‘‘extended’’ to the latter in order to make the parallel work. Second, this extension puts undue interpretive weight on the claim that Hume modifies his position regarding ‘‘power’’ as he moves from Book I of the Treatise to Book II. That is, McIntyre argues, whereas in the former he identifies ability with its exercise, in the latter Hume says a power only has a ‘‘reference’’ to an action (T 2.1.10.6, SBN 313). This requirement must be met if character traits are to have the ‘‘power . . . to produce sentiments of approval and disapproval.’’22 Yet only two paragraphs earlier (T 2.1.10.4, SBN 311) – in Book II, that is – Hume is still maintaining that distinguishing ‘‘betwixt a power and the exercise of it, is entirely frivolous.’’ Third, and most telling, is that in trying to save Hume’s realist account of character, McIntyre ultimately falls prey to the very metaphysical reasoning that

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Hume otherwise rejects. McIntryre describes Hume’s notion of ‘‘durable and constant’’ as ‘‘surprisingly vague,’’ but then employs similar language in her own explanation. She speaks of the ‘‘real components of the Humean self,’’ passions that ‘‘exist independently of a social context,’’ and ‘‘real correlates’’ of the idea of character, all of which – as Hume says with regard to power and efficacy – signify ‘‘something’’ of which we have no clear idea (T 1.3.14.27, SBN 168).23 The termination of McIntyre’s account in ‘‘absurdities’’ similar in kind to those Hume himself exposes also appears in David Fate Norton’s attempt to argue a more general case for Hume’s moral realism. Norton says: ‘‘I submit that he [Hume] holds that vice and disapprobation are not identical and that moral qualities are not merely sentiments but, rather, the objective correlates of sentiments.’’ Norton is then obliged to ask what ‘‘objective correlates’’ could possibly mean. ‘‘No rash conclusions should be drawn from this claim about objective correlates,’’ he writes, I do not suggest that virtue and vice are objects in the ordinary sense (physical objects), or that they are transcendentally existing qualities of some kind. On the contrary, I suggest that for Hume virtue and vice are publicly available aspects of man’s world (specifically, particular modifications or qualities of this world), and that they are aspects which serve as the occasion or cause of specific feelings. These feelings in turn make us aware of these objective correlates and of their particular moral character.24 This approach to Hume inevitably runs up against some version of J.L. Mackie’s ‘‘argument from queerness.’’ If ‘‘real’’ traits or values did exist, ‘‘then they would be entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort,’’ Mackie remarks, ‘‘utterly different from anything else in the universe . . . [and] if we were aware of them, it would have to be by some special faculty of moral perception or intuition, utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing everything else.’’25 Rather than clarifying Hume’s views, the appeal to further qualities – independently existing passions or the objective correlates of sentiments – tends to obscure his position further. In light of this and Hume’s own rejection of the metaphysics involved in theories of self, soul, and substance, it seems reasonable to abandon the metaphysical view entirely in favor of a more promising alternative.

The ‘‘practical’’ view of character One alternative way of approaching Hume’s conception of character is via his aesthetics, one area where commentators are unanimous in not seeing Hume as a realist.26 Two elements of his aesthetics discussed earlier are relevant in this context. First, the parallel between beauty in nature and art, and the beauty of morals, under the auspices of which Hume speaks of the

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beauty of character; and, second, the Lockean doctrine according to which beauty is comparable to a secondary quality that takes the form of a sentiment in us. The beauty of character As in the case of beauty in nature, art, and morals, Hume thinks we praise or blame character according to the principles of agreeableness or utility. First, character can be immediately agreeable to the possessor where an individual’s happiness ‘‘communicates a secret joy and satisfaction, like sunshine or the prospect of well-cultivated plains’’ (EPM 6.22, SBN 244). We cannot be indifferent to the happiness or misery of those we meet, and the view of certain qualities in a character produces an immediate agreeableness on the part of the spectator. In the presence of an individual with talents, abilities, a command over his fortune, and prospects of future success ‘‘we are struck with such agreeable images, and feel a complacency and regard immediately arise towards him. The ideas of happiness, joy, triumph, prosperity, are connected with every circumstance of his character, and diffuse over our minds a pleasing sentiment of sympathy and humanity’’ (EPM 6.3, SBN 234). Second, character can be immediately agreeable to others, especially in terms of that ‘‘manner, grace, an ease, a genteelness, an I-know-notwhat, which some men possess above others, which is very different from external beauty and comeliness, and which, however, catches our affection almost as suddenly and powerfully.’’ The idea that agreeable qualities have an effect on others, Hume concludes, ‘‘enters into all the judgments which we form concerning manners and characters’’ (EPM 8.14–15, EPM 267). While immediate agreeableness is one reason why we approve the virtuous and disapprove the vicious, Hume considers utility to be the most powerful factor in the approbation or disapprobation of character. ‘‘If we examine the panegyrics that are commonly made of great men,’’ he writes, we shall find, that most of the qualities, which are attributed to them, may be divided into two kinds, viz. such as make them perform their part in society; and such as render them serviceable to themselves, and enable them to promote their own interest. Their prudence, temperance, frugality, industry, assiduity, enterprise, dexterity, are celebrated, as well as their generosity and humanity. (T 3.3.1.24, SBN 587) ‘‘The characters which engage our approbation are chiefly such as contribute to the peace and security of human society,’’ Hume also remarks, ‘‘. . . Whence it may reasonably be presumed, that the moral sentiments arise, either mediately or immediately, from a reflection of these opposite interests’’ (EHU 8.35, SBN 102). Sometimes we approve of good character because it involves qualities useful to the possessor. The merit of ‘‘temperance,

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sobriety, patience, constancy, perseverance, forethought, considerateness, secrecy, order, insinuation, address, presenceof mind, quickness of conception, facility of expression,’’ Hume writes, ‘‘. . . consists in the tendency to serve the person, possessed of them, without any magnificent claim to public and social desert’’ (EPM 6.21, SBN 243). The fool, on the other hand, the individual who shows an ‘‘utter incapacity for any purpose or undertaking,’’ gives rise to such disgust that only the affection of parents can overlook it (EPM 6.16, SBN 240). Indeed, the ‘‘best character . . . were it not rather too perfect for human nature, is that which is not swayed by temper of any kind; but alternately employs enterprise and caution, as each is useful to the particular purpose intended’’ (EPM 6.9, SBN 237). Of greater beauty still, Hume suggests, is the character approved for being useful to others, which promotes the good of the whole. ‘‘In every judgment of beauty, the feelings of the person affected enter into consideration, and communicate to the spectator similar touches of pleasure and pain. What wonder, then, if we can pronounce no judgement concerning the character and conduct of men, without considering the tendencies of their actions, and the happiness or misery which thence arises to society’’ (EPM 5.38, SBN 224–25). On the other hand, ‘‘a man, whose habits and conduct are hurtful to society, and dangerous and pernicious to everyone who has an intercourse with him, should, on that account, be an object of disapprobation, and communicate to every spectator the strongest sentiments of disgust and hatred’’ (EPM 5.1, SBN 213). In all these instances, the beauty of character consists ultimately in a particular virtue or quality that dominates the individual in question, or in a collection of such virtues or qualities that occur together. In Cleanthes, one finds such a combination of the immediate and useful in one place that Hume refers to him as a ‘‘model of perfect virtue’’ (EPM 9.3, SBN 270). Beauty and the ‘‘practical’’ view of character The question that arises from thinking of character in this way is precisely how qualities can combine or occur together – how virtues can attach to a person and form his or her character – if not through some mysterious substance or state as the metaphysical view of character holds. As we have seen, in his aesthetics Hume adopts the Lockean position that beauty and deformity are ‘‘not qualities in objects, but belong entirely to the sentiment, internal or external’’ (E 235). Beauty ‘‘is not, properly speaking, a quality in any object, but merely a passion or impression in the soul’’ (T 2.1.8.6, SBN 301). Beauty might appear to be a quality in an object, but it is actually a sentiment that arises in an observer and is attributed subsequently to the object in question. In approaching beauty and deformity in terms of this distinction between primary and secondary qualities, Hume not only explains beauty in terms of sentiments aroused in a subject, but also emphasizes an ‘‘error’’ into

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which non-philosophical consciousness naturally falls. In common life the idea that beauty is a quality in the object has deep roots in the imagination, and people cannot shake themselves free from believing it to be the case; all evidence points to the fact that beauty does reside in objects, and this finds expression in ordinary locutions of the sort: ‘‘x is beautiful.’’ People uncritically accept what their senses tell them and conclude that beauty is a quality in the object itself. The ‘‘careful eye’’ of the philosopher, on the other hand, discovers the mistake of naive realism and shows beauty to be a matter of sentiment. Thus, as Hume puts it in ‘‘The Sceptic,’’ though it is ‘‘supposed’’ that the ‘‘agreeable quality . . . [lies] in the object, not in the sentiment,’’ a ‘‘little reflection’’ discovers the ‘‘error’’ upon which such a view is based. Only through philosophical reflection does it become clear that the beauty of a circle, to cite Hume’s example again, does not lie ‘‘in any part of the line whose parts are all equally distant from a common center. It is only the effect which that figure produces upon the mind‘‘ (E 165, first emphasis in original, second added). Hume makes a similar point about error in Book I of the Treatise. There he ‘‘establish[es] it as a general maxim in . . . [the] science of human nature, that wherever there is a close relation betwixt two ideas, the mind is very apt to mistake them, and in all its discourses and reasonings to use the one for the other’’ (T 1.2.5.19, SBN 60). This principle, Hume urges, explains the nature of otherwise confusing phenomena: why we entertain the idea of a vacuum, for example, or take ‘‘power’’ and ‘‘necessity’’ to have real existence. In our ‘‘natural way of thinking,’’ Hume discovers, we ‘‘falsely imagine’’ ideas such as empty space, and take power and necessity to be ‘‘perceiv’d externally in bodies’’ when they are actually ‘‘qualities in perceptions . . . internally felt by the soul’’ (T 1.3.14.24, SBN 166). The principles of association lead the mind from an internal impression to a belief that those qualities ‘‘lie in the objects we consider, not in our mind, that considers them’’ (T 1.3.14.25, SBN 167). Ideas of beauty, vacuum, power, and necessity, then, all appear to have real referents, but when understood philosophically these referents turn out to be erroneous conclusions or errors of thinking. For while beauty is actually a sentiment that rises in the subject, and power and necessity are ideas born of association and past experience, the human mind treats them as if they were a quality or force ‘‘in’’ objects themselves. Precisely the same logic applies to Hume’s thinking about character and the ‘‘traits,’’ which, in the metaphysical view, are treated as mysterious entities or ‘‘somethings.’’ Traits of character might appear to be ‘‘in’’ persons, and are talked about as if they had location and duration: they are ‘‘stable dispositions’’ that ‘‘endure’’ or ‘‘display themselves’’ in action. Philosophical reflection, however, reveals this belief to be in error, a rule of the first influence, which reveals that ‘‘traits’’ are not qualities that inhere in ‘‘substance,’’ ‘‘passions,’’ or some conceptual equivalent, but are actually sentiments to which certain actions give rise. Further, as individuals commit the ‘‘error’’ of taking beauty

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as a quality in the object, so they assign ‘‘character traits’’ to this or that person as if they were qualities that inhered in persons (or brains). Beauty, rather, is an internal impression arising from the fit between object and observer and, in a similar way, traits are actually sentiments that arise in the judging subject and are subsequently attributed to or predicated of the person being judged. Just as actions are neither virtuous nor vicious in themselves, so strictly speaking a person is neither ‘‘good’’ nor ‘‘bad,’’ but the occasion of approval or disapproval – based on agreeableness or utility – where the latter are sentiments that arise in the person making the judgment. Understood in this way, Hume’s conception of character is similar in kind to his approach in aesthetics and morals, and does not contradict his treatment of self, soul, and substance. Hume’s view is only problematic if character is interpreted as a purely speculative or ‘‘metaphysical’’ entity of the sort that Hume rejects. Towards the beginning of Book III of the Treatise Hume indicates that he thinks of character along these lines. In a well-known passage, he argues explicitly that vice is not a matter of fact or real existence residing in an object, and that ‘‘vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object. You never can find it,’’ he continues, ‘‘till you turn your reflexion into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you, towards this action. Here is a matter of fact; but ‘tis the object of feeling, not reason. It lies in yourself, not the object’’ (T 3.1.1.26, SBN 468– 69, emphasis added). This ‘‘matter of fact’’ is the same as the sentiment or ‘‘trait’’ attributed to a person whenever a moral judgment is made, and the practice of making such judgments explains the sense in which character ‘‘exists.’’ Character can be discussed, praised, condemned, and the like, but these possibilities do not require of their referent that it be located in time and space like an object with ‘‘real’’ existence. This way of considering Hume’s approach to character might be termed the practical view, since, following his distinction between speculative and practical philosophy (T 3.1.1.5, SBN 457), and the reference to ‘‘practical morality’’ at the end of the Treatise, (T 3.3.3.6, SBN 621), it captures Hume’s insistence that morals is concerned with conduct. ‘‘Morals excite passions,’’ as he says, ‘‘and produce or prevent actions’’ (T 3.1.1.6, SBN 457).27 According to the practical view, the set of stable dispositions, traits, and motives that constitute character are not possessed (as the metaphysical view holds) in some mysterious manner, but have an empirical basis, consisting as they do in the practice of attributing moral categories on the basis of probabilistic reasoning and according to standards governing the category in question. On this practical view, character involves doing certain things and engaging in conduct known – according to general standards – to be praise or blameworthy. Intimations of this way of understanding Hume are to be found in several commentators. Penelhum, for example, emphasizes that for Hume ‘‘when we say someone’s character is virtuous and thus praise that person, we are expressing a feeling of approval, and that this . . . is somehow constitutive of

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his being virtuous, not a consequence of our discerning his virtue independently.’’28 Barry Stroud describes Hume’s conception of a ‘‘moral judgment’’ as ‘‘the attribution of a certain characteristic of an action or character. Although there is in fact no such characteristic in action, or characters,’’ he continues, ‘‘the feeling we get on contemplating them inevitably leads us to ascribe it to them.’’ It is this process of feeling, contemplation, and ascription through which Hume explains the origin of virtue and vice.29 In a similar vain, Simon Blackburn remarks that ‘‘the primary object of moral judgment, for Hume, is the character of an agent, and this character is not laid before us as the bearer of sensible properties. It is a construct from occasions of acting, thoughts about likely motivation, efforts at discounting for personal involvement with the subject, and so on.’’ Thus, for Hume, Blackburn maintains, ‘‘the problem in . . . ethics is how a passion, an original existence, becomes transmuted into a judgment of the properties of things.’’30 It might seem as if ‘‘character’’ consisted of traits or sensible properties residing in persons themselves but, as with the beauty of the circle cited above, it is actually a phenomenon (to use Blackburn’s term) ‘‘constructed’’ from occasions of practical action. The view proposed here emphasizes this idea that character is the outcome of conduct in which people engage. To have a trait of character is never to possess any ‘‘thing,’’ but is to have somebody else account for one’s behavior in terms of the ‘‘moral distinctions’’ that make up Hume’s ‘‘catalogue of virtues.’’ For a person to say of another that he or she is ‘‘prudent,’’ ‘‘temperate,’’ or ‘‘dexterous’’ is to say that he or she engages in actions that can be appropriately categorized as ‘‘prudent,’’ ‘‘temperate,’’ or ‘‘dexterous.’’ People have these concepts at their disposal and employ them to explain, evaluate, or otherwise describe each other’s conduct. The routine ascription of moral terms to account for each other’s conduct is what constitutes a person’s character. This, in turn, presupposes two features of moral language that Hume seems to have recognized. First, only a limited set of concepts make up specifically moral language and, subsequently, are relevant to the formation of character. Hume observes, for example, that memory is ‘‘of the least consequence to the character’’; for ‘‘we commonly take not notice of its [memory’s] variations,’’ he says, ‘‘nor ever mention them to the praise or dispraise of any person’’ (T 3.3.4.13, SBN 612). Hume’s point of course is not to rule out moral diversity, but to show that the existence of some set of categories is a minimal condition for moral conduct. The specific virtues appearing in the catalogue may vary, but at any given time, there will be a relatively stable set through which conduct is assessed. Second, within the class of operative moral concepts, there must be public criteria for judging a person’s conduct in terms of an appropriate category. This means no more than that a competent agent is familiar with the concepts in question and is capable of employing them correctly on any given occasion. People can contravene these standards and employ a category inappropriately, but doing so systematically

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constitutes conduct itself in need of explanation. Calling somebody selfish, for example, when their conduct does not give sufficient grounds for doing so, might be a moral failure on the part of the judge, and baseless attributions of moral categories to slight another become an occasion for moral disapprobation. As Hume says, were the door opened to self-praise, and were Montaigne’s maxim observed, that one should say as frankly, I have sense, I have wit, I have learning, I have courage, beauty, or wit; as it is sure we often think so; were this the case, I say, everyone is sensible that such a flood of impertinence would break in upon us, as would render society wholly intolerable. (EPM 8.9, SBN 264) Such attributions of vice, as well as virtue, are only possible, however, if standards exist in the first place. Character, then, on this practical view, consists in the appropriate attribution of a moral category in order to account for the action in question. In principle, it can explain any virtue or vice, though Hume’s remarks on indolence and pride can serve as an illustration. The trait of indolence, Hume says, is always taken to be a fault by others and ‘‘a very great one, if extreme.’’ To be indolent is not to be deprived of one’s ‘‘parts and capacity,’’ but to suspend their exercise; and since the failure to exercise one’s capacities is ‘‘in some measure’’ a matter of personal choice, it is conduct that reflects poorly on the indolent person. ‘‘He cou’d make a figure, say they, if he pleas’d to give application: His understanding is sound, his conception quick, and his memory tenacious; but he hates business, and is indifferent about his fortune’’ (T 3.3.1.24, SBN 587). Thus to say of somebody that he is ‘‘indolent’’ means that this category is routinely attributed to a person who engages in action appropriately termed ‘‘indolent’’: the failure to do certain things and an explanation of this fact constitutes the indolence of an indolent man; that is all that it can mean to possess an ‘‘indolent trait’’ of character. A second and quite striking example of the practical formation of character is to be found in Hume’s discussion of pride. A man is proud if he has an ‘‘over-weaning conceit of [his] own merit,’’ Hume remarks, and such a man is judged vicious because he produces an uneasiness amongst those who share his company. This uneasiness and the judgment that follows upon it comes about because the said man obliges his companions to compare themselves with his own person. Men, as Hume says, tending to ‘‘judge more of objects by comparison than by their intrinsic worth and value’’ (T 3.3.2.4, SBN 593), discover in the man of pride an unwelcome opportunity to confront their own conceit. It is for this reason that ‘‘the proud never can endure the proud, and rather seek the company of those who are of an opposite disposition’’ (T 3.3.2.7, SBN 596). As with the trait of indolence, pride, Hume suggests, is a way of accounting for a set of particular actions:

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the proud man behaves with an unwarranted yet ‘‘firm persuasion’’ of qualities and capacities that, according to the standards of common life, he does not in fact possess. Again, such a presentation of self requires some explanation. The attribution of ‘‘pride’’ to a man results from this requirement and constitutes the character of a man so called. The same logic governs Hume’s further observation that, although overweening pride is judged a vicious trait of character, a ‘‘due degree of pride’’ is regarded as virtuous and a necessary quality of good character. It is said of a man possessed of such character that he has ‘‘confidence’’ and ‘‘assurance’’; that he is properly acquainted with his own capacity, and can ‘‘form . . . designs suitable to it’’ (T 3.3.2.8, SBN 597). Yet even this due degree of pride is liable to induce individuals to compare themselves with the self-assured man. As such, uneasiness and the rancor and disharmony following upon it become a constant and unwelcome feature of social intercourse. For the sake of harmonious relations, therefore, ‘‘rules of goodbreeding’’ and decency arise and these are paramount in defining the appropriate social behavior of a man judged virtuous. Thus the mark of a good character – one who lacks obvious conceit, yet drapes his proper sense of self-worth with approved standards of good behavior – is he in whom there is an ‘‘appearance of modesty and mutual deference in all [his] conduct and behaviour’’ (T 3.3.2.10, SBN 598). The character of such a man consists in the fact he is a ‘‘man of breeding.’’ Perhaps nowhere is this practical view of character more evident than in the assessments Hume offers of the various figures that populate the History of England. On these occasions, Hume writes as a practical moralist and creates ‘‘pictures of human life in various attitudes and situations,’’ which are intended to strike the reader as beautiful or deformed, and ‘‘inspire us with different sentiments, of praise or blame, admiration or ridicule,’’ according to the qualities of the person in question (EHU 1.8, SBN 9–10). The qualities or traits are derived not from a mysterious source in the subject, however, but are attributions Hume makes based on the actions these people have performed over the course of a lifetime. Consider, for example, Hume’s descriptions of Henry II (1154–89) and his heir and successor Richard I (1189–99). Of Henry, Hume writes: His character, in private as well as in public life, is almost without a blemish; and he seems to have possessed every accomplishment both of body and mind, which makes a man either estimable or amiable . . . He loved peace, but possessed both bravery and conduct in war; was provident without timidity; severe in the execution of justice without rigour; and temperate without austerity. He preserved health, and kept himself from corpulency . . . When he could enjoy leisure, he recreated himself either in learned conversation or in reading; and he recreated his natural talents by study, above any prince of his time. (H I, 370)

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Richard, by contrast, is distinguished by his military talents, earning him ‘‘the appellation of the lion-hearted, coeur de lion’’: He passionately loved glory, chiefly military glory; and as his conduct in the field was not inferior to his valour, he seems to have possessed every talent necessary for acquiring it. His resentments also were high; his pride unconquerable . . . Of an impetuous and vehement spirit, he was distinguished by all the good, as well as the bad qualities, incident to that character: He was open, frank, generous, sincere, and brave; he was revengeful, domineering, ambitious, haughty, and cruel. (H I, 403) Hume provides these character assessments having narrated the details of the policies and conduct of the sovereign in question. Henry’s administration is marked by the king’s attention to justice and equity, reflected in his grief over the unfortunate murder of Thomas a´ Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. Richard’s reign, by contrast, is stamped with the effects of war and aggression. The conduct and policies of each individual give warrant for the attribution of the traits in question and that is what allows Hume to offer assessments of their respective characters. Possible objections answered The argument developed in this chapter so far makes sense of what Hume means when he speaks of character, and does so without undermining his general philosophical approach. The practical view, in fact, is compatible with Hume’s critique of metaphysics and his treatments of self, soul, and substance. In addition, it is consistent with two elements of his moral philosophy discussed in previous chapters. First, character is the ongoing product of the practice of moral judgment that Hume considers central to moral life. Individuals can improve their conduct through reflection and correction, and in so doing move closer to the standards praised and blamed in common life, and personified in the figure of the moral expert. The model towards which individuals should aim is the ‘‘perfect character’’ of Cleanthes. Hume also extends this idea of character to beyond the individual to ‘‘characters peculiar to different nations . . . as well as common to mankind’’ (T 2.3.1.10, SBN 403; see also H II, 95; V, 401; and VI, 128 and 427), as well as to institutions such as the Long Parliament convened during the English Revolution (H VI, 353). Second, the practical view of character expresses the normative dimension of Hume’s approach to morals, which he derives from producing philosophical rules in their second influence. In his conception of character, Hume speaks as a moralist, associated metaphorically with the warm colors and flourish of the painter, who recommends some actions as virtuous while clearly rejecting others as vicious.

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Two charges, however, could be brought against the practical view of character, and I want to respond to them before bringing the chapter to a close. First, the practical view might be seen as focusing exclusively on the third person, implying that individuals have no influence or control over their reputations or the ‘‘figure’’ they make in the world. In response, it should be emphasized how the practical view assumes that people have the capacity, noted above, to reflect upon their own conduct and correct mistakes made on previous occasions. Good character must be earned, and this involves some soul-craft where flaws are discovered and efforts taken to mend them. For ‘‘Who . . . is not deeply mortified,’’ Hume asks, ‘‘with reflecting on his own folly and dissoluteness, and feels not a secret sting or compunction whenever his memory presents any past occurrence, where he behaved with stupidity or ill-manners?’’ (EPM Appx. 4.3, SBN 314–15). At the same time, character is not something one gives to oneself, and for this reason a bad character can be unwarranted or a poor reputation undeserved; indeed, attributing virtue to oneself is usually a vice. Calling Hume’s approach practical in the sense proposed here actually takes both sides of character formation into account. From a first person perspective it makes room for individual reflection and improvement, and from a third person point of view it shows how the intelligibility of conduct depends upon intersubjective, publicly available criteria; that, as Penelhum writes, ‘‘although moral judgments express feelings, they are true or false in a publicly discernible way.’’31 Second, the practical view might be criticized for its apparent nominalism. Does not emphasizing the role of standards and moral categories, make character ‘‘merely’’ linguistic or, to use McIntyre’s phrase, undertake a ‘‘simplistic reduction of character to actions’’? One response to this objection is to emphasize how the practical view succeeds in explaining what Hume means when he talks of ‘‘dispositions,’’ ‘‘traits,’’ and the like. It does so, moreover, by dissolving the contradiction created by seeing Hume as a realist in his approach to character while rejecting similar doctrines elsewhere in his work. The practical view is one way of articulating what McIntyre points to when she claims that because its ‘‘identification requires a social context’’ character must have an ‘‘important social dimension.’’32 This, in turn, is recognition of Hume’s own emphasis on the social nature of human beings, a view that is to the fore particularly in his treatment of justice and property (T 3.2.1–6, SBN 477–534), and in his discussions of sympathy and the ‘‘infectious’’ nature of social life. Far from ‘‘reducing’’ character to language or action, the view proposed here reflects Hume’s insight by placing character at the very heart of social life. It is important to emphasize, moreover, how the practical view explains two things that at first sight favor the metaphysical view it replaces. The first concerns the language Hume uses in connection with character. As pointed out at the beginning of the chapter, he emphasizes durable qualities, principles, and the uniformity of traits over and above the temporary and perishing

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nature of actions; he speaks of durable qualities that remain, of a cause in the character, the display of virtues, underlying dispositions, and the nonaccidental nature of the object of moral approval. The metaphysical view accommodates this well since it accepts (to use McIntyre’s words quoted earlier) that ‘‘character traits endure and can exist without being continuously exercised.’’ On the practical view, however, ‘‘traits’’ or ‘‘dispositions’’ consist in the attribution of qualities to others based on sentiments felt by the observer. Thus, the practical view shows that when Hume uses such terms, he is not identifying real states or passions at all, but is describing the process of causal inference that makes up the routine formation of character.33 The characters of people appear in the things they do, but the causal relationship in the case of ‘‘moral evidence’’ is no more or less mysterious than in the ‘‘natural’’ when a cause is manifest as one billiard ball strikes and moves another. The orders of both the moral and natural world consist in constant conjunction and judgments based on probabilistic reasoning about future events. The ‘‘conjunction between motives and voluntary actions is as regular and uniform,’’ Hume writes, ‘‘as that between the cause and effect in any part of nature’’ (EHU 8.16, SBN 88). ‘‘Even the characters, which are peculiar to each individual,’’ as Hume writes in his discussion of liberty and necessity, ‘‘have a uniformity in their influence; otherwise our acquaintance with the persons and our observations of their conduct could never teach us their dispositions, or serve to direct our behaviour with regard to them’’ (EHU 8.12, SBN 86). Indeed, the uniformity of character is necessary for there to be causal reasoning that enables inferences from motives to actions, without which it would be impossible to hold individuals responsible for their actions. ‘‘Where would be the foundation of morals,’’ Hume asks, ‘‘if particular characters had no certain or determinate power to produce particular sentiments? . . . It seems impossible . . . to engage, either in science or action of any kind, without acknowledging this inference from motives to voluntary actions; from characters to conduct’’ (EHU 8.18, SBN 90). Second, and related to this, is the ‘‘proposition’’ that Hume describes in a letter to Hutcheson, ‘‘that to every virtuous actions [sic] there must be a Motive or impelling Passion distinct from the Virtue, & that Virtue can never be the sole Motive to any Action’’ (L I, 35). In the Treatise he makes the same point in slightly different terms, observing that ‘‘when we praise any actions, we regard only the motives that produced them, and consider the actions as signs or indications of certain principles in the mind and temper. The external performance has not merit. We must look within to find the moral quality’’ (T 3.2.1.2, SBN 477). Like ‘‘enduring qualities,’’ at first sight this proposal suggests a thoroughgoing realism that generates the contradiction between self and character discussed above. When understood in terms of Hume’s epistemology, however, what looks like an assumption about the existence of mental or physical states turns out to be a description

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of the regularity involved in causal connection. The proper explanation for moral approbation or blame is the enduring part of character (the ‘‘motive signified by the action’’) rather than the action itself, because the former reflects how a person is known to have behaved in the past and so can be expected to behave in the future. ‘‘Durable qualities’’ or ‘‘principles’’ of mind are the products of ‘‘experimental reasoning’’ where similar effects are expected to follow like causes with a probability proportionate to their conjunction in the past; people are thus experienced as being of a certain ‘‘sort,’’ and in this sense can be said to ‘‘possess’’ the qualities in question. Through the ‘‘guide’’ of experience, as Hume remarks, ‘‘we mount up to the knowledge of men’s inclinations and motives, from their actions, expressions, even gestures; and again, descend to the interpretations of their actions from our knowledge of their motives and inclinations’’ (EHU 8.9, SBN 84–85). Similarly, saying of people that they have undergone a ‘‘change of character’’ means that they are not fulfilling expectations based on our experience of them. Becket’s abrupt change of character, for instance, consists in the sudden change of conduct and departure from his previous habits of behavior: He [Becket] maintained, in his retinue and attendants alone, his ancient pomp and luster, which was useful to strike the vulgar: In his own person he affected the greatest austerity, and most rigid mortification, which, he was sensible, would have an equal or a greater tendency to the same end. He wore sack-cloth next to his skin . . . He changed it so seldom, that it was filled with dirt and vermin: His usual diet was bread; his drink water . . . He tore his back with the frequent discipline which he inflicted on it: He daily on his knees washed, in imitation of Christ, the feet of thirteen beggars, whom he afterwards dismissed with presents. (H I, 309–10) The same is true when we say that somebody is behaving ‘‘out of character’’ or in a way ‘‘not suitable’’ to their character. Hume offers various examples of this in the History. A generous act performed William the Conqueror, for example, is notable given his generally tyrannical behavior (H I, 232), as are the poor judgments of an otherwise judicious Elizabeth I (H IV, 42 and 50). Hume also reports how the ‘‘established character for truth and sincerity’’ of General Monk – ‘‘honest George Monk,’’ hero of the Stuart Restoration – was sufficient to allay suspicions of his conduct aired by the parliamentary party hostile to Charles II’s claim (H VI, 123). Further, as an historian, Hume draws on the reported deeds of individuals to draw conclusions about the likely veracity of other reports and rumors. Henry VII’s otherwise good character casts doubt on the suspicion that he was involved in a plot to ruin two of his nobles (H III, 63); the reputation of Hubert de Burgh, a minister of Henry III, makes it unlikely that he annulled a royal charter (H II, 16); and that Sir Francis Walsingham forged a letter produced in the trial of Mary Queen of Scots is rendered spurious by his otherwise meritorious

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conduct. ‘‘The great character, indeed,’’ Hume writes, ‘‘which Sir Francis Walsingham bears for probity and honour, should remove from him all suspicion of such base arts as forgery and subornation’’ (H IV, 235). Where accusations such as these are exceptions to the rule, they are not likely to damage or improve the long-standing reputation of the individual concerned. Where rumors and reports are unrelenting, by contrast, they can acquire an air of authenticity despite having no basis in fact. We might well ‘‘feel a liberty within ourselves,’’ as Hume says, but since ‘‘the necessity of any action . . . is not, properly speaking, a quality in the agent, but in . . . [the] intelligent being, who may consider the action’’ (EHU 8.22.n18), the latter (observer) can make an inference without the former (agent) being aware of it. Becket, again, is a case in point (H I, 336–37), and it is part of the historian’s task to separate fact from fiction by balancing details of the historical record with expectations of behavior based on knowledge of character. As in common life, this is not always possible to do, and mistakes can be made. Only the logic of character ascription, however, makes the historian’s practice of making judgments possible at all.

Conclusion The aim of this chapter has been to show the central place of character in Hume’s moral philosophy by drawing on two central elements of his aesthetics. First, character gives rise to moral beauty, a sentiment based on agreeableness and utility, and, second, involves an error theory, since what appear to be moral qualities in persons are actually sentiments aroused in the observer and subsequently attributed to the person in question. Approaching character in this way overcomes the difficulty of committing Hume to a metaphysical view of character based on a mistake similar to those he deciphers and corrects in his treatment of self, soul, and substance. In addition, the practical view of character reflects Hume’s emphasis on the practice of moral judgment and the ideal standard personified in the figure of the moral expert, and represents the normative dimension of his approach to morals, derived from producing philosophical rules in their second influence. Hume’s conception of character is also important because it raises an issue central to the concerns of moral philosophy. For in order to say of people that they are virtuous or vicious presupposes both a capacity for disinterestedness and that criteria exist in terms of which moral categories can be applied. Like their aesthetic counterparts, moral judgments are open to rational, public dispute and, as is often the case, can be retracted or revised in light of further evidence. The question, then, is how far this public extends: in what sense are moral standards universal across cultures; how is the diversity of common life to be understood; and, finally, can one speak meaningfully of moral progress above the level of individual character? It is to these questions that we now turn.

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So far, we have focused on Hume’s aesthetics as a way of reflecting on his moral philosophy. This has shed light on important aspects of his thought – the role of general rules, the search for principles, the place of models, his view of character formation, the specifically normative dimensions of his approach, and how the antinomical nature of reason enables individuals to hold simultaneously contradictory views over the existence of aesthetic and moral standards. In this chapter and the next I propose to draw on these insights to emphasize three particular areas where Hume’s philosophy makes a substantive contribution to understanding the nature of moral life and our own moral conduct. I shall do so by responding to three objections that might be raised against Hume’s moral philosophy as it has emerged over the course of this study. First, if morality is an immediate reaction to the beauty of vice and the deformity of virtue, why is perfect virtue not the general condition of every human individual? Second, if morality consists of sentiments that arise in the subject, how can moral judgments be objective and claim universal validity? And third, if it is indeed possible to talk of ‘‘general standards’’ that govern conduct, how does one account for the apparent diversity of moral systems and the fact that morals change and even improve over time? This latter question will form the basis for a discussion of Hume’s views on moral progress in chapter six; the current chapter considers the first two questions, which I approach by considering Hume’s view of therelationship between taste and education, and the degree to which he is open to the charges of subjectivism and relativism.

Taste and education If, as Hume maintains, morality consists of sentiments that arise naturally from contemplating the beauty or deformity of conduct and character, why is our moral practice so imperfect and vice rather than virtue the defining feature of so large a part of human action? If the fit between beauty and the human capacity to be affected by it is immediate in the way Hume suggests, why is the true judge and the perfection the figure represents the exception

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rather than the rule? Why is it, as Hume expresses it in ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste,’’ that ‘‘few are qualified to give judgment on any work of art,’’ and such good judges are so rare? Understanding Hume’s response to these questions in the sphere of aesthetics will provide a way of answering the question in the sphere of morals. Before we see how this is the case, it will be useful to comment briefly on Hume’s use of the term ‘‘natural.’’ In the Treatise (T 3.2.1) while considering justice, Hume explicitly juxtaposes ‘‘natural’’ to ‘‘artificial,’’ and, being a case of an ‘‘obvious and absolutely necessary . . . invention,’’ the rules being discussed clearly fall under the latter heading. Yet although justice is unnatural in so far as it is a contrivance rather than a ‘‘thing that proceeds immediately from natural principles,’’ it is ‘‘natural’’ if one takes the term to mean a phenomenon ‘‘common to’’ or ‘‘inseparable from the species’’ (T 3.2.1.19, SBN 484). Making the same point in the second Enquiry, Hume adds ‘‘unusual’’ and ‘‘miraculous’’ as terms contrasting to natural: justice is clearly natural when juxtaposed to the first two terms – it is neither unusual nor miraculous – but not when one considers that it requires the artifices of ‘‘reason, forethought, design, and a social union and confederacy among men’’ (EPM Appx. 3.9n64, SBN 307–8n2). While on this reckoning the origin of justice requires a particular sort of explanation, there is nothing – rules of justice included – that cannot be called ‘‘natural’’ in some sense. It really is a matter of definition and since, as Hume says, the ‘‘word natural is commonly taken in so many senses and is of so loose a signification, . . . it seems vain to dispute whether justice be natural or not’’ (EPM Appx. 3.9, SBN 307). The implication here is that the artificial virtues have their origin in human nature and that all ‘‘natural’’ sentiments are conventional or customary in some way. Whether, as in the reaction to the beauty of objects and conduct, sentiments spring from ‘‘natural principles,’’ or, like the natural but ‘‘artificial’’ rules of justice, they arise from necessity and are mediated by reflection, sentiments must be cultivated or educated. Nature provides the material, but it has to be worked up within an individual life and flourishing culture. This idea is clearly involved in Hume’s concept of taste: capacities are supplied by nature, but they have to be actualized in practices of one sort or another. This is not to say that all individuals are possessed of the same abilities or that they will be equally successful in realizing those they have. Some people have capacities others lack; they are ‘‘gifted,’’ show ‘‘genius,’’ reveal ‘‘talents,’’ and the like, which, try as they might, others cannot emulate though they apply themselves with no less diligence. Likewise, at the other end of the spectrum, there are those who are limited physiologically in their ability to make good judgments. As Hume says, ‘‘the organs of internal sensation are seldom so perfect as to allow the general principles their full play . . . They labour under some defect, or are vitiated by some disorder; and by that means, excite a sentiment, which may be pronounced erroneous’’ (ST 241).

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These are extremes at either end of the spectrum, however; most people fall somewhere in between and, natural talents or pathological defects notwithstanding, it is generally assumed that any fully functioning individual possesses a range of capacities, which, given the appropriate circumstances, can be actualized to a greater or lesser degree. Hume’s further point, moreover, is that although the ‘‘generality of mankind’’ have the potential for good taste, it does not follow that this will translate into skills or good judgment. Taste, in other words, is both a faculty and an achievement, and the individual with an ‘‘experienced eye is . . . sensible to many excellencies, which escape persons ignorant and uninstructed’’ (EPM 2.10, SBN 179). The details of educating the sentiments will vary according to the practice in question, but the transition from potentiality to actuality, from novice to expert, will always demand patience, dedication, hard work, and sacrifice. The judgments of Sancho’s kinsmen at the hogshead of wine are evidence that they have achieved excellence in a certain practice. Yet the taste they display has a history; it is the result of perseverance in a particular endeavor. Since taste is a process of this sort, cultivating it successfully is always a contingent matter; the outcome can never be guaranteed, and any attempt to achieve excellence might well fail. A variety of sociological or psychological reasons might be advanced to explain this, but Hume’s insight is that all failure involves some lack of perfection. The process is directly analogous to the case of belief where ‘‘our fallible and uncertain faculties’’ are liable to lead us into errors of one sort or another. ‘‘Our reason must be consider’d as a kind of cause,’’ Hume says, ‘‘of which truth is the natural effect; but such-a-one as by the irruption of other causes, and by the inconstancy of our mental powers, may frequently be prevented’’ (T 1.4.1.1, SBN 180). The ‘‘mechanism which nature has set up may be perverted,’’ as W.H. Walsh expresses Hume’s view, ‘‘and men may in consequence embrace beliefs that have no foundation in fact . . . [and] abandon ways of behaving which are to their true interest.’’1 Hume himself suggests various reasons why nature might be perverted in such a fashion. ‘‘One man may,’’ for example, ‘‘very much surpass another in attention and memory and observation, [and] this will make a very great difference in their reasoning’’; one ‘‘man is able to carry on a chain of consequences to a greater length than another’’; or, again, some persons display more of that ‘‘great attention, accuracy, and subtilty [sic]’’ required to separate the matter at hand from ‘‘other circumstances, which are foreign and extrinsic’’ (EHU 167n20, SBN 107n1). All of these depend either upon the capacities various individuals possess, or the degree to which people have improved their natural abilities through experience and reflection. Taste can be understood in a similar way. Hume’s critic is ‘‘so rare a character’’ precisely because the natural potential to achieve the highest standards is liable to ‘‘perversions’’ of various kinds. ‘‘Where men vary in their judgments,’’ Hume says, ‘‘some defect or perversion of the faculties may commonly be remarked’’ (ST 243). The generality of mankind labor

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under one or more of the various ‘‘imperfections’’ that are overcome in the ‘‘valuable character’’ of the true judge. As we have already seen, this is why Hume’s true judge is ideal: the figure personifies general standards that people (critic and non-critic alike) presuppose when making judgments of taste, and represents perfection towards which people aim. Failure remains the norm, however, because the perfection promised by nature is routinely vitiated by lack of sense, coarse sentiments, inadequate practice, neglect of comparison, and prejudice. Imperfection rather than its opposite, Hume teaches, is the condition of being human. How does the concept of taste from Hume’s aesthetics, then, help in answering the question raised above, that if sentiments are natural, why is vice rather than virtue the rule rather than the exception in human life? Hume himself points the way in this regard when he extends the notion of critical taste to morals. Approbation of conduct and character ‘‘proceeds entirely from a moral taste’’ (T 3.3.1.15, SBN 581), Hume writes, and we can talk of a ‘‘right or wrong taste in morals’’ as we can in eloquence and beauty (T 3.2.8.8n80, SBN 547n1). Moral taste ‘‘gives the sentiment of beauty and deformity, vice and virtue.’’ Taste ‘‘has a productive faculty,’’ he continues, and gilding or staining all natural objects with the colours, borrowed from internal sentiment, raises in a manner a new creation . . . Taste, as it gives pleasure or pain, and thereby constitutes happiness or misery, becomes a motive to action, and is the first spring or impulse to desire and volition. (EPM Appx. 1.21, SBN 294) It is ‘‘requisite to employ much reasoning, in order to feel the proper sentiment’’ (EPM 1.10, SBN 174), as Hume remarks, and if critical taste is the source of natural and artistic beauty and deformity, then moral taste should play the same role in moral beauty and deformity as does aesthetic taste in the beauty and deformity of art and nature. Three points of comparison between the two will bear this contention out. First, as with the true judge, the capacity to be moral is possessed by the majority of human beings. There are people who are particularly devoted to virtue, which finds its most complete expression in those who dedicate themselves to the rigors of a religious life. Similarly, as with the organs of internal sensation, which are defective in some way, there might well be individuals who show a pathological tendency to engage in anti-social behavior. Hume himself describes a figure of this latter sort in his wellknown portrait of the ‘‘sensible knave,’’ that individual who ‘‘may think that an act of iniquity or infidelity will make a considerable addition to his fortune, without causing any considerable breach in the social union and confederacy’’ (EPM 9.22, SBN 282). As Hume points out, there are no ‘‘satisfactory and convincing’’ arguments to marshal against such a person; all one can do is to recognize his pathological state and accept that ‘‘[if] his

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heart rebel not against . . . pernicious maxims, if he feel no reluctance to the thoughts of villainy or baseness, he has indeed lost a considerable motive to virtue’’ (EPM 9.23, SBN 283). Second, as the case of the sensible knave shows, being moral requires that one actually feel the sentiments in question such that they can function as a motive for virtuous behavior. As Hume says, the principles of every passion, and of every sentiment, is in every man; and when touched properly, they rise to life, and warm the heart, and convey that satisfaction, by which a work of genius is to be distinguished from the adulterate beauties of a capricious wit and fancy. (E 107, emphasis added) Individuals, that is, might well have the capacity to be affected by the view of certain action, but the existence of a natural fit between subject and conduct observed does not in itself guarantee that the ‘‘proper’’ sentiments will arise. The ‘‘beauty and elegance’’ of a figure arises from the sentiments of a spectator ‘‘alone,’’ Hume says, but only when ‘‘that complicated figure is presented to an intelligent mind, susceptible to those finer sensations.’’ ‘‘You must acknowledge,’’ he continues, that the moral turpitude results, in the same manner, from the contemplation of the whole, when presented to a being whose organs have such a particular structure and formation. The orator may paint rage, insolence, barbarity on the one side; meekness, suffering, sorrow, innocence on the other. But if you feel no indignation or compassion arise in you from this complication of circumstances, you would in vain ask him, in what consists the crime of villainy, which he so vehemently exclaims against? (EPM Appx. 1.16, SBN 292, emphasis added) Like the critical taste manifest in the true judge, the majority of individuals have the potential to be moral, but to actualize it and really be affected in the appropriate manner requires a certain sort of attention, ‘‘and the more we habituate ourselves to an accurate scrutiny of morals, the more delicate feeling do we acquire of the most minute distinctions between vice and virtue’’ (EPM 5.15, SBN 217). Like the skill of Sancho’s kinsmen, however, the progress of this acquisition is hardly guaranteed. Morality is always a contingent matter and an endeavor in which one might fail: ‘‘a coxcomb may beget a philosopher,’’ as Hume says at one point, ‘‘. . . as a man of virtue may leave a worthless progeny’’ (E 215). Yet, third, it is not enough simply to feel the sentiments in questions. Hume teaches that there are standards governing correct judgments. As the fit between a beautiful object and the sentiment of beauty requires cultivation according to certain criteria, so the natural capacity to approve right

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conduct and disapprove its opposite requires that the sentiments – albeit natural – be ‘‘educated’’ in a particular way; there is correct moral taste as there is correct aesthetic taste. For ‘‘tho’ ‘tis certain,’’ Hume says, ‘‘a musical voice is nothing but one that naturally gives a particular kind of pleasure; yet ‘tis difficult for a man to be sensible, that the voice of an enemy is agreeable, or to allow it to be musical. But a person of a fine ear, who has the command of himself, can separate these feelings, and give praise to what deserves it’’ (T 3.1.2.4, SBN 472, first emphasis in original, second added). Thus, as David Wiggins has put it, Hume expresses the view that as we become better schooled in that public standard, better equipped to participate in its determination, and more party to the general concerns that it embodies, we shall come to feel a pleasurable sentiment of a particular kind (or an uneasy sentiment of a particular kind) in the view or spectacle of virtuous (or of vicious) characters and the actions that express them.2 The sentiments, in other words, must be educated. The term ‘‘education’’ is potentially misleading in this context given that Hume often uses it pejoratively, identifying it as a source of prejudice, and a process in which ‘‘all those opinions and notions of things, to which we have been accustom’d from our infancy, take such deep root, that ‘tis impossible for us, by all the powers of reason and experience, to eradicate them’’ (T 1.3.9.17, SBN 116). It is an ‘‘artificial and not a natural cause’’ (T 1.3.9.19, SBN 117), he says, one of the ‘‘byasses [sic] . . . [which] hang more upon one mind than another’’ (EHU 9.5n20, SBN 107n1); a force of reaction which explains why ‘‘all systems are apt to be rejected at first as new and unusual’’ (T 1.3.10.1, SBN 118) and explanation for Hume’s doubts that even his most impressive discoveries will win him few followers (T 1.3.10.1, SBN 118). Nowhere is this negative view of education more pronounced than in Hume’s use of the term to characterize enthusiasm and superstition. ‘‘Every by-stander,’’ he says in the Natural History of Religion, will easily judge (but unfortunately the bystanders are few) that, if nothing were requisite to establish any popular system, but exposing the absurdities of other systems, every voter of every superstition could give a sufficient reason for his blind and bigoted attachment to the principles in which he has been educated. (NHR 169) Understood in this way, for Hume education is the very opposite of good sense and clear reasoning and, thus conceived, is hardly an appropriate way of cultivating the sentiments. Although Hume does use the term education to condemn a certain narrowness and dogmatic way of thinking, he also employs it to denote

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improvement. Education in this sense is close to the critical engagement with the world that allows experience and custom to remedy – at least in some measure – the tendency to error inherent in ‘‘our fallible and uncertain faculties.’’ As Donald Siebert expresses it, ‘‘Surely part of Hume’s moral teaching is that virtue, and benevolence as central to it, may be innate, but it must be buttressed by reason and nurtured by words of praise.’’3 ‘‘It is custom alone,’’ Hume himself says, ‘‘which engages animals, from every object, that strikes their sense, to infer its usual attendant, and carries their imagination, from the appearance of the one, to conceive the other’’ (EHU 9.5, SBN 106), and experience that determines the degree to which the deceitfulness of the understanding will be corrected (T 1.41.1, SBN 180). As it is ‘‘certain, that the most ignorant and stupid peasants – nay infants, nay even brute beasts – improve by experience, and learn the qualities of natural objects, by observing the effects which result from them’’ (EHU 4.23, SBN 39), so individuals can improve their aesthetic and moral sentiments in light of the ideal manifest in the true judge and moral expert. Hume is adamant that ‘‘Had nature no such distinction, founded on the original constitution of the mind,’’ moral language would be unthinkable; but he does not deny the ‘‘powerful influence of . . . precept and education’’ which ‘‘may frequently increase or diminish, beyond their natural standard the sentiments of approbation and dislike, and may even, in particular circumstances, create, without any natural principle, a new sentiment of this kind’’ (EPM 5.3, SBN 214; see EPM 7.19, SBN 257). This idea of improvement is reflected in those passages where Hume does use the term education in a positive way. Unless ‘‘tamed by education,’’ he says in the History, human nature will always be subject to vice (H I, 339). Education has the power of ‘‘humanizing the temper, and softening the heart’’ (H II, 477) and offers a cure for credulity and superstition (H II, 421, 453, 519, 521 passim). In the case of the ‘‘companionable virtues of good manners and wit, decency and gentleness,’’ he says elsewhere, ‘‘All our failures . . . proceed from bad education, want of capacity, or a perverse and unreliable disposition’’ (EPM 9.18, SBN 280). Further, in a passage that anticipates the sensible knave, Hume argues that ‘‘man in his civiliz’d state’’ has a respect for justice, a sense of duty and ‘‘abhorrence of villainy and knavery.’’ These are ‘‘natural virtues,’’ he contends, but they only function as such ‘‘when train’d up according to a certain discipline and education’’ (T 3.2. 1.9, SBN 479); ‘‘Men are necessarily born in a family-society, and are trained up by their parents to some rule of conduct and behaviour’’ (EPM 3.16, SBN 190). The same idea of progress applies to the artificial virtues where ‘‘the sense of justice and injustice is not deriv’d from nature, but arises artificially, tho’ necessarily from education, and human conventions’’ (T 3.2.1.17, SBN 483).4 Hume also attributes social diversity to the ‘‘force of custom and education, which,’’ he says, ‘‘mould the human mind from its infancy and form it into a fixed and established character’’ (EHU 8.11, SBN 86), and,

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finally, uses the phrase ‘‘private education and instruction’’ to denote the formal inculcation of morality where parents work to mould good citizens from their natural off-spring. ‘‘[P]arents easily observe,’’ Hume maintains, that a man is the more useful, both to himself and others, the greater degree of probity and honour he is endow’d with, and that those principles have a greater force, when custom and education assist interest and reflexion: For these reasons they are induc’d to inculcate on their children, from their earliest infancy, the principles of probity, and teach them to regard the observance of these rules, by which society is maintain’d, as worthy and honourable, and their violation as base and infamous. (T 3.2.2.26, SBN 500–1) Hume’s use of the term education, then, goes some way to explaining how he understands sentiments as both ‘‘natural’’ and ‘‘conventional.’’ They proceed ‘‘immediately from natural principles,’’ but are also an ‘‘obvious and absolutely necessary invention’’ because they have to be ‘‘train’d up’’ in a particular manner. In addition, Hume also highlights a certain paradox that seems to lie at the heart of aesthetic and moral life. On the one hand, critical and moral taste are given as potentialities to be actualized through education and reflection, while, on the other, this process of improvement presupposes the ideal of perfection represented by the true judge and moral expert. In morality, that is, there are ‘‘models’’ of virtue that Hume finds among the ancients and paints in the colors of Cleanthes and sees manifest in the noble characters of the History; but precisely because such models are ideal, taste – critical or moral – is a task without end, a goal which can never be fully realized.5 The ‘‘best models’’ of which Hume speaks are visions of perfection and, although they represent standards that can never be realized, they function to regulate the shape of individual conduct. This is a view of morals that has been articulated particularly well by Iris Murdoch, and although she tends to see him as an adversary rather than an ally, her approach serves to illustrate the insight Hume is articulating.6 Three elements are of particular note. First, taking inspiration from Plato’s allegory of the cave, Murdoch portrays virtue as something beautiful and, like the Form of the Good beyond the darkness, an absolute of which everything phenomenal is an imperfect copy or instantiation. This means, second, that virtue is acquired; it is a ‘‘task’’ to be set and, like Plato’s philosopher who escapes the world of appearances to glimpse the Good, a goal for which one must strive. In practical life, Murdoch says, this involves a process of ‘‘unselfing’’ where one must ‘‘keep the attention fixed upon the real situation . . . to prevent it from returning surreptitiously to the self with consolations of self-pity, resentment, fantasy and despair.’’7 For Murdoch, this is exemplified most fully in the contemplation of fine art. For art, she says, ‘‘. . . affords us a pure delight in the independent existence of what is excellent’’; its ‘‘enjoyment . . .

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is a training in the love of virtue’’ and because it ‘‘transcends selfish and obsessive limitations of personality and can enlarge the sensibility of its consumer [i]t is a kind of goodness by proxy.’’8 Third, like the Form of the Good for which the Socratic philosopher strives, virtue is elusive and the task of reaching it overwhelming. To steal a glimpse of the sun is to risk blindness and even Socrates, the wisest of all men, admits failure in the attempt. The near impossibility of the task, however, remains a necessary condition for undertaking it. Excellence is only possible because conceived in terms of an ideal beyond the reach of most human beings. Murdoch writes: The proper and serious use of the term [Good] refers us to a perfection which is perhaps never exemplified in the world we know . . . and which carries with it the ideas of hierarchy and transcendence. How do we know that the very great are not the perfect? We see the differences, we sense the directions, and we know that the Good is still somewhere beyond . . . This is the non-metaphysical meaning of the idea of transcendence . . . [where] ‘‘Good is a transcendent reality’’ means that virtue is the attempt to pierce the veil of selfish consciousness and join the world as it really is. It is an empirical fact about human nature that this attempt cannot be entirely successful.9 Hume understands critical and moral taste in similar terms. The true judge and the moral expert represent the world as it ‘‘really is’’ in so far as they personify perfection; they are manifestations of a projected ‘‘transcendent reality’’ which regulates and directs human conduct. As such, both figures function as a necessary condition for judgments about the beautiful. On the one hand, they are necessary for the ‘‘fact’’ of any judgment: without an ideal there would be nothing to set as a task, and without a vision of perfection – the possibility, however remote, that virtue can be achieved – there would be no incentive to educate the sentiments, and the world would be populated by sensible knaves. On the other hand, the ideal is a necessary condition for the ‘‘intelligibility’’ of any judgment: without it there would be no criteria or standards in terms of which any judgment could be deemed correct or incorrect; and without standards there would be no difference between beauty and deformity, good and bad, right and wrong.

The question of moral standards So far in this chapter we have considered the first objection to Hume’s moral philosophy, and responded by considering his view of taste and education. Hume’s approach illuminates a certain paradox in moral life, namely, that while individuals must seek to educate the sentiments in an appropriate way, the very process through which they undertake such a task presupposes a perfection that can never be achieved. The second issue concerns the

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question of standards. We have seen how, in aesthetic matters, good judgment is governed by the ‘‘fit’’ between subject and object, and grasping the relation of parts to whole and understanding the end of the art work in question. What is the equivalent governing good judgment in the moral realm? In this sphere, Hume is susceptible to the same charge that Kant leveled against Hutcheson, and applies to any approach that explains conduct in terms of a ‘‘fit’’ or a ‘‘moral sense,’’ namely, that he seems to confuse a ‘‘theoretical capacity for perception directed towards an object’’ with ‘‘something merely subjective,’’ as Kant puts it, and it cannot account for the universality that moral judgments presuppose and express, reducing them instead to inconstancy, caprice, whim, and habit.10 How can Hume explain moral distinctions, then, when he embraces a reduction of morals to mere feeling? For if morality consists of sentiments that arise in the subject, in what sense are moral judgments ‘‘objective’’? I shall approach these questions and the objections they raise by dividing the discussion into two parts. The first addresses the problem of subjectivism, whether Hume can account for the existence of general standards while also maintaining that aesthetic and moral judgments are matters of feeling. The second addresses the problem of relativism, and the sense in which general standards are ‘‘universal.’’ The problem of subjectivism A number of commentators have found Hume’s emphasis on sentiment to be at best troubling and at worst simply wrong. For any reliance on feeling, the criticism runs, necessarily reduces morality to the unavoidable contingency of personal whim. As Penelhum puts it, Hume is ‘‘open to the standard objection to Subjectivist analyses of moral judgments, namely, that they make it impossible for there to be genuine disagreement about questions of value. If A reports that he has a feeling of approval, and B reports that he has a feeling of disapproval, these are entirely compatible with one another.’’11 Or, as Philippa Foot expresses the same point: this theory of Hume’s about moral sentiment commits him to a subjectivist theory of ethics. He could not consistently maintain both that a man calls qualities virtues when he happens to feel towards them this peculiar sentiment, and that virtue and vice are objective. For if they were objective . . . there would have to be some method of deciding, in case of disagreement, whether one man’s opinion or another’s was correct . . . But since Hume has denied all logical connexions . . . between moral approval and the objects of moral approval . . . it follows that no one could get at an opponent who professed weird ‘‘moral views.’’12 Can Hume be defended against the charge of subjectivism without replacing feeling with some form of reason, claiming him for the side of realism or, with Foot, dismissing the theory altogether? To begin with, it is worth

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noting that there is, as C.D. Broad has pointed out, something inherently trivial about holding to a theory of subjectivism in morals. For a ‘‘subjective theory,’’ Broad says, ‘‘is one which would make all ethical judgments to consist of statements by the speaker about his own mental attitude towards an object at the time of speaking. On this view,’’ he observes, ‘‘there is nothing in ethics to discuss, and it would be mere rudeness to question any ethical judgment that anyone might choose to make.’’13 Presumably, those who fault Hume for being a subjectivist do not intend to rule out his moral philosophy tout court as absurd. Perhaps the difficulty here stems from the fact that in one way or another Hume’s critics identify sentimentalism with subjectivism.14 Talk of ‘‘sentiments’’ is deciphered as code for ‘‘private’’ so that any philosophy that accounts for moral distinctions in terms of feeling must give up any pretensions of ranking value as virtue and vice. Instead of identifying sentiment with subjectivism, however, one might see sentiments as objective precisely because they presuppose or constitute standards that everybody assumes to be general. Thus in so far as there are real standards that constitute moral and aesthetic judgments, Hume might be termed a ‘‘realist’’ of a particular sort. Hume himself does not doubt the reality of moral distinctions or that everybody is ‘‘often . . . touched with the images of Right and Wrong.’’ ‘‘Those who have denied the reality of moral distinctions, may be ranked among the disingenuous disputants [in disputes over the principles of morals]; nor is it conceivable,’’ he continues, that any creature could ever seriously believe, that all characters and actions were alike entitled to the affection and regard of everyone. The difference, which nature has placed between one man and another, is so wide . . . that . . . there is no scepticism so scrupulous, and scarce any assurance so determined, as absolutely to deny all distinction between them. (EPM 1.2, SBN 169–70) Yet what could it mean to say that standards are ‘‘objective’’ – that they ‘‘exist’’ or are ‘‘real’’ – if not in the confused way of ‘‘entities,’’ ‘‘things,’’ or ‘‘somethings’’ underlying the metaphysical view of character?15 One way to approach this issue is to consider, first, in what sense sentiments are real, and a clue to answering this question is to be found in an idea that arose when discussing Hume’s concept of character. Sentiments are real in the same way as self or character are real, namely, as objects that ‘‘may exist, and yet be no where.’’ For as Hume says, A moral reflection cannot be plac’d on the right or on the left hand of a passion, nor can a smell or sound be either of a circular or a square figure. These objects and perceptions, so far from requiring any particular place, are absolutely incompatible with it, and even the imagination

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cannot attribute it to them . . . If they appear not to have any particular place, they may possibly exist in the same manner; since whatever we conceive is possible. (T 1.4.5.10, SBN 236) One can indeed think of sentiments as being based in the subject, but existing ‘‘in the same manner’’ as if they were located in time and place.16 The same logic can be applied to Hume’s notion of standards. Standards have neither spatial nor temporal location, but they do have the power to constrain conduct and can be articulated as principles. One way to make this point clear is to think of standards as real in so far as they are immanent in any particular judgment. The judgment, that is, presupposes that standards exist and will approximate them to a lesser or greater degree; the standard itself is only manifest in the judgment itself. The rules governing good writing, to take Oakeshott’s example again, can be extracted and stated formally, but the resulting grammar always abridges what people do when they actually write. Thus rules exist only in so far as they describe actual occasions of literary practice. In a similar way, standards can be formulated as abridgments of what people do, but they exist only in the practice of making moral distinctions. Further, the rules of a grammar are ideal in that they represent something to which everybody who wishes to write well must conform. Grammarians might disagree about the correct way to categorize elements of a given language, but it makes no sense for those who speak it to disagree over the essential meanings of words and concepts. Learning a language means submitting to the authority of the rules in question. The same is true of morals. Individuals are born into a culture where the terms of good and bad, right or wrong are already inscribed in a system that transcends any individual. Being moral means conforming to that system, and it is only in reference to that system that the knave can be a ‘‘knave’’ or the monkish virtues appear as ‘‘monkish.’’ Hume’s claim, then, is that although they are not ‘‘somethings,’’ standards exist as criteria in terms of which conduct and character are beautiful or deformed. Moral distinctions derive from a common moral order, and the enduring nature of this order and the standards it contains allows distinctions to have moral content. Hume’s view is not that morality depends upon the ‘‘subjectivity’’ of individual judgments, but that judgments themselves depend upon a transcendent reality of which all sentiments partake and to which they all refer. Moral judgments are ‘‘objective’’ or ‘‘public’’ because there are independent grounds for knowing how one ought to behave and for deciding whether any action is, as a matter of fact, right or wrong. After all, my belief in the beauty of my action can hardly be the basis for moral approval or disapproval. ‘‘The principles of a bigot,’’ as Michael Gill says writing of Hume, ‘‘may look just fine to her and her cohorts, but we still have grounds for condemning them. And even if the bigot can’t bear her own survey, we will, and she should, condemn her principles for other, less

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reflexive reasons.’’17 Bigots might think they are open-minded as others place Ogilby over Milton or take mole-hills for mountains. As Hume says, ‘‘no one pays attention to such a taste; and we pronounce without scruple the sentiment of these pretended critics to be absurd or ridiculous’’ (ST 231). Such judgments are mistakes, because (to use Foot’s phrase) ‘‘weird views’’ contradict the standards to which such claims necessarily refer. This, again, is a lesson to be drawn from the sensible knave whose story shows that moral standards do not change simply because there is knavery in the world. For ‘‘in all ingenuous natures,’’ Hume remarks, the antipathy to treachery and roguery is too strong to be counterbalanced by any views of profit and pecuniary advantage. Inward peace of mind, consciousness of integrity, a satisfactory review of our own conduct; these are circumstances, very requisite to happiness, and will be cherished and cultivated by every honest man, who feels the importance of them. (EPM 9.23, SBN 283) By contravening the standards in question, knaves put themselves beyond the circle of common life. Those who lie and cheat find themselves in a situation ‘‘whence they can never extricate themselves, without a total loss of reputation, and the forfeiture of all future trust and confidence with mankind’’ (EPM 9.23, SBN 283). The assumed rationality – that their behavior is ‘‘sensible’’ – is only apparent, and the moral sentiments that govern the generality of mankind remain untouched. The sensible knave confirms the fact that morality suffers only temporary set-backs at the hands of the occasional reprobate or ‘‘fancied monster’’ (EPM 6.4–5, SBN 235–36).18 Hume’s point is exemplified in a particularly vivid way by Hannah Arendt’s portrait of Adolf Eichmann, a man who, no one could doubt, put himself and his country well beyond the sentiments of ‘‘all ingenuous natures.’’ ‘‘The longer one listened to him,’’ Arendt observes of the accused in the course of his trial, the more obvious it became that his inability to speak was closely connected with an inability to think, namely, to think from the standpoint of somebody else. No communication was possible with him, not because he lied but because he was surrounded by the most reliable of all safeguards against the words and the presence of others, and hence against reality as such.19 Thus ‘‘Eichmann only had to recall the past,’’ she continues a few pages later, in order to feel assured that he was not lying and that he was not deceiving himself, for he and the world he lived in had once been in perfect harmony. And that German society of eighty million people had

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been shielded against reality and factuality by the same means, the same self-deception, lies, and stupidity that had now become engrained in Eichmann’s mentality.20 Arendt’s description recalls remarks that Hume makes about Cromwell’s decision to execute Charles I. ‘‘The murder of the king, the most atrocious of all his actions, was to him covered under a mighty cloud of republican and fanatical illusions; and it is not impossible, but he might believe it, as many did, the most meritorious action, that he could perform’’ (H VI, 110).21 The ‘‘knavery’’ of the Nazis and Cromwell, however, did not undermine the reality of standards their conduct contravened. To use Murdoch’s phrase, their failure was to have lost sight of the world as it ‘‘really is’’; but that world and its moral order remained as the grounds upon which their actions were condemned. Eichmann was put to death for his crimes, and Cromwell’s reign is viewed as an unfortunate episode of tyranny in the history of English constitutionalism. The problem of relativism Contrary to Penelhum’s warning that the ‘‘likenesses between aesthetic and moral values press subjectivism in moral theory,’’22 understanding Hume’s approach to morals by way of his aesthetics shows how and in what sense standards are in fact real and objective. Disagreements can be adjudicated and one judgment deemed right and another wrong because standards constitute objective, public criteria for evaluating and categorizing the moral worth of conduct. Sentiments, after all, rather than matters of fact, constitute moral judgments and people confirm and presuppose the standards these sentiments represent, though – as Hume’s antinomy of taste reveals – they fall into contradiction and deny the existence of the very same. Yet the very notion that standards are ‘‘general’’ or that one can speak of a ‘‘common’’ moral order raises a further difficulty. For in what sense are such standards ‘‘general’’ and to what degree can one talk of morals as ‘‘universal’’? How far are they uniform within a given culture or between cultures that, on the face of it at least, approve and condemn quite different practices? Why should the sheer and undeniable diversity of moral life not lead one to reject the very concept of general standards altogether in favor of some form of moral relativism? One place to begin answering these questions is with an observation Kivy has made about the term ‘‘unity’’ when applied to a work of art. ‘‘Unity,’’ he points out, means something quite different when used to characterize a political party or a nation than it does when used to describe a work of art. ‘‘But in each instance – in the political party or nation, symphony or novel – what we look for when we look for unity are the same kinds of things: common elements, recurrent patterns, shared structures: something common.’’23 The concept of unity has the same connotation even though it denotes a

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variety of contents in its various applications. The unity of a nation will differ from the unity of a symphony, but it is always common elements or recurrent patterns that account for the unity in question. Or, to put the same thought in Aristotelian terms, the ‘‘something common’’ or general is koinon: ‘‘the universal is common (koinon), for that is ‘said universally’ . . . whose nature is to belong to a number of things.’’24 The same point can be made about moral terms as well. To say of somebody that he or she is ‘‘courageous,’’ for example, is to say that he or she shows fortitude in the face of danger. Courage will always be defined by this universal feature even though in different situations what will count as courageous varies a great deal. On one occasion it might consist of risking life and limb in defense of one’s country; in another, saving a child from drowning; or yet again, following through on a particular plan of action despite being uncertain of the consequences that might result. An act considered courageous in the past might even contradict contemporary views of the same virtue. As Hume remarks on the death of John Cummin, a traitor to the cause of Scotland under Edward I who was killed by Robert the Bruce and Sir Thomas Kirkpatric: ‘‘This deed of Bruce and his associates, which contains circumstances justly condemned by our present manners, was regarded in that age, as an effort of manly vigour and just policy’’ (H II, 139). Thus as the unity of a nation or a symphony is indicated by a recurrent pattern – agreement among the citizenry, the development and repetition of a musical theme, and the like – the presence of fortitude in the face of danger is always the mark of a courageous individual. To use Aristotle’s phrase, courage is said universally because its nature belongs to a number of things. When Hume talks of general or universal standards, he has this sort of view in mind, and nowhere is this more evident than in ‘‘A Dialogue’’ appended to the second Enquiry (EPM 324–43).25 Hume has his interlocutor, Palamades, describe the fictional land of Fourli where the people approve of conduct directly opposed to what Hume and any other moral individual would consider appropriate behavior. Having run through the various outrages of the inhabitants, Palamades confesses his ploy, admitting that all the examples were derived, names changed, from ancient sources. Palamades, that is, makes ‘‘it appear, that an Athenian man of merit might be such a one as with us would pass for incestuous, a parricide, an assassin, an ungrateful, perjured traitor, and something else too abominable to be named; not to mention his rusticity and ill-manners’’ (EPM, A Dialogue 17, SBN 329). The figure of Hume responds by describing the morals of the modern French nation and, finding there institutionalized adultery, servility, ‘‘plaguing and tormenting [of] . . . unhappy prisoners,’’ and the subservience of masters and sovereigns to women ‘‘without virtue’’ (EPM, A Dialogue 23, SBN 332), he makes the point that a French gentleman is no more or less corrupt than his Athenian counterpart. Hume sets a difficult – and still familiar – puzzle for the moral philosopher to solve. Here are two societies, one ancient, one modern, separated by

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time and place and organized according to quite different moral traditions. Where the French heap praise on the successful seducer ‘‘as much as if he had been several times a conqueror in boxing or wrestling at the Olympic games’’ (EPM, A Dialogue 19, SBN 330), the Athenians ‘‘never mentioned the crime of adultery but in conjunction with robbery and poisoning’’ (EPM, A Dialogue 19, SBN 331). The French nation, moreover, are ‘‘as proud of their slavery and dependence as the ATHENIANS of their liberty,’’ and where a man among the former though ‘‘oppressed, disgraced, impoverished, insulted, or imprisoned by the tyrant . . . would still regard it as the highest merit to love, serve, and obey him,’’ the Athenian would wonder if such an individual belonged to ‘‘human society, or . . . some inferior, servile species’’ (EPM, A Dialogue 20, SBN 331). In a similar vein, the Athenians would find risking one’s life in a duel to save honor quite barbaric when amongst themselves ‘‘a man of rank would row in the gallies, would beg his bread, would languish in prison, would suffer any tortures; and still preserve his wretched life’’ (EPM, A Dialogue 22, SBN 331–32). The situation is no different in the way the two nations organize the relation between the sexes. The Greeks, Hume says, were the ‘‘most reserved in their commerce with the fair sex,’’ imposing strict laws on modesty and decency (EPM, A Dialogue 44, SBN 338), while in France ‘‘the females enter into all transactions and all management of church and state’’ (EPM, A Dialogue 46, SBN 339). The dilemma here is analogous to the one Hume formulates in ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste.’’ As the ‘‘great diversity of Taste, as well as of opinion, which prevails in the world’’ apparently undermines any attempt to fix a standard, so the variety of what is approved and condemned seems to undermine the notion of fixing general standards in moral life. The uniformity of human actions should not obscure ‘‘the diversity of characters, prejudices, and opinions’’ (EHU 8.10, SBN 85). For if, as Hume says, there is such a ‘‘wide difference . . . in the sentiments of morals . . . between nations whose characters have little in common,’’ and if the very same conduct can be approved by one people and condemned by another, what could it possibly mean to speak of ‘‘something common’’? ‘‘How shall we pretend to fix a standard,’’ Hume has Palamades ask, ‘‘for judgments of this nature?’’ (EPM, A Dialogue 25, SBN 333); and in the face of such diversity, who would ignore the ‘‘manners and customs of different ages . . . and try a GREEK or ROMAN by the common law of ENGLAND?’’ Who would not wait in pronouncing judgment until the accused has defended himself ‘‘by his own maxims’’ (EPM, A Dialogue 18, SBN 330)? Who, in short, would not embrace the reality of moral relativism? Despite the temptation to accept such a conclusion, Hume does fix a standard or rule in morals, by which, as in his aesthetics, ‘‘the various sentiments of men may be reconciled; at least a decision, afforded, confirming one sentiment, and condemning another’’ (ST 229). First, Hume is not claiming that moral practices are uniform, but begins by emphasizing the

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diversity of moral life. ‘‘We must not,’’ as he remarks in the first Enquiry, ‘‘. . . expect that . . . [the] uniformity of human actions should be carried to such a length as that all men, in the same circumstances, will always act precisely in the same manner, without making any allowance for the diversity of characters, prejudices, and opinions’’ (EHU 10, SBN 85). Second, Hume is not aiming at empirical generalizations to determine ‘‘correct’’ conduct. Instead, he is articulating the pre-reflective order of common life by discovering the ‘‘most universal, established principles of morals’’ (EPM, A Dialogue 27, SBN 334). The diversity of conduct does not undermine this aim. ‘‘On the contrary,’’ Hume remarks, ‘‘from observing the variety of conduct in different men, we are enabled to form a greater variety of maxims, which still suppose a degree of uniformity’’ (EHU 8.10, SBN 85). The standard for moral judgments is to be fixed By tracing matters . . . a little higher, and examining the first principles, which each nation establishes, of blame or censure. The RHINE flows north, the RHONE south; yet both spring from the same mountain, and are also actuated, in their opposite directions, by the same principle of gravity. The different inclinations of the ground, on which they run, cause all the differences of their courses. (EPM, A Dialogue 26, SBN 333) Hume’s metaphor is of a piece with Kivy’s observation about ‘‘unity’’ and the concept of courage. As the concept of ‘‘unity’’ remains constant though the meaning of ‘‘unity’’ varies from case to case (nation, symphony, novel, and the like), so the practices that constitute virtuous behavior are of different sorts though each one will be as ‘‘virtuous’’ as the next. Certain qualities or virtues like courage are koinon. They are ‘‘esteemed in all nations and all ages’’ and are thus universal even if the particular manifestations of that virtue vary. As Hume himself puts it, ‘‘the principles upon which men reason in morals are always the same; though the conclusions which they draw are often very different’’ (EPM, A Dialogue 36, SBN 335–36). Love, for example, can be the motive for protecting a child from harm at all costs; it can also be a reason for infanticide. ‘‘Had you asked a parent at ATHENS,’’ Hume contends, ‘‘why he bereaved his child of that life, which he had so lately given it. It is because I love it, he would reply; and regard the poverty which it must inherit from me, as a greater evil than death, which it is not capable of dreading, feeling, or resenting’’ (EPM, A Dialogue 30, SBN 334). The same principle underlies obeying the law of the land, which is ‘‘every where acknowledged a capital virtue.’’ Whereas in one case the virtue might involve attachment to a democracy or monarchy, however, in another it will mean supporting a tyrant. Yet virtue is lacking no less in the latter than in the former case: for ‘‘where the people are not so happy, as to have any legislature but a single person, the strictest loyalty is, in that case, the truest patriotism’’ (EPM, A Dialogue 33, SBN 335). Hume makes

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a similar point about civility and good manners. Again, nobody would discount these from the catalogue of virtues, but many – Hume included – would reject dueling as part of an ‘‘ancient barbarous jurisprudence’’ (H III, 169) and consider it an ‘‘absurd’’ way of begetting the virtues in question. ‘‘Very oddly directed’’ though they might be, among the French, courage, honour, fidelity, and friendship are precisely the virtues dueling is held to represent. Suicide can be considered in the same way. In some cases taking one’s own life is condemned as a sin, and in others celebrated as virtuous behavior: ‘‘Have the gods forbid self-murder?’’ Hume asks. ‘‘An ATHENIAN allows, that it ought to be forborn. Has the Deity permitted it? A FRENCHMAN allows, that death is preferable to pain and infamy’’ (EPM, A Dialogue, SBN 335). Yet how can this diversity in the way virtues are realized be explained if the ‘‘virtues’’ are the ‘‘same’’ in each case? There is no general explanation, Hume’s answer runs, because the cause of a ‘‘moral precept . . . is susceptible, without any inconvenience, of very different latitude in the several ages and nations of the world’’ (H III, 191), and only the particular circumstances of a people can account for the variation in question. ‘‘Sometimes men differ in their judgment,’’ for example, rendering ‘‘one quality more useful than others, and giv[ing] it a peculiar preference’’; in times of war, the military virtues will tend to predominate over the pacific, and acts on the battle field which will bring praise and honor will hardly be considered meritorious when the country is at peace. At different times luxury and other ‘‘particular accidents’’ cause one of the four sources of morals to ‘‘flow with greater abundance than at another’’ (EPM, A Dialogue 42, SBN 338). ‘‘Chance,’’ Hume says, also ‘‘has a great influence on national manners’’ (EPM, A Dialogue 50, SBN 340), as do the political circumstances under which a people live: ‘‘The differences of moral sentiment, which naturally arise from a republican or monarchical government,’’ are also very obvious ‘‘as well as those which proceed from general riches or poverty, union or faction, ignorance or learning’’ (EPM, A Dialogue 51, SBN 340– 41). Indeed, the idea of merit in general and the particular virtues considered appropriate vary with the ‘‘circumstances of an age’’ and make one virtue more important than another: ‘‘Sometimes . . . magnanimity, greatness of mind, disdain of slavery, inflexible rigour and integrity’’ are esteemed, while at other times the same virtues will be dismissed (EPM, A Dialogue 40, SBN 337). The ‘‘struggle of passion and of reason,’’ as Hume says in the Treatise, ‘‘. . . diversifies human life, and makes men so different not only from each other, but also from themselves in different times’’ (T 2.3.8.13, SBN 438). Hume makes the same point about personal beauty: ‘‘It is thus, in countries, where men’s bodies are apt to exceed in corpulency,’’ he observes, ‘‘personal beauty is placed in a much greater degree of slenderness, than in countries, where that is the most usual defect’’ (EPM 8.9, SBN 264).26 Three important conclusions follow from this Humean response to the problem of relativism. The first can be seen by reference to what Hume

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refers to elsewhere as the ‘‘abstract theory of morals,’’ which ‘‘supposes all right to be founded on certain rapports or relations . . . [and] excludes all sentiment and pretends to found everything on reason’’ (EPM 34n12, SBN 197n1). Morality, that is, always requires a context; there can only be a moral life where there are a people with a particular history and tradition. The principles of morality and the catalogue of virtues Hume collects are purely formal until they are refracted through a given culture and made manifest in the practices that constitute common life. What counts as moral will then depend upon the culture in question and because cultures are diverse, moral practices will be diverse as well. The examples cited above show that the virtues themselves can vary according to the circumstances in question, but, as in Hume’s metaphor of different rivers springing from the same source, so motives to virtuous conduct remain identical in each case: love, honor, prudence, magnanimity, temperance, decency, and the ‘‘whole catalogue of those qualities which are the object of censure and reproach’’ (EPM Appx. 4.1, SBN 312) are found in all ages. These constitute ‘‘that something common,’’ though like the ‘‘different inclinations of the ground’’ that direct the course of Rhine and Rhone, the contingencies of time and place will shape the moral order that develops. This order then determines the content of moral education, provides the standards in terms of which a particular action is approved or condemned as virtuous, and thus provides the criteria and categories for the process that underlies the formation of character. This means, second, that the force of Hume’s practical or normative ethics comes not from some philosophical ide´e fixe, but is derived from the standards that constitute moral perfection and indicate how people ought to behave if they are to achieve moral excellence. Any directive about conduct originates in the common life of a community and not in philosophical reflection, which always abridges and expresses formally the moral order that is already there. This in turn casts light on the nature of moral dilemmas that are often cast in purely abstract terms, freed from any context. For Hume, it is unintelligible to inquire about the moral legitimacy of any practice – taking life though abortion or euthanasia, for example – unless it is asked of a particular culture in a specific time and place. Treated abstractly and without context, the answer could be either ‘‘yes’’ or ‘‘no’’; only when the place of each practice within the life of a culture is specified can the question be answered in a meaningful way. There are standards, Hume argues, that distinguish ‘‘each particular beauty’’ from ‘‘durable admiration,’’ so that neither ‘‘changes of climate, government, religion, and language’’ (ST 233) nor the ‘‘particular manners and opinions of our age and country’’ undermine the ‘‘general principles of taste [that] are uniform in human nature’’ (ST 243, emphasis added). The moral sphere, Hume urges, is governed by the same structure. Third, since the diversity of which Hume speaks is entirely empirical, moral practices have the same logical structure as matters of fact and, as

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with the ‘‘likings’’ that people express when they judge things beautiful, there is no contradiction between the various practices in question. Individuals can agree to disagree about the morality of their conduct, just as they can have their personal preferences for particular works of art. Hume’s point is that even practices diametrically opposed to one another can never come into moral conflict because independent of time and place there is no abstract standard to be discovered. Each practice is a fact which can be denied without fear of contradiction.27 Empirical diversity, however, is to be distinguished from a standard in the sense that Hume fixes it, namely, as the principles of morals, which explains in what moral judgment consists. This has the same logical status as relations of ideas, and cannot be denied without risk of absurdity. Hume discovers the general principles of morals, and explains its origin in agreeableness and utility and the fit between the beauty of conduct and the individual capacity to be affected. The content of any particular virtue, however, is to be found by reference to a specific time and place. Thus it is one thing to deny that a particular act is (say) courageous, but it is quite another to deny that courage itself is a virtue. To do the latter would be ‘‘no less an extravagance’’ – to recall again Hume’s comparison in ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’ – than taking Ogilby over Milton or a mole-hill as a mountain; those who hold such a view are simply in error, either defective in some measure or unable to understand the meaning of moral terms. As in the antinomy of taste, however, it is possible to confuse these logical orders, and doing so results in prejudice of which we can distinguish two varieties. The first sort is most aptly described as philosophical since it involves the failure to see the logical difference between the particular empirical facts that constitute moral diversity and the generality of universal sentiments that produce them; one is then liable to conclude that philosophical inquiry can direct conduct when it is actually limited to a speculative or (to use Hume’s term) anatomical task. On Humean grounds, then, the view of the philosopher as primarily a ‘‘practical ethicist’’ who can alter the course of moral conduct is to mistake philosophical anatomy (at the level of sentiment) for the empirical world of conduct (the level of matter of fact). While there is room to recommend some practices and condemn others, this is legitimate only with respect to the ideal that is discovered though the explanatory task of producing philosophical rules in their second influence. Otherwise, philosophical ethics is a misguided attempt to bring about change through means quite unsuited to the task, since it would involve going beyond experience and ‘‘imposing conjectures and hypotheses on the world.’’ The second sort of prejudice is dogmatic since it is an expression of ideological positions that are maintained despite there being good reason to abandon them. Again, these have their origin in confusing matter of fact with sentiment, but the result is not to mistake the reach of philosophical reason, but to regard one moral practice (matter of fact) as universally

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correct conduct as if ‘‘universality’’ had an empirical meaning. Failing to understand that conduct is moral only as part of a given practice, the dogmatist thinks the specific content of his or her moral system applies in every single case. Thus ‘‘morality,’’ as Nietzsche was to express it sometime later, becomes a matter of generalizing from the contingent fact of one’s own culture to the ‘‘true’’ form conduct in general should take.28 Indeed, this is a charge that has been brought against Hume himself, and considering to what degree it is a fair one will concern us in the next chapter.

Conclusion In this fifth chapter, we have considered two of the three objections that can reasonably be raised against Hume’s moral philosophy: first, if morality is an immediate reaction to the beauty of vice and the deformity of virtue, why is perfect virtue not the general condition of human kind rather than a contingent feature of particular individuals? And, second, since morality, on Hume’s view, consists of sentiments that arise in the subject, how does one explain the objective feature of moral judgments that they involve claims to universal validity? We have seen in the course of the discussion that there are Humean answers to these questions: his account of taste and education shows that imperfection and error are defining features of moral life, and his discussion of standards contains a response to the charges of subjectivism and relativism by showing in what sense once can be speak of virtues as being universal despite the fact that moral life displays varying degrees of cultural diversity. As in matters of taste, a standard of morals can be ‘‘fixed,’’ although following the conclusion that philosophy cannot go beyond experience, one must at once acknowledge that the content of particular virtues depends on the culture in question. Answering these objections, however, leaves unanswered the third and final question concerning moral progress: even if there are general standards governing moral conduct, that is, how are these to be reconciled with the observation that morals change and even improve over time? As we shall see in chapter six, Hume’s moral philosophy contains a response to this question in the shape of an account of moral progress, and this is robust enough to withstand and even explain the uncritical prejudice into which Hume himself fell.

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The final objection, that the idea of ‘‘general standards’’ governing conduct runs foul of moral diversity and the fact that morals change and even improve over time, can be made perspicuous by extending the point made towards the end of the previous chapter, namely, that there is an analogy to be drawn between the error that explains the Antinomy of Taste and the confusion underlying philosophical and dogmatic prejudice. For if – as the analogy implies – one can speak of an ‘‘antinomy of moral taste,’’ one would be obliged to accept the conclusion reached concerning the antinomy of aesthetic taste: that the error is necessary and, although susceptible to philosophical explanation, remains an unavoidable condition of common life. Does the same not hold for the existence of prejudice, then, and should Hume, as some have argued, not be seen as a reactionary defender of a particular moral order? If this question is answered in the affirmative, then Hume himself would be guilty of the very error his treatment of antimony uncovers, namely, of taking one empirical manifestation of universal sentiments and applying it to the generality of humankind. Framing the issue in slightly different terms, one might ask of Hume whether, if standards are ‘‘general’’ and ‘‘uniform,’’ one can account for the fact that morals change and even improve over time. We have already encountered two arguments that go some way to answering this objection. First, standards that are presupposed by and exemplified in given sentiments are always refracted through a particular culture and manifest in the practices that compose it. Even if standards are general and uniform, therefore, the same need not apply to practices: there is no contradiction in holding that tensed moral practices change while maintaining that the formal and timeless standards they presuppose are constant. One consists of empirical contingencies subject to the vagaries of time and place; the other is immanent and transcends the limitations by which matters of fact are constrained. Second, the possibility that practices can change is ensured by the fact that an education into a particular tradition does not entail uncritical acceptance of everything one is taught; a tradition can be engaged critically and individuals reflect upon their conduct and change their behavior accordingly. As Hume says, it is ‘‘sufficient,

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that the original principles of censure or blame are uniform, and the erroneous conclusions can be corrected by sounder reasoning and larger experience’’ (EPM, A Dialogue 36, SBN 336). The imperfection of human beings means that error and ‘‘erroneous conclusions’’ will be a permanent feature of human life, but the structure of Hume’s moral philosophy does not rule out indefinite ‘‘improvements in reason and philosophy’’ (T Intro. 7, SBN xvii), but speaks to ‘‘a natural, and even necessary progress of sentiments’’ (T 3.2.2.25, SBN 500). Virtue will always remain a task even if the perfection for which it aims remains difficult and unobtainable. There is a further and now familiar criticism raised against Hume, however, that neither of these points addresses, and for that reason demands particular attention, namely, the widespread view that Hume’s thought is marred by prejudice of one sort or another. Steven Wallech, for example, contends that ‘‘Hume used the eighteenth-century terms of ‘rank, distinction, and character,’ which connote a rather fixed and stable social order by placing individuals in definite ranks in the social hierarchy with fixed positions within the community.’’1 Similar charges have been raised against Hume’s aesthetics. Richard Shusterman, for example, takes ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’ to reveal a ‘‘social and class-hierarchical foundation of aesthetic judgment’’ that contradicts the ‘‘idea of a natural uniformity of feeling and response’’ on which Hume otherwise bases his aesthetics. Hume’s appeal to the ‘‘common sentiments of human nature’’ and the idea of natural fit amounts to a ‘‘scandal of taste,’’ Shusterman maintains, since it generalizes particular ‘‘historically privileged subjective preferences’’ into a ‘‘necessary standard for all subjects all times.’’ In his approach to aesthetics and morals, this view of Hume is echoed by various commentators.2 The general line these criticisms take is that rather than explaining moral conduct, Hume’s philosophy simply reflects the moral and aesthetic values of an eighteenth-century gentleman who has mistaken the peculiarities of his own class and culture for general standards that apply across time and place. Hume, to employ his own words, is ‘‘full of the manners of his own age and country’’ (ST 239), and thus commits the sort of dogmatic prejudice which, as emphasized at the end of the last chapter, his approach to morals diagnoses and rejects: he takes one set of moral practices to be universally correct conduct as if ‘‘universality’’ had an empirical meaning. The result is that the specific content of his own moral system becomes generalized and applied to all times and places. Hume thus confuses ‘‘morals’’ with the facts of historical contingency and offers a philosophy unable to explain the progress to which the demise of slavery, sexism, and other social ills, clearly attests. Are these fair criticisms of Hume’s philosophy, however, and, even if justified to some degree, is there a Humean response to them? For although elements of Hume’s thought do reflect certain prejudices of his age – most notably his infamous remarks about the ‘‘natural inferiority’’ of nonEuropeans – whatever errors of judgment Hume himself might have made,

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they do not impugn the philosophical critique of prejudice and the account of moral progress that are central to his thought. To defend this claim, we need to look first at how Hume conceives of progress, both at an individual and national level, before considering the passages from ‘‘Of National Characteristics’’ and elsewhere, in which Hume’s prejudice seems most pronounced. As we shall see, although much of what he says cannot be defended, its presence actually functions to confirm the philosophical point Hume is making.

Individual and national progress The view that Hume’s philosophy involves a notion of progress has been emphasized by a number of commentators. It is central to Annette Baier’s reading of the Treatise as a ‘‘campaign to show the limits of ‘reason,’’’3 and to Donald Livingston’s view that Hume develops a ‘‘natural history of philosophical consciousness’’ and a ‘‘natural history of the arts,’’ and ‘‘teaches that there is a natural history to enthusiasm.’’4 Donald Siebert notes how ‘‘Hume considered history progressive and normally much preferred the situation and culture of modern Europe to any other imaginable’’;5 and Don Garrett describes Hume’s epistemology as laying bare a ‘‘conceptual progress’’ in ‘‘our processes of inductive inference.’’6 Turning to Hume’s own writings, one might point to his treatment of religious belief in the Natural History of Religion; the ‘‘secret revolution in the sentiments of men’’ (H I, 372) detailed in the volumes of the History of England; various essays where Hume traces such things as the ‘‘Rise and Progress in the Arts and Sciences’’ (E 111–37) and the formation of factions based on superstition and enthusiasm (E 73–79); and the history of political society he sketches in the second Enquiry.7 The ‘‘boundaries of justice still grow larger,’’ Hume writes in the latter work, ‘‘in proportion to the largeness of men’s views, and the force of their mutual connexions. History, experience, reason,’’ he concludes, ‘‘sufficiently instruct in this natural progress of human sentiments, and in the gradual enlargement of our regards to justice, in proportion as we become acquainted with the extensive utility of that virtue’’ (EPM 3.21, SBN 192). Hume’s general view of progress might well be summed up in his remark that the ‘‘manners of a people change very considerably from one age to another, either by alterations in their government, by the mixtures of new people, or by that inconstancy, to which all human affairs are subject’’ (E 206). Accordingly, it is the task of moral science to discover the various ‘‘moral causes’’ that in ‘‘all circumstances are fitted to work on the mind as motives or reasons, and which render a peculiar set of manners habitual to us’’ (E 198). If one grants that a concept of progress is indeed present in Hume’s thinking generally, in what specific sense should it be understood in the case of morals? How might one ‘‘set of manners’’ be considered an improvement on or progress over another? One way to approach this question is to refer back to the discussion of education and models of excellence discussed in previous

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chapters. Hume uses the term education in a pejorative sense to explain the origin and persistence of prejudice and bias, but also employs it to denote the process of reflection and correction, the defining feature of a positive activity through which good moral fiber is formed from the raw stuff of nature. Two points follow from this. First, as we have seen already, while morality is ‘‘natural’’ in the sense of being common to or ‘‘inseparable from the species’’ (T 3.2.1.19, SBN 484), it is ‘‘artificial’’ since without being set as a goal and pursued it is unlikely to develop fully. For this reason, Hume points to models of virtue and develops the idea that one can improve one’s character through reflection and correction. Second – and implied in the very notion of models and characters – there must be an extant moral tradition into which an individual can be educated. This presupposes, in turn, public standards in terms of which people can be said to have acquired the character in question. It is not enough to have sentiments per se; individuals must have the correct sentiments. Thus, as Wiggins expresses Hume’s view, as we become better schooled in that public standard, better equipped to participate in its determination, and more party to the general concerns that it embodies, we shall come to feel a pleasurable sentiment of a particular kind . . . in the view or spectacle of virtuous (or of vicious) characters and the actions that express them.8 Sentiments improve over time and do so with a view to perfectibility. So, as Livingston expresses Hume’s approach, the ‘‘social passions have a natural history of perfection,’’ so that the ‘‘history of morals’’ becomes ‘‘essentially the adventure of cultivating the natural virtues, though the cultural conditions of displaying these may vary enormously.’’9 Perfection, then, need not be confined to the province of the individual, but can be applied at the level of a culture as well. ‘‘There are,’’ as Hume says, ‘‘also characters peculiar to different nations and particular persons, as well as common to mankind’’ (T 2.3.1.10, SBN 403; see also EHU 8.10–11, SBN 85-6). Thus one can talk about the moral character of a whole nation. This is an observation Livingston makes with regard to Hume’s History of England, which, he writes, is essentially the story of the rise of civilization in Britain, with special emphasis on the nature and origin of modern liberty. The same theme of the origin of civilization and modern liberty dominates the Essays Moral, Political, and Literary. If we may think of the Treatise, the two Enquiries, the Dialogues, and The Natural History of Religion as largely the speculative speech of the true sage, the History and the Essays are largely the practical speech of the true patriot. That speech is about liberty as the perfection of civilization.10 It is important to emphasize that progress in the sense of ‘‘perfecting civilization’’ need not imply a telos of the sort familiar from Hegel’s account of

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Spirit or Aristotelian metaphysics. In Hume’s sense it means no more than aiming towards the model of perfection expressed in the figure of the moral expert: there is a vision of the Good towards which a people can orient themselves, and it functions to facilitate and regulate conduct even though, in practice, in the actual course of its history, a nation will always fall short of the goal. A good example of such progress occurs in the Natural History where Hume traces the effects of reflection and correction on the progress of religious sentiments. Caught up in the ‘‘primitive’’ polytheistic ‘‘religion of uninstructed mankind’’ (NHR 138), he argues, human beings ‘‘find human faces in the moon, armies in the clouds; and by a natural propensity, if not corrected by experience and reflection, ascribe malice or good-will to everything, that hurts or pleases . . . [them]’’ (NHR 141). As limited experience and lack of reflection produce and maintain such an attitude, so ‘‘sounder reasoning and larger experience’’ can ameliorate it. ‘‘For men,’’ Hume declares, being taught, by superstitious prejudices, to lay stress on a wrong place; when that fuels them, and they discover, by a little reflection, that the course of nature is regular and uniform, their whole faith totters, and falls to ruin. But being taught, by more reflection, that this very regularity and uniformity is the strongest proof of design and of a supreme intelligence, they return to that belief, which they had deserted; and they are now able to establish it on a firmer and more durable foundation. (NHR 154) Hume is not claiming that religious sentiments will disappear; indeed, elsewhere he argues that some ‘‘public establishment of religion [must exist] in every civilized community’’ (H III, 135). At the same time, he also holds that certain religious superstitions and prejudices will die out or be replaced by others.11 In the History, for example, he describes the spread of Christianity among the Anglo-Saxons as being an advance over the system of indigenous beliefs ‘‘founded on traditional tales’’ (H I, 26–27), speaks favorably of the English reformer Wickliffe (H II, 326–27), and, on the whole, presents the Reformation as an advance over the dogmatism and superstition he sees in Catholicism (see H IV, 119ff.). Hume is also critical of the former, condemning it as a movement which, although it opened ‘‘men’s eyes with regard to the impostures of the Roman Church,’’ succeeded only in replacing the ‘‘multiplied superstitions’’ of one creed with ‘‘an enthusiastic strain of devotion, which . . . placed all merit in a mysterious species of faith, in inward vision, rapture, and ecstasy’’ (H III, 140–41). Thus Hume apparently accepts that prejudice of some kind will always mark a civilization; even in a future age where the Catholic precepts will appear ludicrous, yet it is a ‘‘thousand to one,’’ he says, ‘‘that but these nations themselves shall have something full as absurd in their own creed, to which they will give a most

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implicit and most religious assent’’ (NHR 168). Even ‘‘enlightened’’ natures – Hume included – can come under the sway of some prejudice or another; but the history of human kind still provides evidence that progress has been achieved and is always possible.12

A man of his time or a ‘‘man in general’’? Yet what guarantees the moral health of the tradition when education and improvement proceed in terms of models drawn from the tradition itself ? How can one gain a perspective from which to judge whether the models revered are indeed the best or even worthy of emulation? The history of recent times shows how misplaced faith in one’s ostensibly moral conduct can be, and many practices that were widespread only decades ago are now unacceptable and widely condemned. One way of approaching this issue is by way of the point made earlier about reflection and correction: an education into a particular tradition does not entail uncritical acceptance of everything one is taught; a tradition can and should be engaged critically so that rather than pursuing goals blindly individuals reflect upon their conduct and change their behavior accordingly. ‘‘It is sufficient,’’ Hume writes, ‘‘that the original principles of censure or blame are uniform, and the erroneous conclusions can be corrected by sounder reasoning and larger experience’’ (EPM, A Dialogue 36, SBN 336). This is not say that prejudices are removed easily or completely, and Hume himself is less than sanguine about the degree to which this is possible. As he writes in the Natural History, ‘‘Every by-stander will easily judge (but unfortunately the bystanders are few) that, if nothing were requisite to establish any popular system, but exposing the absurdities of other systems, every voter of every superstition could give a sufficient reason for his blind and bigoted attachment to the principles in which he has been educated’’ (NHR 169). Yet Hume’s own pessimism about the resistance of prejudice to the force of reason and reflection does not conflict with his view that the imperfections of human beings and the ‘‘erroneous conclusions’’ they draw need not remain permanent and unchangeable features of human life. Moral sentiments can change over time, even if gradually and not to the same degree in all people. As emphasized above, Hume writes explicitly of ‘‘improvements in reason and philosophy’’ as well as of a ‘‘natural, and even necessary progress of the sentiments.’’ The notion of progress, which is central to Hume’s philosophy, can accommodate this aspect of his thought, even if the prejudices of the age are occasionally reflected in his own writings. Indeed, that Hume was a man of his time only serves to underscore the philosophical point he is making. One area where Hume expresses a widespread prejudice of his age is in his infamous but unequivocal lapse into an uncritical repetition of contemporary views of European superiority. ‘‘I am apt to suspect the negroes

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to be naturally inferior to the whites,’’ he remarks in a notorious and oftquoted footnote to the 1777 edition ‘‘Of National Characteristics.’’ ‘‘There scarcely ever was a civilized nation of that complexion,’’ he continues, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the whites . . . have something eminent about them, in their valour, form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction between these breeds of men. (E 209n10) On another occasion Hume seems unwilling to accept reports that nonwhites could or had reached achievements comparable to their white counterparts. ‘‘In JAMAICA, indeed,’’ Hume remarks in the same footnote to ‘‘Of National Characters,’’ ‘‘they talk of one negroe as a man of parts and learning; but it is likely he is admired for his slender acquisitions, like a parrot who speaks a few words plainly’’ (E 208n10). Criticism of a similar sort might be raised against remarks Hume makes in the second Enquiry where he argues that justice only arises with a degree of equality, since where ‘‘so unequal a confederacy’’ exists, such rules would be rendered useless. ‘‘This is plainly the situation of men, with regard to animals,’’ he then remarks, and how far they may be said to possess reason, I leave it to others to determine. The great superiority of civilized EUROPEANS above barbarous INDIANS, tempted us to imagine ourselves on the same footing with regard to them, and made us throw off all restraints of justice, and even humanity, in our treatment. (EPM 3.19, SBN 191) In the History, moreover, Hume speaks with apparent approval of European colonization. He laments the failure of the early American colonies under Sir Walter Raleigh (H IV, 217), and says that what ‘‘chiefly renders the reign of James [I] memorable, is the commencement of the English colonies in America; colonies established on the noblest footing that has been known in any age or nation . . . People gradually from England by the necessitous and indigent . . . the colonies, which were planted along that tract [from St. Augustine to Cape Breton], have promoted the navigation, encouraged the industry, and even perhaps multiplied the inhabitants of their mother-country’’ (H V, 146–47). There is every expression here of benefits to the colonists, and little appreciation of what the native peoples had and were to suffer. These remarks have led to considerable debate on the precise character and extent of Hume’s attitude to non-whites. Some commentators have

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taken Hume at his word and condemned him as an out and out racist. Richard Popkin, for example, describes the footnote as Hume’s ‘‘racial law’’;13 H.M. Bracken cites Hume’s remarks as a ‘‘statement of color racism’’;14 Charles Mills says Hume is guilty of making ‘‘explicitly racist statements about blacks’’;15 Johnson describes Hume as a western thinker guilty of ‘‘often unsanitized and unabashed racism’’;16 and Winthrop Jordan takes the remarks as evidence of Hume’s putative view that ‘‘the people near the poles and in the tropics were essentially inferior to those in the temperate zones.’’17 Some have made the stronger claim that Hume’s remarks are endemic to his philosophy more generally. Considering the import of Hume’s revision of the footnote in ‘‘Of National Characteristics,’’18 John Immerwahr characterizes Hume’s view as a form of ‘‘philosophical racism,’’ and calls the footnote ‘‘an ugly piece of racism that seriously stains Hume’s character.’’ While ‘‘Hume did not, in fact, adopt the most extreme form of racism,’’ Immerwahr concludes, ‘‘. . . the revisions show . . . that Hume’s racism was a considered and deliberate position, rather than an offhand remark.’’19 Robert Palter goes further and contends that ‘‘at least some of Hume’s central philosophical doctrines are logically implicated in his racism.’’20 Bracken also defends the thesis that there is an historical and philosophical connection between racism and empiricism in general, and, more recently, Emmanuel Eze has taken up Immerwahr’s suggestion to defend the contention that ‘‘Hume’s ‘remark’ about the races, the Negro in particular is grounded in Hume’s theory of nature. When he says . . . that the Negroes have ‘no arts, no sciences,’’’ Eze contends, ‘‘he is drawing conclusions from his highly sophisticated theory of mind.’’21 Finally, some have emphasized that Hume’s remarks are particularly notable since, as Immerwahr again puts it, ‘‘Hume’s reputation and influence’’ gave an authority to the footnote such that it subsequently ‘‘played a remarkable role in the history of racism.’’22 As others have argued, however, the situation is somewhat more complicated than these various condemnations would suggest. Palter has pointed out that the claims about Hume’s influence on the history of racism are light on evidence, finding only eleven writers who actually cite the footnote in support of their own views.23 Andrew Valls has argued recently that while Hume was certainly a ‘‘racialist’’ (he took race to be ‘‘real’’ in some sense) and held racist sentiments (he maintained a thesis about white superiority in the face of contrary evidence), his remarks do not warrant the more virulent attacks leveled against him.24 Jordan’s claim, moreover, that Hume argues for the superiority of those living in the temperate zones is simply false; Hume explicitly rejects any argument for physical and climatic explanations of character in favor of an explanation in terms of ‘‘moral causes’’ alone. ‘‘As to physical causes,’’ he writes for example, ‘‘I am inclined to doubt altogether of their operation in this particular [the character of different professions]; nor do I think, that men owe any thing of their temper or genius to the air, food, or climate’’ (E 200).25

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Further, some of the passages cited to support the contention that Hume is racist appear differently when read in context. The remark in the second Enquiry about the ‘‘great superiority of civilized Europeans,’’ for instance, can certainly be clarified on textual grounds by emphasizing how the main point of the passage is to show that rules which constitute justice only arise where there is a ‘‘degree of equality’’ since where ‘‘unequal . . . confederacy’’ exists such rules would be rendered useless. Hume emphasizes that it was only the assumption or erroneous judgment that ‘‘barbarous Indians’’ had the same status with regard to us as animals that allowed the former to be treated in the same unjust way as the latter. Hume might not be expressly criticizing such inhumanity in this passage, but neither is he endorsing or expressing sympathy with the view that ‘‘civilized Europeans’’ are indeed superior.26 Needless to say, this does not account for the passages from ‘‘Of National Characteristics,’’ and no commentator has attempted to excuse Hume from expressing such unacceptable views. However, a somewhat more balanced picture of the matter emerges when the passages are placed in the context of Hume’s writings as a whole. As Palter notes, the footnote is the only passage in Hume’s corpus that is ‘‘definitely racist in its import’’ and thus amounts to a ‘‘single, isolated racist pronouncement.’’27 More significantly, Hume’s comments stand in stark contrast to his persistently naturalistic emphasis on sentiments, sympathy, and the ‘‘natural equality of mankind’’ (E 185; see T 2.1.11.1 and 2.3.1.11–12; SBN 316 and 403), and on many more occasions than he lapses into prejudice himself, Hume expresses an unequivocal opposition to the institution of slavery accompanying the sort of prejudice he seems to embrace. He separates himself from those ‘‘passionate admirers of the ancients [who] . . . cannot forbear regretting the loss of this institution [the practice of slavery]’’ (E 383), and declares how ‘‘domestic slavery in the AMERICAN colonies, and among some EUROPEAN nations, would never surely create a desire of rendering it more universal.’’ He is no less critical of the ‘‘state of real slavery’’ which characterized European feudalism and made it ‘‘difficult, and almost impossible, for a private man to remain altogether free and independent’’ (H I, 437 and 171; see also 226–27 and 463; II, 522–24 passim; and III, 417); of the ‘‘barefaced acts of tyranny and oppression [that] were practised against the Jews’’ (H I, 483; see also 378–79, and H II, 68, 78 passim) and he is critical of monarchical government and the sciences of ‘‘oppression and slavery’’ that result from it (E 118; see also 117). It is for similar reasons that Hume expresses sympathy for the colonies, not because they represent the ascendancy of westerners over their inferiors, but because they reflect an attempt to escape the established church and monarchy in England. Hume admires the colonists for their ‘‘spirit of independency’’ (H V, 147) and the virtues of industry and improvement, which is rather different than giving wholesale support to a system that in later years was to bring such violence and misery to large parts of the globe. Indeed, it is fair to say that Hume shows overwhelming opposition

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not only to practices that reduce the amount of general liberty in a society, but condemns the very sentiments and ignorance that – as Hegel was to present it much later – deprives both master and slave of their human dignity. For the ‘‘little humanity,’’ Hume declares, commonly observed in persons, accustomed, from their infancy, to exercise so great authority over their fellow-creatures, and to trample upon human nature, were sufficient alone to disgust us with that unbounded dominion. Nor can a more probable reason be assigned for the severe, I might say, barbarous manners of ancient times, than the practice of domestic slavery; by which every man of rank was rendered a petty tyrant, and educated amidst the flattery, submission, and low debasement of his slaves. (E 383; see also 185) Though guilty of error in dismissing some non-Europeans as ‘‘naturally inferior,’’ Hume is unequivocal in seeing the demise of slavery and other unwarranted prejudices as a mark of moral progress, as a step from ancient barbarism to modern civilization. Whatever defense one might mount on his behalf, however, it is certainly reasonable to conclude that in the very least Hume expresses attitudes that could not be defended today without resorting to some ideology or pseudoscientific theory of one sort or another. One might well be inclined simply to dismiss Hume as a ‘‘racist,’’ but to do so misses an important feature of the approach that his remarks on inequality and slavery reveal: Hume’s personal prejudice, that is, does not effect his philosophical claim that ‘‘erroneous conclusions’’ which characterize an age – that non-whites are naturally inferior, for example – can and should be corrected by sounder reasoning and larger experience. As Hume points out, ‘‘we every day meet with persons, who are in a different situation from ourselves, and who cou’d never converse with us on reasonable terms, were we to remain constantly in that situation and point of view, which is peculiar to ourselves’’ (T 3.3.3.2; SBN 602). In this respect, sound moral judgment follows the same pattern as good criticism where perusing an unfamiliar work requires placing oneself ‘‘in the same situation as the audience, in order to form a true judgment of the oration. In like manner,’’ Hume continues, when any work is addressed to the public, though I should have a friendship or enmity with the author, I must depart from this situation; and considering myself as a man in general, forget, if possible, my individual being and peculiar circumstances. A person influenced by prejudice, complies not with this condition; but obstinately maintains his natural position, without placing himself in that point of view, which the performance supposes. (ST 239)

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One might fail to take up this point of view and in criticism and morals remain full of the manners of one’s age rather than becoming a man in general capable of reaching a true judgment, a fate that clearly befell Hume himself in the footnote to ‘‘Of National Characteristics.’’ It is thus more reasonable, as C.L. Ten has recently emphasized, to view Hume’s ‘‘racism’’ not as a principled position or the necessary outcome of his philosophical views, but as a personal failure, a lapse – however regrettable – in which he contradicts his own injunction to dismiss beliefs ‘‘without any compelling evidence, and in the face of counter-evidence.’’28 Hume’s philosophy involves a view of progress and an approach to morals, which, whatever the content of his own prejudices, shows that some judgments are erroneous and can and should be overcome through reflection and correction. It is thus ‘‘surely to Hume’s credit,’’ as Palter puts it, ‘‘that he has formulated a theory of prejudice which will account for his own prejudices.’’29

Conclusion Prejudice, after all, consists in the ‘‘undistinguishing judgments’’ of the vulgar that ‘‘men of sense’’ condemn (E 197), and the possibility of taking the general point of view provides the means to correct one’s judgments and realize that one’s beliefs are unfounded. Like the mark of the good critic in ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste,’’ the good moral judge can ‘‘place himself in the same situation as the audience,’’ depart from his situation, consider himself a man in general, and forget his ‘‘individual being and peculiar circumstances’’ (ST 239). As in art so in morals, to educate one’s taste is a task and the outcome of engaging one’s culture in a critical manner. The traces of such progress are already visible in Hume’s own writings and in a more developed form have become a mark of the present age: although not reduced to the point of extinction, prejudices based on categories of race are widely condemned, and anyone who expresses the opposite opinion is rightly reproached for the immorality of their view. Like those who hold Ogilby over Milton, ‘‘no one pays attention to such a taste; and we pronounce without scruple the sentiment of these pretended critics to be absurd or ridiculous’’ (ST 231). Hume is well aware, as he says at one point in the History, that ‘‘Each century has its peculiar mode in conducting business; and men, guided more by custom than by reason, follow, without enquiry, the manners, which are prevalent in their own time’’ (H II, 86). Even the reflective philosopher is no exception to this rule; and though a man of his own time, were he writing at the beginning of the twenty-first century rather than in the middle of the eighteenth, one can expect Hume to condemn racial prejudice with no less ardor than he did, his occasional lapses notwithstanding, the superstition, ignorance, and bigotry of his own.

Conclusion Philosophy and moral life

In the forgoing chapters we have made clear some of the connections between Hume’s aesthetics and his approach to morals. We have seen – to put the matter in the most general terms – that his investigations in both areas are motivated by a conception of beauty based on the natural fit between subject and world, and how this is manifest in striking parallels between the way he treats standards, education, and progress in both the moral and aesthetic realm. At the same time, Hume also makes clear that philosophy is neither a neutral instrument from which knowledge of the world can be read nor a transparent medium through which it is channeled. Philosophy, rather, is itself an activity, governed by a logic or internal order, such that when made the object of its own scrutiny it expresses that order in the forms of rules, procedures, and methodological principles. In the course of pursuing investigations into matters such as beauty and morals, Hume, the honest philosopher, cannot but reflect upon the nature of that investigation itself. Through such reflection, Hume discovers that philosophy is a particular application of human reason, and, when it leaves experience behind, liable to conjure falsehood and illusion.1 Self-knowledge has its price, however. When fully self-conscious, philosophy is true to its own origins, but also gains the insight that ‘‘ultimate principles’’ are beyond its grasp and that there are limits placed upon its own activity. For ‘‘any hypothesis, that pretends to discover the ultimate original qualities of human nature,’’ Hume writes, ‘‘ought at first to be rejected as presumptuous and chimerical’’ (T Intro. 8, SBN xvii), and having discovered the ‘‘utmost extent of human reason,’’ the philosopher should ‘‘sit down contented.’’ We can do this, moreover, ‘‘perfectly satisfied in the main of our ignorance’’ because it is genuine knowledge, born of hard philosophical labor, and expressing the discovery that ‘‘we can give no reason for our most general and most refined principles, beside our experience of their reality’’ (T Intro. 9, SBN xviii). Of course, the restlessness of the human mind and the conceit of the philosophical spirit makes such tranquility rare, and the history of philosophy is littered with corpses of those ‘‘greatest geniuses [who] have failed with the utmost pains’’ to reach the grail of ultimate reality (T Intro. 3, SBN xiv). Unaware of their failure,

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however (as Hume remarks in his discussion of necessary connection), they adopt ‘‘obscure and uncertain principles’’ – ‘‘substantial forms, and accidents, and faculties’’ – while overlooking those that are ‘‘clear and intelligible’’ (T 1.3.14.7, SBN 158). In fact, Hume observes, where they have done this, philosophers have as good as admitted their own ignorance, but through dishonesty or deliberate omission have failed to recognize it themselves: ‘‘the ultimate force and efficacy of nature is perfectly unknown to us, and that ‘tis in vain we search for it in all the known qualities of matter. In this opinion they are almost unanimous, and ‘tis only in the inference they draw from it, that they discover any difference in their sentiments’’ (T 1.3.14 8, SBN 159). What bearing, then, do these reflections have on the present study, and why do they make a fitting end to a book on aesthetic and moral beauty? The answer to this question lies in what we have learned about morals from Hume’s approach to beauty, and the conclusions he reaches concerning the role of philosophy in regulating our conduct. Since philosophical reason cannot go beyond experience without risking falsehood, Hume teaches, its domain is largely coextensive with ordinary reason and the practices of common life. Philosophy presupposes the concrete activities it expresses, and its anatomical inquiries abridge the pre-reflective order of everyday life. Hume points out that the philosophical doctrine of free-will, for example, ‘‘enters very little into common life, and has but small influence on our vulgar and popular ways of thinking’’ (T 2.1.10.5, SBN 312), and that significant discoveries in morals, such as virtue being perceptions of the mind rather than qualities of objects, have ‘‘little or no influence on practice.’’ In that practice, Hume emphasizes, ‘‘Nothing can be more real, or concern us more, than our own sentiments of pleasure and uneasiness; and if these be favourable to virtue, and unfavourable to vice, no more can be requisite to the regulation of our conduct and behaviour’’ (T 3.1.1.26, SBN 469). Sentiments rather than philosophical argument are motives for action, and these have their origin in the concrete activities of people rather than in philosophical abridgments of them. This view of the relationship between philosophy and moral life has profound implications for practical morals or ethics, where the philosopher claims to have discovered some principle or other that can and should guide conduct. For Hume, the philosopher should be wary of such principles and claims based on them, since imposing conjectures and hypotheses on the world oversteps the bounds of proper philosophical activity and gives rise to purely speculative and potentially dangerous doctrines. There is, as Hume warns, a ‘‘grave philosophic Endeavour after Perfection, which, under Pretext of reforming Prejudices and Errors, strikes at all the most endearing Sentiments of the Heart, and all the most useful Byasses and Instincts, which can govern a human Creature’’ (E 539). Moral prescriptions abound, depending upon the view of ‘‘perfection’’ one takes, but unless they arise, like the true judge in art and morals, from practice itself, they are empty

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and abstract, like a wheel (to borrow an image from Wittgenstein) that does not engage the mechanism in which it turns.2 It is important to emphasize, however, that the relative autonomy of philosophy does not rule out philosophical reflection as a possible source of moral education. Hume uses it as a basis for denouncing the monkish virtues, for example, as well as condemning the enthusiasm and superstition that regularly accompany religious belief. Hume is able to make these evaluative declarations without falling into prejudice because he has discovered them to be practices that contravene standards derived from producing general rules that express the origin of morals in utility and agreeableness. As such, Hume does not add anything to moral life that is not already there. The ethical dimension of Hume’s moral philosophy is also evident in his approach to character, which is formed through reflecting upon and correcting conduct in view of models that ideally express the standards that everyone acknowledges to constitute virtue. Here too, the practice of moral life – attributing praise and blame and improving one’s character – does not depend on philosophical insight, but involves individuals engaging in reflection and correction of which they are all capable. As Hume says in a letter to Hutcheson, ‘‘Except a Man be in Orders, or be immediately concern’d in the Instruction of Youth, I do not think his Character depends upon his philosophical Speculations’’ (L I, 34). For one of Kantian bent, of course, these Humean conclusions about philosophical reason and practical activity are part and parcel of a destructive scepticism – as Kant expresses himself in the Preface of the first Critique – that unseats metaphysics, at one time Queen of all the sciences, from the throne of her philosophical empire (A viii). Hume might well state his intention to bring his case before the ‘‘tribunal of human reason’’ (T Intro. 1, SBN xiii), but for Kant this would be no more than wishful thinking since Hume misrepresents the faculty of reason itself and fails to grasp the a priori character of all genuine knowledge. A more sympathetic observer, however, might see in Hume’s observations a lesson in humility and appreciation of that wonder in which the Ancients located the origin of philosophy. For philosophy is simply baffled when it comes up against the intransigence of the world, and humbled to discover that there are regions into which it cannot penetrate: But besides all the agreeable qualities, the origin of whose beauty we can, in some degree, explain and account for, there still remains something mysterious and inexplicable, which conveys an immediate satisfaction to the spectator, but how or why, or for what reason, he cannot pretend to determine. There is a manner, a grace, an ease, a genteelness, an I-know-not-what, which some men possess above others . . . This class of accomplishments . . . must be trusted entirely to the blind, but sure testimony of taste and sentiment; and must be considered as a part

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of ethics, left by nature to baffle all the pride of philosophy, and make her sensible of her narrow boundaries and slender acquisitions. (EPM 8.14, SBN 267) It is perhaps fitting that beauty, at once ubiquitous and undeveloped in Hume’s own thought, should, in the final analysis, be the point at which philosophy is rendered mute and must defer to something more powerful – nature, instinct, feeling – that requires an entirely different idiom – the poetic – for adequate expression. For ‘‘however philosophers may have been bewilder’d in those speculations,’’ Hume writes, ‘‘poets have been guided more infallibly, by a certain taste or common instinct, which in most kinds of reasoning goes farther than any of that art and philosophy, with which we have been yet acquainted’’ (T 3.2.2.16, SBN 494). It is also appropriate that the humbled philosopher should apply the same insight to the practice in which he or she engages, and accept taste and sentiment as the explanation for the ‘‘I-know-not-what’’ of philosophical predilection. Above and beyond the pretensions of reason, abstruse arguments, and the ‘‘wisdom of the schools,’’ Hume observes that in the final analysis the preference for one position over another rests not on recognizing the best argument, but on taste: ‘Tis not solely in poetry and music, we must follow our taste and sentiment, but likewise in philosophy. When I am convinc’d of any principle, ‘tis only an idea, which strikes more strongly upon me. When I give the preference to one set of arguments above another, I do nothing but decide from my feeling concerning the superiority of their influence. (T 1.3.8.12, SBN 103, emphasis added) Conviction follows on the depth of sentiment and on a delicacy of taste that will always overcome the claims of reason. Educating one’s taste here, of course, is a task like any other; only time, attention, and following the best models will educate the sentiments, and distinguish the true philosopher from pretenders. Nothing in this teaching, however, condemns philosophy to irrationality or predicts its imminent demise. Philosophy is an activity, and, on Hume’s view at least, the search for good philosophical taste finds its best models in the ‘‘great Philosopher’’ – a Newton or a Galileo – who sets for those who follow in his or her footsteps the endless task of progress that that can never be fully realized. Like the true judge in ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste,’’ ‘‘So rare is this Character,’’ Hume remarks, ‘‘that, perhaps, there has not, as yet, been above two [Galileo and Newton] in the World, who can lay a just Claim to it’’ (E 550. See also H VI, 542, and V, 135). Perhaps, as Hume speculates, ‘‘Two thousand years with such long interruptions, and under such mighty discouragements are a small space of time to give any tolerable perfection to the sciences’’; and the fact that philosophers have not yet ‘‘discover[ed] any

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principles, which will bear the examination of the latest posterity’’ can be explained by their living in ‘‘too early an age of the world’’ (T 1.4.7.14, SBN 273). On the other hand, it might be that Hume too labors under an illusion that a ‘‘perfect philosophy’’ is within his reach. If he does, then he is proof of his own insight that excellence is possible only if one has an ideal in view. It is the ‘‘ambition,’’ as Hume himself says, of contributing to the ‘‘instruction of mankind’’ – of showing them the world as it ‘‘really is’’ – that tempts him back to his closet and drives his weather-beaten vessel onwards through the storm that rages on every side (T 1.4.7.1, SBN 263–64). For as in the beauty of art, nature, and morals, so in philosophy one can – indeed must – set perfection as a task and educate one’s taste accordingly. One might fail in that endeavor, of course; but that, as Hume well knows, is only human.

Notes

Preface 1 Brunius, David Hume on Criticism; and Townsend, Hume’s Aesthetic Theory. 2 For an indication of the breadth and depth of the scholarship in these and related areas, see Costelloe, ‘‘Hume’s Aesthetics: The Literature and Directions for Research.’’ 3 See Jones, ‘‘Hume’s Literary and Aesthetic Theory,’’ 256; Kivy, ‘‘Hume’s Neighbour’s Wife,’’ 201; Laird, Hume’s Philosophy of Human Nature, 276–77; and Noxon, ‘‘Hume’s Opinion of Critics,’’ 157 and 161. 4 Mackie, Hume’s Moral Theory, 65. The most detailed attempts to trace the comparison are to be found in Jones, ‘‘Another Look at Hume’s Views of Aesthetic and Moral Judgments’’; Halberstadt, ‘‘A Problem in Hume’s Aesthetics’’; and Townsend, Taste and Sentiment, chap. 4. 1 General rules and ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’ 1 See, for example ‘‘Of Eloquence,’’ ‘‘Of Tragedy,’’ and ‘‘Of Essay Writing,’’ in E 97–110, 216–25, and 533–37, respectively; and H V, 149–55, and VI, 542–45. 2 For the place of Hume in eighteenth-century aesthetics, see Brunius, David Hume on Criticism, chap. 6; Kivy, The Seventh Sense; Jones, Hume’s Sentiments; and Townsend, Hume’s Aesthetic Theory. See also Land, From Signs to Propositions. 3 Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 2.8 (hereafter Essay). Cf. Hume’s criticism of the ‘‘modern philosophy’’ (T 1.4.4), and for the view that he never took the Lockean distinction seriously, Blackburn, ‘‘Hume on the Mezzanine Level’’. For a response to Blackburn, see Winkler, ‘‘Hutcheson and Hume on the Color of Virtue,’’ 13–18. 4 It should be noted that Hume employs ‘‘quality’’ in two different senses. He holds that ‘‘beauty and deformity . . . are not qualities in objects, but belong entirely to the sentiment,’’ but ‘‘it must be allowed,’’ he continues ‘‘that there are certain qualities in objects, which are fitted by nature to produce those particular feelings’’ (E 235, emphasis added). Cf. Locke’s remark: the Power to produce any Idea in our mind I call Quality of the Subject wherein that power is. Thus a Snow-ball having the power to produce in us the Ideas of White, Cold, and Round, the Powers to produce those Ideas in us, as they are in the Snow-ball, I call Qualities; and as they are Sensations, or Perceptions, in our Understandings, I call them Ideas; which Ideas, if I speak of sometimes as in the things themselves, I would be understood to mean those Qualities in the Objects which produce them in us. (Essay 2.8.8)

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5 See Jones, ‘‘Hume’s Aesthetics Reassessed’’; Wieand, ‘‘Hume’s Two Standards of Taste’’; and Shiner, ‘‘Hume and the Causal Theory of Taste’’. 6 Brown, ‘‘Observations on Hume’s Theory of Taste,’’ 193. 7 See Brown, ‘‘Observations on Hume’s Theory of Taste,’’ 196; Kulenkampff, ‘‘The Objectivity of Taste: Kant and Hume,’’ 99–100; Wieand, ‘‘Hume’s Two Standards of Taste,’’ 131; Shusterman, ‘‘Of the Scandal of Taste,’’ 213; Hester, ‘‘Hume on Principles and Perceptual Ability,’’ 296; Osborne, ‘‘Some Theories of Aesthetic Judgment,’’ 136, and his ‘‘Hume’s Standard and the Diversity of Aesthetic Taste,’’ 56. 8 See also H IV, 386, where Hume describes Spenser as ‘‘a kind of task-reading.’’ He then writes: This effect . . . is usually ascribed to the change of manners: But manners have more changed since Homer’s age; and yet that poet remains still the favourite of every reader of taste and judgment: Homer copied true natural manners, which, however rough or uncultivated, will always form an agreeable and interesting picture: But the pencil of the English poet was employed in drawing affectations, and conceits, and fopperies of chivalry, which appear ridiculous as soon as they lose the recommendation of the mode. 9 This view is widespread. See Guyer, ‘‘The Standard of Taste and the ‘Most Ardent Desire of Society,’’’ 52ff.; Mothersill, ‘‘Hume and the Paradox of Taste,’’ 279–80; MacLachlan, ‘‘Hume and the Standard of Taste,’’ 32; Sverdlik, ‘‘Hume’s Key and Aesthetic Rationality,’’ 69; Helm, ‘‘Why We Believe in Induction,’’ 133; and Noxon, ‘‘Hume’s Opinon of Critics,’’ 160–61. Cf. Friday, ‘‘Hume’s Sceptical Standard of Taste,’’ who argues that Hume is committed only to providing descriptions of certain phenomena, rather than attempting a normative reconciliation of divergent tastes. A similar emphasis is to be found in Railton, ‘‘Aesthetic Value, Moral Value, and Naturalism,’’ 68; Dickie, The Century of Taste, 136, and Evaluating Art, 141ff.; and Gracyk, ‘‘Rethinking Hume’s Standard of Taste,’’ 176–77. 10 For the place of Hume’s general rules in the history of the early modern period, see Serjeantson, ‘‘Hume’s General Rules and the ‘Chief Business of Philosophers.’’’ 11 Hume makes a similar point when he distinguishes between causation as a ‘‘philosophical’’ and ‘‘natural relation’’: ‘‘Thus tho’ causation be a philosophical relation, as implying contiguity, succession, and constant conjunction, yet ‘tis only so far as it is a natural relation, and produces union among our ideas, that we are able to reason upon it, or draw any inference from it’’ (T 1.3.7.16). When Hume draws a distinction between the ‘‘logic’’ he employs in his ‘‘reasoning’’ and the ‘‘natural principles of the understanding’’ (T 1.3.15.11), he separates rules in their first influence from rules in their second, and shows how the former are ‘‘supply’d by’’ the latter. 12 Hearn, ‘‘‘General Rules’ in Hume’s Treatise,’’ 411 and 407. See also Vanterpool, ‘‘Hume’s Account of General Rules’’; and Martin, ‘‘The Rational Warrant for Hume’s General Rules.’’ 13 Hearn, ‘‘‘General Rules’ in Hume’s Treatise,’’ 408 and 414. 14 Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, 111. 15 Passmore, Hume’s Intentions, 55. 16 Helm, ‘‘Why We Believe in Induction,’’ 128. 17 See Townsend, Hume’s Aesthetic Theory, chap. 5, esp. 158–63. The quotation is taken from 160. Townsend does not apply his view of rules to ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste.’’ 18 Serjeantson, ‘‘Hume’s General Rules,’’ 207. See also 208, where Serjeantson emphasizes how Hume also extends this to ‘‘questions of ‘criticsm.’’’

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19 Reflection in this sense is not to be confused with Locke’s use of the term to denote one of the two ‘‘Fountain[s], from which Experience furnisheth the Understanding with Ideas.’’ Reflection of this sort, Locke explains, is ‘‘that notice which the Mind takes of its own Operations, and the manner of them, by reason whereof, there come to be Ideas of these Operations in the Understanding’’ (Essay II, I, 4). See in this context Bricke, Hume’s Philosophy of Mind, 128, who observes that ‘‘Hume appears prepared to speak of both images and passions as objects of ‘reflection’ . . . items ‘which the mind by reflection finds in itself,’’’ and that he ‘‘often uses ‘reflection’ in a way roughly synonymous with ‘thinking,’ ‘thought’ or ‘reasoning.’’’ See also 162n5. 20 Discoveries of a similar sort are announced at T Intro. 9–10, 1.1.3.1–7, 1.2.5.19, 1.3.6.13, 1.3.12.20, 1.4.2.44, 1.4.5.10 (SBN xviii, 14–15, 60, 93, 139, 210, 235), and EHU 1.12–13, 8.7, 8.13 (SBN 12–13, 83, 87), passim. 21 See Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, 111–12. 22 Wieand, ‘‘Hume’s Two Standards of Taste.’’ Wieand’s own solution is to argue that the standard of taste is both a rule and a joint verdict. See also Shelley, ‘‘Hume’s Double Standard of Taste,’’ who suggests that Hume switches from rules to a joint verdict because criteria for the latter (the five characteristics of the true judge) are easier to specify. 23 See Schmidt, David Hume: Reason in History, 329ff.; Gurstein, ‘‘Taste and ‘the Conversible World’ in the Eighteenth Century,’’ 215; Shiner, ‘‘Hume and the Causal Theory of Taste,’’ 239–40; Perricone, ‘‘The Body and Hume’s Standard of Taste,’’ 374ff.; Marshall, ‘‘Arguing by Analogy: Hume’s Standard of Taste,’’ 324 and 325; Budd, Values of Art, 18–20; Zangwill, ‘‘Hume, Taste, and Teleology,’’ 4– 5; Carroll, ‘‘Hume’s Standard of Taste,’’ 181 and 191–92; Mooji, ‘‘Hume on IsOught and the Standard of Taste,’’ 325–26; Korsmeyer, ‘‘Hume and the Foundations of Taste,’’ 204–5; Kivy, ‘‘Hume’s Standard of Taste: Breaking the Circle,’’ 59; Osborne, ‘‘Hume’s Standard and the Diversity of Aesthetic Taste,’’ 55–56; and Sugg, ‘‘Hume’s Search for the Key with the Leather Thong,’’ 101. 24 See above, n5. 25 See Osborne, ‘‘Some Theories of Aesthetic Judgment,’’ 136, who comes closest to expressing this view. It should be noted that there is also a long-standing tradition of understanding Hume’s true judge as an ‘‘ideal observer’’ who expresses the ‘‘general point of view’’; this is a different sense of ideal than the one I am suggesting in connection with Hume’s view of general rules. Cf. Sverdlik, ‘‘Hume’s Key and Aesthetic Rationality,’’ 69; Gurstein, ‘‘Taste and the ‘Conversible World,’’’ 210 and 214; Cohen, ‘‘Partial Enchantments of the Quixote Story in Hume’s Essay on Taste’’; Sayre-McCord, ‘‘On Why Hume’s ‘General Point of View’ Isn’t Ideal’’; Helm, ‘‘Why We Believe in Induction,’’ 132; and MacMillan, ‘‘Hume, Points of View and Aesthetic Judgments.’’ 26 For Hume’s forays into criticism, see, for example, H IV, 381–86; V, 149–55; and VI, 150–54 and 540–45. For some evaluation of Hume’s views, see Laird, Hume’s Philosophy of Human Nature, 273; and Stewart, The Moral and Political Philosophy of David Hume, 263. A more sympathetic account is to be found in Brunius, David Hume on Criticism, chap. 6. 27 Shelley, ‘‘Hume and the Nature of Taste,’’ 35. 28 Kivy, ‘‘Aesthetics and Rationality,’’ 52. See also Gurstein, ‘‘Taste and ‘the Conversible World,’’’ 204. 29 Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, Kants Gesamelte Schriften (KGS 5) (Berlin: Ko¨niglich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften: Walter de Gruyter [and predecessors], 1902ff.), 205–7 passim. I take up this issue in more detail in chapter three. 30 See the ‘‘Second Moment of a Judgment of Taste,’’ KGS 5, 211ff.

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2 Aesthetic beauty and moral beauty 1 Cf. Garrett, Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy, 107–11, who argues that the psychological content of Hume’s account of cause and effect finds a direct parallel in the case of virtue. He writes: Just as in the case of ‘‘cause,’’ we have a class of objects possessing a feature that produces a certain characteristic psychological effect on observers. However, in this case [virtue] the objects are mental qualities of persons, rather than pairs of objects or events; their common feature is usefulness or agreeableness to the possessor or others, rather than the constant conjunction of resembling objects; and the psychological effect is the sentiment of moral approbation, rather than association and inference. (107, emphasis added) 2 Hutcheson, An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, II.i.i. 3 Cf. Blackburn, ‘‘Hume on the Mezzanine Level,’’ 275, who takes Hume’s use of ‘‘moral sense’’ as ‘‘partly piety to Hutcheson and partly a slogan.’’ See also Dickie, The Century of Taste, 123 passim, who emphasizes Hume’s departure from Hutcheson in term’s of his rejection of internal sense and a faculty of taste. Cf. Siebert, The Moral Animus of David Hume, 18–21. 4 For a detailed comparison, see Halberstadt, ‘‘A Problem in Hume’s Aesthetics.’’ 5 On this point, see Kydd, Reason and Conduct in Hume’s Treatise, 48–49. Cf. Davie, ‘‘Hume on Morality, Action, and Character,’’ who says that Hume ‘‘compares the case of a child murdering his parent with the case of a young oak or elm which overtops and destroys the parent tree and he finds the same action of ingratitude in both cases‘‘ (344–45). 6 Hume offers an additional argument to explain the distinction. While pleasure and pain associated with animate objects produce pride, humility, love, or hatred, he points out, inanimate objects involve pleasure and pain without an attendant passion. ‘‘And this,’’ Hume concludes, ‘‘is perhaps, the most considerable effect that virtue and vice have upon the human mind’’ (T 3.1.2.5, SBN 473). It might also be noted that natural beauty is not capable of becoming a source of pain: ‘‘One can consider the clouds, and heavens, and trees, and stones, however frequently repeated, without ever feeling any aversion. But when the fair sex, or music, or good cheer, or any thing, that naturally ought to be agreeable, becomes indifferent, it easily produces the opposite affection’’ (T 2.3.5.4, SBN 423–24). 7 See also Hume’s remark that ‘‘a convenient house and a virtuous character cause not the same feeling of approbation, even though the source of our approbation be the same, and flow from sympathy and an idea of utility’’ (T 3.3.6.6, SBN 617). See Jones, ‘‘Cause, Reason, and Objectivity in Hume’s Aesthetics,’’ 326. 8 Hume writes that an ‘‘Anatomist . . . can give very good Advice to a Painter or Statuary, . . . in like manner, I am perswaded [sic], that a Metaphysician may be very helpful to a Moralist: tho’ I cannot easily conceive these two Characters united in the same Work’’ (L I, 33). Cf. Norton, David Hume, 43–44. 9 See Shaver, ‘‘Hume’s Moral Theory?’’, who argues that Hume’s ‘‘anatomist/ painter distinction does not divide the factual from the normative’’; it is not, he says, a ‘‘distinction . . . between the normative and the descriptive, but between the engaging and the ‘accurate’’’ (319). See also Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, 52, who finds Hume’s distinction ‘‘odd’’; and Immerwahr, ‘‘The Anatomist and the Painter,’’ who understands Hume’s early work as anatomical and the Essays as an exercise in ‘‘practical philosophy’’ that ‘‘should not dissect politics and morality but should encourage morals and political virtue’’ (6–7); and Potkay, The Passion for Happiness, 16–22, who argues that ‘‘it is the work’s

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12

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[second Enquiry‘s] reconciliation of painting with anatomy that is, as Hume would later say, ‘in my opinion . . . incomparably the best’’’ (19). Cf. Costelloe, ‘‘To have lived from the beginning of the world.’’ See Atkinson, ‘‘Hume on the Standard of Morals,’’ 42, who observes that ‘‘Hume might have tried to develop the notion of a competent ‘critic’ in morality too, but, apart from the odd reference . . . to a man of temper and judgment, he did not do so. Whether this was a considered omission is hard to say.’’ See also Railton, ‘‘Aesthetic Value, Moral Value, and Naturalism,’’ 93–94. See Sayre-McCord, ‘‘On Why Hume’s ‘General Point of View’ Isn’t Ideal,’’ 220– 21, who writes that ‘‘the general point of view, as it describes a standard in morals, parallels to an extraordinary degree the point of view of a qualified critic.’’ Both involve taking a standpoint beyond our own situation, SayreMcCord emphasizes, and depend upon a gift of nature, freedom from prejudice, and judging whether something is ‘‘well-suited to the serving of certain purposes.’’ Cohen, ‘‘Partial Enchantments of the Quixote Story in Hume’s Essay on Taste,’’ 153, remarks how ‘‘in his moral theory Hume explains the difference between virtue and vice in terms of the feelings of an ‘impartial spectator,’’’ and ‘‘[i]n this regard, his moral theory is formally the same as his theory of taste.’’ Sayre-McCord, ‘‘On Why Hume’s ‘General Point of View’ Isn’t Ideal,’’ 203–4. Sayre-McCord sees ‘‘sympathetic omniscience’’ as a necessary part of any ‘‘Ideal Oberver’’ theory, and thus rejects the idea that Hume’s general point of view can be ‘‘ideal’’ in any sense. Cf. Cohen, ‘‘Partial Enchantments of the Quixote Story in Hume’s Essay on Taste,’’ 148, who suggests that Hume has an ‘‘ideal creature’’ theory in which ‘‘although it is true that the object pleases some of us and not others, it remains to determine whose feeling is fit to count as a standard.’’ Radcliffe, ‘‘Hume on Motivating Sentiments, the General Point of View, and the Inculcation of ‘Morality,’’’ 37. See also Hume’s remark: The most perfect character is supposed to lie between those extremes; retaining an equal ability and taste for books, company, and business; preserving in conversation that discernment and delicacy which arise from polite letters; and in business that probity and accuracy which are the natural result of a just philosophy. (EHU 1.5, SBN 8)

3 Antinomy and error 1 Kuehn, ‘‘Hume’s Antinomies,’’ 26. See also Coleman, ‘‘Hume’s Dialectic,’’ who makes a similar claim in comparing Hume’s scepticism with Kant’s ‘‘dialectical method.’’ ‘‘Just as Kant solves the antinomies of pure reason through a criticism, not a dissolution, of transcendental illusion,’’ she writes, ‘‘so Hume solves contradiction between natural beliefs through a criticism, not a dissolution, of natural illusion’’ (152). 2 Kant does not refer explicitly to ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’ in the third Critique, but a German translation by Johann Georg Sulzer under the title ‘‘Von der Regel des Geschmacks’’ appeared in 1758 (only one year after its publication in English) and commentators generally assume that Kant owned a copy or had at least read it. See, for example, Kivy, ‘‘Hume’s Standard of Taste,’’ 58, and ‘‘Hume’s Neighbour’s Wife,’’ 203; Mothersill, Beauty Restored, 178; Kulenkampff, ‘‘The Objectivity of Taste,’’ 109n1; Schaper, ‘‘Kant’s Aesthetic Theory,’’ 380; Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste, 380; Coleman, The Harmony of Reason, 135; and ‘‘Translator’s Introduction’’ in the Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar,

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3

4

5 6

7

Notes

li–lii. For a more detailed discussion of the literature on this and related issues, see Costelloe, ‘‘Hume’s Aesthetics’’; and for Kant’s explicit references to Hume’s Essays and History, KGS 5, 285, 320n55, and 420, and Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (KGS 7), Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. Victor Lyle Dowdell, 173, 260, 309, and 311. See Jones, ‘‘Hume’s Literary and Aesthetic Theory,’’ 277; Carritt, ‘‘The Sources and Effects in England of Kant’s Philosophy of Beauty,’’ 315; Mothersill, Beauty Restored, chaps 7 and 8; Savile, Kantian Aesthetics Pursued, chap. 4; and Budd, Values of Art, 16ff. Cf. Zart, Einfluss der englischen Philosophen seit Bacon auf die deutsche Philosophie des 18ten Jahrhunderts, 215ff.; and Gracyk, ‘‘Kant’s Shifting Debt to British Aesthetics.’’ Kivy, ‘‘Hume’s Neighbour’s Wife,’’ 203. See also Kivy’s ‘‘Hume’s Standard of Taste,’’ 58, ‘‘Aesthetics and Rationality,’’ 51; and The Seventh Sense, chap. 7. The point has been reiterated by Mothersill, ‘‘Hume and the Paradox of Taste,’’ 270; and Schaper, ‘‘Kant’s Aesthetic Theory,’’ 296. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, KGS 3 and 4, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith, A406/B4320; A339/B397 passim. See Guyer, Kant and the Claims ofTaste, 299: ‘‘if it is the first Critique‘s Antinomies which provide the model of the formulation of the dialectical problem of taste, it is the Paralogisms and their exposure of a sophisma figurae dictionis which provide the model for its solution.’’ See Allison, Kant’s Theory of Taste, 239, who remarks that although, as it stands, this [formulation of the Antinomy of Taste] does not have the developed structure of the better-known antinomies from the first Critique, wherein each side argues for its case apogogically through a reductio of the opposing view, it can easily be given such a form.

8 See Al-Azm, The Origins of Kant’s Arguments in the Antinomies, 140–41; Walsh, Kant’s Criticism of Metaphysics, 197ff.; Allison, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism, 38 and 337n6; and Kemp Smith, A Commentary to Kant’s ‘‘Critique of Pure Reason’’, 480–83. 9 Kuehn, ‘‘Hume’s Antinomies,’’ 26. See also Walsh, Kant’s Criticism of Metaphysics, 197ff. 10 Kant claims this formulation is necessary because aesthetic judgments of sense about the agreeable cannot generate a dialectical conflict. See Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste, 295, who points out, first, that one would expect the dialectic to involve ‘‘two forms of judgment’’ rather than ‘‘a form of judgment with the theory of that judgment’’ that Kant actually presents; and second, that Kant’s formulation involves a ‘‘misuse’’ of the term ‘‘taste’’ because limiting it to the agreeable alone seems to contradict the argument of the Analytic, which shows that judgments of taste always involve a claim to universality. 11 Based largely on Kant’s ambiguous answer to the question whether pleasure precedes the judgment of an object or vice versa (KGS 5, x9), some commentators draw a sharp distinction between ‘‘aesthetic judgment’’ and ‘‘judgment of taste,’’ and interpret the latter as involving not one but two distinct judgments. See Crawford, Kant’s Aesthetic Theory, 70–71; Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste, chap. 3; and Gracyk, ‘‘Are Kant’s ‘Aesthetic Judgment’ and ‘Judgment of Taste’ Synonymous?’’ To avoid any ambiguity I use ‘‘judgment of taste’’ or ‘‘judgment about the beautiful’’ to refer specifically to the view that Kant expresses in the four moments, namely, that liking in an (aesthetic) judgment of taste is disinterested, universal, purposive, and necessary, and thus involves subjective universality.

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12 See Kuehn, ‘‘Hume’s Antinomies,’’ 27–28, who points out that insisting on the rational element of the antinomies ‘‘would effectively restrict the term [antinomy] to Kant’’ (and, one might add, to Kant after 1775). 13 Allison, Kant’s Theory of Taste, 236. Thus the formal resolution, Allison urges, can be distinguished from the ‘‘problematic and much-criticized appeal to the supersensible that Kant makes on the basis of this resolution’’ (ibid., emphasis added) 14 One important point to note here is that – as the title of the essay suggests – ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’ intends to provide philosophical support for the existence of standards and how individual erroneous individual judgments might be reconciled with them. In this sense Hume does not treat the two influences of common sense in the same way. However, the fact that the naive endorsement of diversity is essentially misguided and cannot be given philosophical support does not prevent it from being a fact of common life. The error of such judgments notwithstanding, Hume’s argument proceeds by articulating it as one of two equally valid though contradictory opinions which individuals can and do hold. In this respect one is entitled to understand Hume’s argument as antinomical. 15 On this point, see Kivy, ‘‘Hume’s Standard of Taste,’’ 59. 16 It might be noted that in contrast to ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste,’’ in ‘‘The Sceptic’’ Hume identifies taste more closely with matters of fact than with sentiment. He observes that despite the ‘‘uniformity among human kind, [it] hinders not, but there is a considerable diversity in the sentiments of beauty and worth, and that education, custom, prejudice, caprice, and humour, frequently vary our taste of this kind’’ (E 163). Hume’s argument in ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste,’’ on the other hand, is that such variations are empirical matters and they do not change the fact that a general standard regarding the beautiful exists, even if this standard is ‘‘ideal’’ and in practice never attained due to imperfections or exigencies of one sort or another. 17 Most commentators regard the efforts of both Hume and Kant to have failed in this regard. For this view of Hume’s essay (though not necessarily understood as an antinomy), see Brown, ‘‘Observations on Hume’s Theory of Taste,’’ 196 and 197; Kivy, ‘‘Hume’s Standard of Taste,’’ 63–64; Shusterman, ‘‘Of the Scandal of Taste,’’ 218; Hester, ‘‘Hume on Principles and Perceptual Ability,’’ 298; Korsmeyer, ‘‘Hume and the Foundations of Taste,’’ 202, 205, and 212; Savile, Kantian Aesthetics Pursued, chap. 4; and Mothersill, Beauty Restored, 180–81. On the Kant side, see Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste, chap. 10, esp. 302ff.; Ginsborg, ‘‘Kant on the Subjectivity of Taste’’; and the reply by Ameriks, ‘‘New Views on Kant’s Judgment of Taste,’’ in the same volume. 18 See Coleman, ‘‘Hume’s Dialectic,’’ 153n3, who points to a disanalogy between Hume and Kant concern[ing] the ultimate goal of dialectic. For Kant the goal of dialectic is not merely to resolve scepticism, but to achieve certainty (CPR [KGS 5] 395). For all his criticism of dogmatic metaphysics, Kant yet aspires to the Cartesian ideal of certitude. Hume, on the other hand, renounced all aspirations to certitude (T xviii). However, this disanalogy is not sufficient to negate the thesis that Hume, like Kant, employs dialectic to resolve, not to generate, scepticism. 19 Cf. Kant’s discussion of the Cognitive Faculty in the Anthropology where he says: ‘‘On the other hand, we are often enough the victim of obscure ideas (das Spiel dunkeler Vorstellungen), which are reluctant to vanish, even when the understanding has thrown light upon them’’ (KGS 7, 136–37). See also 143 and 146. See in this context Al-Azm, The Origins of Kant’s Arguments, 149:

118

Notes The illusion is natural and unavoidable simply in the sense that no matter how meticulous and careful we are in our thinking about experience we cannot fully guard ourselves against hypostatizing our ideas. There is no way of completely eliminating the possibility of self-deception. The illusion can be detected and guarded against to a greater or lesser degree, but it cannot be eradicated.

20

21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28 29 30

31 32

33

See also Kemp Smith (who Al-Azm quotes), A Commentary to Kant’s ‘‘Critique of Pure Reason,’’ who takes Kant as saying that human beings have ‘‘an in-born need of metaphysical construction’’ (426). Kant employs similar terminology in the Anthropology, 149–50, when distinguishing between natural and artificial delusion (Blendewerk), what he calls Ta¨u¨schung (illusio) and Betrug (fraus), respectively. Deception of the latter kind – ‘‘deception of the senses’’ (Betrug der Sinne) – ceases when it is discovered that the appearance (Schein) only arises through the object in question: ‘‘Betrug aber der Sinne ist: wenn, sobald man wei, wie es mit dem Gegenstande beschaffen ist, auch der Schein sogleich aufho¨rt’’ [Deception of the sense exists when the appearance vanishes as soon as we know the nature of the object] (KGS 7, 150). See also his view of the inclination to delusion (Neigung des Wahnes) as a passion in which ‘‘die Natur wirklich mit dem Menschen spielt um ihn (das Subjekt) zu ¨ berregung steht (objektiv), sich seinen Zwecke spornt: indessen da dieser in der U selbst einen eigenen Zweck gesetzt zu haben’’ [Nature really plays with the person and spurs him (the subject) on to its purpose, although the person is convinced (objectively) that he pursues his own purpose] (KGS 7, 275). Allison, Kant’s Theory of Freedom, 24 (cf. 13–14). See also his Kant’s Transcendental Idealism, chap. 3, esp. 36–38; and Al-Azm, The Origins of Kant’s Arguments, 10ff. See also Prolegomena zu einer jeden Kunftigen Metaphysik die als Wissenshcaft wird auftreten konnen (KGS 4), 306–7, and Al-Azm, The Origins of Kant’s Arguments, 37–38. Allison, Kant’s Theory of Freedom, 24. See also Walsh, Kant’s Criticism of Metaphysics, 208–10. Cf. Crawford, Kant’s Aesthetic Theory, 129, who emphasizes another aspect of the solution: ‘‘Kant sees an indeterminate concept of the subjective purposiveness of nature as the resolution or synthesis of the subjective–objective dichotomy seemingly forced upon us by the logical features of judgments of taste.’’ He traces this back to the B edition of the first Critique. Kuehn, ‘‘Hume’s Antinomies,’’ 33 and 35. Coleman, ‘‘Hume’s Dialectic,’’ 147 and 150. Kivy, The Seventh Sense, 140. Kivy, ‘‘Hume’s Neighbour’s Wife,’’ 203. Kivy, ‘‘Aesthetics and Rationality,’’ 51. See Al-Azm, The Origin of Kant’s Arguments, 146, who also talks of the ‘‘systematic irrelevance (and not necessarily the psychological, moral, cathartic, and regulative irrelevance) of the antinomical conflict to scientific knowledge and explanation of the world.’’ Al-Azm, The Origin of Kant’s Arguments, 149. In the third Critique Kant says that ‘‘the antinomies compel us against our will to look beyond the sensible to the supersensible as the point [where] all our a priori powers are reconciled, since that is the only alternative left to us for bringing reason into harmony with itself’’ (KGS 5, 341). Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (KGS 4), Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary J. Gregor, 404.

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4 Reflection and character 1 See, for example, Jones, Hume’s Sentiments, chap. 1; Schneewind, ‘‘The Misfortunes of Virtue’’; Martin, ‘‘Hume as Classical Moralist,’’ 383; Darwall, ‘‘Motive and Obligation in Hume’s Ethics’’; and Livingston, Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium’, 136–42 and 390. See also Desjardins, ‘‘Terms of ‘De Oficiis’ in Hume and Kant’’; Timmons, ‘‘Kant and the Possibility of Moral Motivation,’’ 379–80; and Wallace, ‘‘Virtue, Reason, and Principle.’’ The case against has been put by MacIntrye, After Virtue, chap. 4, and Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, chaps 16 and 17; and Foot, ‘‘Virtues and Vices.’’ 2 See essays XV–XVII, E 138–80. 3 McIntyre, ‘‘Character,’’ 195. 4 Ryle, The Concept of Mind, 20. See also Kant (KGS 3 and 4), A580/B608–A583/B611. 5 See also Hume’s remarks on Malebranche’s ‘‘abstract theory of morals,’’ which ‘‘excludes all sentiment, and pretends to found everything on reason’’ (EPM 3.34.n12, SBN 197n1). 6 Penelhum, David Hume, 150. 7 Dees, ‘‘Hume on the Characters of Virtue,’’ 47. 8 Johnson, ‘‘Hume’s Theory of Moral Responsibility,’’ 7–8, emphasis added. See ´ rdal, Passion and Value in Hume’s Treatise, also Norton, David Hume, 113ff.; A 91–92; Sayre-McCord, ‘‘On Why Hume’s ‘General Point of View’ Isn’t Ideal,’’ 206–7, 208, 225–26, and 225n43; and Ainslie, ‘‘Scepticism about Persons in Book II of Hume’s Treatise,’’ 491. Cf. Kydd, Reason and Conduct in Hume’s Treatise, 190–93. 9 Johnson, ‘‘Hume on Character, Action and Causal Necessity,’’ 158. See also 150, 159 and 163, and ‘‘Hume’s Theory of Moral Responsibility,’’ 16n5. 10 Johnson, ‘‘Hume’s Theory of Moral Responsibility,’’ 5 and 16n6. 11 Johnson, ‘‘Hume’s Theory of Moral Responsibility,’’ 6, emphasis added. 12 Bricke, ‘‘Hume’s Conception of Character,’’ 109. See also his Hume’s Philosophy of Mind, 30–31. 13 See Penelhum, David Hume, 55; Garrett, Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy, 232; Wright, The Sceptical Realism of David Hume, 15–16, 43, and 86; Russell, Freedom and Moral Sentiment, 63 and 95–96; and Buckle, Hume’s Enlightenment Tract, 145ff., 174–75, and 180–81. Cf. Helm, ‘‘Why We Believe in Induction,’’ 120; and Coleman, ‘‘Hume’s Dialectic,’’ 155n10, who explicitly questions Bricke’s reasoning. 14 See Bricke, Hume’s Philosophy of Mind, 31. 15 Wright, The Sceptical Realism of David Hume, 188ff. 16 Cf. Hume’s mention of ‘‘pipes or canals’’ in his discussion of belief (T 1.3.10.7, SBN 122), and Philo’s remark in the Dialogues: ‘‘What peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call thought, that we must thus make it a model of the whole universe?’’ (DNR, 50). 17 See, for example, EHU 8 and EPM Appx. 4. See also Jones, Hume’s Sentiments, chap. 4; King, ‘‘The Place of the Language of Morals in Hume’s Second Inquiry’’; and Glossop, ‘‘Hume, Stevenson, and Hare on Moral Language.’’ 18 McIntyre, ‘‘Character,’’ 194. 19 Dummett, Truth and Other Enigmas, 145–46. See also Strawson, The Secret Connexion, 59ff., and Norton, David Hume, 109. 20 McIntyre, ‘‘Character,’’ 195, second emphasis added. 21 McIntyre, ‘‘Character,’’ 201. 22 McIntyre, ‘‘Character,’’ 197–98. 23 McIntyre, ‘‘Character,’’ 195, 200, 202, and 203, respectively. 24 Norton, David Hume, 111–12n15 (cf. 116 n21). See also his ‘‘Hume’s Moral Ontology’’; and Penelhum, David Hume, 150, who criticizes Norton for suggesting

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that ‘‘Hume thinks the positive or negative value of the character judged is some discerned fact over and above the character itself.’’ Mackie, Ethics, 38. The only exception to this is Kulenkampff, ‘‘The Objectivity of Taste.’’ For a contemporary approach to character not inspired by Hume, but developed along similar lines, see Coulter, Mind in Action, 103–12. See also Sabini and Silver, Moralities of Everyday Life, chap. 8. Penelhum, David Hume, 147. Stroud, Hume, 184–85. See also his ‘‘‘Gilding or Staining’ the World with ‘Sentiments’ and ‘Phantasms’’’; Halberstadt, ‘‘A Problem in Hume’s Aesthetics’’; Penelhum, David Hume, 147; and Schmidt, David Hume, esp. 181 and 200. Blackburn, ‘‘Hume on the Mezzanine Level,’’ 275 and 279, respectively. Blackburn makes this claim while rejecting the view that Hume adopts the doctrine of primary and secondary qualities. See also Baier, A Progress of Sentiments, 188–89. Penelhum, David Hume, 149, emphasis added. McIntyre, ‘‘Character,’’ 196 and 202, respectively. See the discussion in Livingston, Hume’s Philosophy of Common Life, chap. 7; and Dees, ‘‘Hume on the Characters of Virtue.’’

5 Beauty and moral life 1 2 3 4

Walsh, ‘‘Hume’s Concept of Truth,’’ 108. Wiggins, ‘‘Categorical Requirements,’’ 86, emphasis added. Siebert, The Moral Animus of David Hume, 35. See also T 3.2.5.12, SBN 523, where Hume makes a similar point. Considering the obligation of promises he observes that a sentiment of morals concurs with interest and becomes a new obligation upon mankind. This sentiment of morality, in the performance of promises, arises from the same principle as that in the abstinence from the property of others. Public interest, education, and the artifices of politicians, have the same effect in both cases.

5 Cf. McGinn, Moral Literacy, who seems to think that moral perfection is a fairly easy goal to attain: Fortunately individual moral progress isn’t terribly time-consuming – you can almost do it as you go along – so there is not much excuse for neglecting it . . . Being good . . . is something that everyone should be able to manage. You don’t need special sabbaticals in order to cultivate virtue in your actions. 6 My discussion is drawn from Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good and Other Essays, and from the title essay, in particular. See also Siebert, The Moral Animus of David Hume, who sees a similar view of perfection at work in Hume’s historical writings: Hume’s History projects a moral vision by its ability to reshape the past, to impose meanings on the past, creating patterns that imply a corresponding beauty in human nature – all too seldom instantiated in human life, it is true, but nonetheless capable of being discovered, indeed created in the fiat of narrative, by the historian’s moral imagination. (21; see also 44) 7 Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good, 91.

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8 Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good, 85, 86, and 87, respectively. Cf. Jones, ‘‘‘Art’ and ‘Moderation’ in Hume’s Essays,’’ who comments that ‘‘Hume conceives pleasure as a necessary constituent of human happiness, and arts as a means of providing it’’ (179). 9 Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good, 93. 10 Kant, Metapyhysik der Sitten (KGS 7), The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor, 400, and 383–84. 11 Penelhum, David Hume 148–49. He also remarks that ‘‘For whatever reason, subjectivist theories have always had easier acceptance in aesthetics than in ethics; but this very fact is troubling when Hume, or anyone, leans on the likenesses between aesthetic and moral values to press subjectivism in moral theory’’ (140). 12 Foot, ‘‘Hume on Moral Judgment,’’ 71. This sort of view stems, no doubt, from G.E. Moore’s influential criticism of moral subjectivism, though – as Wiggins points out – ‘‘Moore cautiously refrains from mentioning [Hume] by name in this connexion.’’ See Wiggins, ‘‘A Sensible Subjectivism?’’, 186; and Moore, Philosophical Papers, 329ff. See also Kivy, The Seventh Sense, 140; Radcliffe, ‘‘Hume on Motivating Sentiments’’; Timmons, ‘‘Kant and the Possibility of Moral Motivation,’’ 379 and 381; and Atkinson, ‘‘Hume on the Standard of Morals.’’ 13 Broad, Five Types of Ethical Theory, 260. 14 A notable exception is Wiggins, ‘‘A Sensible Subjectivism?,’’ although one might note that the version of subjectivism Wiggins defends is one he says Hume ‘‘could have made’’ but did not, namely, the ‘‘subjectivist claim that x is good if and only if x is such as to arouse/such as to make appropriate the sentiments of approbation’’ (187 and 190). Wiggins takes the emphasis on approbation (rather than on what is appropriate) to be closer to Hume’s actual position. 15 See also Wright, The Sceptical Realism of David Hume, 21, who takes Hume to be a scientific realist. 16 On this point, see Livingston, Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium, 123. 17 Gill, ‘‘A Philosopher in his Closet,’’ 245, emphasis added. See also Garrett, Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy, 133; and Wiggins, ‘‘Categorical Requirements,’’ who says at one point that ‘‘the standard is indeed the way it is because affection for children is a natural human response to them . . . but this standard itself applies to John even if John himself does not feel such affection’’ (88). 18 Cf. Gauthier, ‘‘Artificial Virtues and the Sensible Knave,’’ 422, who sees the knave as teaching that ‘‘human society . . . lacks any moral foundation’’ because she denies that each person must expect every choice that she makes between conforming to and violating the rules of justice to have an effect on the behaviour of others with consequences for her own advantage sufficient to afford her with a normally adequate motive for conformity. (418) Cf. Baier, ‘‘Artificial Virtues and the Equally Sensible Non-Knaves: A Response to Gauthier,’’ esp. 437–38. 19 Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 49, first emphasis in original, second added. 20 Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 52. 21 The same self-deception is to be found among philosophers who, as Hume writes of Diogenes and Pascal, are men ‘‘in a different element from the rest of mankind; and the natural principles of their mind, play not with the same regularity, as if left to themselves, free from the illusions of religious superstition or philosophical enthusiasm.’’ Despite the ‘‘extravagant philosophy’’ and ‘‘ridiculous superstition’’ that underlie their views, ‘‘both of them have met with general admiration in their different ages, and have been proposed as models of imitation’’ (EPM, A Dialogue, 55, SBN 343).

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22 23 24 25

Penelhum, David Hume, 148–49. Kivy, ‘‘Aesthetics and Rationality,’’ 56. Aristotle, Metaphysics Books VII–X, trans. Montgomery Furth, Zeta 13, 38b9. For views of Hume’s dialogue, see Livingston, Hume’s Philosophy of Common Life, 220–22, and Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium, 390; Shaver, ‘‘Hume’s Moral Theory?,’’ 325; and Strawson, Skepticism and Naturalism, 31–50. Cf. Siebert, The Moral Animus of David Hume, chap. 4, esp. 184–86, who sees ‘‘A Dialogue,’’ as ‘‘an excellent example of both Hume’s moral iconoclasm and his insistence on openness, flexibility, and toleration as the only reliable guidelines of moral thought’’ (186). 26 See also T 3.3.5.6, SBN 617, where Hume remarks on the ‘‘flexibility of our sentiments, and the several changes they so readily receive from the objects, with which they are conjoin’d.’’ He concludes by saying that ‘‘There is something very inexplicable in this variation of our feelings; but ‘tis what we have experience of with regard to all our passions and sentiments.’’ 27 Cf. Wiggins, ‘‘A Sensible Subjectivism?,’’ 202–4, who expresses a similar point via his notion of ‘‘relativity’’: What this relativity imports is the possibility that there may be simply no point in urging that a stranger to our associations owes the object this [appropriate] response . . . Even when the response A becomes possible for him . . . this may not trigger any readiness on his part to participate in all the collateral aesthetic or practical responses normally associated with A. (203) Thus, it is quite possible, on Wiggins’ view, to have perfectly appropriate (moral) responses that others cannot in principle share. 28 See, for example, Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufman, 1–33. Nietzsche, of course, thought this was a complete explanation of morality; for Hume it is an insight gained from understanding the sense in which moral qualities are universal. 6 Progress and prejudice 1 Wallech, ‘‘The Elements of Social Status in Hume’s Treatise,’’ 207. 2 Shusterman, ‘‘The Scandal of Taste,’’ 212–13. See also Savile, Kantian Aesthetics Pursued, 76; Korsmeyer, ‘‘Hume and the Foundations of Taste,’’ 202 and 212n2; Osborne, ‘‘Hume’s Standard and the Diversity of Aesthetic Taste,’’ 56, and ‘‘Some Theories of Aesthetic Judgment,’’ 136; and Schmidt, David Hume, 316. Cf. Cohen, ‘‘Partial Enchantments,’’ 155n4; Shelley, ‘‘Hume and the Nature of Taste,’’ 31–33; and Gurstein, ‘‘Taste and ‘the Conversible World,’’’ 219, who notes that taste is an essentially democratic concept, since ‘‘Anyone who gives him or herself over to the rigors of the practice is welcome to join and dispute with the public whose judgments do carry weight.’’ 3 See Baier, A Progress of Sentiments, chap. 12. The quotation is taken from 284. For criticism of Baier’s approach, see Gill, ‘‘A Philosopher in his Closet.’’ 4 See Livingston, Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium, chaps 2 and 3, and 221 and 227, respectively. See also 139 and 141, where Livingston writes that the ‘‘social passions have a natural history of perfection,’’ so that the ‘‘history of morals . . . [is] essentially the adventure of cultivating the natural virtues, though the cultural conditions of displaying these may vary enormously.’’ 5 Siebert, The Moral Animus of David Hume, 38. Cf. Siebert’s understanding of Hume’s view of religion, chap. 2, 62ff.

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6 Garrett, Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy, 116: the abstract idea, or concept, of causation itself . . . is open to temporal change in Hume’s system, as our processes of inductive inference mature and evolve though reflection on our predictive successes and failures. Instead of trying to specify a complete set of timeless criteria for causation, he seeks to ground our understanding of the evolving concept of causation in the fundamental associative and inferential cognitive mechanism that gives it force and significance. 7 See also EPM 7.15, SBN 255, where Hume talks of progress from ‘‘uncultivated nations’’ to peoples who have a ‘‘full experience of the advantages attending beneficence, justice, and the social virtues.’’ 8 Wiggins, ‘‘Categorical Requirements,’’ 86, emphasis added. 9 Livingston, Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium, 139 and 141. 10 Livingston, Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium, 175. Thus the ‘‘story of civilization,’’ he says later, ‘‘is largely the story of how the checks to arbitrary power framed in the modern notion of the rule of law have gradually become established’’ (189). 11 For a discussion that recognizes this aspect of Hume’s thinking, see Siebert, ‘‘Hume on Idolatry and Incarnation.’’ Siebert remarks, for instance, that ‘‘Hume seemed to recognize that man needs to invest objects with significance, that he is a contriver of symbols, a Vates or Maker. The recognition of this fact in the NHR, as it probably is in most of Hume’s philosophy, is grudging and somewhat disapproving. But it exists nonetheless’’ (394). For the view that Hume is simply opposed to religious sentiments in all their forms, see Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy, 374–76; and for a discussion of this issue more generally, Costelloe, ‘‘‘In every civilized society.’’’ 12 Cf. Hume’s discussion of the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII (H III, 203–7, 339, and 369–70). On the question of progress, see Strawson, Skepticism and Naturalism, 47, who remarks: As for the magnitude of historical shifts in standards, that is a commonplace: consider the changes in the attitude to the institution of slavery, now generally regarded as morally abhorrent; consider even possible future changes in the attitude of meat-eating, which some wish to see generally regarded as no less morally abhorrent. 13 14 15 16

Popkin, ‘‘Hume’s Racism,’’ in The High Road to Pyrrhonism, 254 and 258. Bracken, ‘‘Essence, Accident, Race,’’ 82. Mills, ‘‘Non-Cartesian Sums,’’ 225 (see also 242n8). Johnson, ‘‘Teaching the Canon of Western Philosophy in Historically Black Colleges and Universities,’’ 417 (see also 418). 17 Jordan, White Over Black, 253–54. 18 Hume first added the footnote for the 1753 edition of the Essays and revised the first two sentences for the final and posthumous edition of 1777. The original 1753 version reads as follows: I am apt to suspect the negroes, and in general all the other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. See Immerwahr, ‘‘Hume’s Revised Racism,’’ who speculates that Hume’s revision was a result of criticism made by James Beattie in An Essay on the Nature and

124

19 20 21

22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

Notes

Immutability of Truth in Opposition to Sophistry and Speculation, 479ff. Immerwahr goes on to argue that, while it demonstrates that Hume never endorsed polygenesis, the revision also has the effect of ‘‘strengthening his anti-black claims, rather than ameliorating them.’’ As such, Immerwahr concludes, ‘‘it shows that Hume’s racism was deliberate and considered’’ (485). See also Miller’s editorial note (E 629) and Popkin, ‘‘Hume’s Racism,’’ 261ff. Immerwahr, ‘‘Hume’s Revised Racism,’’ 482 and 481. Cf. Garrett’s response to Immerwahr’s argument in ‘‘Hume’s Revised Racism Revisited.’’ Palter, ‘‘Hume and Prejudice,’’ 3. Palter refers to this as a ‘‘(to me) obviously fallacious claim’’ (3–4). Bracken, ‘‘Essence, Accident, Race’’; and Eze, ‘‘Hume, Race, and Human Nature,’’ 693. Cf. Popkin, ‘‘Hume’s Racism Reconsidered,’’ The Third Force in Seventeenth Century Thought, 64, who concludes that Hume’s racism does not follow from his theory of knowledge. Immerwahr, ‘‘Hume’s Revised Racism,’’ 482. See also Popkin, ‘‘Hume’s Racism,’’ 259. Cf. Palter, ‘‘Hume and Prejudice,’’ 9. See Palter, ‘‘Hume and Prejudice,’’ 9–11. Valls, ‘‘‘A Lousy Empirical Scientist.’’’ On this point, see Chamley, ‘‘The Conflict between Montesquieu and Hume.’’ See also the discussion in Valls, ‘‘‘A Lousy Empirical Scientist.’’’ Palter, ‘‘Hume and Prejudice,’’ 4 and 10. Ten, ‘‘Hume’s Racism and Miracles,’’ 101. See also 103. Ten makes the point, however, that Hume’s racism is evident in the fact that he does not hold the same prejudice towards whites. Palter, ‘‘Hume and Prejudice,’’ 11. See also Popkin, ‘‘Hume’s Racism,’’ 259, who, while condemning Hume as a racist, finds an explanation for it in Hume’s own thinking: How could an alleged empiricist like Hume make such sweeping generalizations and ignore evidence to the contrary? Hume himself explained the matter in his discussion of general rules in the chapter of the Treatise on ‘‘Unphilosophical probability.’’ He showed the psychological factors involved in people believing prejudicial general rules, such as ‘‘All Irishmen are quarrelsome,’’ in spite of counter-evidence. And, Hume seems to have been a perfect case of his own explanation of how prejudices can override any evidence.

Conclusion 1 For the view that Hume’s philosophy at once involves a critique of philosophy itself, see, for example, Passmore, Hume’s Intentions, 153; Penelhum Hume, 9–13; Traiger, ‘‘The Secret Operations of the Mind,’’ 310 and 312; and Livingston, Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium, esp. Part One. This aspect of Hume’s philosophy has led some commentators to compare him to Wittgenstein. See, for example, Wertz, ‘‘Hume’s Use of the Game Analogy’’; Gill, ‘‘On Reaching Bedrock’’; Jones, ‘‘Strains in Hume and Wittgenstein’’; Strawson, Scepticism and Naturalism, 14ff.; and, most recently, McCormick, ‘‘Hume, Wittgenstein, and the Impact of Skepticism.’’ Comments of a more passing nature are to be found in Wright, The Sceptical Realism of David Hume, 20ff. passim; Bell and McGinn, ‘‘Naturalism and Scepticism’’; and Baier, A Progress of Sentiments, 2 (see also 295n2). Cf. Penelhum, David Hume, 55. 2 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M Anscombe, x271.

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Index

abridgment see general rules Addison, Joseph 1, 13, 20 aesthetics: Hume’s approach to 1–3; Hume’s place in history of 1–2 agreeableness 27, 62; see also pleasure, utility Ainslie, Donald C. 119 n8 Al-Azm, Sadik J. 50, 116 n8, 117 n18, 118 n19, 118 n21–22, 118 n30–31 Alcibiades 36 Alexander VI 35 Allison, Henry 41, 46, 116 n7–8, 117 n13 Ameriks, Karl 117 n17 animals 27 antinomy: Kant’s conception of 20, 37–40, 49–51; of moral taste 95 Antinomy of Taste: Kant’s x, 20–21, 39, 41, 42, 44, 45–48; Hume’s 40–45, 48–51, 87, 117 n14 ´ rdal, Pa´ll S. 119 n8 A Arendt, Hannah 86, 87 Aristotle 53, 54, 88, 99, 122 n24 art, work of ix, 14 arts, Hume’s knowledge of the viii, 1 association, principles of 64 Atkinson, R.F. 115 n10, 121 n12 Baier, Annette 121 n18, 122 n3, 124 n1 Beattie, James 123 n18 beauty: as quality 24, 64; in art and nature viii, 61; natural and moral compared ix 23–27; of character viii, 61, 62–63; see sentiment Beckett, Thomas a` 69, 73 belief 7, 29, 64, 75 Bell, Martin 124 n1 Blackburn, Simon 66, 120 n30 Bracken, H.M. 102, 123 n14, 124 n21

Bricke, John 58, 119 n12, 119 n14 Broad, C.D. 84, 121 n13 Brown, S.G. 4, 112 n6–7, 117n17 Brunius, Teddy viii, 111 n1–2 Buckle, Stephen 119 n13 Budd, Malcolm 113 n23 Bunyan, John 20 Catholicism 98; see also religion Carritt, E.F. 116n3 Carroll, Noe¨l 113 n23 Cato 35 causes: moral 54, 97, 102; physical 102 causal inference 71; see also judgments Ceasar, Gaius Julius 35 Chamley, P.E. 124 n25 character; and nominalism 70; first and third person perspective of 70; and utility 63; change/acting out of 72; metaphysical view of 54–59, 84; practical view of x-xi, 61–69, 108; realist view of 59–61; 84; social dimension of 70; see also qualities, reflection, virtues characteristics, national 29 Charles I 87 Charles II 72 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 35, 53 Cleanthes 35, 36, 63, 69 Cohen, Ted 113 n25, 115 n12, 122 n2 Coleman, Dorothy P. 50, 115 n1–2, 117 n18, 119 n13 colonialism xiii, 7, 101, 103, 104 contiguity 29 correction see reflection Costelloe, Timothy M. 111 n1, 115 n9, 116 n2, 123 n11 Coulter, Jeff 120 n27

Index Crawford, Donald 116 n11, 117 n17, 118 n24 critic see true judge Cromwell, Oliver 81 Cummin, John 88 custom see habit Darwall, Stephen 119 n1 David, King 35 Davie, William 114 n4 deformity see beauty Dees, Richard H. 58, 119 n7, 120 n33 Desjardins, Gregory 119 n1 Dickie, George 112 n9, 114 n3 diversity: moral 80, 89, 91, 93, 102; of taste 19, 48, 77, 117 n14 Don Quixote, and Sancho’s kinsmen: 15–16, 18 Dubos, Abbe´ Jean-Baptiste 1 Dummett, Michael 60, 119 n19 Eichmann, Adolf 86–87 Edward I 88 education see moral, philosophy, taste Elizabeth I 72 English Revolution 69 enthusiasm 31, 97, 99, 108; see also religion Epamindondas 35 error 6, 7, 8, 57, 63, 64, 103, 105; see also character, qualities, reflection, self Eze, Emmanuel C. 102, 124 n21 fact, disagreement in 49; matters of 20, 21, 43, 93, and virtue 65; questions of 43; see also sentiments, taste fictions 18 see also self, soul, imagination fit ix, 2, 25, 29, 65, 74, 78, 83 Foot, Philippa R. 83, 86, 119 n1, 121 n12 Friday, Jonathan 112 n9 Galileo109 Garrett, Aaron 124 n19 Garrett, Don 97, 114 n1, 116 n5, 116 n10–11, 119n13, 121 n17, 123 n16 Gauthier, David 121 n18 general point of view 34, 53 general rules: and art 14; and cause and effect 6, 8, 12, 16; and ‘‘Of the Standard of Taste’’ 4, 13–17; as abridgments 1, 8–9, 12, 13, 16, 31,

135

85, 92; first and second influence of 1, 6–10, 14, 29, 30, 31, 32–33, 56, 69; fixing 1, 8, 16, 89; normative and descriptive function of 17; philosophical 14, 31, 33; see also philosophy, standards, taste Glossop, Ronald J. 119 n17 Gill, Michael 85, 124 n1, 122 n3 Ginsborg, Hannah 117 n17 Gracyk, Theodore A. 112 n9, 116 n3, 116 n11 Guicciardini, Francesco, and History of Italy 35 Gurstein, Rochelle 113 n23, 113 n25, 122 n2 Guyer, Paul 112 n9, 116 n6, 116 n10–11, 117 n17 habit 6, 10, 80 Halberstadt, William H. 114 n4, 120 n29 Hannibal 35 Hearn, Thomas 8, 112 n12–13 Hegel, G.W.F. 98, 104 Helm, Bennett W. 10, 112 n9, 113 n25, 119 n13 Henry II 68–69 Henry III 72 Henry VII 72 Henry VIII 36; and dissolution of the monasteries 123 n12 Hester, Marcus 112 n7, 117 n17 Homer 5 Hutcheson, Francis 1, 26, 71, 114n2 Ideal Observer Theory 34, 115 n12 imagination 7, 8, 10, 18, 30, 57, 64 Immerhwahr, John 102, 114 n9, 123 n18, 124 n19, 124 n22 imperfection see perfection impressions: internal 65; of reflection 26 improvement see progress Johnson, Clarence Shole´ 58, 102, 119 n8/9/10/11, 123 n16 Jones, Peter 111 n3–4, 111 n2, 112 n5, 114 n7, 116 n3, 119 n1, 119 n17, 121 n8, 124 n1 Jordan, Winthrop D. 123 n17 judgments: aesthetic 1–2, 13, 14, 16, 23, 26, 29, 38, 44, 82, 116 n11; moral 29, 33, 38, 69; of cause and effect 8, 10, 12, 13; subjective and objective xii, 85 justice 75, 80, 97

136

Index

Kant, Immanuel 37, 108–9, 113 n29, 115 n2, 117 n12, 117 n17, 117 n19, 118 n19–20, 118 n 32, 119 n4, 121 n10; and freedom 51–52; and role of philosophy x, 52, 108–9 see also antinomy, Antinomy of Taste Kemp Smith, Norman 116 n8, 118 n19, 118 n21, 118 n23 King, James T. 119 n17 Kirkpatrick, Sir Thomas 88 Kivy, Peter 20, 113 n3, 111 n2, 113 n23, 113 n28, 121 n12, 122 n23; on Antinomy of Taste 38, 41, 48, 115 n2, 116 n4, 117 n15, 117 n17, 118 n27–29; on unity 87–88, 90 Kydd, Rachel 114 n4, 119 n8 Korsgaard, Christine K. 114 n9 Korsmeyer, Carolyn W. 113 n23, 122 n2 Kuehn, Manfred 37, 47, 48, 115 n1, 116 n9, 117 n12, 118 n25 Kulenkampff, Jens 112 n7, 115 n2, 120 n26 Laird, John 113 n3, 113n2 language, Hume’s view of 57, 59, 66–67 liberty xiii, 71, 104 Livingston, Donald W. 97, 98, 119 n1, 120 n33, 121 n16, 122 n25, 122 n4 Livy 35 Locke, John 1, 2, 63, 111 n3, 111 n4, 113 n19 Long Parliament 69 MacIntrye, Alisdair 119 n1 Mackie, J.L. ix, 61, 111 n4, 120 n25 MacLachlan, Christopher 112 n9 MacMillan, Claude 113 n25 Malbranche, Nicolas 119 n5 Marshall, David 113 n23 Martin, Marie 119n1 Mary Queen of Scots 72 McCormick, Miriam 124 n1 McGinn, Colin 120 n5, 124 n1 McIntyre, Jane 55, 60, 70, 119 n3, 119 n18, 119 n20–23, 120 n32 Miller, Eugene F. 43, 124 n18 Mills, Charles W. 102, 123 n15 Milton, John 20, 42, 44, 86, 93, 105 Mississipi Company 70, 71 models xii, 19, 23, 33, 35, 81, 97, 98; see also perfection Monk, General George 72 Mooji, J.J.A. 113 n23 Moore, G.E. 121 n12

moral; capacity for being 75, 76; education 76, 79–82, 95, 97–98, 100; expert x, 32–36, 82; monster 36, 86, 95 morals: abstract theory of 92; principles of x, 24, 34, 92, 93, 115 n12; see also reflection Mothersill, Mary 112 n9, 115 n2, 116 n3–4, 117 n17 Murdoch, Iris 81, 82, 87, 120 n6–7, 121 n19–20 Nazism 87 Nero 36 Newton, Isaac 109 Nietzsche, Friedrich 94, 122 n28 Norton, David Fate 61, 114 n8, 119 n8, 119 n19, 119 n24 Noxon, James 111 n3, 112 n9 objects, animate and inanimate 27–28 Oakeshott, Michael 8–9, 12, 85, 113 n21; see also general rules as abridgments Ogilby, John 20, 42, 44, 86, 93, 105 Osborne, Harold 112 n7, 113 n23, 113 n25, 122 n2 pain see pleasure Palamades 88, 89 Palter, Robert 102, 104, 124 n20, 124 n22–23, 124 n27, 124 n29 Pascal, Blaise 121 n21 parricide 27 Passmore, John 9, 112 n14–15, 112 n17, 124 n1 Penelhum, Terence 58, 65, 83, 87, 119 n6, 119 n13, 119 n24, 120 n28–29, 120 n31, 121 n11, 122 n22, 124 n1 perfection 74, 76, 77, 81, 82, 96, 98–99; philosophical 107, 110 Perricone, Christopher 113 n23 personal identity see self philosophy: and explanation x, 1, 12, 16, 22, 31, 35, 37, 57, 95; and moral life 106–10; and normativity x, 16– 17, 52, 53, 69, 93; and scepticism xiii, 43; and self-knowledge xiv, 106; and taste 109; as anatomy x, 31, 36, 53, 59 93; as metaphysics 55–56; as painting 32, 53, 69; Hume’s view of, x, xiii-iv; limits of xiv, 108–10; see also morals, perfection, practical moralist, prejudice, reason, reflection

Index Plato 81; and Allegory of the Cave 81–82 pleasure 3, 23, 25, 26, 28, 114n6 Pluhar, Werner S. 115 n2 Popkin, Richard 102, 123 n13, 124 n21–22; 124 n29 Potkay, Adam 114 n9 prejudice: 100; dogmatic and philosophical 93–94, 96; Hume’s philosophical critique of xiii, 97 practical moralist 32, 52, 65, 92, 93 progress xiii, 123 n7, 80–82; individual and national 97–100; moral xiv, 79–2, 123 n7; of arts and sciences 97; political 97; religious 99 qualities: and character xi, 53, 55–59, 62, 65, 71; primary and secondary xi, 2, 63, 120 n30; see also beauty racism xiii, 101–5, 124 n28–29 Radcliffe, Elizabeth S. 115 n13, 121 n12 Raleigh, Sir Walter 101 Railton, Peter 112 n9, 115 n10 realism: scientific 121 n15; moral 61; see also character reason: and antinomy 37–38; moral distinctions 25, 27; ordinary 107; philosophical 48, 107; see also reflection reflection: and character 53; moral 28–32, 100; ordinary 10–11, 12, 30, 31, 56–57; philosophical 1, 11–12, 31, 52, 56, 57, 64; see also error religion xiii, 55, 99 relativism xii, 4, 87–94 Richard I 68–69 Robert the Bruce 88 Russell, Paul 119 n13 Ryle, Gilbert 56, 57, 119 n3 Sabini, John 120 n27 Savile, Anthony 116 n3, 122 n2 Sayre-McCord, Geoffrey 34, 113 n25, 115 n11–12, 119 n8 Schapter, Eva 115 n2, 116 n4 Schmidt, Claudia M. 113 n23, 120 n29, 122 n2 Schneewind, Jerome B. 119 n1, 123 n11 self, Hume’s view of xi, 54, 56, 57, 65 sense: moral 26, 74; internal 2, 27; see also education sensible knave 77, 78, 80, 82, 85, 86

137

sentiments: and beauty 5, 63, 64, 77; and relations of ideas compared 43, 87; and education 79; correct xii, 98; moral 25–26, 27–28; disagreement in 49; external and internal 2; natural 75, 80; questions of 43–44; see also character, fit, qualities sentimentalism, Hume’s xii Serjeantson, R.W. 10, 112 n10, 112 n18 sexism 96 Shaver, Robert 114 n9 Shelley, James R. 113 n22, 113 n27, 122 n2 Shiner, Roger A. 112 n5, 113 n23 Shusterman, Richard 96, 112 n7, 117 n17, 122 n2 Siebert, Donald T. 80, 97, 114 n3, 120 n3, 117 n6, 122 n25, 122 n5, 123 n11 Silver, Maury 120 n27 slavery xiii, 96, 103, 104 Socrates 82 Solomon, King 35 soul, Hume’s view of 57, 65; see also self standards: and taste x, 1, 4, 5, 14, 15–16, 17, 22, 33, 174n14; aesthetic x, 1, 5, 14, 15–16; as real 85; empirical 16; concept of 84–85; fictional 18; fixing ix, xii, 20, 52, 93; general xii, 87, 95; ideal 117n16; moral 33, 82–94; objective 84; see also general rules Stewart, John B. 113 n26 Strahan, William 4 Strawson, Galen 119 n19 Strawson, Peter 122 n25, 123 n 12, 124 n1 Stroud, Barry, 66, 120 n29 Stuart Restoration 72 subjectivism xii, 83–87, 121 n14; and sentimentalism 84 substance: 57, 65; Cartesian xi, 55; Spinoza’s view of 55 Sugg, Redding S. Jr., 113 n23 suicide 91 Sulzer, Johan Georg 115 n2 superstition see enthusiasm Sverdlik, Steven 112 n9, 113 n25 taste: and general rules 14, 16–17; and matter of fact 117 n14; and education xii, 3, 74–82 105; and morals 79–82; as capacity 75, 81–82;

138

Index

causal theory of 2; delicacy of 13–14; see also diversity, standards Ten, C.L., 105, 124 n28 Timmons, Mark 119 n1, 120 n12 Timon of Athens 36 Townsend, Dabney viii, 10, 111 n1–2 Traiger, Saul 124 n1 true judge ix, xii, 1, 4, 14, 17–21, 33, 74, 76, 77, 78, 82; see also general rules, moral expert, standards tyrannicide 30 understanding 10, 14, 29 utility 2, 25, 62 Valls, Andrew 102, 124 n24, 124 n26 Vanterpool, Rudolph V. 112 n12 vice see virtues virtue(s): 28, 35, 36, 66, 67, 96; monkish 85, 108; and civility 91; catalogue of 92; of courage 88;

natural and artificial 75; and indolence 67; of love 90; of pride 67–68; social 26 Wallace, R. Jay 119 n1 Wallech, Steven 96, 122 n1 Walsh, W.H. 76, 116 n8–9, 120 n1 Walsingham, Sir Francis 72–73 Wickliffe, John 98 Wieand, Jeffrey 17, 112n5, 112n7, 113n22 Wiggins, David 79, 98, 120 n2, 121 n12, 121 n14, 121 n17, 122 n27, 123 n8 William the Conqueror 72 Winkler, Kenneth P. 111 n3, 114 n3 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 108, 124 n2 Wright, John P. 59, 119 n13, 119 n15, 121 n15, 124 n1 Zangwill, Nick 113 n23 Zart, Gustav 116 n3

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