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5 - Hume's moral psychology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2006

By
Terence Penelhum
Edited by
David Fate Norton
David Fate Norton
Affiliation:
McGill University, Montréal
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Summary

Within Hume's philosophical system and his account of human nature one finds a number of elements that are intimately related to his moral objectives. I refer, widely, to his moral objectives, rather than more restrictedly to his ethical theory, because his whole system has a moral thrust that can be discerned in many places where the immediate subject-matter is not ethical at all.

HUME AND HIS PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM

In 1927, A. E. Taylor concluded his Leslie Stephen Lecture David Hume and the Miraculous with a judgement of Hume's attitude to his philosophical work that has been held by many others:

What kind of response one makes to life will, no doubt, for better or worse, depend on the sort of man one is for good or bad. . . . But we can all make it our purpose that our philosophy, if we have one, shall be no mere affair of surface opinions, but the genuine expression of a whole personality. Because I can never feel that Hume's own philosophy was that, I have to own to a haunting uncertainty whether Hume was really a great philosopher, or only a "very clever man."

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The Cambridge Companion to Hume , pp. 117 - 147
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1993

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