¹ This paper was presented to the Canadian Philosophical Association at the annual meetings held in Edmonton, in June, 1975. I am grateful to those who discussed the paper at that time, and especially to my commentator, but since Professor Marcil Lacoste's contribution is published below, I have not attempted to revise my essay beyond adding three or four footnotes.

I am indebted to the Canada Council for a Research Fellowship which contributed materially to my understanding of these issues.

² Enquiries concerning the Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. Selby-Bigge, L.A. (2nd ed.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), pp. 173–74Google Scholar. (I shall refer to this work as ‘Enquiries’.)

³ Ibid., pp. 269–270.

⁴ Ibid., p. 270.

⁵ Ibid. That is to say, having inferred our general principles from the observation of particular instances, we are justified in making these distinctions. One ought to stop here to object to Hume's complacence. “Men do, as a matter of fact, find value in such things as submission, trust, uncertainty, risk, even despair and suffering, and these values can scarcely all be related to a central ideal of happiness. And is we find some explanations, psychoanalytical, perhaps, or even in some cases zoological, of such attitudes, and also come to regard them as aberrancies which we seek to reduce, then certainly we are changing the world from the standpoint of a certain morality, not merely making the world more responsive to what morality unquestionably is.” (Williams, Bernard, Morality, (London: Penguin Books, 1973), p. 94.Google Scholar)

⁶ A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Selby-Bigge, L.A. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958), pp. 570–71Google Scholar. (I shall refer to this work as “Treatise”.) Cf., “An infidelity… is much more pernicious in women than in men.” (Enquiries, p. 207.)

⁷ Enquiries, pp. 238–39.

⁸ Ibid., p. 239.

⁹ Ibid., pp. 206–07.

¹⁰ Treatise, pp. 570–71.

¹¹ Ibid., p. 572. Some principle such as this is being invoked when we imagine that there is something morally wrong about a “double standard”. Moreover, a double standard will be fair enough when the parties concerned are relevantly different (or unequal). Our fundamental question, then, is whether men and women are relevantly unequal.

Hume is, of course, just reflecting the accepted views of his class and his century. This does not excuse him. Professor Marcil-Lacoste (see below) argues that Hume's views are a product of his epistemology. This claim is of a much higher level of interest and importance. (The ways in which Hume's epistemology and metaphysics are themselves determined by historical and material circumstances is also of another level of importance.)

It is instructive to compare Hume with Plato, who, despite frequently retailing his society's even more chauvinist opinions about women, does at one inspired moment lay the foundation for all feminist thought. At the start of Book V in the Republic he argues that, although there are important differences between male and female, for political, economic and academic purposes they are of the same essence, have the same virtues and abilities, and should meet with the same training and expectations. This follows, of course, from his previous conclusions, first about the rôle of areté as a distinguishing mark of a thing's nature, and second that the person is a complex of three parts (each an essence) and therefore of four virtues (one for each part and one of the ordered whole). Human nature, or the essence of a human being, does not discriminate by sex. That nothing follows from that about sexual rôles or personality differences is true. But these differences, in turn, imply nothing about suitability for political (or ecclesiastical) positions.

¹² Norman, Richard, “On Seeing Things Differently”, Radical Philosophy, 1, (January, 1972), p. 9Google Scholar.

¹³ Ibid.

¹⁴ Enquiries, p. 207.

¹⁵ We may presume that in the present day, given our skill with “birth control” methods, were Hume true to his principles he would hold that chastity is no longer any sort of virtue at all. We can scarcely expect that Hume contemplated more distant implications. If women were to gain economic independence, or if a community were to welcome children without regard to the identities of their biological fathers, chastity would also on Hume's grounds cease to be any kind of virtue.

¹⁶ Enquiries, pp. 190–91.

¹⁷ These were, we may remind ourselves, wit with good manners, unaffected gallantry, and ingenious knowledge genteelly delivered. (Enquiries, p. 269.)

¹⁸ Treatise, pp. 308–09.

¹⁹ Cf., Enquiries, p. 192, and Treatise, p. 486.

²⁰ Enquiries, p. 266.