Hostname: page-component-54dcc4c588-54gsr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-13T03:01:30.280Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Motivating Hume’s natural virtues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Philip A. Reed
Philip A. Reed*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Canisius College, 2001 Main St, Buffalo, NY, 14208, USA
*
*Email: reedp@canisius.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Many commentators propose that Hume thinks that we are not or should not be motivated to perform naturally virtuous actions from moral sentiments. I take issue with this interpretation in this paper, arguing that Hume fully incorporates the moral sentiments into his understanding of how human beings act when it comes to the natural virtues and that he does not see the moral sentiments as a problematic kind of motivation that threatens or weakens the virtuous status of the action.

Keywords

Humenatural virtuesmoral sentimentsmoral motivation

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Ainslie, Donald 2007. “Character Traits and the Humean Approach to Ethics.” In Moral Psychology (Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, vol. 94), edited by Tenenbaum, Sergio 79–110. New York: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Baier, Anette 1991. A Progress of Sentiments. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Baldwin, Jason 2004. “Hume's Knave and the Interests of Justice.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 42 (3): 277–296.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baron, Marcia 1988. “Morality as a Back-up System: Hume's View?” Hume Studies 14 (1): 25–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Besser-Jones, Lorraine 2006. “The Role of Justice in Hume's Theory of Psychological Development.” Hume Studies 32 (2): 253–276.Google Scholar
Bricke, John 1988. “Hume, Motivation and Morality.” Hume Studies 14 (1): 1–24+.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Charlotte 1988. “Is Hume an Internalist?” Journal of the History of Philosophy 26 (1): 69–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Charlotte 1994. “From Spectator to Agent: Hume's Theory of Obligation.” Hume Studies 20 (1): 19–35.Google Scholar
Brown, Charlotte and Morris, William 2012. Starting with Hume. New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Cohon, Rachel 2008. Hume's Morality: Feeling and Fabrication. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Darwall, Stephen 1993. “Motive and Obligation in Hume's Ethics.” Nous 27 (4): 415–448.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garrett, Don 2007. “The First Motive to Justice: Hume's Circle Argument Squared.” Hume Studies 33 (2): 257–288.Google Scholar
Gauthier, David 1992. “Artificial Virtues and the Sensible Knave.” Hume Studies 18 (2): 401–428.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, James A. 2010. “Hume on the Moral Obligation to Justice.” Hume Studies 36 (1): 25–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hume, David 1957. The Natural History of Religion, edited by Root, H. E. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Hutcheson, Frances 2004. An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue. Revised ed. Wolfgang Leidhold. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund.Google Scholar
Korsgaard, Christine 1996. The Sources of Normativity, edited by O’Neill, Onora Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mackie, J. L. 1980. Hume's Moral Theory. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Norton, David Fate 1993. “Hume, Human Nature, and the Foundations of Morality.” In The Cambridge Companion to Hume, edited by Norton, David Fate 148–181. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Day, Ken 1994. “Hume's distinction Between the Natural and Artificial Virtues.” Hume Studies 20 (1): 121–142.Google Scholar
Penelhum, Terrence 1993. “Hume's Moral Psychology.” In The Cambridge Companion to Hume, edited by Norton, David Fate 117–147. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Radcliffe, Elizabeth 1996. “How Does the Humean Sense of Duty Motivate?” Journal of the History of Philosophy 34 (3): 383–407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reed, Philip A. 2012a. “What's Wrong with Monkish Virtues? Hume on the Standard of Virtue.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 29 (1): 39–56.Google Scholar
Reed, Philip A. 2012b. “The Alliance of Virtue and Vanity in Hume's Moral Theory.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 93 (4): 595–614.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russell, Paul 1995. Freedom and Moral Sentiment: Hume's Way of Naturalizing Responsibility. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Russell, Paul 2006. “Moral Sense and Virtue in Hume's Ethics.” In Values and Virtues: Aristotelianism in Contemporary Ethics, edited by Chappel, Timothy 158–170. New York: Oxford.Google Scholar
Williams, Bernard 1985. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar