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Hume, Treatise, III, i, 1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Donald F. Henze
Donald F. Henze
Affiliation:
California State University, Northridge
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Extract

The reappearance of Professor Alasdair MacIntyre's far-ranging and provocative article, ‘Hume on “is” and “ought”’, is the proximate cause of this short excursion to an old, well-scarred, and still fascinating battleground. Re-reading MacIntyre's brilliant offensive thrust led me to review the counter-attacks and diversionary movements that followed its first appearance. They in turn sent me back, inevitably and ultimately, to look again at the cause of this philosophic skirmishing: Section 1 of Part i of Book III of Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, entitled ‘Moral Distinctions not deriv'd from Reason’. The battles of the past have been waged chiefly round the last paragraph of this Section (pp. 469–470 in Selby-Bigge's edition), but my primary concern here is going to be with those ‘reasonings’ that precede the celebrated ‘is-ought’ paragraph. Closer attention to the bulk of Book III, Part i, Section 1, to which ‘reasonings’ Hume says he ‘cannot forbear adding … an observation’ on ‘is’ and ‘ought’, and some selective attention as well to Books I and II of the Treatise, should help to scale down the exaggerated importance attached to the ‘is-ought’ passage. Unless this is done, one runs the risk of permitting a tailpiece to wag the body of the chapter, if not the whole Book ‘Of Morals’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 48 , Issue 185 , July 1973 , pp. 277 - 283
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1973

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References

1 In MacIntyre, Alasdair, Against the Self-images of the Age: Essays on Ideology and Philosophy (London: Duckworth, 1971)Google Scholar. ‘Hume on “is” and “ought”’ appeared originally in The Philosophical Review, LXVIII, no. 4 (10 1959).Google Scholar

2 See, e.g., articles by Atkinson, R. F., Flew, A., Hunter, G., and Hudson, W. D. in Hume, ed. Chappell, V. C. (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1966)Google Scholar, or in The Is-Ought Question, ed. Hudson, W. D. (London: Macmillan, 1969).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Hume writes, in the first paragraph of II, i, 1: ‘I am not, however, without hopes, that the present system of philosophy will acquire new forms as it advances; and that our reasonings concerning morals will corroborate whatever has been said concerning the understanding and the passions’ (S-B., 455).

4 Nowell-Smith, P. H., Ethics (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1954), 37.Google Scholar

5 MacIntyre, , Against the Self-Images of the Age, 122Google Scholar; Hume, ed. Chappell, 261Google Scholar; The Is-Ought Question, ed. Hudson, 47–48.Google Scholar

6 Flew, A. G. N., Evolutionary Ethics (London: Macmillan, 1967), 39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Not ‘human nature’ as Nowell-Smith's ‘free translation’ suggests.

8 Hume, , An Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. Hendel, Charles W. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1957)Google Scholar, Appendix I, ‘Concerning Moral Sentiment’, 108–109.Google Scholar

9 Hume, , An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Hendel, Charles W. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1955)Google Scholar, ‘Of the Academical or Skeptical Philosophy’, 172.Google Scholar

10 For three short comments on active passion, inactive reason, and the ‘is-ought’ question, see Foot, Philippa, ‘Hume on Moral Judgement’, in David Hume, A Symposium, ed. Pears, D. F. (London: Macmillan, 1963), 73Google Scholar; Kydd, Rachel M., Reason and Conduct in Hume's Treatise (New York: Russell and Russell, 1964), 53–54Google Scholar; and Broiles, R. David, The Moral Philosophy of David Hume (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964), 93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 I am indebted to John Kekes for his helpful criticisms of an earlier draft of this paper.