Abstract
This paper attempts to give a complete and coherent account of how Hume’s moral psychology can explain the cultivation of moral character. I argue that the outcome of a fully formed moral character is an agent who strengthens her calm moral sentiments into settled principles of action. I then take up the question of how the process of strengthening moral sentiments might occur, rejecting the possibilities of sympathy, “reflection,” and “resolution” because either they are too weak or else they make the passion violent, preventing the essential calm nature of moral sentiments. I next argue that custom and the non-moral motives of pride and the love of fame play the critical roles in character formation. Custom can be considered as both the process of education, whereby certain impressions are habitually and formally inculcated into us by educators, and the process of experience in society and conversation, whereby we learn to associate pleasure with the virtues and pain with the vices. In both these processes, Hume implicitly appeals to certain non-moral motives, especially pride and the love of fame, in order to launch the effects of custom.
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Notes
References to the Treatise (T) are four numbers referring to Book, Part, Section, and Paragraph number of A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. David Fate and Mary J. Norton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). References to the Enquiry (EPM) are two numbers referring to Section and Paragraph number of An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals ed. Tom L. Beauchamp (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
I say “capable of” to account for Hume’s exception of virtue in rags (see T 3.3.1.19). I ignore in this paper potential problems about consistency between Hume’s views on virtue, character, and the self.
See Árdal 1989, esp. chapter five. Árdal does not consider how a calm passion can trump a violent one.
See also T 3.3.1.18, 3.3.3.2. I use “moral sentiment” broadly, to include a moral judgment, opinion, or feeling that some action or character is virtuous or vicious.
See, e.g., T 3.3.1.18. For a different view, see, e.g., Brown 1988. This issue is controversial and has received an enormous amount of attention in the literature; the purpose of this paper is not to add substantially to this debate.
“Provide” is intentionally ambiguous; I wish to stay neutral (as I think Hume does) on how exactly the moral sentiments provide such motives.
This is of course a controversial claim, but I am thinking of the well-known passages in T 3.3.1 where Hume seems to deflate the motivational influence of the moral sentiments. See also T 3.2.1.10–11, 3.2.5.8–9, and 3.2.9.3.
See, e.g., T 2.1.6.4, T 3.1.2.10, and Hume 1985: 83. The rarity of virtue is to be distinguished from the sense of virtue, which Hume believes is common and universal (T 3.1.2.8). It might be thought that (some of) the natural virtues (e.g. parental affection) are not rare, but Donald Ainslie helpfully distinguishes between a duty and a virtue and observes that Hume names the breach of some natural duties as vicious, but not the keeping of them as virtuous (2007: 105, n. 31). It might also be thought that the artificial virtues are not rare, since compliance with justice is required for social stability; here also I follow Ainslie’s distinction (ibid. 107, n. 33) between a minimal notion of justice as compliance with the conventions, which is common, and a stronger sense of justice as a virtue, which Hume believes is uncommon (see T 2.3.6.4 and T. 3.2.9.3).
As commentators have noticed, this means that calm passions have to be thought of as “typically calm” and violent passions as “typically violent,” as I suggested earlier. See, e.g., Baier 1991: chapter 7.
See EPM 6.15 and T 2.3.3.10. For a detailed analysis of strength of mind, see McIntyre 2006.
I think this account is implied in Hume’s remark: “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 App. 1.21). It might be objected that my analysis does not fit well with Hume’s apparent aim to separate the virtuous motive from the moral sentiment (e.g., T 3.2.1.4–7). While a full discussion of this issue is outside the scope of this essay, I believe it is necessary to distinguish between Hume’s aim to provide a naturalistic explanation of why we approve of certain qualities, for which it is necessary to identify what Hume calls the “first” virtuous motive, from his understanding of how agents are commonly motivated to act. See Reed 2012a; see also §3 below for a discussion of moral education with respect to natural and artificial virtues.
See note 7.
Admittedly, Hume makes these remarks in book two about the effects of custom on the calm passions without mentioning moral sentiments. For a different though not unrelated application of the effect of custom to Hume’s views on the cultivation of moral character, see Wright 1995.
See, e.g., T 3.2.2.25–26, 3.2.5.12, 3.2.6.11, 3.2.8.7.
Radcliffe says the role of moral education is “to make effective in action the natural sentiments we already possess” (52).
Indeed, Hume speaks frequently of generosity’s “limited” character, indicating its relative weakness in human nature (e.g., T 3.3.1.23). Hume also explicitly mentions cultivating the natural virtue of gratitude (T 3.2.1.8).
Here, it is necessary to realize that the natural virtues are not divorced from the moral sentiments as some scholars suppose. For a careful discussion of this issue, see Reed 2012a.
Pride for oneself and love or esteem from others is the “most considerable effect” that virtue has on the mind (T 3.1.2.5).
See esp. T 3.2.2.27; EPM 9.10–11 and 9.18–25.
My discussion of the significance of general rules to the formation of character ignores what Thomas Hearn calls Hume’s “reflective” general rules, which are the normative judgments that Hume says can correct potential errors, and instead considers the unreflective effect of custom on the imagination and the passions; see T 1.3.13.12 and Hearn 1970.
At the end of his paper, Gill considers that this picture of human nature could help to dissolve Hume’s apparent problem of weak (or even non-motivating) moral sentiments.
“General rules” is an imprecise title for this psychological phenomenon, but Hume does use it consistently, e.g., at T 2.2.5.12, 2.2.7.5, and 3.2.9.3. See also T 2.3.10.7 and 3.2.10.4.
Thus, I do not think taking up the general point of view is a rational endeavor, as some commentators do. For an outline of this debate and a thorough argument that taking up the general point of view is more of an unconscious habit, see Davie 1998.
While Hume categorizes pride, e.g., among the indirect violent passions of the Treatise’s book two, it is necessary to remember that violent passions are only typically violent.
Ensuring the violence of our love of fame will not necessarily entail that this motivation will be maintained and so fail to drop out of an agent’s moral motivation; Hume allows that an agent can take great delight in the fame of his character without this fame being a motive to virtue (see also 1985: 85–86 and EPM 8.11).
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Acknowledgments
An earlier version of this paper was presented in 2012 at the 39th Annual International Hume Society Conference in Calgary. I thank my commentator, Charlotte Brown, and members of the audience for instructive feedback. I also thank several anonymous referees for their suggestions to improve the paper.
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Reed, P.A. Hume on the Cultivation of Moral Character. Philosophia 45, 299–315 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-016-9765-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-016-9765-0