Reid on Hume on Justice

Abstract

Reid’s lectures on practical ethics proceed on the assumption that a clear distinction may be drawn between, on the one hand, the teaching of man’s duty to himself, to his maker, and to other men, and, on the other hand, examination of ‘theoretical’ questions concerning the nature of the moral faculty and the ground of moral motivation. (See the manuscripts collected and edited by Knud Haakonssen in Reid, 2007; for commentary, see Haakonssen, 2007.) In the Essays on the Active Powers of Man, Reid observes that accounts of our duties have tended to be made more voluminous and bulky than is necessary, partly on account of the fact that political questions have been intermixed with moral ones, and partly by the unnecessary adding in of accounts of ‘the structure of our moral powers; that is, of those powers of mind by which we have our moral conceptions and distinguish right from wrong in human actions’ (Reid, 1969b, p. 376). The latter is both a controversial and an important matter, Reid acknowledges, but it has nothing to do with promulgating knowledge of our duties. Moreover, to the extent that theoretical questions are included in treatments of practical ethics, there is every chance that men may be led into the mistake which Reid wishes very much to avoid, namely, the belief ‘that in order to understand his duty, a man must needs be a philosopher and a metaphysician’ (Reid, 1969b, p. 377).