Among secularists, freethinkers and rationalists, David Hume’s epistemological philosophy is undoubtedly best known, especially in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding(1748). The section on Miracles is indeed famous for its skeptical methodology. However,Hume himself regarded his An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1752) to be superior to the first Enquiry: It was “in my own opinion (who ought not to judge on that subject) of all my writings, historical, philosophical, or literary, incomparably the best: It came unnoticed and unobserved into the World.”

I first encountered Hume in an introductory course on Ethics at the University of Kansas in the early 1960s. After traversing various theories, Professor Don Emmons stated that he considered Hume’s theory to be correct. Our reading, as I recall, was an excerpt from Hume advancing the idea that reason is not the real basis for morality, but that our emotions are the guiding force.

Years later I read Hume’s book on Morality where, after he refutes the popular idea that Self-Love is the basis of ethics, he states that words like “sociable, good-natured, humane, merciful, grateful, friendly . . . or their equivalents, are known in all languages, and universally express the highest merit.”

“We must renounce, the theory,” he writes, which accounts for every moral sentiment by the principle of self-love. We must adopt a more public affection . . . everything, which contributes to the happiness of society, recommends itself directly to our approbation and good-will. Here is a principle, which accounts, in great part for the origin of morality: And what need we seek for abstruse and remote systems, when there occurs one so obvious and natural?”

Pursuing his theme, Hume adds what I consider the most remarkable footnote in the entire literature of philosophy: “It is needless to push our researches so far as to ask, why we have humanity or a fellow-feeling with others. It is sufficient, that this is experienced to be a principle in human nature. We must stop somewhere in our examination of causes; and there are, in every science, some general principles, beyond which we cannot hope to find any principle more general. No man is absolutely indifferent to the happiness and misery of others.”Here, I think, we have arrived at a ground much deeper than any envisaged in a hundred Heideggers. In the context of late 18th century Enlightenment humanism, at the dawn of an age of revolutions, Hume asserts this quiet, modest principle.

Hume proceeds to supply examples which support his argument. He observes that when we attend the theater, we are moved by the actions and situations of the characters, even though we know they are fictional. This is an instance of sympathy, which is known in all cultures. When we read or hear of some event in the news, we are naturally interested and curious, though we may have no personal stake in the outcome.

To the question “how shall we pretend to fix a standard for judgments of this nature”” he replies: “By tracing matters a little higher, and examining first principles, which each nation establishes, of blame or censure. The Rhine flows north, the Rhone south; yet both spring from the same mountain, and are also actuated, in their opposite directions, by the same principle of gravity. The different inclinations of the ground, on which they run, cause all their differences of their courses.” Here Hume explicitly compares his principleof benevolence to Newton’s law of gravity. No wonder he considered his book on morality to be“incomparably the best.”

In another passage of the Enquiry, Hume states of his principle: “It is entirely agreeable to the rules of philosophy, and even of common reason; where any principle has been found to have a great force and energy in one instance, to ascribe to it a like energy in all similar instances. This indeed is Newton’s chief rule of philosophizing.” Notice how Hume employs the language of physics, with words like “force” and “energy.” Benevolence reaches across artificial borders and boundaries, just as gravity works on all physical bodies in the universe.

An argument traditionally brought against Hume’s concept is that it is so broad as to be vague, and hard to define in any precise way. Furthermore, not everyone has within them this concept of benevolence; indeed, some people hardly possess it at all. Hume acknowledges these arguments, and admits that benevolence cannot be measured with the precision of mathematics. He meets this point head-on, making the case that because the motive of ethics is emotional, it simply is not of the same order of phenomena as physics or mathematics. Hence, any attempt at precise measurements misses the nature of ethics altogether. After Hume, other influential philosophers were influenced by him, but misconstrued the matter. Kant concurred with Hume that ethics was non-rational, then reverted to normative concepts, notably the categorical imperative. Bentham posited the moral calculus, in which numerical equivalents would be assigned to elements of pleasure and pain, and whichever column resulted in the highest number, would determine the appropriate choice for a given action. This method proved useful for bureaucracies, from that day forward to the present. The crucial difficulty with this “calculus” was that different people could assign different numerical values, depending on what they stood to gain.

In support of Hume’s view, the concept of jen in the Confucian philosophy denotes “man” and the character for it is based on a pictograph of a human figure.Mencius states that “the heart of compassion is possessed by all men alike . . . the heart of compassion pertains to benevolence.” In the more metaphysical tradition of Taoism, Lao Tzu posits that “in his associations [the best man] loves humanity.” Thus a feeling for and respect for man is at the core of classical Chinese philosophy. Similarly, in Christian philosophy, caritas (much broader than our present sense of “charity” though clearly related) might be regarded as at the core of that system, classically described in I Corinthians 13: “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” Hume’s purpose, like that of Confucius, is non-theist, but the concept of benevolence or love is widely found in human societies whether they are religious or not.

More recently, the philosophical writer who has probably had a broader impact than any other in the United States is Ayn Rand. She called her philosophy Objectivism, and based it on the “virtue of selfishness.” Rand argues that we must discard all social obligations, all concepts of ties which bind us together, in favor of the Individual. Rand felt that social obligations were a form of collectivism, whether in mildliberal form, or militant socialism or communist form. She praised individual initiative and creativity to the exclusion of any other concept.

Rand imagines a situation in which we are confronted by a beggar pleading for money to buy food. She says we are free to give him something, but only if we want to; we are equally justified if we decide not to give him anything, even if he is starving. There is, in Rand’s view, no obligation to help the beggar at all. When long ago I taught Rand in philosophy classes, I asked students if they agree with Rand on the beggar, and a good many said they do. For the sake of argument, I lay out the same situation, of confronting a beggar, only that upon the beggar’s appeal you pull out a pistol and shoot him to death. I asked who agrees with this, and they all indignantly say “No!” Innocent of being led down the primrose path, they do not realize that if they refuse giving money so the beggar may prevent starvation, they are in fact condemning him to death. It’s just that the means of killing him is more dramatic if a pistol is used. The end result is the same. The story and its “elaboration” proved an effective way to illustrate the limitations of any philosophy based on self-love.

Hume actually addressed this same issue: “Virtue in rags is still virtue, and the love, which it procures, attends a man into a dungeon or a desert, where the virtue can no longer be exerted in action, and is lost to all the world.” Hume’s valuation of a beggar or impoverished person runs diametrically opposite to Rand’s.

Coming yet closer to our own times, the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher became famous (or infamous) for declaring that “there’s no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families.” Between Rand and Thatcher, and myriads of economists, the dominant market concept of society is predicated on the individual, on self-love.

At the same time, and largely in response to this concept, there is increased interest in and focus on empathy in social relations and social philosophy. Renewed attention to Hume’s writing on morality would surely stimulate the study of empathy in contemporary philosophy.

References

Hume, David, “Life of the Author by Himself,” Essays, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963.

Hume, David, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Beauchamp, Tom L. (ed), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Rand, Ayn, The Virtue of Selfishness, New York: New American Library, 1964.