An Interpretation of Hume's Theory of the Place of Reason in Ethics and Politics

Abstract

In a paper of the sort I have in mind here, certain preliminary remarks must be made. What I have to say in this essay is based primarily on Hume's Treatise and, more particularly, on book 3, Of Morals. This book contains most of Hume's foundational studies in moral and political theory. However it must be said at once, that despite its justly celebrated style, the Treatise generally and book 3 in particular present many difficulties for the reader. Central terms such as reason, and morals themselves are not used consistently. For this and other reasons, it is very difficult to gain either a clear or a consistent overview of Hume's basic doctrines. In my view this much seems clear: in the domains of metaphysics, epistemology and theory of knowledge, Hume's various skeptical arguments are intended mainly to drive the philosophical methods of Descartes and Locke into the ground and thus to prepare the way for a general philosophy of an entirely different sort whose main themes reemerge in various ways in the writings of the American pragmatists and certain British philosophers of ordinary language. There are some grounds, no doubt, for regarding him as either a proto logical positivist or empiricist of the sort typified by Ayer. For Hume does distinguish at least three main varieties of statement: (a) statements concerning relations of ideas, (b) statements about matters of fact, and (c) statements of the sort which abound in ethical and political as well as in aesthetic and religious discourses. Where he differs from Ayer, in the end at any rate, is in his refusal to regard statements of the third sort as merely expressive or emotive. On the contrary, as I shall show, he develops by stages a whole theory of discourse and of rationality which, despite appearances, is largely at odds with that to be found in the writings of our latter-day positivists. One further introductory point should be made. It is no accident that Hume's moral and political philosophy are run together in book 3, and hence that no account of his political theory can be given without