Self-Interest and Benevolence in Hume's Account of Moral Obligation

Abstract

In his well-known article Account of Obligation,1 Bernard Wand quite correctly argues against the view that Hume has no worked-out account of our duties and obligations. Wand insists that Hume is clearly concerned both to discover the foundations of moral appraisal and the source of moral action2 and to offer, in connection with the latter of these concerns, an account of obligation. Hume's account of obligation Wand considers persuasive,3 though not sufficiently persuasive to avoid a number of severe criticisms. Wand asserts, for example, that moral obligations on Hume's view have no distinctly moral function4 and that Hume's view of obligations precludes the possibility of our recognizing, after deliberate reflection, that within any specific situation a certain action is right, and our failure to carry it out makes us morally responsible for it.a It will be the purpose of this paper to show that Hume's view of moral obligation can be defended against Wand's criticisms, although, as Section VII will suggest, it remains unsatisfactory in another respect. This paper will argue that Wand's failure to distinguish the motives which originate the artificial conventions of society from the motives which sustain such conventions once established leads to an inadequate account of Hume's view of man's moral obligations and, hence, also of Hume's view of man's capacity for responsible action.