The Party of Humanity: Writing Moral Psychology in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Abstract

What is the relationship between the self and society? Where do moral judgements come from? As Blakey Vermeule demonstrates in this discussion, such questions about sociability and moral philosophy were central to 18th-century writers and artists. Vermeule focuses on a group of aesthetically complicated moral texts: Alexander Pope's character sketches and Dunciad, Samuel Johnson's Life of Savage, and David Hume's self-consciously theatrical writings on pride and his autobiographical writings on religious melancholia. These writers and their characters confronted familiar social dilemmas - sexual desire, gender identity, family relations, cheating, ambition, status, rivalry and shame - and responded by developing a practical ethics about their own behaviour at the same time that they refined their moral judgements of others. This book frames its discussion about emotions, social conflict and aesthetics within two broad theories: the emerging field of evolutionary psychology and Kantian moral philosophy. By studying how 18th-century Britons experienced the demands of their social identities, Vermeule argues, we can better understand the most salient problems facing moral philosophy today - the issue of self-interest and the question of how moral norms are shaped by social agendas.