Study Questions

Read MacIntyre's introduction. (9-17)

Contents:

Section I -- Section II, -- Section III -- Section IV -- Section V
Section VI. -- Section VII -- Section VIII -- Section IX part I, Section IX part II
Appendix I, Appendix II, Appendix III

1. What does Hume think inconceivable? (23)

2. What controversy is more worthy of study than the one he began with? (24)

3. What do ancient philosophers often affirm? (24)

4. How do "modern enquirers" try to explain morals? (24)

5. How might one argue that moral distinctions can be discovered by pure reason? (24-25)

6. How might one argue that all moral judgments resolve into sentiment (roughly: feeling)? (25)

7. What is the purpose of moral reflection? (25) What do conclusions of the understanding achieve? What do they not influence? (25)

8. How does Hume contrast the understanding and the heart at pp. 25-26?

9. What does H. say is probable about the final sentence in moral determinations (judgments)? On the other hand, what often precedes this judgment? (26)

10. How is moral judgment similar to judgment regarding beauty, especially in the "finer arts"? (26)

11. What "very simple method" does H propose to follow? (27)

12. What role does "enter[ing] into his own breast" (reflection about his own feelings?) play in this method? (27)

13. What role does language play? How relatively minor function does reason perform? (27)

14. Is Hume, in his view, following an empirical method or the method, common to mathematics and some philosophical systems, of deducing conclusions from very abstract premises? (27-28)

15. What comparison is Hume making between his procedure in moral inquiry and the procedure of modern scientists of his time (18th century)? (28)

16. What does H mean by "benevolence"? (29-30) What seems to happen whenever qualities related to benevolence appear? (30)

17. What may be concluded regarding the merit of the "social virtues"? (31-32) That is, what seems to be common to them all that explains why they are praised?

18. What circumstance is primarily under consideration in judgments concerning morality and the extent of one's duty? (32) How do controversies about giving alms confirm or disconfirm H's point? Tyrannicide? Liberality in princes? (33)

The subject of this section, justice, is further discussed in Appendix III of the Enquiry and in the Treatise of Human Nature (see pp. 203-235 of HEW for the relevant pages from the Treatise).

19. What thought experiment does Hume perform on p. 35? What conclusion may be drawn? (35- top 36)

20. What point does Hume make about the ownership of large bodies of water (up to his time)? (36) How has this changed since then? Does the change refute H's perspective?

21. What thought experiment does H perform on p. 36-37? What conclusion does he draw?

22. What thought experiments does H perform on pp. 37 (bottom) -39? What conclusions does he draw regarding justice?

23. What is the "common situation" regarding society? How does justice acquire merit and become an obligation? (39)

24. How do myths regarding the Golden Age and the philosophical fiction of a Hobbesian "state of nature" support H's theory? (40-41)

25. Can justice exist between humans and nonhuman animals? Between men and women? How does H explain his answers to these questions? (41-42)

26. What point is H making about the boundaries of justice? (42-43) What changes would he likely predict with the growing economic interdependence of peoples that seems characteristic of capitalist globalization?

27. How does H argue that that equality of possessions is harmful to society? (44-45)

28. What rules regarding property does H claim it useful for society to follow? (45) Note: These are roughly the same rules that the great early modern natural law theorist, Hugo Grotius, claims to follow from the law of nature, which is rooted in human nature [ultimately created by God]. (The "rules of natural justice" to which H refers on p. 47 are identical to the rules about property he mentions on p. 45.)

29. Is there any mark, in the nature of an external object, that it is mine or thine? What conclusion does H draw from this? (46, first full para.)

30. What role do analogy and imagination play in reasoning about justice? Emergency situations? (46)

31. Why do we often have recourse to civil laws? In what ways are they useful? (47)

32. What argument regarding justice does H consider on pp. 48-49 top? (As you read this argument, bear in mind that England had recently become a Protestant country, while some of its neighbors, e.g. France, remained Catholic, with all their traditional rites.) How does he try to refute it? (49-51)

33. What do you suppose H means by "sentiment of justice" on p. 51?

34. What two possible explanations for the origin of the sentiment of justice does H consider? Why does he rule out one of them? (51).

35. What is the point of the contrast between how birds of the same species build their nests and how human beings make buildings? (52)

36. Are we always conscious of the pernicious results of injustice? Why might this seem to be an argument against H's theory? How does he respond to it? (52-53)

37. What rule of philosophizing does H claim to share with (the great natural philosopher Sir Isaac) Newton? (53)

38. What, hypothetically, would make political society useless? (54)

39. What rules are found to be useful once a number of political societies are erected? (54) What difference does H note between kingdoms and individuals? What light does that fact shed on the adherence of nations to the "law of nations"? (55)

40. What is the origin of the virtue of chastity or fidelity? How does H explain what might seem to be a double standard regarding male and female partners in marriage? (55-56) Why is incest so strongly condemned? (56)

41. Why is constancy in friendships and attachments commended? (56)

42. "It is impossible for men so much as to murder each other without statutes and maxims, and an idea of justice and honour." (59) What is Hume's point? Why is this so?

43. Why are the social virtues allowed to have a natural beauty and amiableness? (62) What part does self-love have in this? Does Hume agree with Polybius and Thomas Hobbes? (62-63)

44. What evidence is there against the "selfish theory"? (63-64)

45. How does H answer the question "useful for whose interest?" (65)

46. What is meant by "experimentum crucis"? What experimentum crucis compels us to reject the theory that "accounts for every moral sentiment by the principle of self-love"? (66)

47. Put the various real or imagined cases described by H on pp. 67-70 into a small number of categories. (List the categories.) What conclusion does H believe these types of cases support?

Note the analogy between the judgment of taste (with regard to beauty) and moral evaluation indicated on 70-71.

48. What kind of person is H describing on pp. 71-72. Does this case support his perspective on the cause of moral judgment? If so, how?

49. What kind of person is H describing on pp. 72-73? What point is H trying to make here?

50. In what way does sympathy affect judgments that would otherwise proceed from our narrowly self-interested perceptions and feelings? What enhances the effects of sympathy? (73-75)

51. What point does H make in n. 9 on p. 75?

52. What conclusion does he draw regarding the source of the "merit . . . ascribed to the social virtues"? (75, last para.) What sorts of mental practices would contribute to feelings (and possibly actions) that more or less accord with virtue? (76)

53. Pages 76-77 seem to summarize what has gone before. State in your own words the point H is making about specific virtues, utility, and "the force of the benevolent principle."

Section VI

54. What is meant by the title of Section VI? Why does H say that "it can never be self-love which renders the prospect of [these advantages] agreeable to us"? (78)

55. What distinction does H say is the same as "the moral distinction" (when the person making it is not what H calls "this fancied monster")? (80)

56. What is H's point about discretion and "enterprise"? (80-81) (By the latter he seems to mean a willingness to take a certain amount of risk in pursuit of worthwhile goals.)

57. About "a reasonable frugality"? (82) What two sources account for the praise bestowed on honesty, integrity, and truth(fullness)? (82)

58. About "strength of mind"? (84)

59. What is the "merit" of those virtues listed on p. 86?

60. What is there "a necessity for confessing"? (87)

61. What sorts of "excellences" are being discussed in Part II of this section? What is the best explanation for "natural respect" we have for these things? (89)

62. What does the first complete paragraph on p. 90 tell us about England and (lowland) Scotland in Hume's time?

63. How does a person who is "convinced…from experience as well as philosophy" judge differences in fortune? (91)

64. What point is Hume making in his comparison between England and other countries of Europe regarding the qualities that are esteemed in various places? (91-92)

65. What does H mean what he says that some qualities are "immediately agreeable" to ourselves? He gives cheerfulness as an example. Is it his point that if you are cheerful, that will make you happy? Explain. (93)

66. What point is he making about courage (after the first sentence of the last para. on p. 96)? About "undisturbed philosophical tranquility"? (98) About benevolence? (99)

67. How do H's points about (epic?) poetry fit into this section? (101-102)

68. Why does H discuss good manners, wit and ingenuity in this section? (103)

69. Eloquence, good sense, and sound reasoning? (104-5)

70. Modesty, abstracted from chastity? (105)

71. Decency? (107)

72. What theory that is simple and obvious has long escaped the elaborate examination of philosophers, according to H? (109)

73. How does the verbal portrait of the fictional Cleanthes relate to Hume's thesis? (110)

74. What qualities considered virtuous by some people during the Middle Ages does H clearly regard as vices (and think it natural that others would too)? (111)

75. What advantage ("happiness") does H claim for his theory that certain other theories may lack (111)?

76. Why are ambition, vanity, and greed excluded from H's theory on the origin of morals? (112)

77. What two required circumstances belong to the "sentiment of humanity" and only to it, according to H? (112)

78. Try to define this notion of a sentiment of humanity, given how H uses the phrase. (112-13)

79. What differences does H note between how this sentiment operates and how the passions of avarice or ambition operate? (114)

80. How do virtue and vice become known? (114)

81. The ancient Stoics proposed, as an ideal, a sage who was free from the violent feelings, which they called "passions" (pathe)? Hume was familiar with this. What does he seem to think of this view? (115) What kind of society does H think virtue would endorse? (115) On this point he is close to the Stoics.

82. Of what alleged truth is H presently convinced? (118) What, does he say, pushes him back into skepticism? (Is he being falsely modest here?)

83. What (moral?) argument is H presenting in favor of his theory? (118-19)

84. H seems to think that the sentiment of benevolence or humanity is needed as a basis for self-love. Explain this claim to show why he finds it plausible. (120)

85. What passions or sentiments does H clearly regard as good? (121)

86. What virtue seems, at first glance anyway, most likely to cause a person to lose by his integrity? (121) What arguments in favor this does H rehearse? (122)

87. What counter-arguments does H present, at least for folks with "ingenuous" (not very cunning?) minds? (122) What frequently happens to cunning knaves? How is that a counter-argument? (122) What is his final argument? (122-23)

88. What general function does reason serve in the determination of [what is worthy of] moral praise? (124; 2nd para., first sentence)

Reason plays a special role in the determination of the moral praise due to justice. (124-25) Hume returns to this issue in Appendix III.

89. Does sentiment play a role? If so, what sentiment and what role? (125)

90. What considerations (arguments) does H. present against the view that reason is the sole source of morals? (125-32)

At HEW 177-96, i.e., in the Treatise of Human Nature he wrote when he was fresh out of college, he addresses more or less the same questions he discusses in this Appendix. Some of his formulations are often more colorful and more shocking: "Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger." (p. 180) It would be a good paper topic to ask whether there are any substantial differences between the Treatise and the Enquiry on the relationship between reason and the passions (sentiments).

91. What principle is H discussing in the first para on p. 133? What somewhat different principle does H mention in the para beginning toward the bottom of p. 133 (="the selfish hypothesis," p. 135)?

92. What main arguments does he present against this theory, usually known today as psychological egoism? (134-39)

93. How do the social virtues of humanity and benevolence differ from those of justice and fidelity? How does the comparison between building a wall and building a vault (arch?) help H's case? (140-41)

94. What is H's point about laws governing property? (Would opponents of a graduated income tax find an ally in H?)

95. What version of the theory that justice originates from a convention does Hume reject? Why? What version of that theory does he accept? State as clearly as you can the differences between these two versions.

96. In what sense may justice be considered natural? (143-44) Does H think that justice is natural if natural is the opposite of artificial? (144n2)

97. What, according to H, has been the constant endeavour among all civilized nations? (144)

98. What happens after the laws of justice are fixed by considerations of general utility? (148)

Hume also discussed origin of our notions of justice and fidelity in his more youthful Treatise of Human Nature. (See pp. 203-235) There he more clearly insisted that justice is an "artificial virtue," in at least verbal opposition to Thomas Aquinas and the early modern natural law theorists like Hugo Grotius and, to some extent, John Locke. His account of the origins of justice seems more detailed too. But it is worth asking, again, whether anything substantial has changed between the Treatise and the Enquiry.