Analysis Of David Hume And Kant On Morality

David Hume sought out to express his opinion in which sentiment is seen as the grounding basis for morality. This sentiment is acting as the causal reasoning for why we have morality or act in a moral way. David Hume, as well as Kant, believe that causal necessity governs humans lives and actions. In this essay, I will show how Hume, provides an argument in favor of sentiment being the foundation of our morality, rather than his predecessors who favored reason. To do this, I will begin to outline Hume’s theories, highlighting his main ideas for grounding morality on sentiment and bring up some possible counterarguments one of which being Immanuel Kant's theories and how that might potentially weaken his argument and how the roots of morality

An individual that takes a contrary approach is Kant. Kant rejects sentiment as a basis for morality, saying we are motivated by our duty or our reason. Kant believed that goodwill is determined by the individual decisions that are wholly influenced by moral demands or what he calls moral law. Kant thought that all moral laws, if fair and just, need to bind all rational beings universally and that Hume’s theory fails at achieving this universality because the empirical principles he favored are contingent upon the observer's sentiment. Therefore, Kant beliefs would go against Hume’s empiricist method, due to its contingent nature and its inability to ground moral laws due to its apparent lack of

Hume claims that to make a moral judgment; one must keep in mind all the relevant aspects the situation, and recognize all the related ideas concerning the situation. This means that we must take into consideration reason. Nevertheless, The moral judgment itself is not possible without passions or sentiment, which ultimately takes in all the deliverances of reason and creates the sentiment of disapproval or approval. All of these arguments effectively convey Hume’s beliefs that passion plays the dominant role in motivating action, and that reason is merely a “slave of the passions.” Hume describes how reason cannot hold control over passion’s motivational influence nor can it resist it. He illustrates the idea that one cannot use the power of reason to criticize or praise passions.

A piece of evidence that he gives is that reason cannot be the motive to moral action; if reason can't motivate any action, it ultimately cannot motivate moral