Hume's View

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In this essay I am going to evaluate Hume’s view of the origin of moral judgements based on his sympathy principle. I argue that Hume’s account, in some cases, is not sufficient for explaining the origin of moral judgements, especially the shaping of impartial moral judgements. First, I will give an introduction to Hume’s idea of ‘sympathy’ and explain how it forms the basis of our moral approval or disapproval of certain character traits and qualities of mind. Second, I will discuss the role of ‘judicious spectator’ in forming an impartial moral judgement. Then, I shall proceed to the discussion on questions and objections regarding the sympathy principle and the judicious spectator with possible replies from Hume’s point of view. Finally I will attempt to defend my argument by stressing some further problems that Hume does not give an answer in his Treatise. I start with analysing the mechanism of sympathy. Hume’s notion of ‘sympathy’ is rather different with the word ‘sympathy’ we are using today. Its meaning is more similar to the word ‘empathy’. When we witness and perceive the emotions or feelings of other people, we form an idea in our minds of their emotions. This idea naturally induces us to resonate and go along with their emotions, and generate a ‘fellow-feeling’ in our minds. For instance, when I see a smile on my friend’s face, I infer that she is happy and I have a tendency to become happy as well. Note that, through sympathy, the sentiments we generate do not necessarily have to be exactly the same as the sentiments that the person we are observing. Usually, they are of a weaker degree and are a harmonised version, in the sense that the emotions we generated are consistent with the original ones. Negative passions ... ... middle of paper ... ...lacks enough food wants to save them, and steals some food from another neighbour Y who just has a tiny bit more than them. The consequence is the poor family is saved by X, but the other neighbour Y who got stolen is now in danger of starvation. Shall we say X has the virtue of benevolence because he saved the poor family? Or shall we say he is not benevolent because he stole food from Y and let Y in danger of starvation? If we apply the sympathy principle, we would find ourselves unable to set our moral judgements. On the one hand, we would sympathise with the poor family, a pleasure would arise in our minds. On the other hand, we would also sympathise with the neighbour Y, and in turn, a pain or uneasiness would arise. Hume does not give any guideline for weighing the effects, or the reflections of impressions, when they are in conflict, aroused by our sympathies.

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