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Can passion be a ground for moral judgement for David Hume
The role of feelings in moral decisions
David Hume and ethics
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On Emotion and Value in David Hume and Max Scheler
ABSTRACT: While some philosophers tend to exclude any significance of emotion for the moral life, others place them in the center of both the moral life and the theory of value judgment. This paper presents a confrontation of two classic positions of the second type, namely the position of Hume and Scheler. The ultimate goal of this confrontation is metatheoretical — particularly as it concerns the analysis of the relations between the idea of emotion and the idea of value in this kind of theory of value judgment. In conclusion, I point to some important theoretical assumptions which underlie the positions of both thinkers despite all the other differences between them.
In at least four types of ethical theories emotions and feelings are regarded as a vital factor in explaining the nature of both value judgement and value itself. Such types of ethical theories, however, offer not only different theories of value and valuation but they also assume or imply quite different theories of emotions and feelings. A look at the history of philosophical psychology can convince us that there has been no generally accepted theory of emotion but the idea of emotion has been changing together with the idea of mind or soul. (1) One could expect that there is a correlation between the idea of emotion and the idea of value or the good in each type of the above mentioned theories.
In what follows, I shall discuss this correlation for two ethical theories in greater detail. I shall consider the moral philosophy of David Hume which I construe as psychological naturalism of non-relativistic type. (2) I shall also consider the case of emotional intuitionism exemplified by Max Scheler. Both H...
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...the objects of emotion see: Sousa, de R. - The Rationality of Emotion, The MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1990.
(9) For excellent discussion of this point see: Hudson, S. D. - Humean Pleasure Reconsidered, "Canadian Journal of Philosophy" 5 (1975), no 4, pp. 545-62; Fieser, J. - Hume's Classification of the Passions and Its Precursors, "Hume Studies" 18 (1992), no 1, pp. 1-17.
(10) See note 8 above.
(11) Scheler, Max - Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik, Gesammelte Werke, Bd. 2, Francke Verlag, Bern - München 1954, pp. 256-278; hereafter cited as F.
(12) F, pp. 341-356. See also: Smith, Q. - Scheler's Stratification of Emotional Life and Strawson's Person, "Philosophical Studies" (Irleand), 25 (1977), pp. 103-127.
(13) F, pp. 125 -130.
(14) Cf. Calhoun, Ch., Solomon, R. C. - What is an Emotion, Oxford University Press, New York 1984.
Eggleston, Larry G. Women in the Civil War. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2003. Print.
Solomon, Robert. "Emotions and Choice (1973)." Solomon: Emotions and Choice. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~lormand/phil/teach/p&e/readings/Solomon%20-%20Emotions%20and%20Choice%20(highlights).htm (accessed April 5, 2014).
Aristotle’s psychological types, as described in “Nichomachean Ethics,” are a categorization of different internal moral characters. These categories are a comprehensive attempt - for ancient philosophy - at identifying which internal psychologies manifest virtuous or morally bad behaviour. His moral categories are somewhat obsolete in a post-modern world, where science and politics are far more developed than in Ancient Greece. However, moral psychological ethics and normative debate still holds a relevant position in the moral undercurrent of society – it is dispersed through legal, political, military and medical activity, in relationships and familial function. It is for this reason, that Immanuel Kant examined a similar issue in “Pure Practical Reason and the Moral Law,” and that it still makes for interesting philosophical discussion.
In his article "The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories," Michael Stocker argues that mainstream ethical theories, namely consequentialism and deontology, are incompatible with maintaining personal relations of love, friendship, and fellow feeling because they both overemphasise the role of duty, obligation, and rightness, and ignore the role of motivation in morality. Stocker states that the great goods of life, i.e. love, friendship, etc., essentially contain certain motives and preclude others, such as those demanded by mainstream ethics.11 In his paper "Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality," Peter Railton argues that a particular version of consequentialism, namely sophisticated consequentialism, is not incompatible with love, affection and acting for the sake of others. In the essays "War and Massacre" and "Autonomy and Deontology," Thomas Nagel holds that a theory of absolutism, i.e. deontology, may be compatible with maintaining personal commitments. The first objective of this paper is to demonstrate that despite the efforts of both Railton and Nagel, consequentialism and deontology do not in fact incorporate personal relations into morality in a satisfactory way. This essay shows that Stocker’s challenge may also hold against versions of Virtue Ethics, such as that put forth by Rosalind Hursthouse in her article "Virtue Theory and Abortion." The second objective of this discussion is to examine criticisms of Stocker made by Kurt Baier in his article "Radical Virtue Ethics." This essay demonstrates that in the end Baier’s objections are not convincing.
Two centuries ago there was a women’s rights movement forming in order to fight an oppression. Women were poorly treated and seen as inferior to men. It is believed the women’s rights movement was “inspired-or rather provoked-by the insufferable male supremacy” (Davis 46). Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton among other women received unfair treatment at the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. At this convention they were “fenced off behind a bar and a curtain similar to those used in churches to screen the choir from the public gaze” (Davis 47). They were excluded because the men believed their view at this convention was useless. Women during this time had to live up to the standards society had of them. If they did not follow,
The country is crying out for liberty and equality. Every man and woman has the right to express his/her opinions,” echoes Mariah S. Stewart, the first African-American female to speak amongst a mixed race and gender crowd. Since the very moment men dictated women to act as children, seen and not heard, fervent female voices refused the patriarchal oppression aimed at quelling the efforts of their female gender’s. With a social order firmly placed in position and accepted in large by those in political and social power, women activists continued to work towards impeding the subjection, which denounced them as the weaker, unintellectual, unspiritual, less virtuous and inarticulate sex. While some of these women used the power of Christianity as a vehicle to assert their concerns of women’s lack of freedom, they simultaneously chastised men for condemning their gender as less righteous, which was essentially against God’s order. The prevalence of women’s activist roots contextualizes women in a cultural manifestation of societal change. By tracing a synopsis of some of the key figures in the anti-slavery agenda, woman’s war on race and sexism, woman’s fight for equality in religiosity and ministerial vocation, and more exclusively, the women’s rights movement, we can identify in a historical tradition of rhetoric the preeminence of the female voice and her passionate declaration for individual rights to freedom and happiness
Plutchik, Robert (1980), Emotion: Theory, research, and experience: Vol. 1. Theories of emotion, 1, New York: Academic
(6) Rhetoric. 1378a20. "The emotions are all those feelings that so change men as to affect their judgements, and that are also attended by pain or pleasure. Such are anger, pity, fear and the like with their opposites."
Ethics can be defined as "the conscious reflection on our moral beliefs with the aim of improving, extending or refining those beliefs in some way." (Dodds, Lecture 2) Kantian moral theory and Utilitarianism are two theories that attempt to answer the ethical nature of human beings. This paper will attempt to explain how and why Kantian moral theory and Utilitarianism differ as well as discuss why I believe Kant's theory provides a more plausible account of ethics.
Arnold, Denis. ed. The New Oxford Companion to Music. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1983.
Before Hume can begin to explain what morality is, he lays down a foundation of logic to build on by clarifying what he thinks the mind is. Hume states that the facts the mind sees are just the perceptions we have of things around us, such as color, sound, and heat (Hume, 215). These perceptions can be divided into the two categories of ideas and impressions (215). Both of these categories rely on reason to identify and explain what is observed and inferred. However, neither one of these sufficiently explains morality, for to Hume, morals “. . .excite passions, and produce or prevent actions” (216)....
In Appendix I., Concerning Moral Sentiment, David Hume looks to find a place in morality for reason, and sentiment. Through, five principles he ultimately concludes that reason has no place within the concept of morality, but rather is something that can only assist sentiment in matters concerning morality. And while reason can be true or false, those truths or falsities apply to facts, not to morality. He then argues morals are the direct result of sentiment, or the inner feeling within a human being. These sentiments are what intrinsically drive and thus create morality within a being. Sentiments such as beauty, revenge, pleasure, pain, create moral motivation, and action, and are immune to falsity and truth. They are the foundation for which morals are built, and exist themselves apart from any reasoning. Thesis: In moral motivation, the role of sentiment is to drive an intrinsically instilled presence within us to examine what we would deem a moral act or an immoral act, and act accordingly, and accurately upon the sentiments that apply. These sentiments may be assisted by reasons, but the reason alone does not drive us to do what we would feel necessary. They can only guide us towards the final result of moral motivation which (by now it’s painfully clear) is sentiment.
Pogue, David and Scott Speak. Classical Music for Dummies. Foster City, California: IDG Worldwide, 1997. Print
In this essay Hume creates the true judges who are required to have: delicacy of taste, practice in a specific art of taste, be free from prejudice in their determinations, and good sense to guide their judgments. In Hume’s view the judges allow for reasonable critiques of objects. Hume also pointed out that taste is not merely an opinion but has some physical quality which can be proved. So taste is not a sentiment but a determination. What was inconsistent in the triad of commonly held belief was that all taste is equal and so Hume replaced the faulty assumption with the true judges who can guide society’s sentiments.