ABSTRACT
David Hume’s moral philosophy has met with much disfavour among later moralists. Perhaps it is a safer method to point out just what, as a matter of observable fact, happens in people when the pass moral judgements on the conduct of ourselves and others. Perhaps it is safer to describe the nature, causes, and effects of the moral sentiment and leave it to each individual, so instructed, to choose whether he shall attach more importance to it than to other sentiments. It would appear then that the essence of Hume’s theory, purged of its psychological element, consists in a plausible and wholesome philosophical contention; that there is a connexion between the meanings of the terms “moral”, “approval” and “disapproval”, “happiness” and “unhappiness”. It must be confessed, indeed, that Hume often, particularly in the Treatise, fails to distinguish the philosophical and psychological elements in his theory, and therefore uses a great many psychological arguments to support philosophical propositions.
