ABSTRACT

The Stoics had identified virtue and happiness with conformity to reason, and a long line of Christian thinkers had believed in “Natural Law” which they conceived to be in essence rational and intelligible to human reason, and to comprise the fundamental principles of justice. The argument which David Hume uses is that moral judgements do influence actions; sometimes, however rarely, men do things because it is their duty to do them, and in opposition to their desires. Hume deals briskly and briefly with demonstrative reasoning; he thinks “it scarce will be asserted” that this species of reasoning “alone is ever the cause of any action. He seems to allow that moral decisions may be influenced by reason in more varied and complicated ways. The scandal would have been less had Hume maintained that the non-rational source of moral distinctions was in any way supernatural.