ABSTRACT
Chapter Five confirms Bonar’s opinion that Hume explained the moral sense away, the sentiment of sympathy providing the key. For while Hume writes of the morality of actions ‘felt by an internal sense, and by means of some sentiment, which the reflecting on such an action naturally occasions’, he denies that such a sense operates as an automatic index of what is ethically good or bad independently of the tendency of an action to augment happiness and applauds conduct motivated by concern for the general good. Indeed, despite a certain ambiguity it would seem that Hume, in the manner of Hutcheson, prioritized motivation. Hume, however, said nothing of Locke’s having already designated other-regarding conduct as ethically meritorious despite such conduct being in the individual’s interest, and was highly critical of Locke’s ‘loose’ use of the word idea ‘as standing for any of our perceptions, our sensations and passions, as well as thoughts’. Hume’s perspective on Distributive Justice, entailing inter alia a case made out for increased equality, will also engage us. Details of the Hume–Smith and Hume–Bentham relationships are addressed in later chapters.
