Hume: Utilitarianism

Hume maintains that the boundaries of morality are widely drawn in everyday life. We routinely blame characters for traits that we find disgusting, on this account, as well as those which we perceive as being harmful. Contemporary moral psychology provides further evidence that human beings have a natural tendency to moralize traits that produce feelings of repugnance. But recent work also demonstrates a significant amount of individual variation in our sensitivities to disgust. We have sufficient reason to bracket this emotion, (...) therefore, when adopting the general point of view: if we allow idiosyncratic affective responses to shape our fully considered moral judgments, we could no longer reasonably expect spectators with different sensitivities to agree with us. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to clarify the relationship of three thinkers, Hume, Bentham, and Mill in the context of utilitarianism. Through discussion, we shall figure out how and why utilitarianism is trustworthy.

Promise keeping and the virtue of integrity are understandable only if the sense of justice and of injustice doesn't come from nature but results from education and of some of the most inventive human conventions. We comment this argument that we find in the Treatise of Nature, book III and present how it impacts the notion of retribution and punishment in general.

Although written in Japanese, 動機説の観点から見た倫理的判断の諸相（Phases of the ethical judgement）has formed my original ideas on action theory, ethics, and so on.

Abstract Differing interpretations of the political thought of David Hume have tended to emphasize either conservative, gradualist elements similar to Burke or rationalist aspects similar to Hobbes. The concept of indirect utility as used by Hume reconciles these two approaches. Indirect utility is best illustrated by Hume's conception of justice, in contrast to his conception of benevolence, which yields direct benefits. This understanding of Hume's consequentialism also helps underscore certain egalitarian aspects of Hume's thought.

The paper interprets Kant’s neglected argument at FOUNDATIONS 401 as consisting of these two premises and conclusion: (1) It follows from consequentialism that in a natural paradise people would not be obligated to be morally good. (2) But this is absurd; one ought to be morally good no matter what. Therefore, consequentialism is false. It is shown that this argument is a powerful one, mainly by showing that independent grounds support (2) and that (1) may survive a number of strong (...) possible objections. One that it does not appear to survive, though, is that the paradise envisioned is not logically possible. (shrink)

If there is a normative moral theory embedded in Hume's works and if the recent critics of the utilitarian interpretation of Hume are correct in claiming that he was not a utilitarian, then what is the nature of Hume's moral theory? In this paper I hope to provide a plausible answer to that question by examining Hume's contention that the moral sentiment is analogous to a secondary quality. I shall show that his discussions of the moral sentiment provide one with (...) a method for evaluating the moral value of an agent's motive. Turning to Hume's discussions of obligation, I shall show that, for Hume, questions regarding one's obligations are resolved on the basis of societal conventions. Hume's social relativism, however, does not commit him to moral relativism, for questions of moral obligation are to be resolved by considering both whether one is socially obligated to perform a certain kind of action and whether or performing that kind of action in a certain set of circumstances in virtuous or vicious. Granting that there are utilitarian strains in Hume's moral theory, I shall conclude by discussing the role of the principle of utility in Hume's moral theory. (shrink)