Abstract

What are the permanent principles which underlie the diversity of excellent people's cares, choices, actions and characteristics? This dissertation analyses the normative teachings of Hume's Second Enquiry, Price's Review and Reid's Active Powers. The disagreements between Hume's sentiment-based virtue-ethics and Price's and Reid's reason-based deontological ethics cover over a more basic agreement that human life finds its completion in the dutiful and benevolent pursuit of goods which are achieved in the domestic and social arenas. ;Hume's Second Enquiry teaches that there are four kinds of virtues: qualities useful or agreeable to oneself or to others. Separate analyses of each of the virtues disclose the goods which Hume presents as proper to human life, the goods which constitute true happiness. The goods at which human nature is properly directed include such things as material prosperity and security, sentiments which enable one to face misfortunes, and the affection of others. Underlying Hume's analyses is a complex and subtle conception of the human good which is neither monolithic nor nihilistic. ;Price's normative foundation of morals are the six principal duties or "heads of virtue." Price gives two very different accounts of human action, but according to both accounts an action has the moral quality it does because of its relation to the heads of virtue. What is the life in which all of these duties, and only these duties, would have a place? These duties seem ultimate and without need of further justification because Price makes certain assumptions about the best life for man. ;Certain fundamental duties are also Reid's normative foundations of morals. These first principles of morals are the culmination of Reid's account of the many principles of action inherent in human nature. These first principles cannot, by themselves, direct one to act well because they presuppose that one has an accurate account of the human good. So, to fully understand Reid's answer to the question of how one should live it is necessary to examine his presentation of human nature