What Kind of Virtue Theorist is Hume?

Transcription

1 What Kind of Virtue Theorist is Hume? (i) Hume s criterion of virtue. In answering the question: What kind of virtue theorist is Hume? we must first discuss the various criteria of virtue to be found in Hume. I shall argue that Hume has but one genuine criterion of virtue, assuming the following understanding of a criterion: X is a criterion of Y if and only if both the following are true: (i) X is an indicator of Y either because X is a necessary and sufficient condition of Y, or, if X is not a necessary condition of Y, then, if Y is present, characteristically X is present. (ii) X is an indicator of Y on conceptual or necessary grounds. The Treatise 1 account of the criterion of virtue may be summarized as follows: (A) Virtues and vices are those qualities of mind that, respectively, excite in the observer, in certain kinds of circumstances, certain kinds of pleasure and pain. The relevant circumstances are those in which the observer has judged the traits, including their tendencies, from a steady and general point of view (T.581-2). The topic of this paper is what substantive account of the virtues, according to Hume, results from the application of this criterion. In order to address this issue, we need first to discuss the relation between (A) and other features of traits, which, on Hume s account, look like criteria of virtue. To begin, let us discuss the relation between (A) and what is standardly thought to be the criterion of virtue in Hume, namely: (B) Virtues are useful or immediately agreeable to oneself or to others. (T.590-1). It may be thought that (B) is a disjunctive criterion of virtue in Hume, because if V is a virtue it must belong to one of the four categories specified in (B), and if V belongs to one or more of the four categories V is a virtue, or is characteristically a virtue. I shall claim that (B) should not be thought of as a criterion of virtue in Hume because it is neither indicative of virtue on conceptual or necessary grounds, nor indicative of virtue in a sufficiently reliable way. It is not indicative of virtue on conceptual or necessary grounds because it is just a matter of fact that, having applied (A), we take the right kind of pleasure in the right kind of way in traits that are useful and/or immediately agreeable. That is, to use Wittgenstein s language, features specified in (B) are 1 David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge,2 nd edn.revised P.H..Niddich (Oxford:Oxford University Press,1975). (Hereafter referred to by T. followed by page number). 1 symptoms of virtue, not criteria. Secondly, (B) is not a sufficiently reliable indicator of virtue, for the features specified in (B) are not sufficient for virtue, and nor is it the case that characteristically, where those features exist, virtue exists. Many traits having the features specified by (B) are not virtues. This point is made by Rosalind Hursthouse. In her Virtue Ethics and Human Nature 2 Hursthouse objects to an account of virtue that uses (B) alone as a disjunctive criterion of virtue: (B) would count a disturbing number of vices as virtues. How then should (B) be read? It tells us that if a trait is a virtue it will have one or more of the four features specified in (B). (B), then, would just be a taxonomy of the virtues. As Hume puts it in T.591, the pleasure and pain occasioned by the survey of traits from the general point of view has four different sources. (B), then, provides a taxonomy of virtue while (A) offers a criterion. From the point of view of substantive ethics however, a crucial question remains unanswered. This is: what is it about a character trait that makes it a virtue? What is it about a trait that makes it requisite that we should approve of it? (B) does not provide an answer to this question as Hursthouse points out. Given that (B) does not explain what it is about traits which elicits the right kind of pleasure in the right kind of way, we need to search in Hume for a feature which explains why some traits falling under (B) are virtues, and some are not. Hume does not disappoint. He does seem to supply a substantive standard of virtue, which, unlike (B), is genuinely indicative of virtue. This standard is: (C) qualities acquire our approbation, because of their tendency to the good of mankind. (T.578). Here, at last, we seem to have a genuine account of what it is about traits that explains why some traits falling under (B) are virtues, and some are not. A problem remains. What is the relation between (B) and (C)? The relation is this. As a result of applying (C), we can directly rule out as vices certain traits which possess one or more of the features specified in (B): traits such as injustice, meanness, and intemperance. That is, (C) provides some sort of constraint on (B). But what sort of constraint? Is tending to the good of mankind a necessary condition of virtue, ruling out as virtues all those traits conforming to (B) but not tending to the good of mankind? Or is the relation between (C) and virtue-status of some more complex kind? The main task of the paper is to defend the claim that (C) does not offer a necessary condition of virtue, by outlining the pluralistic bases of virtue-status in Hume. Essentially the virtues are seen as constituted by a variety of dispositions whose passional base is refined by processes of education, experience, maturation, general rules, the civilizing force of custom and so forth, 3 and which 2 In Hume Studies 25 (1999), pp See further Annette C. Baier, A Progress of Sentiments: Reflections On Hume s Treatise (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991); Jacqueline Taylor, Justice and the Foundations of Social Morality in Hume s Treatise, Hume Studies Vol. 24 (1998), pp. 5-30; 2

2 are in various ways responsive to, and expressive of, various important features of the world; notably peoples good, valuable features such as beauty, bonds, and status. First however we need to note that (C) is susceptible of more than one interpretation. This fact has profoundly affected the interpretation of Hume as a normative ethical theorist of virtue. Three quite different important interpretations are possible. Though I shall not argue that any is superior to the other two, I shall claim that (C), however interpreted, does not offer a necessary condition of virtue for Hume. (ii) Interpretations of good for mankind in Hume. The three interpretations of (C) are: (a) A utilitarian interpretation. (b) A eudaimonist interpretation. (c) A Bauhausian interpretation. 4 The utilitarian view is described by Sayre-McCord thus: On the utilitarian interpretation what the four categories [of the virtues] have in common, over and above their all giving rise to approbation thanks to sympathy, is their subsumability under a utilitarian principle. 5 This interpretation depends on the idea that trait having a tendency to the good of mankind should be read as offering a consequentialist account of the virtues, which in the actualist (as opposed to the expectabilist) version, is described thus by Julia Driver: a virtue is a character trait that systematically produces more actual good than not. 6 A utilitarian interpretation of actual good would yield the following interpretation of (C): (C1) What would be approved in the right circumstances as virtues are those traits which systematically produce more actual utility than not. It is easy to see, given standard axiological claims, how (C) can be interpreted in a utilitarian way. These claims have two central features, which are: (1) The replacement of the good of (mankind) by the good or value (notably utility of one or other sorts) (2) The espousal of what may be called the thesis of the aretaic independence of value. Rachel Cohon, Hume s Difficulty with the Virtue of Honesty, Hume Studies Vol.23 (1997), pp Geoffrey Sayre-McCord s term: See his Hume and the Bauhaus Theory of Ethics, in Midwest Studies in Philosophy 20, Moral Concepts eds. Peter A. French, Theodore E. Uehling Jr., Howard How do (1) and (2) make for a utilitarian interpretation of (C)? Consider first, (1). In normal usage, the idea of tending to the good of mankind suggests tending to what is good for mankind or to its benefit. Furthermore, on normal understandings, what is good for mankind is what is good for (benefits) individual human beings. However, according to (1), the idea of benefit, or the good for, is replaced by the idea of value. If the notion of the good for is replaced by the idea of value, then value can be more readily seen as a kind of stuff that has to be promoted or produced, usually maximally. Thus are born aggregative consequentialist theories about what is good for mankind. Consider now claim (2). According to (2), the concept of value is allied to the thesis of the aretaic independence of value. That is, the idea of value does not have aretaic value or excellence built into it. What has value, for example, is pleasure rather than pleasure handled excellently, friends or friendship rather than friends or friendship handled excellently. Hence, given (2), a utilitarian interpretation of (C) would seem more natural, since value could then be understood as pleasure or welfare understood in a non-aretaic way. Virtue would then be understood as a disposition to promote something that is of independent value (such as pleasure). By contrast, if a virtue is understood in an Aristotelian way, as being well disposed to items in its field (domain), and if, for example, pleasure is in the field of the virtue of temperance, then the virtue of temperance is understood as the disposition to handle pleasure excellently. What is of value, or is good without qualification as Aristotle would put it, is not pleasure as such, but pleasure handled excellently. Thus if (1) and (2) are rejected, (C) will not be understood in a utilitarian way. Rather, the good of mankind will be understood as the good for mankind, and the good for mankind what is of benefit to individual humans in general will comprise the excellent handling of such things as pleasure. In fact (C) is compatible with eudaimonism, which rejects both (1) and (2) above, and which we discuss next. According to a eudaimonist interpretation of Hume, (C) should be understood as follows: (C2) What would be approved in the right circumstances as virtues are those traits that are of benefit to individual human beings, where the idea of benefit is given a suitable aretaic reading. For Hume to be understood as a eudaimonist as normally understood, he would also have to subscribe to the following theses. (a) It is a necessary condition of her flourishing that a human being possess and exercise at least the core virtues. (b) It is a necessary condition of a trait being a virtue that it characteristically (partially) constitute (or contribute to) the flourishing of the possessor of the virtue. K. Wettstein (University of Notre Dame Press: Notre Dame 1996), pp It is questionable that (C) should be interpreted as the claim that nothing is a virtue unless it characteristically benefits its possessor. (C) is quite clearly a 5 Op.cit., p See her Uneasy Virtue ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p

3 claim about the connection between virtue and the benefit of mankind, understood either in terms of particular persons or of mankind in general, as Hume makes clear in T 589, quoted below. It is possible that such virtues also characteristically benefit their possessor, but whether or not Hume believed this is a question I will not address. Finally, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord proposes an interesting and plausible interpretation of Hume, which he calls the Bauhaus theory of ethics. According to this view, as applied to Hume s criterion (A) of virtue status, we have: (C3) A trait of character commands approbation, when it does, in virtue of its being well suited for the achieving of certain ends or the solving of certain problems. Particular evaluations, of e.g. traits as virtues are driven by a concern for specific problems and are determined by what is well suited to solve the problems in question. 7 Dispositions apt for the solving of mankind s problems is a plausible reading of dispositions tending to the good of mankind. Indeed (C3) is an improvement on (C1), the utilitarian reading, since it does not assume that mankind has, fundamentally, just one big problem - how to maximise utility. Hence Sayre-McCord s claim that What the theory avoids is any commitment to their being a single overarching standard for evaluating all solutions. 8 However the unifying feature of the Bauhausian account lies in its general claim that virtues are so because they are well suited to the solving of problems posed by the circumstances and necessities of mankind. Paradigm examples are justice (the problem being the need for cooperation when there are tendencies to selfishness) and benevolence (the problem being the existence of neediness and vulnerability). Even if (C1), (C2), or (C3) are good candidates for the interpretation of (C), I am not convinced that (C), interpreted in any of these ways, provides a necessary condition for a trait being a virtue. Granted (B) itself provides a necessary condition of virtue in the sense that all traits which are virtues must belong to at least one of the four categories specified in (B). However, not all traits immediately agreeable or useful to self or (some) others are virtues, for some are bad for mankind, (or sufficiently so as to be vices). If a trait is a virtue it is immediately agreeable or useful to self or others. But the reverse does not hold. Some traits which are instances of (B) and are virtues, are not instances of (C). They do not tend to the good of mankind. (B) cannot run amok, in the way feared by Hursthouse in her critique of (B), since it is constrained by (C). This is noted by Rachel Cohon when she claims that according to Hume, approval of fasting, penance, and mortification is not warranted because these produce no good at all. But she is wrong I believe to claim that our approval of traits is warranted provided the disposition has some systematic causal connection to the social good, although that connection need not be a direct or simple one. 9 Approval can be granted because traits express, in the right kind of way, passions that arise from good or evil, such as hope, joy, love, pride, pity, and esteem. It is a basic feature of our constitution that we respond to good and evil in a variety of ways, and virtues may express such habits of response independent (or largely independent) of consequences. Furthermore, these different kinds of response reflect various kinds of feature in the field of a virtue -features such as value (e.g. beauty), the good for an individual, bonds between individuals, and status. Here is some textual evidence for my view that (C) is not a necessary condition of virtue: Moral good and evil are certainly distinguish d by our sentiments, not by reason: But these sentiments may arise either from the mere species or appearances of characters and passions, or from reflexions on their tendency to the happiness of mankind, and of particular persons. My opinion is, that both these causes are intermix d in our judgments of morals; after the same manner as they are in our decisions concerning most kinds of external beauty: Tho I am also of opinion, that reflexions on the tendencies of actions have by far the greatest influence, and determine all the great lines of our duty. There are, however, instances, in cases of less moment, wherein this immediate taste or sentiment produces our approbation. (T ). Immediately after this passage Hume gives wit as an example of this latter basis of virtue-status, but although being witty can hardly be described as one of the great lines of our duty, it does tend to the good of mankind. And a eudaimonist can well admit wit into the catalogue of virtues, as Aristotle indeed does. What we want is a virtue which does not tend to the good of mankind but is derivable (on Hume s view) from the criterion of virtue (A), and conforms to (B) s taxonomy, which is contingently related to (A). Hume in fact suggests that there may be such virtues - those that arouse pleasure by their dazzling qualities, or by their ability to seize the heart by their noble elevation or engaging tenderness. (Enquiries #208.) 10 Such virtues are excessive bravery and resolute inflexibility, for we take pleasure in splendour and greatness of appearance. (Enquiries #208; T.601.) We shall discuss the grounds of such virtues in the next section, but meanwhile we need to address the question: for Hume, is there no ground for such virtues other than their immediate agreeability? It may look as if Hume is postulating in the above passage a kind of asymmetry in the grounds of virtue status. Immediate agreeability just is a form of pleasure it is not a feature which makes the pleasure apt. Can Hume provide a deeper account of why one 7 Op.cit. p Op.cit. p Op.cit. p David Hume, Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding, ed.l.a. Selby-Bigge, 3 rd edn. revised P.H.Niddich (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1968). 6

4 would take pleasure in such traits as dazzling splendour from the general point of view? (iii) Hume s Pluralism. Though we may admire and take delight in some, indeed most, virtues because they are effective in promoting some end - the good of mankind - some may be delighted in and admired for their immediate agreeableness. Their rationale as virtues does not lie in their promoting anything. Why then should such traits be admirable (as opposed to admired whether or not from the general point of view)? Shouldn t their admirability be grounded in something worthwhile? The task now is to account for Hume s acceptance of virtues which are immediately agreeable as opposed to possessing tendencies for the good of mankind or of particular persons. I shall argue that attention to Hume s discussion of the passions makes it quite plausible to assume that many virtues have as their basis passions other than benevolence the desire for another s good. The complexity and plurality of the account of virtues arises naturally from the complexity and plurality of the passions discussed by Hume. I shall develop a pluralistic account of virtue status in Hume along the following lines. The immediate agreeability of traits which are virtues may be grounded (at least) in love, pride, joy, respect, and hope. Consider, first, love. The object of love is always a person or thinking being: Virtue and vice when consider d in the abstract; beauty and deformity, when placed on inanimate objects excite no degree of love or hatred, esteem or contempt towards those, who have no relation to them (T.331) Love is distinct from benevolence. Benevolence as a virtue is a disposition to desire the good of another (and act on that desire). Benevolence as a (direct) passion is simply the desire for the good of another. Love, by contrast, is an indirect passion. Benevolence as Jane L. McIntyre explains in Hume s Passions: Direct and Indirect is not inherent to the emotion of love itself. 11 She elaborates thus: Benevolent desires, which are themselves direct passions, arise in the complex causal context created by the indirect passion of love. We take pleasure, for example, in another person s witty or intelligent conversation, and, through the double association of impressions and ideas, that pleasure gives rise to a pleasurable feeling of love for that person. It is this indirect passion of love, according to Hume, that causes the desire of that person s good. 12 Such love is able to be extended to others not immediately connected with us by the principle of sympathy. For example, esteem/love of the rich and 11 Hume Studies Vol.26, (2000), pp.77-86,at p Ibid. p powerful is originally occasioned by our expectation of succour and protection from them. (T.362). The esteem/love is transferred to others from whom we can expect no advantage, by the principle of sympathy. Even though the desire for another s good is not essential to love (T.367), Hume does claim that we can never love any person without desiring his happiness. However other emotions such as the indirect passion of envy, can be mixed with love, contaminating it. In resentment-filled individuals, any desire for the welfare of individuals loved may be contaminated by and indeed overwhelmed by, malice. Hume indeed explains this phenomenon: The predominant passion swallows up the inferior and converts it into itself. (T.420) Hume s own example concerns the conversion of hatreds to love: When a person is once heartily in love, the little faults and caprice of his mistress however related to anger and hatred; are yet found to give additional force to the prevailing passion. (T420) In a sports-loving country, prone to resentment of the rich, conversion of love to hate may be displayed towards the most successful professional sportsmen, to the point where, for example, the attacking genius of a great player is downgraded ( no real sidestep- relies on his strength ) and defensive frailties so exaggerated ( no real technique in the tackle- relies on his strength ) that resentment-filled individuals do not want him in the national side. 13 His strength is still related to love, but yet gives additional force to the prevailing passion of hate. In the taxonomy of the virtues, charm, wit, attentiveness, tenderness, come under the category of the immediately agreeable. When Hume states that our hearts are seized by engaging tenderness he is focusing on the bonds of love rather than the mere promotion of good (or value) by acts of tenderness. What affords pleasure is not in this instance the thought that the consequences of such tenderness are likely to be generally beneficial, or that such tenderness is liable to play a role in the solving of problems. Rather, the pleasure is excited by the immediate, emotionally charged, perception of a bond, which can be recognized as itself a basis of a moral response. 14 Wit and charm, much maligned as virtues relevant to morality, but endorsed as virtues by Hume, can therefore be understood as moral virtues, for they are expressive of bonds between friends and acquaintances, and that is the source of the pleasure we take in them. If one were indifferent or misanthropic one wouldn t bother with either wit or charm, cultivating instead Aristotle s conversational vices of sourness, or buffoonery. But as Hume recognizes, to 13 Such a fate befell a New Zealand rugby player, Jonah Lomu adored in Europe but belittled shamefully in his home country. 14 See further my Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, esp.chapter 2. 8

5 class them as virtues is not to class them as virtues expressing the great lines of our duty. Tenderness and attentiveness have the same kind of rationale for Hume: Tis remarkable, that nothing touches a man of humanity more than any instance of extraordinary delicacy in love or friendship, where a person is attentive to the smallest concerns of his friend, and is willing to sacrifice to them the most considerable interest of his own. (T.604-5). He goes on to make it clear that the merit in such virtue is not its tendency to the good of mankind: Such delicacies have little influence on society: because they make us regard the greatest trifles: But they are the more engaging, the more minute the concern is, and a proof of the highest merit in any one, who is capable of them. (T. 605). A similar point can be extracted from Hume s discussion of grief in T.605. Here Hume is claiming that excessive grief for a close friend, though disutile, can be seen as virtuous for it is expressive of a strong bond. Of course not all excessive grief is virtuous grief: it may be pathological or not expressive of a genuine bond. The outpourings of grief on the death of Princess Diana may be classed in this category, but correct judgments in this area are not clear cut, since theories of grief themselves are subject to controversy. My claim then is this. As a substantive basis of virtue we can add to (C); (D) Qualities acquire our approbation because they are expressive of bonds of (non-pathological) love. Hume lists some of these virtues: Love may show itself in the shape of tenderness, friendship, intimacy, esteem, goodwill (T.448) We turn now to pride. What are we to make of our finding immediately agreeable traits such as excessive bravery and dazzling splendour? Pleasure in such traits is founded on such virtues as loyalty, patriotism, and appreciation of heritage. To understand these as virtues we need to turn to another passion - pride. According to Hume, the object of pride is self, but it is clear that we can take pride in the praiseworthy qualities of others. Pride, as opposed to love, is involved only when there is a connection between those others and self. Pride can be taken in all manner of objects, but these must somehow reflect on ourselves as Hume makes clear in this passage: We found a vanity upon houses, gardens, equipages, as well as upon personal merit and accomplishments; and tho these external advantages be in themselves widely distant from thought or [of?] a person, yet they considerably influence even a passion, which is directed to that as its ultimate object. This 9 happens when external objects acquire any particular relation to ourselves, and are associated or connected with us. A beautiful fish in the ocean, an animal in the desert, and indeed any thing that neither belongs, nor is related to us, has no manner of influence on our vanity, whatever extraordinary qualities it may be endowed with (T. 303). So the beautiful fish spotted by me on a snorkeling trip to Vanuatu cannot be an object of pride. However, when I, a New Zealander, am affected by the dazzling splendour of the royal processions in Pall Mall, London, I am affected not simply by their impersonal value but by their connection with those of us who value (take pride in) our British (or perhaps English) heritage. This point is made by Hume in T. 355: The mind finds a satisfaction and ease in the view of objects to which it is accustom d and naturally prefers them to others, which tho, perhaps, in themselves more valuable, are less known to it. The partialism rationalized by pride of course has to be subjected to the general and steady point of view for such satisfaction and ease may be a mark of complacency, prejudice, laziness, fear and other faults. But Hume is drawing our attention here to a feature of human nature ignored at our peril. Like Heidegger, Hume emphasizes that we are creatures who need to belong, who need a heritage, as opposed to merely needing to appreciate the value of things (from a disinterested perspective) independent of their relation to our own particular dwelling (as Heidegger would put it). This fact accounts too, I think, for excessive courage being immediately agreeable: we take pride in it insofar as its manifestation in others benefits the defence of our country, our homes, our children. One s nation or country is a source of pride for Hume (T. 330), and wartime reinforces the sense of unity and associated partialistic perspective (T348). Hence excessive courage or resoluteness in the prosecution of war is admired from a sense of national pride. Whether such immediate agreeableness, so founded, would survive the test of the general and steady point of view is another matter. 15 A third ground of virtue status can now be provided: (E) Qualities acquire our approbation because of the (proper) pride we take in them. There is not space to develop what might count as proper pride - what are the limits of pride-based virtues, joy-based virtues and so forth. But discussion of such limits would yield a rich account of virtue: for example Annette Baier draws our attention to the fact that modesty is a virtue for Hume, by virtue of the fact that modesty is simply a recognition of the limits of one s grounds for 15 See on the virtue status of such traits as excessive courage or resolute inflexibility the literature on admirable immorality; Michael Slote Goods and Virtues (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), chapter 4. 10

6 pride. 16 Modesty can then be seen as a pride-based virtue, but one that recognizes its proper limits. A puzzle remains: how are we to account for virtues related to appreciation of the beautiful fish in the ocean when the fish is not connected with me directly or indirectly? If such a thing cannot be a source of pride or love how can we account for the environmental virtues, or the virtues of connoisseurship, or the love of wisdom? What of the ability to take delight in virtue in the abstract, or beauty in inanimate objects entirely unrelated to me? The ability of a person to overflow from an elevate or humane disposition (T.335) when taking pleasure in wonderful or pleasing objects is sourced in our capacity for joy, a direct passion. Joy is a pleasure taken in a good when it is certain or probable, while uncertain good gives rise to hope only (T.439). We have then another ground of virtue: (F) Qualities acquire our approbation insofar as they (appropriately) express joy. Such virtues are joyfulness, curiosity (disposition to take joy in the process of discovery), wonder (tendency to take joy in mystery or the mysterious), cheerfulness. Corresponding vices are apathy, tendency to boredom, curmudgeonliness. Virtues of hope also exist: (G) Qualities acquire our approbation insofar as they express appropriate hope. Such virtues are hopefulness, and (wise) trust. Corresponding vices are despair, (excessive) mistrust, cynicism, excessive pessimism. My pluralist interpretation of Hume makes sense of the apparent failure of Hume to make a sharp distinction between the moral (relatively narrowly understood) and the aesthetic. Hume can be understood as suggesting that receptivity and appreciation, sourced in pride, love, or joy, is an aspect of much virtue, although it is more salient in what may be called the virtues of connoisseurship, and the environmental virtues. But it is also part of moral virtue that we appreciate and take joy in friends and colleagues, and Hume s standard of taste should not be confined to art works. There remains for us to consider the moral response (or responses) particularly associated with the artificial virtues such as justice and honesty. It is well known that for Hume, there is no natural sentiment constituting the motive of justice, such as love or benevolence. There is no motive of love of mankind as such, private benevolence may fail, and even when present will not necessarily deliver the right, just, results. For justice may be owed to someone 16 See Progress of the Sentiments, p not loved or hated. For what if [a person] be my enemy, and has given me just cause to hate him? What if he be a vicious man, and deserves the hatred of all mankind? What if he be a miser and can make no use of what I wou d deprive him of? What if he be a profligate debauchee, and wou d rather receive harm than benefit from large possessions? What if I be in necessity and have urgent motives to acquire something for my family? (T.482). Motives of justice are just the regard for justice itself. (T.479). But cannot the respect for persons and their property, proper to justice and honesty, be analysed in a more substantive way? Is there not a desire, associated with respect, that is different from benevolence desire for the good of another? Rather than respect being the desire for the good of another or institutions, we should understand respect as fundamentally the desire to leave things and persons alone; to abstain from interfering with, or violating them, either capriciously, or for their own or other s ends (including their good). I shall call this kind of respect justice-based in order to 17 distinguish it from a sense, discussed by Hume, which is opposed to contempt. This notion of respect, grounding virtues of deference, will be discussed below. Could Hume account for the approbation of justice towards persons to whom we are indifferent or whom we hate, by means of an appeal to a desire not to violate? If hatred is causally annexed to the desire for the misery of another (T.368), how can hate be coupled with respect in the requisite sense? Note first that the desires for the misery of those hated arise only upon the ideas of the misery of our enemy being presented to the imagination. (T367). Hume asserts that passions of love and hate may subsist for a considerable time without our reflecting on the happiness or misery of their objects (T.368). Given this, I believe Hume can account for a justice-linked desire within his theory of the passions by appeal to the passion of pity. The suggestion is this. Hume claims that all human creatures are related to us by resemblance, and that we can therefore pity even those who are indifferent to us. Can the operations of the imagination allow us to pity those in grief and affliction even where they are hated? If desires for the misery of another are in abeyance, the operations of pity may take over. As love is causally associated with benevolence (desire for a person s good), pity is causally associated with a desire not to cause grief and affliction - a desire based on sympathy for humanity. This desire is not the same as that of benevolence - it is causally based on sympathy with humanity rather than on praiseworthy qualities in which we take pleasure. As a result, pity can exist without benevolence: the sympathies may be unconnected with the 17 Compare Stephen L. Darwall s Two Kinds of Respect, in Robin S. Dillon ed. Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect, (New York: Routledge, 1995), pp , where he distinguishes between recognition respect and appraisal respect, claiming that: The distinction between appraisal respect and recognition respect for persons enables us to see that there is no puzzle at all in thinking both that all persons are deserving of respect just by virtue of being persons and that persons are deserving of more or less respect by virtue of their personal characteristics. (p.192). I believe the same kind of view can be attributed to Hume. 12

7 love that causes benevolence. The misery of another can cause me to take a sympathetic interest in him; but as I am not so much interested as to concern myself in his good fortune, as well as his bad, I never feel the extensive sympathy, nor the passions related to it. (T 386). Thus justice, founded on the desire not to cause grief and affliction a desire based on sympathy with a person by virtue of his humanity, as opposed to esteemed qualities is to be distinguished from benevolence. Nor is it simply reducible to the regard for justice itself. We have then another basis for the immediate agreeability of a trait: it is immediately agreeable because it displays justice-based respect for persons. It can also be seen that respect for another person s property can be based on this pity or compassion-based sympathy, since one can imaginatively be aware of the personal affliction caused by loss or damage to a person s entitlements including his property. There is however another ground of respect for authoritative rules (including those of property), to be discussed below. Accordingly we offer another ground of virtue status in Hume: (H) Qualities acquire our approbation, because they display justice-based respect for persons, and their property, and that respect is caused by our capacity for pity. Not all respectful demeanour is founded on our capacity for pity. The respect of deference, for example to those in authority, and to the aged because of characteristic wisdom and experience, must be founded on another passion. Indeed Hume discusses that passion which he calls esteem or respect, and which is opposed to contempt. He claims: A sense of superiority in another breeds in all men an inclination to keep themselves at a distance from him, and determines them to redouble the marks of respect and reverence, when they are oblig d to approach him; and where they do not observe that conduct, tis a proof they are not sensible of his superiority. (T.393). Such failure is a mark of ill-breeding. Consider the following example. When the ex-prime Minister of Australia violated rules of distance by putting his arm round the Queen s waist, that behaviour provoked a reaction of extreme immediate disagreeability on the part of many (especially in the UK) which had nothing to do with beliefs about the good of mankind. For respect has to do with treatment according to status, as opposed to good. 18 Korsgaard calls (deferencebased) respect a modified, blended, passion: one that results when the pleasing qualities in a person that cause love also at the same time cause humility and fear. 19 Both kinds of respect (justice-based and deference-based) involve keeping a distance, but for entirely different kinds of reason. 18 See my Virtue Ethics, op.cit. 19 Christine M. Korsgaard, The General Point of View: Love and Moral Approval in Hume s Ethics, Hume Studies, Vol.25, (1999), pp 3-41, at p I suggest too, that Hume can account for the respect for authoritative rules in the same sort of way. It may be that breaking a rule will not cause harm, and would promote good. But we defer to these rules because they emanate from authoritative persons who are superior to us in that regard. Hence it as arrogant of us to usurp the status of the rules, taking it upon ourselves to break them in the common interest. Virtues of deference and obedience virtues of proper demeanour according to status-rankings - are based on respect (as opposed to contempt), and suggest then another ground of virtue status: (I) Qualities acquire our approbation because they display proper esteem (respect) for our superiors (in relevant respects). Such virtues, including appropriate obedience and deference, are opposed to range of vices, including servility, blind obedience, sycophancy, authority complex (sourced in anger against those in authority), envy-based resentment (sourced in anger against those who are superior to oneself). 20 It is true that sympathy with the public interest is claimed by Hume to be the source of moral approval of justice (T ). However in this passage Hume is concerned with the movement from self interest to a more general point of view, which is a prerequisite for the assessment of all traits as virtues. This sympathy is not enough to explain what is the specific point or aim of the virtue of justice (and of other respect-based virtues). Justice as a virtue is not simply the moral point of view. (iv) Conclusion. I have offered on Hume s behalf several substantive grounds of virtue status, none of which is a necessary condition of a trait being a virtue. Hume is interesting for a virtue ethicist because his careful discussion of the passions whose refinement according to education, maturity, experience, and grasp of general rules produces habits of virtue, shows that not only is it the not case that all the virtues are reducible to benevolence, but they do not need to be justified as virtues in terms of their connection with the good of mankind. For the passions display multiple grounds of immediate agreeability from the general point of view. Hence Hume s substantive ethics can be seen as pluralist in a sense defined originally by J.O. Urmson. 21 There is a plurality of ultimate principles for determining whether a trait is a virtue, and there is no lexicographical principle or decision procedure for determining which has priority when they conflict. Certainly, Hume seems to suggest that (C), at least 20 I have suggested that there are respect-type passions that can ground justice and the respect for authority. If so, then Hume could resolve the inconsistency discussed by Rachel Cohon: that between his claim that there is in human nature some non-moral motive that elicits our approval and renders traits suitably expressing such motives or passions virtues, and that for the artificial virtues there are no such motives. See her Hume s Difficulty with the Virtue of Honesty, Hume Studies, Vol.23, (1997), pp See his A Defence of Intuitionism, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol 65, (1975), pp

8 characteristically, has priority across time as opposed to at a time. Although for example respect for the status of a rule as authoritative provides a constraint on breaking that rule for the sake of beneficial consequences at a given time, were a system of rules to undermine the good of mankind, that system on Hume s view should over time be replaced. But this view does not imply that what makes justice a personal virtue is simply its tendency to promote the general good. I have argued that for Hume the beam of light shining from the criterion of virtue (A) falls on many types of traits. It spills out beyond the terrain marked out by (C) the good of mankind. Though (C) is revealed by the central area of light, it also falls on a murky fuzzy area also giving pleasure. The territory of the immediately agreeable need not be aimed at tendencies to benefit, or to any further good at all. It incorporates our receptivity to splendour, our expression of bonds in love, our respect for status of various kinds. However, these murky areas do not escape entirely the boundaries of the central core. There is a real question for example whether virtues sourced in pride such as excessive courage or resolute inflexibilty should be replaced by prudent courage and sensible levels of resolution, on the grounds that these latter tend more clearly to the good of mankind, rather than to the interests of our country or nation. However there are two issues of weighting here. One is the weighting of differing grounds for virtue status at a time. The other is not so much a matter of individual ethics but of larger scale policy making and societal change. For example should our need for heritage be gradually replaced by a more cosmopolitan attitude, where regional pride is replaced by something else? As far as Hume is concerned one thing is clear. If (C) is to ground long term change it cannot ride roughshod over features of human nature. Though, as Michael Gill claims, Hume has a progressive rather than an originalist theory of human nature, which allows that original motives can evolve into other motives of different kinds 22 it is not totally plastic. C Swanton University of Auckland, January Hume s Progressive View of Human Nature, Hume Studies, Vol.26, (2000), ,at p