Modern Philosophy: Empiricism for discussion purposes only

Jove Jim S. Aguas

The Philosophy of David Hume

I. General Notions

John Locke had determined the fundamental principle of Empiricism: the

immediate object of knowledge is sensations which the subject experiences within
himself. From this doctrine arose the problem of determining whether outside these
subjective representations there was a reality corresponding to them, and whether this
reality was knowable.

Locke, with some hesitation making use of the principle of causality, had
concluded affirmatively, by admitting the existence of substance as a support of such
sensations, and the existence of God.

George Berkeley, another leading empiricist, had attacked the distinction

between material and spiritual substance, and had denied the existence of the first,
which he reduced to a mode of sensation. He had, however, affirmed the existence of
spiritual substances, God and spirits.

Hume accepted dogmatically what had been the initial step for Locke and
Berkeley -- namely, that the object of knowledge is solely the sense impressions
perceived by the subject. But he did not allow himself to make any concession to
classical philosophy, as Locke had done by admitting the validity of the principle of
causality and the existence of substance. Nor was he guided by any dogmatic or
religious principles, such as those which had led Berkeley to admit the existence of
spiritual substance. Instead, Hume logically developed to its extreme conclusions the
empiristic principle that subjective impressions alone are the immediate objects of
knowledge. Passage outside our sensitive impressions is not possible. Hence there is
no metaphysics: we know nothing of God, of the exterior world, or of our own soul

II. Life and Works

David Hume was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1711. He studied at the

University in his native city, revealing a passionate interest in philosophy and literature.
During a sojourn in France, he wrote his Treatise on Human Nature, in three volumes,
which were published in 1739 and 1740. When this work did not meet with the success
its author expected, Hume rewrote it in a more popular form, which he published
successively under the titles Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding and Inquiry
Concerning the Principles of Morals.

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As a staff member of the British embassy, he had occasion to travel in Holland,

Austria, Italy, and again in France. Here he struck up a friendship with Rousseau, whom
he brought to England; but there this friendship was broken. Hume also dedicated
himself to the study of history, and wrote an important History of Great Britain. He died
in 1776. Besides the works already mentioned, other important ones by Hume are:
Natural History of Religion, and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Hume is a
representative British type: litterateur, philosopher, politician, man of affairs and of the
world.

III. Theory of Knowledge

Perceptions are the contents of our consciousness. But introspection shows that
perceptions fall into two classes. For example there is the experience of warmth during
summer, but during Christmas season the previous experience of warmth is a faint
memory. The warmth as remembered is a copy of the original experience, but different
from it in the degree of force or liveliness. Our original experiences are impressions
while ideas are the copies of these impressions.

According to Hume, the prime, constitutive and fundamental elements of

knowledge are impressions and ideas. The difference between impressions and ideas
lies in the degree of vividness with which the sensory fact is presented. Impressions
are either sensations or the immediate and original contents of our own psychological
states. They are “our more lively perceptions when we hear, or see, or feel, or love, or
hate, or desire, or will.” Idea are the less forceful copies or faint images of our
impressions.

Thus the impression is an actual vivid perception which, as Hume says, brings
with it conviction or positive belief in the existence of a corresponding objective reality.
The idea is an element derived from the impression, and hence is less vivid than the
latter; it is a copy which the impression leaves behind. It is one thing to open my eyes
and see the red tapestry in the room where I am sitting, the table on which I am writing,
and the objects which are on that table. It is another thing to close my eyes and have
the image of what I have seen in my room. The first is impression, because it is vivid;
the second is a weak representation of the first and is an idea.

According to Hume “the creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the
faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting or diminishing the materials afforded
us by the senses and experience.” Without the original impressions, the mind cannot
have real contents.

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Impressions and ideas are not psychic atoms isolated from one another. Hume
said: “there is a principle of connection between the different thoughts or ideas of the
mind, and that, in their appearance to the memory or imagination, they introduce each
other with a certain degree of method and regularity.”

Impressions and ideas are all linked together by an inclination to recall one
another. This permits thought to pass from an actual impression to the idea of other
impressions obtained in the past, and from these ideas to other ideas. This is the law of
association of ideas, a fundamental point in Hume's doctrine and the basis for complex
ideas. Thus ideas are naturally associated with one another and form large groups, and
these groups in turn are related, to form still larger groups.

The belief that behind these groups of representations there is a reality

corresponding to them gives origin to belief in an external world, regulated by the same
laws that exist in the world of thought. Hume distinguished three type types of
association: likeness or resemblance, contiguity in time and space, cause and effect.

 The law of resemblance – ideas that are similar tend to be associated

together
 The law of contiguity - ideas that appear together in space and time tend
to be linked together in thought.
 The law of cause and effect - events that tend to regularly succeed one
another are associated with one another.

Hume also proposed two kinds or reasoning and the corresponding knowledge
that they produce: Relations of ideas and Matters of facts.

Propositions that express a relation of ideas are necessarily true, to deny them is
to assert a contradiction. Our knowledge of the external world is irrelevant to the truth of
these propositions because their certainty is not based of any external fact. Matters of
fact on the hand are different in the sense that their truth is based on contingency, they
may be true or not, but to state propositions based on them even if they are false will
not result into a logical contradiction. That the sun will not rise tomorrow may be false
but that will not express a logical contradiction.

Reason alone cannot decide whether a factual statement is true or false. Since
reason cannot tell us about matters of fact, they have to be discovered through
experience. According to Hume, we cannot discover by the qualities of an object that
appear to the senses either the cause which produced it nor the effects that will arise
from it without the assistance of experience. Nor can reason unassisted by experience
ever draw any inference concerning real existence and matter of fact.

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Hume digs a impassable trench between these two kinds of knowledge which
undermines the bridge between reason and the world. Such bridge is essential to the
metaphysical conclusion of the rationalists. On one side reason is king, the truths are
necessary and certain, but for all its certainty, it does not tell us about the real world that
lies on the other side of the trench. On the other side of the trench experience is king,
we reason about matters of fact. Experience give us information about the world, but
empirical judgments do not have certainty nor necessity that logical truths have. At best
matters of facts are based on various degrees of probability.

Implications of his theory of knowledge - Impressions have priority in the order

of knowledge, they force themselves on us in such a way that our consciousness can
only passively receive them. Ideas in contrast are faint and derivative copies, if we can
trace an idea back to its corresponding impression that its credentials are validated.
Any philosophical term or notion not tied to original impression is empty and useless, it
does not have the faint content of a legitimate idea.

Another fundamental law of Hume's theory of knowledge is that of habit.

Impressions succeed one another with a certain constancy. For example, every time I
have drawn near the stove, I have felt warm. This realization, experienced in the past, of
having observed one phenomenon constantly united with another, gives rise to the habit
of my expecting also in the future a repetition of what has happened in the past, so that,
having placed the first condition, I have a trusting expectancy of the second: every time
I approach the stove, from force of habit I expect to warm myself.

Force of habit gives to the constancy of the phenomenon experienced in the past
the force of metaphysical necessity, and from it results the concept of substance, of the
laws which govern such substances; in short, the resulting term is philosophy and
science. But are philosophy and science cannot be reasonably justifiable. Hume admits
only two instances of absolute certainly:

 The certainty found in factual things, when we limit ourselves to the

verification and description of facts expressed by actual past or present
sensation (and disregard those which will be presented in the future). Thus
an object is seen next to another, or after another; and these spatial and
temporal relationships included in the impression are certain. I am likewise
certain that some given impressions have been constantly co-related in the
past -- for example, when one ball struck another, this latter moved.

 The certainty found in the relationships between ideas; for if we assume

that ideas retain their identity, the relationships between them will be
constant. On these relationships depend the universality and necessity of
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mathematical demonstrations, which show us the relations between ideas

that are immutable in the abstract -- ideas whose logical value does not
depend on the objects that correspond to them.

Outside these two types, there is no certitude, philosophical or scientific, strong

enough to exclude all doubt.

IV. Negation of Metaphysics and Science

Hume's criticism aimed at the destruction of the concept of space and time, of
material and spiritual substance, of the principle of causality -- all of which are essential
to philosophy and science. Among Hume's criticisms the most famous (historically) is
the critique of the principle of causality, which we may summarize as follows:

A. Criticism of the Concept of Cause and Effect

The principle of causality consists in a relationship of necessary connection

between cause and effect, in virtue of which the one (effect) cannot be had without the
presence of the other (cause). Hence the formulation of the principle of causality:
"Everything that begins to exist must have a cause for its existence."

Now this principle, or this absolute necessity of connection between the effect
and its cause, is anything but exempt from doubt. Analytical a priori reasoning is such
that it implies a proposition whose predicate is derivable from the idea of the subject --
as in the example, "Three times five is equal to fifteen." Now, according to Hume, the
mind can never find the effect by examination of the supposed cause; for the effect is
totally different from the cause, and consequently can never be discovered in it.

In the collision between two billiards balls, the motion in the second billiard ball is
a quite distinct event from motion in the first; nor is there anything in the one to suggest
the motion of the other, without the assistance of observation and experience. No man
could infer merely from the fluidity of water that it would suffocate him. All these
observations are true in the empiristic position of Hume, in which any idea is simply a
copy of sensation. Thus the idea of the motion of the first billiard ball does not contain
anything to suggest the motion of the second, and the idea of water does not include a
priori the fact that it would suffocate a man.

In this regard we must observe that in the philosophy of Aristotelian realism a

proposition is called analytical a priori not only when the predicate is found by analysis
of the subject, but also when the predicate and the subject, while remaining two distinct
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concepts, have a transcendental relation to each other, a relation which is known

intuitively by the intellect. This is precisely the case with the principle of causality, in
which the mind, in comprehending the concept of that which begins to exist, discerns a
necessary relation to another object, which is both the cause and the rational
explanation of the thing that at first did not exist and now begins to exist.

The necessary connection upon which the principle of causality is based is not
demonstrable, according to Hume, even by experience. Any fact -- for example, the
striking together of two billiard balls, or any other fact to which we apply the concept of
causality -- indicates to us nothing else but the constancy of the contiguity and
succession of the two objects. But the stable union does not show me a necessary
connection between the two. In the supposition that it has been observed by me and
others that fact B is constantly joined with its antecedent, A, this constant repetition
does not authorize me to say that always in the future fact B must follow upon fact A,
and that between the two there is a necessary bond.

Hume states: "The repetition of perfectly similar instances can never alone give
rise to the original idea, different from what is to be found in any particular instance."
(Treatise on Human Nature, I, xiv.) Not even our activity and the effect of the will upon
the movements of our body and our spirit can give us the impression of causality: "No
relationship is more inexplicable," Hume adds, "than that which exists between the
faculties of though and the essence of matter."

Here the Cartesian questions concerning the interplay between "res extensa"
and "res cogitans" give Hume good arguments for denying the stability of causality,
even in the movements which proceed from our own selves. Thus it is necessary to give
up attributing any objective value to the idea of cause.

For Hume the idea of causality arises from a psychological fact formed in the
following manner.
 Experience has shown that fact B has constantly followed fact A.
 This stability, never contradicted by experience, shows indeed that
the two facts, A and B, are associated with one another, so that the one evokes
the other.
 Through force of association there arises in me the trusting
expectation, and hence the habit of expecting, that also in the future, and
necessarily, granted fact A, fact B must follow.
 Thus the necessary connection is not a bond which regulates
reality, but is a manner of feeling on the part of the subject, a new law which the
subject places in regard to his impressions.

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B. Criticism of the Concept of Substance

An irresistible and universal conviction brings men to believe in a world of beings

separate and distinct from the subject. Is such a conviction rationally justified? Hume
answers in the negative. If the immediate object of our knowledge is impressions, there
is nothing in them to justify the affirmation that outside these impressions there are
actual beings corresponding to them. In truth, if, as Hume holds, the impression is
nothing other than a manner of feeling on the part of the subject, it is not possible for
thought to go out of itself. Nor is recourse to the principle of causality valid (as Locke
and Berkeley held); for we have seen that this principle, as far as Hume is concerned,
has only a psychological value.

How then explain the idea of a world of beings separate and distinct from the
subject -- a conviction which everyone holds? What is the origin of this belief? Hume
gives the following explanation. Many impressions, although intermittent and hence
separable and distinct, are presented as being constantly similar. By the law of
association these impressions evoke one another. Thought, in order to give itself an
explanation of this stability, is brought to believe that these impressions are identical,
and that hence, beneath them, there is some unchanging principle which gives unity to
the sensible data that appear to be the same in impressions. Thus arises the concept of
duality of subject and object, and, furthermore, the concept of substance as the support
of impressions.

I open my eyes, and I see the objects disposed in a certain manner in my room. I
go out, and after a time re-enter. The impressions which I receive of the position of
those objects are entirely similar to the preceding ones, and the same will happen if I
repeat the experience. These intermittent impressions are distinct, but they are similar
and recall one another to mind. Thought, in order to give itself a reason why this can
happen, is forced to admit the existence of some stable objective thing which is the
support or basis of these similar impressions. Consequently, this concept of substance
as the stable support of impressions, is not real, and is reduced to a fiction of the
subject, originating in the constancy of similar impressions.

Hume's destructive criticism of the concept of material substance is also applied

to spiritual substance, the personal ego. The idea we have of a personal ego ("anima")
is not given by any impression, and hence is fictitious. Its origin is due to the behavior of
the impressions themselves. We can affirm only the succession of impressions which,
through the law of association, are gathered together into ever larger groups. Thought is
then induced to conjure up a subject which unites all these groups; thoughts may be
likened to a stage on which the impressions follow upon and recall one another. Hence
comes the idea of the personal ego, of the spiritual soul, which the Cartesians accepted

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as the "primum notum." But not only is this ego nonexistent; it is one of the many
fictions of thought advanced as a means of understanding impressions.

Thus Hume arrives at the denial of all the basic concepts of scientific and
philosophical knowledge. So-called material and spiritual substances are only
aggregations of impressions and ideas. The most basic principles, such as the principle
of cause and effect, are reduced to psychological fictions, which are explained through
the mechanism of association and habit. Hume, better than Berkeley, can say: "Omne
esse est percipi" -- being is a mode of feeling. Theoretical empirical reason concludes
with the collapse of all rational understanding; it leads inevitably to Skepticism.

V. Natural Religion

Granted the failure of theoretical reason, it is no longer possible to prove the

existence of God and hence the necessity of religion. Still, Hume does not deny the
existence of God. In the light of reason, however, the existence of God is only a
hypothesis and does not surpass the value of other hypotheses. Nor can religion be
justified from the rational standpoint.

Hume defends a natural religion which owes its being to practical motives:
Sentiments of terror and the need for protection in the face of the disturbing events of
life and of nature push man to belief in a being (God) endowed with superior powers.
Such sentiments carried primitive man to anthropomorphism, then to polytheism, and
finally to monotheism. Monotheism corresponds better to intellectual exigencies,
although man, because of practical necessities, never succeeds in freeing himself from
the idea of polytheism.

The fact of moral obligation also arises from motives of practicality. Hume does
not deny the distinction between the just and unjust as a datum of fact. But according to
him, if the reasons which have given origin to this distinction are thoroughly examined,
one comes to the conclusion that morality is the result of the sentiment of sympathy.
According to this position, man approves certain actions of others as if they were his
own, and approves of some of his own actions because he believes that by these
actions he will meet with the approval of others.

Hume, lacking a metaphysics, had recourse to practical exigencies in order to

justify the value of ethics, and of religion as well. This distinction between the theoretical
and practical motives, and the justification of insuppressible values through practical
motives alone, were to pass as a heritage to Immanuel Kant, and to form one of the
pillars of his critical philosophy.

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In morals, Hume set up the public good as the standard of right and wrong, and assigns
to feelings rather than to reason the task of applying this ethical norm.

VI. Moral Philosophy: Ethics Based on Epistemology

For Hume, there is a generic similarity between moral assertions and scientific or
empirical assertions. Moral assertions like, “Helping others is good,” and the scientific
assertion like, “Water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen,” both deal with matters of
fact and like other factual judgments are only contingently true and not necessarily true.

However, the matters of fact of scientific assertions lie in the object, while those
of moral assertions are rooted in the in human feelings. The justification of the empirical
statement is based on the conjunction of two external and experiential events, while that
of moral assertion is based on the conjunction of experienced events one of which is an
external behavioral event and the other internal mental event; specifically, one is a
voluntary action and the other is a feeling of either approval or disapproval.

Hume provides a descriptive ethics rather than a prescriptive ethics. His moral
philosophy provides a description of moral assertions and evaluations rather than
provides a sort of standard or norm of moral evaluation. Hume tries to tie up morality
with psychology or his account of the nature the mind. Morality is natural to man and it
is based on his natural make-up. Hume acknowledges both the rational and passionate
natures of man.

Hume’s theory of ethics is based on his theory of knowledge or epistemology,

especially his distinction between the relations of ideas, which is provided by reason
and matters of fact, known through experience. He believes that this distinction is
applicable to all types of knowledge including knowledge about morality. In his theory of
knowledge, he shows that reason cannot provide us with knowledge about the world, so
he argues that it plays a very limited role in our moral life.

Although he acknowledges the role of reason in providing information to our will,

reason cannot compel us to act, it is the passion that drives man to act, ethically or
unethically, hence ethics is related to the human passions. At first, Hume raises the
question whether or not the source of morality resides solely in our rational nature or
solely in our passionate nature. However, although blending the two positions is
attractive, Hume concludes that there can be no compromise between the two.

A. The Rule of Passions and the Role of Reason

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Morality is practical, it influences and regulates our conduct, but the fact that
reason in itself does not provide a spring of action, hence it cannot be the source of
moral conduct. Reason is used to discover truth or falsehood. It tells us what is
logically necessary and what is contradictory. But when it comes to moral issues, one
cannot just be concerned with what is true or necessary, morality is concerned with
what one ought to do.

Furthermore, the rightness or wrongness of an act cannot be discerned from the

relationship of ideas which is provided by reason. Our sense of wrongness or rightness
is not even based on the appreciation of facts, because wrongness or rightness is not a
matter-of-fact issue, but a matter of sentiments or passion. Hence sentiments or
passions is the ultimate source of morality, although reason plays a role in rendering
moral decisions.

Based on Hume's theory of knowledge, or mind, passions are impressions rather

than ideas. The direct passions, which include desire, aversion, hope, fear, grief, and
joy, are those that “arise immediately from good or evil, from pain or pleasure” that we
experience or think about in prospect.

However he also groups with them some instincts of unknown origin, such as the
bodily appetites and the vengeful impulse, which do not proceed from pain and pleasure
but produce them. The indirect passions, primarily pride, humility (shame), love and
hatred, are generated in a more complex way, but still one involving either the thought
or experience of pain or pleasure.

Hume sets himself in opposition to most moral philosophers who talk of the
combat of passion and reason, and who urge human beings to regulate their actions by
reason and grant it dominion over their contrary passions. Hume claims that “reason
alone can never be a motive to any action of the will,” and that reason alone “can never
oppose passion in the direction of the will.”

He grants that reason provides information which makes a difference to the

direction of the will, but reason alone cannot motivate to action; the impulse to act itself
must come from passion. Reason is merely the “slave of the passions” Hume gives
these arguments for the “inertia” of reason.

The first is based on the two rational functions of the mind. The mind judges —
from demonstration — the abstract relations of ideas (as in mathematical reasoning);
and it also judges — from probability — the relations of objects (especially their causal
relations) that are revealed in experience.

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Demonstrative reasoning is never the cause of any action by itself, since it deals
with ideas rather than realities. Reasoning is useful when we have some purpose in
view and intend to use its discoveries to inform our inferences about causes and effects.
Although probable or cause-and-effect reasoning does play a role in deciding what to
do, its function is only auxiliary.

When we anticipate pain or pleasure from some source, we feel aversion or

propensity to that object and we try to avoid what will give us pain or embrace what will
give us pleasure. It is our emotion or passion that makes us seek the causes of these
sources of pain or pleasure, and we use causal reasoning only to discover them. Once
we do, our emotion naturally extends itself to those causes, and we act to avoid or
embrace them.

The impulse to act does not arise from the reasoning but is only directed by it. 'It
is from the prospect of pain or pleasure that the aversion or propensity arises. Probable
reasoning is merely the discovery of causal connections, and knowledge of these never
concerns us if we are indifferent to the causes and the effects so conjoined. Thus,
neither demonstrative nor probable reasoning alone causes action.

B. Morality Based on Sentiments

Sentiments according to Hume are natural and psychological givens. It is a

moral feeling common to everyone. The human community can survive because we
have some kind of moral feelings that tend to lead us to work for the good of the
community. Morality is therefore more properly felt than judged.

Because he is convinced that reason alone cannot motivate action, Hume claims
that moral distinctions are not derived from reason but rather from sentiment. Hume
rejects the position of rationalists that moral properties are discovered by reason, and
that moral goodness is in accord with reason and moral evil is unreasonable.

Hume argues against the epistemic position that we discover good and evil
through reasoning by showing that neither demonstrative nor causal reasoning has vice
and virtue as its proper objects. Demonstrative reasoning discovers relations of ideas,
and vice and virtue are not identical with any of the four philosophical relations
(resemblance, contrariety, degrees in quality, or proportions in quantity and number)
whose presence can be demonstrated.

Causal reasoning, by contrast, does infer matters of fact pertaining to actions, in

particular their causes and effects; but the vice of an action (its wickedness) is not found
in such matters, but only in the sentiments of the observer. Therefore moral good and
evil are not discovered by reason alone.
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Furthermore, virtue is not the same as reasonableness and vice is not contrary to
reason. Passions, volitions, and actions can be neither reasonable nor unreasonable.
Actions, he observes, can be laudable or blamable. Therefore it follows that “laudable
and blameable are not the same with reasonable or unreasonable, such properties are
not identical.

C. The Moral Evaluation of Character Traits: Virtue and Vice

Our moral evaluations of persons and their character traits, according to Hume,
arise from our sentiments. The character traits: virtues and vices are those traits the
disinterested contemplation of which produces approval and disapproval, respectively,
in whoever contemplates about the trait. The approval or disapproval of the traits that
are produced in the disinterested individual are expressions of moral sentiments are
emotions. They are caused by contemplating on the person or action, without regard
for one’s self-interest, and is based on a common or general perspective that
compensates for any distortion in the observer's sympathies that may result from the
closeness to person or action.

Approval (approbation) is an expression of pleasure, and disapproval

(disapprobation) is an expression of a pain or uneasiness. The moral sentiments are
typically calm rather than violent, although they can be intensified as a result of our
awareness of the moral responses of others.

The sentiments of approval or pleasure and disapproval or uneasiness are

associated with the passions of love and hatred: when we feel moral approval for
another we tend to love or esteem her, and when we approve a trait of our own we are
proud of it. Otherwise we feel the opposite, hatred or aversion.

We distinguish which traits are virtuous and which are vicious based on our
feelings of approval (approbation) and disapproval (disapprobation) toward the traits;
our approval of actions is derived from approval of the traits we believe to have given
rise to them.

D. The Nature of Sympathy

Hume claims that the sentiments of moral approval and disapproval are caused
by the operations of sympathy, a psychological mechanism that enables one person to
receive by communication the sentiments of another. Sympathy in general operates as
follows. First, observation of the effects of another person's “affection” and its outward
expressions in his “countenance and conversation” conveys the idea of his passion into
my mind.
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When we come to share in the affections of strangers, and feel pleasure because
they are pleased, and when we experience an aesthetic enjoyment of a well-designed
ship or fertile field that is not our own, that pleasure can only be caused by sympathy.

Similarly, Hume argues, when we reflect upon a character or mental quality

knowing its tendency either to the benefit or enjoyment of strangers or to their harm or
uneasiness, we come to feel enjoyment when the trait is beneficial or agreeable to
them, and uneasiness when the trait is harmful or disagreeable to them. This reaction of
ours to the tendency of a character trait to affect the sentiments of strangers or those
with whom we have no special affectionate ties, can only be explained by sympathy.

Sympathy can take the form of a general benevolence for all humanity, a
sentiment which is a feeling for the happiness of mankind and resentment for its misery.
Such sympathetic benevolence is a natural to humankind, it is a principle that cannot be
explained by any other principle or motive, it is our moral bedrock. We need not ask as
to why we have this “humanity or fellow-feeling with others,” it is sufficient that this is
experienced to be a principle of human nature.

E. The Approval of Natural and Artificial Virtues

Hume divides the virtues into those that are natural — in that our approval of
them does not depend upon any cultural inventions or jointly-made social rules — and
those that are artificial (dependent both for their existence as character traits and for
their ethical merit on the presence of conventional rules for the common good. Hume
emphasizes that “our sense of every kind of virtue is not natural; but … there are some
virtues, that produce pleasure and approbation by means of an artifice or contrivance,
which arises from the circumstances and necessities of mankind”

The natural virtues are more refined and completed forms of those human
sentiments we could expect to find even in people who belonged to no society but
cooperated only within small familial groups. The artificial virtues are the ones we need
for successful impersonal cooperation; our natural sentiments are too partial to give rise
to these without intervention.

Hume includes among the artificial virtues honesty with respect to property
(which he often calls equity or “justice,” though it is a strangely narrow use of the term),
fidelity to promises (sometimes also listed under “justice”), allegiance to one's
government, conformity to the laws of nations (for princes), chastity (refraining from
non-marital sex) and modesty (both primarily for women and girls), and good manners,
material honesty and of faithfulness to promises and contracts.
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The natural virtues, are greatness of mind (“a hearty pride, or self-esteem, if well-
concealed and well-founded,” goodness or benevolence (an umbrella category covering
generosity, gratitude, friendship, and more), and such natural abilities as prudence.

The fact that we approve the natural and artificial virtues even where our own
interest is not at stake, solely for their tendency to benefit the whole society of that time
or place, confirms that through reflection on the tendency of characters and mental
qualities, is sufficient to give us the sentiments of approbation and blame. The
sympathy-generated pleasure, then, is the moral approbation we feel toward these traits
of character. We find the character traits agreeable because they are the means to ends
we find agreeable as a result of sympathy with the pleasure of those who receive
benefit.

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