Hume’s Critique Of Rationalist Morality

David Hume is one of the most influential philosophers of modern empiricism.Hume’s philosophy is based on empiricism.In Hume’s time,the dominant criterion of moral evaluation is the correspondence theory established by rationalism,in which people can only use reason to discover morality.Rationalists think that moral judgment is as self-evident as arithmetic,and at the same time the opposite emotionalism ethics is quietly emerging.In this context,Hume joins the latter camp to refute the rationalist moral view of the time.He believes that the moral basis should be found in human nature,so understanding and emotion are the basis of Hume’s moral philosophy.Based on Hume’s treatise on human nature as the main research book and with reference to other relevant research works and papers,this paper discusses and analyzes Hume’s refutation and criticism of rationalist moral view based on his emotionalist ethics from the perspective of his empiricism.Accordingly,we believe that in the first part of the theory of human nature,the contents of cognition,such as concept,impression,memory,imagination and causality,constitute the empirical basis of Hume’s critical rationalism.In the second part of "a theory of human nature" : human moral sense,will and other contents constitute the emotional basis of Hume’s critical rationalism.It is on these bases that Hume criticizes the moral view of rationalism,pointing out that what reason studies is the fact proposition or probable reasoning,which belongs to the field of speculation and cannot replace the emotion belonging to the field of practice to get the judgment of good and evil,still less can replace the emotion to launch the moral behavior.In his view,we must construct moral theories based on(moral)emotions and search for the universality of morality from the "principle of sympathy".Hume’s criticism of rationalist moral view based on emotionalist moral philosophy strongly refuted the rationalist proposition and the western rationalist tradition at that time.Although Hume’s criticism of rationalist moral view based on emotionalism moral philosophy also has its own limitations,the positive factors contained in it have exerted a very important and far-reaching influence on the development of western ethics and the current real life,and also made a good foundation for our further study.