| My dissertation is on the relationship between ethics, politeness, and aesthetics, in Hume's theory, with a special emphasis on the connection of aesthetics to his artificial virtues. I position Hume as part of a tradition, sometimes called aesthetic moralism, which sees ethics, politeness, and aesthetics as connected rather than divided. I defend Hume from three standard objections made to this approach: that such theories cannot adequately account for (1) the non-equivalence of ethics and aesthetics, (2) cultural variation in taste, and (3) the fundamentally unique nature of morality. I examine his accounts of justice, politeness, and our sense of beauty, arguing that in all three cases Hume's account depends upon the idea that our natural sympathy can be refined in artificial or convention-enabled ways. This central role for artifice shows why customs and conventions have such a strong effect on our judgments of what is just or polite or aesthetically pleasing, yet their artificial component does not mean that these judgments are arbitrary or unnecessary. Analyzing Hume's description of the rise of justice as a progressivist argument, I show that Hume establishes justice as a necessary and non-arbitrary solution to the conflicts inherent in the nature and situation of humans; justice so understood is neither grounded in, nor reducible to, property laws, self-interest, or fairness. |
