The Study On Hume’s Theory Of Moral Sentiments

David Hume is a famous scholastic philosopher, ethicists, historians and economists in the18th century of England. His ethical thought occupies a very important position and has a far-reaching influence in the history of Western philosophy. Scholars have broadly grouped the theory of moral sentiments in Hume’s writings into two aspects:the basic theories in purity and basic moral virtues in practical area. And the basic theory of morality of the Hume’s moral philosophy, which contains:about the origins of morality, Hume argued that all morality is built on people’s original feelings of happiness and moral distinction is not based on reason but moral sense, because rationality can only tell us what is and what is not instead of how to do it; on the basis of moral evaluation and judgment, Hume consider usefulness and agreeable traits as the criteria of moral evaluation and illustrate the specific meaning of morality on the basis of compassion principle. On Hume’s morality thought, the author mainly made the analysis from inherent or acquired morality. For Hume,lnherent Morality mainly refers to what people inherently have, originated from the inherent moral sense of human nature and can stimulate others’ or your own emotion of happiness and appreciation which stems from agreeable traits or usefulness of the quality,including love, submissive, self-esteem, compassionate, gentle, and so on. Acquired morality is what people learned and formulated and observed through artificial measures and designation for meeting the needs of the human environment. The Natural or original motivation for acquired virtue is self-love. However, the basis of moral distinction derived from the compassion for others’ interests after we have received a general point of view, that is, the common sense of the public interest. It is this sense of common interests that helps the acquired morality to appear, sustain effect and to safeguard the interests and well-being of mankind, such as justice, Promise Keeper, obedient, chastity and other virtues. These views constitute Hume’s unique moral sentiments theory, which promotes the transformation of the traditional Virtuous Ethics to modern Normative Ethics. A focus of Current moral controversy is the dispute between so-called normative theory and virtue theory. Therefore, the study on Hume’s theory of moral sentiments can provide some practical reference for current moral controversy.With China’s rapid economic development, people’s living standard has undergone tremendous changes. Due to constantly enrich of the material life, emergence of a wide range of social issues will emerge endlessly. Many social phenomena become increasingly prominent. Then, how can we solve the contradiction between the rapid development of China’s economic construction and people’s pursuit of material and ignorance of emotion? As we all know, the emotion is the bridge between people, and it sustains people’s relationships in society. So emotion plays an irreplaceable role in our life. However, Hume expressed its emphasis on emotion in his theory of moral sentiments, considered the personal merit as a strong point of social moral system and focused on the combination of individual virtues and social moral code. These points have a very important inspiration and practical significance in social moral construction of China’s transition period of socialism.The time when Hume was living is just the early period of Industrial Revolution in Britain, which is also very similar to our current social conditions. And what’s more, his moral theory is just a reflection of the prevailing ideological tendencies and values of the British people, so these similarities can absolutely be a reference for resolving the social ethical issues in today’s China. This article attempts to find out the valuable enlightenment on China’s current social moral construction through the study of Hume’s Moral Sentiments theory. Thereby, the weakening social responsibility can be returned to Chinese people.