The Study Of Utilitarian Tendency In Hume’s Principle Of Sympathy

Ethics is an important part of the thought system of Hume’s philosophy focusing on human nature. His emotivism has affected by Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, but what makes Hume different with them is the utilitarianism in his theory.For Hume, emotion is the origin of morals. It is emotion that gives rise to our moral judgments, not rationality. The reason is that moral judgments are value judgments, instead of the nature of objects, which concerns the relationship between subjects and objects. Since emotion is subjective, only by the role of sympathy, we can achieve similar emotional reaction to the same behavior, because of this, the principle of sympathy can be the first moral principle. Hume says that the principle of sympathy is the intrinsic psychological tendency of human nature, and individuals can transfer others’ emotional performances to themselves’ emotional impressions by the role of imagination, then achieve own vivid emotional experience to form the emotional resonance with others. Because of the existence of the emotional resonance, we can reach agreement on ethics. For example, each one can have the same resonance with me when facing the same behaviors or virtues for the emotional tendency is not different.Hume’s sympathy principle also can be seen as utilitarianism. For Hume, one behavior can be appreciated for four elements:altruism, self-interest, to make others pleasant, to make oneself pleasant. Anything can be seen as good with one of these four elements. One feature of Hume’s utilitarianism ethics is that to be benefit or not is the moral criterion.In fact, Hume cannot be a genuine utilitarian. Although his thoughts have deeply influenced the later utilitarianism and politics, what Hume has done is to analysis the origin of morality from the view of the coexistence of self-love and kind.