A Study On Hume's Moral Motivation Theory

Hume absorbed the ideology of contemporary outstanding moral philosophers critically and started the emotionalism ways of moral motivation research officially. God determinism was popular in the 18th century in which he lived. God gives people reason to make people carry out moral action following the moral law. Hobbes firstly transferred ethicists' attention to human nature and self-interest was seen as the only motivation for action. Locke partly agreed with Hobbes' theory of desire and proposed that moral action was the anxiety because people felt that existence of evil instead of kindness. The theories of Shaftsbury, Hutcheson and Butler were called moral sentimentalism. They thought that moral motivation should be looked for in people's feelings. Their concept theories such as conscience and charity motivation were the direct theoretical origin of Hume's moral motivation theory. Hume's moral motivation theory was established on the basis of his skepticism. People could not get the reasons of action from outside of actors. Moral motivation only came from the emotion and desire of actors and reason just acted as instrumental support. Hume's theory of moral motivation was double motivation theory. Actions without kind motivation were not good actions. Kind motivation was divided into natural motivation and human motivation. People's initial motivation for justice actions was self-interest and the identification to artificial virtues was from sympathy. The respect for the moral rules of civilized society was attributed to the moral sense. Hume connected motivation with moral actions using conscience and the principle of sympathy was present throughout the theory. Human motivation came after the natural motivation of human nature in terms of logic and time. However, its importance had not diminished. In Kant's defending of the position of reason in moral actions, the first issue which needed to be solved was Hume's query of the effects of reason. Kantism was considered by modern moral philosophers as one of the nonbelievers competing with Hume's theory in research area of moral motivations. The two sides debated on which was the reason directly simulating actions, desire or belief? Nagel thought that Humeans confused two desires. Smith defended Hume's theory using the reinterpretation of desire. Williams proposed the idea that internal reason directly denied the classification of the obedience of reason to the moral law to the internal of actors.Hume's theory of moral motivation was mild. He did not ignore the effect of social regulation when emphasizing the importance of passion and desire in inspiring moral actions. The existence of sympathy and moral sense suggested that people could feel the difficulties of others. The distinction of human motivations is of incentive and guiding significance to the moral practice in real life.