Inquiry Into Hume's Theory Of Moral Sentiment

David Hume is a famous British empiricist philosopher.His ethical thoughts have an important and far-reaching influence in the history of western philosophy.Among them,the theory of moral emotion is a characteristic and influential theory in Hume's philosophy,which has left a heavy mark in the history of philosophy.Scholars generally interpret Hume's moral emotion theory from two aspects.The first one is the source or basis of morality,that is,whether morality is based on emotion or rationality.The answer includes the core theory of sympathy of moral emotionalism.The second aspect is about the theory of the division of virtue,that is,how to divide virtue according to the standard of innate or artificial creation.Therefore,in order to study Hume's theory of moral emotion,we should start from two major directions: sympathy theory and virtue theory.From the background,the establishment of Hume's moral emotion theory has a special era environment.First of all,Hume lived in the period of religious reform and Scottish Enlightenment.During this period,people's social life,ideological field and social environment were developing for the better and their thoughts were active.From the perspective of theoretical origin,the philosophical circle is in the debate between rationalism and empiricism,while in the moral field,it is reflected in the opposition between rationalism and emotionalism.Hume's empiricism is the epistemological basis of his moral emotion theory.As for the first aspect of moral emotion theory,where does morality come from,Hume puts forward the conclusion that morality comes from emotion rather than reason in the opening chapter of the theory of human nature.Hume's theory of moral emotion discusses reason,emotion and the relationship between them.Hume first criticizes the school of rationalism at that time and proves that reason can not be the basis of morality.Then Hume answers the question of how moral sense comes into being with sympathy theory.He thinks that moral good and evil are determined by some special pain and happiness.Here,Hume's understanding of sympathy includes two meanings: sympathy and empathy,for which I have distinguished the concepts of sympathy and empathy.In addition,on the understanding of rationality,people misunderstand Hume and think that he negates rationality,but in fact,the rationality he thinks is just a kind of cognitive rationality belonging to the field of cognition.On the other hand,emotion plays a role in the field of moral practice and determines moral attitude and behavior purpose.Because cognitive rationality can only determine or evaluate the true or false problem,and the evaluation of behavioral purpose is not a true or false problem,so cognitive rationality can't do anything about the evaluation of behavioral purpose.Therefore,reason obeys emotion and is the slave of emotion.As for the second aspect of moral emotion theory,that is,the division of virtue,Hume discussed his unique theory of virtue division in Chapter 23 of moral principles.He divided virtue into natural virtue and man-made virtue,in which man-made virtue is the requirement of people based on social environment,Artificially designed some measures and created a certain morality suitable for all people to follow the rules to meet the needs of social progress.On the other hand,the virtue of nature is a kind of virtue type conforming to human's primitive instinct and natural impulse,which is the natural occurrence of human nature.The main differences are reflected in the two different fields of human moral emotion: the private field and the public field.Hume thinks that virtue in the private sphere only expresses the spiritual level of the individual,which has nothing to do with social stability,while man-made virtue belongs to the virtue of social public sphere,because it can maintain social stability.In the end,this paper examines the status of Hume's moral emotion theory in the history of western ethics,and the influence of his moral emotion theory on the philosophy of Bentham,Rawls and Adam Smith.It also discusses the possible problems of Hume's moral emotion theory.First of all,morality is a complex social phenomenon.Although sympathy theory has a vital influence on the generation of morality,it can not be regarded as the fundamental factor to determine the generation of morality.Morality should be the result of the combination of various factors.Secondly,emotion itself has a strong subjective color,which is quite different between different subjects.Hume overemphasized the important role of emotion in morality.From the perspective of the whole history of ethics,Hume's moral emotion theory is between the traditional virtue ethics and the modern normative ethics,which is the transitional link between them.