the originality of hume's theory of obligation

International Phenomenological Society

The Originality of Hume's Theory of ObligationAuthor(s): Henry David AikenSource: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Mar., 1982), pp. 374-383Published by: International Phenomenological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2107493 .

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THE ORIGINALITY OF HUME'S THEORY OF OBLIGATION

I

As I read him, David Hume contends that there is no such thing as the obligatory view, not to mention the moral or political points of view. That is to say, there are no principles of obligation per se. Here, the so-called open question argument, employed by G. E. Moore, has some relevance. One can always ask (in a form, of course, which is closer to Prichard and Ross than to Moore), "But ought one always to do this or that?" Now, I have never claimed that the open question argument is definitive. In fact, I doubt very much whether any argument or counter-argument is ever definitive. Long ago, William Frankena fought the open question argument to a draw, though he supposed that he did more. But he was mistaken. The open question, "But ought one (or I) to do this?" is, at best, of an inductive sort. Let me give one or two examples. One can always ask whether one ought to keep, or has an obligation to keep a certain promise. One can always ask whether one ought to pay his lawfully acquired debts. One can always ask whether he ought to remain loyal to his country, or that he would be wrong in committing an act of treason. Of course, one can indeed always reply, however plausibly, "Yes, certainly, he indeed ought to do so." My point is that, while the open question argument proves nothing, in the strict sense, it has a good deal of plausibility. Whenever one stops asking the open question, because he is tired of raising it for the time being, he can go on and on raising it, from case to case. Thus, as I see it, the open question argument has a great deal of inductive force.

My view is that in Hume's case, there really is, in an unstrict sense, something that amounts to a "proof," that the concept of obligation must always be open. Perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that we can only have conceptions of obligation, and that there is no such thing as the concept of obligation.

Of course, there are many modes of obligation. There are moral obligations, political obligations, professional obligations, religious obligations, and so on. But none of them is definitive. One may say that there are necessary, or sufficient, conditions of any sort of obliga-

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THE ORIGINALITY OF HUME'S THEORY OF OBLIGATION 375

tion, or even of obligation itself. But there are no definitive, necessary and sufficient, conditions of obligation as such.

Let us now return, or rather proceed, to the question of moral obligation. Hume himself plainly distinguishes, in the Treatzse, two senses of the term "moral." In one sense, he applies it to all "moral subjects" which includes practically everything save mathematics and empirical science. It includes morality in the sense understood by Moore and Frankena. But it also includes obligations which, as I have said, pertain to those normally ranged under politics, law, as well as religion. As I shall later argue, "moral obligation" in the wider sense, is in the end hardly more than a name for "obligation" itself. I will go further. For I am convinced that in the end the same may well be true of moral obligation. In the narrower sense, moral obligation contrasts fairly clearly with political obligation. But this is never absolutely clear or definitive, and here again one may make use of the open question argument. In the narrower sense, we intuitively understand that political obligations are obligations of allegiance (for example) to a nation-state. Moral obligations, in this sense, are those which sur- vive when a state, or politically organized society of any sort, is in a state of civil war or revolution. But we must never forget that despite his conservatism, which was as great as that of Burke, to whom he is sometimes compared, he, unlike Burke, always insisted that revolu- tions may be justified, even though the first thing to be done, when a revolution is over, is to reestablish its rules of justice, which for him were largely concerned with property and property rights. The question that must now be asked is whether moral obligations, in this narrower sense, provide the basis for political obligations, and Hume's answer to this in the Treatise is unequivocably "No." Obligations of allegiance are not dependent upon, or necessarily justifiable, in terms of moral obligation. Perhaps they provide a reason, possibly even the reason, for establishing a politically organized society in the first place, though Hume, as we know, considered the whole ideal experiment of a state of nature as hogwash. However, once a state is established, political obligations, however weakly, become indepen- dent.

What, then, are the surviving moral obligations, once a state, or political system, has been constituted or reconstituted? Are they the obligations (and rights) of human beings to one another simply as such? One may think so, but if one did so, one would be wrong. There are many obligations which are not mutual, but merely reciprocal. Obligations are mutual when the rights and responsibilities of both



376 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

parties are precisely the same. They are, for the most part, however, merely reciprocal. Let me give one or two examples. The rights and responsibilities of parents and their children are obviously different. So, too, are the rights and responsibilities of rulers and ordinary citizens. But they are not mutual.

Let us now turn to the question whether there can be un- categorized obligations simply as such. Hume's answer, as I read him, is undoubtedly "Yes." There are, for example, obligations between you and me, or, if you prefer, I and Thou. These are obligations between ourselves simply as individual persons and, of course, the concept of a person does apply to individual human beings, although not exclusively to them. There are also obligations (not necessarily at- tended by rights of any sort at all) on the part of human beings to others who have no obligations whatever. One or two examples makes this obvious. I may have an obligation to take care of my dog, although it would be nonsense to say that my dog has any obligation to me. He may like me, be fond of me, or do my bidding, but the idea of obligation never enters his mind. There are also many other cir- cumstances in which men and women have obligations to other so- called human beings, who cannot be supposed to have any obligations whatever. An individual in a coma may have certain rights. fie may have a right to life and to be kept alive. But surely he cannot be thought of as having any obligation whatever to his physician, his parents, or anyone else. A man on his deathbed may have the right to be eased of his pain, if he remains even minimally conscious. But he has no obligation. Examples of this sort are endless, and they need not be extended.

Whether they realize it or not, philosophers are after knowledge about meanings or forms of words. They are also after knowledge, therefore, of forms of life, whether they realize that or not. Man may not be the rational animal or the laughing animal, but he is certainly that talking and writing animal. This is his great and unique endow- ment, which distinguishes him from all other forms of life whatever. I would almost be prepared to say that it is definitive, though I abhor definitions, save for practical purposes. In his own time and in his own fashion, Hume was certainly a philosopher of language in the widest and richest sense. Here it is unnecessary to reaffirm this prop- osition. This whole paper is a demonstration of Hume's extraordinary acumen as an analytic or linguistic philosopher.

However, Hume did pursue wisdom, not only for himself, but for all members of "the party of humanity." No other philosopher, not




even Socrates, loved wisdom more than he. He contributed to our common fund of wisdom in virtually every sphere, philosophical and nonphilosophical, if such a distinction has any meaning. I say this, precisely because all men do pursue wisdom in their own ways, however limited, and however misguided their various searches for it may be. Think of it: Hume contributed to our wisdom through his epistemological and metaphysical investigations, through his studies of ethics, politics, law, philosophy of art, and religion. He was also a distinguished economist, as Adam Smith testified. And economics or, as I still prefer to think of it, political economy (since there can be no economy independently of politics and government) is a foundational human subject.

Let me now say something, in Hume's behalf, about the fundamental question of religious obligation. Whether he regarded it as fundamental is no matter, though it may seem that he did not do so. Suppose that, as it were, we augment a you into a Thou. Suppose, in short, that we treat you not simply as a moral or political person, with the rights and responsibilities pertaining thereto, or suppose that we begin to see, no matter how dimly, that your moral or political being has a religious aspect of some sort. It does not matter which. You have become, and I am still speaking for Hume, to me, a Thou, a being whom I regard as holy. In our book, the religious life is not to be defined in terms of one's relationship to God, if God there be, but to virtually anything which one regards and treats as holy. I may find anything at all, the sea or the universe, if such there be, as holy. In one of his great sonnets, Wordsworth roars out, "Lo, the mighty being is awake, and doth with his eternal motion make a sound like thunder everlastingly!" Wordsworth has been called a pantheist. But pantheism is no less a form of religion than theism or polytheism. What, then, shall we say about the religious mood save that it invests its object with one's own sense of its holy being?

If this be so, it becomes difficult to understand religious obligation as a definitive kind of obligation. It is found everywhere, in every sort of form, and in every degree. In fact, it is probably one of the most common and indiscriminate of all forms of obligation. So now let me ask, for Hume, whether there is any way whatever of distinguishing religious obligations from obligations of any other sort. In short, what is not, in some respect, a religious obligation? Or, to put the same point in other terms, what obligation has no vestige of holiness? I think, again for Hume, that there is none. I fail to see, therefore, how it is possible to speak with any clarity or distinctness,




of a unique form of obligation which we may call "religious." There are, of course, religious institutions, churches, synagogues, sects, and so on. But these are not necessarily holy, even when they profess to be so. Again, the open question. Is the Catholic church a holy institu- tion? Catholics, when they are sincere, so regard it. So, also, in the case of the Jews, Moslems, and other "churches," creeds and religious practices. Still, we may seriously ask whether this or that church or creed is really holy.

I have said that any obligation whatever becomes religious when it is augmented. Let us now reverse the question. Is it possible for one's sense of the holy to diminish? The answer to this question seems obvious. One may diminish by stages any Thou back into a you, a you, in fact, to whom one feels or has no responsibilities whatever. Despite everything that we have said earlier, one is always faced by diminutions of the sense of holiness that are so great that in the end it disappears altogether. One falls into a coma, as will most people one day, then one's sense of the holiness of anything, including one's own person and life, simply disappears.

For Hume's contention is, then, that religious obligations and rights are not only indefinable but describable only in a variety of nonsynonymous terms.

II

Back, now, to Hume in earnest. My contention is that there is no such thing, in Hume's view, as the obligatory view, let alone the moral, or the political, points of view. If religious obligations are subject to the open question, so are moral obligations, political obligations, legal obligations, and the rest. There are, in short, obligations simply as such. And this concept of obligation, although describable, is indefinable, and it is hard to suppose that there is such a thing as the concept of obligation.

What are the consequences of this view? They are, in fact, virtually incalculable. For they imply, in effect, that the whole topic of obligation has been misconceived from start to finish. They imply, not only that there is no such thing as the religious point of view, the moral point of view, or, indeed, any such point of view. They also imply that the open question argument usually still has an important use in any domain of discourse or activity. They also imply that, in the case of language, we can raise the open question about the meaning of virtually any term whatever. For example, we can always ask about




any definition of man. "But is he a man, as that definition conceives him?" Is man a rational animal? Yes, and no. Is man a laughing animal? Yes, but not always. Is God, or the term "God," definable? Well, many monotheists offer definitions of "God," but it is always possible to ask, "But is God almighty, omniscient, and all merciful?" The point no longer needs belaboring.

That we have obligations is undeniable, although a few philosophers, such as Paul Ziff, have argued that they can get along without them altogether. But even Ziff, so far as I know, confined himself only to promising. Nietzsche, in his talk about going beyond good and evil, seems to some to have had such a notion in mind. But both The Genealogy of Morals and Beyond Good and Evil go no further, he says so explicitly. So-called "noble" men do have obligations. For they have responsibilities to other noble men, and they have rights from other noble men. But everyone knows this. What needs emphasizing here is that no coherent theory of obligation as such has been offered.

Back to Hume. Some may think that I have been using Hume as a clotheshorse on which to hang my own antitheory of obligation. If we care to, we can describe obligations, whether simpliciter or with any qualifying adjective such as "religious" or "moral." But all such descriptions leave plenty of room for open-mindedness about them. And this is precisely what is true in Hume's case.

The fundamental concept, in Hume's philosophy, is that of Sen- timent. Not only does he speak of moral sentiments and religious sentiments, in the first Enquiry, he actually holds not only that statements of fact are statements which express sentiments of approval and disapproval, but also that the same holds true of statements about matters of fact. Hume was one of the least sentimental of men in the present-day pejorative sense of that term, as his Autobiography shows. He was only speaking the truth when he claimed to be a member of the party of Humanity. Few of his friends would have described him as sentimental, although they would have described him accurately as a man of sentiment (in the 18th century sense of the term). Most of his sentiments were benevolent, and he well deserved to think of himself as a humanist, in the best sense of the term.

III

What does Hume mean by the term "sentiment," aside from speaking of it as a "calm passion"? The following description may be




helpful here, although what I shall say about it is scarcely more than a redaction of his own statements about moral sentiments.

Let me put it this way. A sentiment is, so to say, a cognitive emotion or, alternatively, an emotional cognition. It is passional; it is ac- tive; it is also an action guide. But it is also cognitive. And the expres- sion of a sentiment is, or may be, true or false, or, better, probable or improbable. Hume tells us this explicitly, in the Treatise, in pages 581-83.

Let me now take the liberty of quoting him, from time to time, in the following pages in order to demonstrate my claim.

First of all, let us get the terms "approval" and "approbation" out of the way. Many emotivists, and especially C. L. Stevenson, have explicitly construed "approval" and its cognates as merely emotive terms. Thus, as we know, his description of the meaning of a value judgment goes something like this. When I say that X is good, I am saying something which, as he puts it, goes like this. "I approve of X; (kindly) do so also." Stevenson never doubts that the term "approve" is itself an emotive term. But this is plainly false. When one says, "I approve of X," one is not simply expressing, or venting, one's emotion or feeling toward it. In Stevenson's view, approving and wanting, desiring, or taking an interest in something, differ in meaning in no significant way whatever. Nor does he think anything more needs to be said about his view. But if I should say, "I approve of Thomas Jef- ferson," my words express a judgment. Such a statement is tanta- mount to saying, "I judge that Thomas Jefferson was a good man." Stevenson's position simply will not do. A judgment is a statement, whatever its subject, and it asserts something which is confirmable or disconfirmable in one way or another. So nothing more needs to be said about the terms "approval," "approbation," and their cognates which occur so frequently on Hume's pages in the Treatise and in the First, not to mention the Second Enquiry, which I shall not pause to examine here.

Let us return to what Hume has to say on pages 581-83 of the Treatise. In that work, he explicitly holds that moral approbation is a principle of judgment. Its role is not merely to modify other passions but to correct them. Why so? Well, consider the following statement: "I do not feel the same lively pleasure from the virtues of a person, who lived in Greece two thousand years ago, that I feel from the virtues of a familiar friend . . ." (Treatise, page 581). Again: "Yet I do not esteem the one more than the other. Nor does my approval of the behaviour of the one differ, in principle, from that of the other"




(ibid.). And again: "It would be impossible that we could ever con- verse together on any reasonable terms, were each of us to consider characters and persons, only as they appear to us from his peculiar point of view. In order, therefore, to prevent those continual contrac- tions, and arrive at a more stable judgment of things, we fix on some steady and general points of view; and always in our thoughts place ourselves in them, whatever may be our present situation" (Treatise, pages 581-83).

Thus, as Hume tells us, our particular moral sentiments vary a good deal, according to - our present situation or nearness or remoteness with respect to the individual whom we praise or blame as morally good or right or as morally bad or wrong.

The point may be extended without sweat. In regard to our judgments of beauty, whether in art or in nature, it is obvious that the same holds true. In fact, Hume explicitly tells us in "On the Standard of Taste," that what we now call aesthetic judgments are quite different from mere expressions of taste, which may well be mere expressions of emotion or feeling. He has an example which is worth recall- ing. As he says, in effect, I may prefer Ogalvie to Milton, but one does not on that account, unless one is mad, judge Ogalvie (whoever he was) to be a better, more admirable, poet than Milton. On the contrary, one judges the latter to be a greater poet than the former, whatever may be one's taste about the respective poems. Obviously, there is no disputing about tastes. But this is so only because taste, or expressions of taste, are largely noncognitive and nonjudgmental. But literary approbation is an entirely different matter. To announce one's literary approbation of a poem is to make a judgment, and a judgment, as we have seen, is cognitive. Here, we do well to remind ourselves of what Aristotle says about judgment. A judgment is, as Aristotle puts it, a statement that is "true for the most part." Literary, and indeed all aesthetic judgments although true for the most part, are clearly cognitive. But enough about Hume's account of these matters in the essay "On the Standard of Taste."

Our particular sentiments thus tend to vary according to our present situations. Nevertheless, we normally ignore them in our general statements, or judgments, and still apply the terms that express our liking or dislike, much as if we remained in one point of view (cf. Treatise, page 582). This happens, so he says, only through experience, which soon teaches us the same method of correcting our sentiments, or, rather, our language (cf. ibid.).

Such corrections would be unavailing, however, and hence




pointless, were the corrective method in question inert. For, it could then exert no influence upon our variable sentiments or the passions from which we derive them. As Hume argues in Book II of the Treatise, no passion can be modified save by another passion. Hence, if the attitudes expressed by the more general decisions to which he refers were wholly inactive, they could make no conceivable dif- ference to our conduct, moral or otherwise.

At this state, Hume now goes well beyond anything he has said earlier about the subject. In so doing, he provides an extremely in- teresting basis for my own view concerning his general notions of rational in other domains. Thus, it is worth quoting his own words again. As he says, "Such corrections are common with regard to all the senses; and indeed 'twere impossible we could ever make use of language or communicate our sentiments to one another, did we not correct the momentary appearances of things, and overlook our present situation" (ibid.). This is a remarkable passage. But I will fix, here, on one word only. That word is "communicate." The point, surely, is that Hume does regard expressions of sentiments as forms of communication. And it is doubtful whether it makes much sense to speak of emotive discourse as a form of communication. Then, in order to make sure that despite all early appearances of contradic- tion, or, rather, conflict, shall now be removed, he goes on to say that no matter how rarely we are able to bring ourselves to it, and no matter how unreadily our uncalm passions follow our judgments, the rules of morality represent a form of reason. And he goes on to say that this usage will be readily understood "if we consider what we formerly said concerning that reason which is able to oppose our passion; and which we have found to be nothing but a general calm determination of the passions, founded on some distant view or reflexion" (Treatise, page 583). This is the crucial passage; it goes far toward proving the case that in Hume's view virtually all judgments, whether general or particular, whether of principle or not, are expressions of sentiments of approval or disapproval.

I may seem to have taken a long time getting to the point. Hav- ing made it, however, my opinion is that Hume's conception of all forms of judgment is largely inconsistent with that of any form of emotivism whatever. Hume is not an emotivist, despite all his hem- ming and hawing, and despite the common impressions to the contrary, his entire theory of obligation, on all levels, is strongly an- tiemotivist. Moreover, despite all contrary appearances, his position is not, in Moore's sense, naturalistic. He is the philosopher of "senti-




ment." Herein lies his genius. For this is the word that provides the key which unlocks the door to all that is most original and most in- teresting in Hume's philosophy.

IV

It is the business of all philosophy, I believe, to love and to pursue wisdom. And wisdom largely consists in the formation of sentiments in precisely the way Hume describes them and forms them. Of course, no one can be wise if he merely forms them. For there has rarely been a wise man capable of discourse. Imagine a lover of wisdom indifferent to some concern, for the means to his own survival and those he loves Only saints, and few of us are saints, are indifferent to the world's goods. Hume was no saint and would have laughed had anyone called him one. Leslie Stephen called Mill "the saint of rationalism," but Stephen was a sentimentalist, and Mill would have been the last man to accept such a description of his work or his life. Thus, I am prepared to say that for Hume, sainthood is not a useful moral or religious category. Saints are religious neurotics. We are men! Our business is with life on this earth and with our conduct of life here.

Let us now conclude. The originality of Hume's theory of obligation is beyond question. It has taken us through an examination of the moral point of view, the political point of view, the religious point of view. It shows us, piece by piece, why such points of view, when taken as Frankena or Baier do in their writings, will not do. Indeed, it shows the so-called moral point of view that cannot be fully understood, even as an ideal philosophical experiment. That there are points of view, in any domain, cannot be doubted. But they are the points of view of individuals or communities. They evolve, or develop, historically. They differ widely from culture to culture and from civilization to civilization. There is no way of disputing this fact. Thus, there is no such thing as the obligatory view, and definitions of "obligation," as well as "moral" or "political" or "religious" "obligation," are illusory. This has been shown (not demonstrated) in the preceding pages. And, for the present, this is all that needs to be said on the subject.

HENRY DAVID AIKEN. BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY.



the originality of hume's theory of obligation

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