Hume argues against the seventeenth-century rationalists that reason is impotent to motivate action and to originate morality. Hume's arguments have standardly been considered the foundation for the Humean theory of motivation in contemporary philosophy. The Humean theory alleges that beliefs require independent desires to motivate action. Recently, however, new commentaries allege that Hume's argument concerning the inertness of reason has no bearing on whether beliefs can motivate. These commentaries maintain that for Hume, beliefs about future pleasurable and painful objects on (...) their own can produce the desires that move us to action. First, I show that this reading puts Hume at odds with Humeans, since the latter are committed, not only to the view that beliefs and desires are both necessary to action, but also to the view that beliefs do not produce desires. Second, I review textual, philosophical and historical grounds for my interpretation of Hume's argument for the inertness of reason. I argue that the new line on Hume, while consistent with a certain reading of the Treatise, is not supported by the Dissertation on the Passions and the second Enquiry, where Hume argues that all motivation has an origin in “taste”, which I take to be different from belief. Thus, Hume's arguments do support the contemporary Humean theory of motivation. (shrink)

On a familiar conception of the business of ethics, we are set to produce theories which codify our intuitive conception of values. And on this conception, the notion of a theory is that of an account which, in providing the epistemological backing to our intuitive evaluations, overrules our intuitive grasp of our moral lives. An intuitionist faces a dilemma: Without an epistemological backing intuitions of value seem unsuited to deliver moral truth, and yet if a theoretical backing is provided this (...) then threatens the autonomy of the intuitions which become little more than rules of thumb. In this paper, an alternative notion of theorizing in morals is outlined which, although providing the resources to criticize our intuitive grasp of values, does not provide an overruling theory. A critical theory of values is outlined which acts as a filter on those of our moral intuitions which produce conflict. The account is a dynamic notion of critique although, unlike, say, Habermas's, it does not depend on a conception of an end‐state to which the dynamic aims. (shrink)

A recent wave of scholarship has challenged the traditional way of understanding of self-command in Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments as ‘Stoic’ self-command. But the two most thorough alternative interpretations maintain a strong connection between self-command and rationalism, and thus apparently stand opposed to Smith’s overt allegiance to sentimentalism. In this paper I argue that we can and should interpret self-command in the context of Smith’s larger sentimentalist framework, and that when we do, we can see that self-command is (...) ‘sentimentalized’. I offer an interpretation of Smithian self-command, arguing that self-command has its motivational basis in the natural desire for the pleasure of mutual sympathy; that self-command is guided by the sentimental standard of propriety; and that self-command works through the psychological mechanism of the ‘supposed’ impartial spectator. And I show that Smithian self-command is a home-grown, sentimentalist virtue and not an awkward rationalistic transplant. (shrink)