Journal of the History of Philosophy

How Does the Humean Sense of Duty Motivate? ELIZABETH S. RADCLIFFE 1. INTRODUCTION HUME'S MORAL THEORY casts human beings alternately in the role of moral agent and in the role of moral spectator.' On his view, certain natural traits, such as gratitude, benevolence, and the disposition to care for one's children, are virtues that motivate; what makes them virtues is that people as spectators feel approval (a kind of pleasure) toward these characteristics when they consider them without regard to how they affect their own interests. Opposite features of character--for example, ingratitude, malice, and the disposition to neglect one's children--are vices because they arouse disapproval (a kind of pain) in observers under the same circumstances. According to Hume, this spectator-driven "sense of morality" gives us our notions of virtue and vice and of moral obligation, 2 but since Hume emphasizes that "morality" is practiThis paper was presented to a joint meeting of the Hume Society and Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Societyat the Universityof Ottawa,July 1993. I am indebted to my commentator, Richard Dees, for his response on that occasion. I would also like to thank members of the Research Triangle Ethics Circle, Chapel Hill, N.C., particularly Simon Blackburn, Gerald Postema, Thomas Hill, Jr., and Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, for their discussion in March 1992 of many of the ideas in this paper. I am especially grateful to the last two persons and to Robert Audi, Michael Gill, and Carol White for discussing these issues with me individually; and to Annette Baier, Stephen DarwaU, Patricia Greenspan, Gerard Hughes, S.J., Michael Meyer, Rob Shaver, Stephen Sullivan, and particularly Nicholas Sturgeon for written comments. I also thank two referees for thisjournal for comments. Work on this paper was supported by a 1991-92 Paul LocatelliJunior Faculty Fellowshipfrom Santa Clara University. References to David Hume's texts in this paper are to A Treatiseof Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, 2nd ed., rev. by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978) and to An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge,3rd ed., rev. by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford University Press, 1975). References to the Treatise will be designated parenthetically by "T" and page number; references to the Enquiry parenthetically by "E" and page number. 9Although the vocabulary of obligationmay seem foreign to Humean virtue ethics, it is not at all foreign to Hume. He writes, for instance: "All morality depends upon our sentiments; and when any action, or quality of the mind, pleases us after a certainmanner, we say it is virtuous; and [383] 384 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY or PHILOSOPHY 34:3 JULY 1996 cal and action-guiding, it also apparently provides some impetus for us as agents to conform our behavior to our moral obligations. A truly virtuous person is one who naturally possesses the traits an unbiased spectator approves of and who is naturally motivated by those qualities, but, as less than fully virtuous agents, we are at least sometimes motivated by the '~udgment" (perhaps a feeling), acquired in our role as spectators, that certain motives are virtuous (and ought to be cultivated) and others vicious (and ought to be avoided). So, for example, I may be motivated to thank my parents for financial support for graduate school out of natural gratitude toward them, or I may be motivated, not because I appreciate their efforts, but because I realize that gratitude is a virtue (and ought to be cultivated). In the latter instance I am not grateful, but I am performing an action a grateful person would do. I do it out of my sense of morality or duty. The question this paper addresses is: How does Hume's psychology of action combine with his description of the moral sense to allow him to say that the moral sense motivates (gives one a motive to behave in a certain way)? This is a significant question because Hume seems to abrogate the most obvious answer to it, when in fact he needs this obvious answer for the sake of another crucial argument. More specifically, the straightforward answer to how the moral sense motivates is the following. The presence...