Abstract

Hume consistently treats all of the passions, emotions, and feelings, so called, as sentiments in the tradition of Shaftesbury. Further, for Hume, sentiment is the epistemic basis of a disciplined form of thinking, and, as such, it implies both a moral and an aesthetic epistemology (though ‘aesthetic’ is anachronistic when applied to Hume). When sentiment is understood in this way, it becomes the primary evidence for knowledge. Properly disciplined, sentiment can play the role that clear and distinct ideas played for Descartes and Locke, and that internal sense played for Hutcheson. Hume thinks that sentiment allows one to escape the contradictions and skepticism that destroy other empiricist systems. The question discussed in this article, therefore, is how Hume’s use of sentiment legitimizes it as the leading form of judgment, and how that judgment is essentially aesthetic as well as moral.