Hume's theory of reason and passion in moral action

David Hume's Concept Of Reason And Passion

We live in an age that places great primacy on reason. With the evolution of scientific and technological knowledge, most people in Western societies believe that the faculties of reason should determine and motivate people's actions. More than two hundred years ago, however, British philosopher David Hume posited that reason cannot be the major determinant of moral action. Instead, reason should only play a secondary role to another primary human faculty -- passion.

This paper argues the continuing relevance of Hume's thesis, that despite the current level of scientific knowledge, passion remains the strongest determinant of ethical and moral action. The first part of this paper evaluates Hume's conception of reason as an ability to calculate and to discern causation. The next part of the paper then looks at Hume's definition and categories of conception. In the final section, the paper compares Hume's writings on the secondary role of reason to Peter Singer's principle of utility, and shows passion continues to be the prime motivator human action.

Hume's concept of reason

Before Hume, philosophers have taken the Aristotelian view that human beings are rational animals, set apart from other animals by a capacity to reason. Hume believed that humans use rationality to distinguish between truth and falsehoods. People are also rational in the sense that they can discern relationships between empirical objects and facts.

In this sense, Hume is an empiricist who applies the principles of the scientific method to philosophical inquiry. Under Hume's definition, scientists use reason to determine the relationship between objects and phenomena in the real world, such as apples and the ground. Using this system, they can thus conclude the existence of gravity.

Hume rightly conceded that reason is an important human faculty that serves many needs. Reason allows people to recognize and classify objects and phenomena. Through reason, people can infer connections between different events and make conclusions. The task at hand is to take disparate pieces of information and to relate them together (Quinton 17-18).

Hume believed that reason is important because of other reasons. Only through reason, he writes, "can we go beyond the evidence of our memory and senses" (Hume, Enquiries, 586-587). He gave the example of a man finding a watch in the desert. Though the desert may seem desolate, the man may conclude from the watch that other people have been present in the desert at one time.

For Hume, reason is synonymous with causation, a system of factual inference which is "the universal link between the observed and the unobserved, between what we perceive to happen and what must have happened or must be going to happen" (Quinton 16).

Hume did not believe, however, that causal reason could be the sole basis for knowledge and understanding. After all, he believed that "reason does not...give us an assurance of the continued and distinct existence of body. That opinion must be entirely owing to the imagination" (Hume, Treatise, 129).

Despite the causal reasoning, it is difficult for people to form reliable conclusions from observed phenomena. Since most knowledge stems from recognizing causation, Hume thus points out the "utter precariousness of the human condition with regard to knowledge" (Strathern 25).

Much of human knowledge and take as absolute truths are based on reliable supposition.

Hume's continuing relevance

Nowadays, it is no longer fashionable to admit to being ruled by the passions. Most people now pride themselves on being reasonable human beings, who are able to make decisions and act according to ethical moral codes.

Despite the supposed primacy of reason, however, most people disagree with controversial philosopher Peter Singer's view of "preference utilitarianism," an extreme ethical value system that seeks to replace individual instinctive interests with a "reasoned" concept of the general good. Singer's value system states that one's own interests and ideas matter only when seen in their consequence to everyone else's interests (Singer 15). According to Singer's preference utilitarian, the obligation of an American couple to feed and nurture their own baby is equal to their obligation to feed and nurture a refugee Kurdish child. After all, both children have an interest in eating and growing up. The fact that parents intuitively love their own child more than a child they have never met does not figure into Singer's equation.

When applied further, Singer's "preference utilitarianism" even states that the interests of parents or society outweigh those of a As a general principle, Singer proposes that ones actions are ethical insofar as they are compatible with universal interests and produce the "best consequences" for the greatest number of people. According to Singer's preference utility, the rights of parents and collective society far outweigh that of newborns or intellectually disabled children, who are not "self-aware, have a sense of the future, or have the capacity to relate to others" (127). As such, Singer believes abortion and infanticide do not necessarily constitute unethical behavior.

For most people, the initial reaction to such pronouncements is strong and direct - anger and revulsion. Most people would also cite the need for other indirect passions, namely sympathy and compassion. Thus, even if a mentally disabled child constitutes a drain in social resources, few people would find it "reasonable" if a mother killed her severely retarded baby.

On the other hand, because of passions like benevolence and empathy, most people believe that such a severely disadvantaged child deserves financial and social assistance.

Insisting on the primacy of reason simply does not take into account the instincts, desires and passions of human beings. It is therefore unrealistic to believe that parents should put another child's interest above that of their own. In the same way, it is also unconscionable to sanction the infanticide of disabled babies because their existence is disadvantageous to their parents or to greater society.

The moral judgment to oppose Singer's pronouncements spring not from reason, but from the passions.

This does not mean, however, that reason does not play a strong role in human conduct. When Hume says that reason is a "slave" of passions, he simply means that it is through reason serves the passions. It is reason that enables us to "satisfy our desires...(and) recognize that which we then come to want" (Norton 129).

In the end, however, it is the passions that decide moral action, from issues ranging from infanticide to affirmative action, from gun control to abortion. Even when rationality and reason are taken to the extreme, the direct and indirect passions of love and sympathy continue to form the basis of moral behavior.