A Short History of Modern Philosophy: From Descartes to Wittgenstein, Second Edition (18 page)

Shaftesbury had argued that common morality can already be generated by cool self-love, without reference to any other principle. His was the Aristotelian view that, properly considered, reflection on the nature of human fulfilment or happiness will lead us to see that a certain long-term disposition—that of virtue—is uniquely suited to produce it. Butler was not persuaded by Shaftesbury’s conclusion, but accepted many of his premises. In particular, he accepted that the motivation of a rational being must be understood in terms of a principle of self-knowledge, which takes long-term satisfaction and fulfilment into account and which may overrule the urgings of more specific appetites or desires. Moreover he accepted the view that the principal objects of this ‘second-order’ principle are not particular or momentary things, but rather general dispositions of character. And he further agreed that, among these dispositions, benevolence is one of the most, perhaps the single most, important. Hence it is true that cool self-love already points us in the direction of a virtuous life. However, Butler thought that the picture of rational motivation was still too simple. There is a further principle which must be mentioned if rational agency is to be intelligible—the principle of conscience:

the very constitution of our nature requires, that we bring our whole conduct before this superior faculty; wait its determination; enforce upon ourselves its authority, and make it the business of our lives, as it is absolutely the whole business of a moral agent, to conform ourselves to it.

Butler’s description of conscience is extremely interesting, partly because it foreshadows, and to some extent gives content to, Kant’s later reflections on the nature of practical reason. It also shows a concern to avoid the usual simplifications of empiricist thought, while remaining free of the contentious claims made in opposition to them on behalf of the powers of reason. As Butler put it, inspired by a remark of St Paul’s, man is by his very nature a law to himself. What deters us from evil when we act out of conscience is not the fear of punishment, nor even the natural dispositions which self-love would foster, but something altogether higher, which is the obnoxiousness to us of violating a known obligation. Conscience is steady, immovable, and makes itself felt even in the act of disobedience. It is therefore both the maker of law and the motive to obedience; it has (and here Butler borrows from political thought an old Ciceronian distinction) both power and authority, telling us what is good while at the same time motivating us towards the good. Conscience, unlike selflove, is a motive which can overcome passion. While cool self-love can tell us, in reflection, that we should indeed cultivate the disposition of temperance, say, and while this may be of the utmost consequence in persuading us to amend our lives accordingly, self-love is of little use in the actual moment of passion, and is as soon overcome by lust, gluttony or transient passion, as that passion itself might be overcome by rival affections or desires. Conscience, on the other hand, continues quietly to command us even in the frenzy of desire, and can therefore prevent the
subjection
of human nature to the appetites which conflict with it.

Butler’s description of conscience is subtle and distinctive. He remained in part a naturalist, committed to the view that all of ethics, even that part which was the responsibility of conscience alone, was but an exploration of human nature, and of what is necessary for that nature to act in harmony with itself. He was able, therefore, to incorporate into his outlook many of the ancient and interestingly argued doctrines that had appealed to Shaftesbury. For example, he held that

there is no such thing as love of injustice, oppression, treachery, ingratitude; but only eager desires after such and such external goods; which, according to a very ancient observation, the most abandoned would choose to obtain by innocent means, if they were as easy, and as effectual to their end.

Indeed, it often seems as though the claims that Butler makes for conscience are nothing but descriptive; they derive their authority from that same dispassionate argument about the true nature of rational agency that had surprised and delighted the Greeks with its results—in particular with the result that vice is self-defeating and virtue its own reward. In fact, however, Butler’s invocation of this new principle of authority in the moral life represents a departure from naturalism. Even if we attribute to conscience a motivating power adequate to ensure its obedience, we need also to show that what it commands is in fact justifiable. This would seem to raise precisely those epistemological questions which Hutcheson felt he could answer, and which Hume later argued that he could not.

The naturalist’s investigation of the moral life was continued by Adam Smith, in an interesting discussion of the moral sentiments. It led eventually to utilitarianism, and to the study of political economy as a natural science, so providing historical foundations to some of the principal traditions of nineteenth-century thought. At the same time— and again under the original influence of Shaftesbury—empiricist philosophers began to interest themselves in the subject of aesthetics. The Lockean theory of the association of ideas seemed to give a new basis to the view that beauty is not a subjective sentiment, but something that precipitates connections of thought which reach into our innermost feelings. Beauty must therefore have a significance which is greater than that of any appetite or sensual delight. The empiricist philosophers began to be aware of the great lacuna left in their philosophy of mind by the failure to speak of beauty, and by their fumbling efforts towards an account that would distinguish true taste from mere sensory preference. This awareness, expressed in the works of Lord Kames
(Elements of Criticism,
1763), Archibald Alison and Edmund Burke
(On the Sublime and the Beautiful,
1750), was to provide the concepts from which Kant invented anew the philosophical discipline of aesthetics.

The Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) was the most important and influential of the eighteenth-century British empiricists. Of good family and comfortable means, he was for some time engaged in the diplomatic profession and held the office of secretary to the embassy in Paris. His philosophical masterpiece—the
Treatise of Human Nature
—was published in 1739, when Hume was 28, and remained unsurpassed by his later writings. However, the book fell, in Hume’s words, ‘dead-born from the press’—the first of many disappointments.

On returning from his post in France, Hume resumed his literary career in the atmosphere of intellectual activity which Scotland then enjoyed, writing, besides his
Enquiries
(1748-1751) (a shorter and modified version of the
Treatise
), many literary, political and philosophical essays. He also composed a
History of Great Britain
(1752-1777), remarkable for its elegance, scholarship and human insight. A sceptic and freethinker in his intellectual outlook, Hume was nevertheless a staunch and articulate Tory, a man seemingly at peace with the world, who conveyed to his contemporaries a love of life and serenity of outlook which attracted to him the affection and esteem of almost everyone whom he encountered.

Scepticism and naturalism

There are two ways of reading Hume. The first is as a sceptic who defends, from empiricist premises, the view that the standard claims to knowledge are untenable. The second is as the proponent of a ‘natural philosophy’ of man, who begins from empirical observations about the human mind and concludes that the mind has been wrongly construed by the metaphysicians. The two readings are not incompatible, although the second has been emphasised in recent commentaries, partly because it parallels recent developments in philosophy.

Hume’s ‘naturalism’ is Newtonian: he tries to construct a science of the mind while making no unfounded assumptions and relying only on observation. If he rejects the theories of the metaphysicians, he implies, it is because he has been able to discover no grounds for affirming them. At the same time, he affects not to be a radical sceptic, since radical scepticism is against nature. He is a sceptic only in the moderate sense once defended in Plato’s Academy—seeking to curb the pretensions of human reason and to remind us of our true nature as passionate and custom-governed beings. When faced with a sceptical conclusion, therefore, Hume often appears to retreat from it, informing his reader that he has merely been discussing the operations of the human mind and not criticising the beliefs that spontaneously arise in us. However, his ironical style, and the barely discernible twinkle in his eye as he proposes his own ‘sceptical solutions’, make it difficult to be sure of his intention.

Perhaps the best way of reconciling the two Humes is to take seriously his repeated emphasis on custom and instinct as guides to human life. Those who take reason as their master, he seems to suggest, will always be led into confusion; and from this confusion scepticism will spring. Having relied upon reason to guarantee our beliefs, we are thrown into doubt and consternation when reason proves its incapacity. If we rely on custom, however, we are led by our own nature to the beliefs by which our lives are conducted, and will never find a better guide, since custom is a summary of genuine knowledge—knowledge established by experience.

Nevertheless, even if that irenic Hume sometimes speaks from his pages, he made no impression on Hume’s contemporaries, who heard only the radical assailant of received ideas. To his early readers, Hume seemed to be arguing against the existence of God and the truth of religion; indeed, he seemed to reject the very concepts of God and the soul, along with such concepts as substance upon which the rationalist world-view had been constructed. He seemed to be sceptical about the existence of material objects, about the objectivity of moral beliefs and even about the fundamental concepts of science, including—most famously—that of causation.

Meaning and ideas

Hume’s philosophy depends, like those of Locke and Berkeley, on a theory of meaning, and the theory is substantially the same, designed to articulate the fundamental empiricist postulate that there can be no concept except where there is experience. Hence there can be neither grounds for believing in, nor adequate means for expressing, the metaphysical theories of rationalist philosophy. Berkeley had taken Locke’s theory of knowledge to its logical conclusion (as he saw it), and abolished therewith the belief in a material world, elevating the subject and his own mental states into the premise and the conclusion of his philosophy. Hume took Locke’s theory of meaning as his point of departure, and drew conclusions which were at once more radical and more disturbing than those of Berkeley.

As already noted, Hume presented his philosophy as though it began from a natural science of the human mind, being the results of observations which could be confirmed by his readers through direct introspection. He distinguished among the contents of the mind ‘impressions’ and ‘ideas’. The first correspond to what we should call sensations and perceptions, the second to what we should call concepts, or ‘meanings’. When I perceive a horse, I have a particular impression (in this case a visual impression); when I think of a horse, I summon up an idea: this idea belongs to a class which together constitute the meaning (for me) of the word ‘horse’.

What is the difference between impressions and ideas? For Hume it lies in their respective ‘force’ or ‘liveliness’. The impression is received through the senses, and is vivid and forceful during the moment of its reception. The idea is what remains thereafter, when liveliness and force have dwindled. However, Hume also describes ideas as ‘copies’, ‘representations’ and ‘images’ of impressions: they are ‘the faint images [of impressions] in thinking and reasoning’.

Hume follows Locke in distinguishing simple from complex ideas and makes the claim that ‘all our simple ideas in their first appearance are derived from simple impressions, which are correspondent to them, and which they exactly represent’. He seeks to prove this important claim by empirical investigation, though his arguments are far from scientific, and he even admits the counter-example of an idea that can be acquired
before
the corresponding impression (the ‘missing shade of blue’). This does not prevent him from taking the empiricist principle—
no impression, no idea
—as the starting point of his philosophy.

Complex ideas are built from simple ideas; hence all ideas can be traced to the impressions from which they derived. It follows that no term is meaningful (expresses an idea) unless there is an impression from which its meaning can be learned. The meaning of everything that can be said consists in its sensory or empirical content. Hume also endorses Berkeley’s attack on abstract ideas, arguing that a term acquires its generality not through being related to a special kind of ‘general’ idea, but rather through being related to a class of particular ideas, each being nothing but a faded sensory impression, having no real existence outside the mind of the thinker. It would now be natural to reinterpret Hume as saying, not that ideas necessarily originate in sensory impressions, but that their content must be given in terms of those impressions. But the philosophical significance of the doctrine in either case remains the same.

So far there is little difference between Hume and Locke, and, in following Berkeley’s method of pruning away Locke’s redundant assumptions, it would not be surprising if Hume were to arrive, like Berkeley, at a form of idealism. However, Hume’s theory of meaning leads him in quite a new direction. First, he divides all significant propositions into two kinds: empirical and logical. In the first case they derive what meaning they have from experience; in the second case they speak only of the relations between ideas. Hume explains the distinction thus:

All the objects of human reason or enquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit,
relations of ideas
and
matters of fact.
Of the first kind are the sciences of geometry, algebra, and arithmetic, and, in short, every affirmation which is either intuitively or demonstratively certain.. Propositions of this kind are discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is anywhere existent in the universe.. Matters of fact.are not ascertained in the same manner, nor is our evidence of their truth, however great, of a like nature. The contrary of every matter of fact is still possible, because it can never imply a contradiction.