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Hume's Noble Lie: An Account of His Artificial Virtues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Marcia Baron
Marcia Baron*
Affiliation:
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
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Extract

Hume scholars have been anxious to point out that when Hume calls Justice, chastity and so on artificial virtues, he is in no way denying that they are real virtues. I shall argue that they are mistaken, and that anyone who wants to understand Hume's account of Justice and his category of artificial virtues must take seriously his choice of the word ‘artifice,’ recognizing that it means not only ‘Skill in designing and employing expedients,’ but also ‘address, cunning, trickery.'

My suggestion will seem strange given Hume's own repeated plea that we not take the term ‘artifice’ too seriously. Yet while it is generally good policy to take people - at least philosophers - at their word, this is a Justified exception, Justified not only by Hume's known proclivities to irony and subtlety, but also by the implications of hearkening to his plea. To see the implications of not taking the terms ‘artificial’ and ‘artifice’ seriously, one can read either Duncan Forbes’ or Barry Stroud's criticisms of Hume's account of Justice.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , September 1982 , pp. 539 - 555
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1982

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References

1 See, for instance, A'rdal, Páll S. Passion and Value in Hume's TREATISE (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 1966) 162-3.Google Scholar

2 I quote from the Oxford English Dictionary.

3 Hume, David Treatise, ed. Selby-Bigge, 484, 526, 619-20;Google Scholar Enquiries, ed. Selby Bigge and Nidditch, 307. Abbreviations used in reference to Hume's works are as follows: T: Treatise, ed. Selby-Bigge E: Enquiries, ed. Selby-Bigge and Nidditch.

4 Forbes, Duncan Hume's Philosophical Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1975) 89;Google Scholar Stroud, Barry Hume (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1977)Google Scholar Ch. IX. See too Woozley's, A.D. charge of ‘fundamental incoherence’ in his ‘Hume on Justice,’ Philosophical Studies, 33 (1978) 87-8,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Christopher Cherry's conclusion in his ‘Nature, Artifice and Moral Approbation,’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 76 (1975-76) 265-82: ‘Our capacity to attribute a “moral beauty” to certain artificial practices must remain for Hume a complete mystery.'

5 As Eugene Sapadin explains in his ‘Hume's law, Hume's Way,’ G.P. Morice, ed. (David Hume: Bicentenary Papers, [Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 1977]), for Hume and other moral philosophers of his day, ‘obligation’ signified merely a motive. Hence Hume's distinction between a natural obligation and a moral one.

6 There is more to Justice than abstaining from the property of others, though Hume can't really be expected to have seen that.

7 It is curious that Hume rules them out on the grounds that no one of them invariably directs us to act Justly. Shouldn't the criterion be a weaker one, namely that there be no instance in which none of the three motives directs us to act Justly? This is not a serious objection, however, for it is easy to embellish the example about the secret loan to show that even this weaker condition is not satisfied.

8 See Lewis, David Convention (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1969) 90,Google Scholar and Botwinick, Aryeh ‘A Case for Hume's Nonutilitarianism,’ Journal for the History of Philosophy, 19 (1977) 423-35,Google Scholar especially p. 431.

9 This is not to deny, of course, that it frequently does explain our motivation, nor, more specifically, that a number of acts may have negative utility while forming a composite or ‘scheme’ which has large positive utility. See J.L., Mackie's discussion of this in Hume's Moral Theory (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1980) 91-3.Google Scholar

10 Rawls, John ‘Two Concepts of Rules,’ Philosophical Review, 64 (1955) 3–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 The passage on T500-501 supports my interpretation.

12 In addition to T570-573 and E206-208, 238-239, see Hume's letter of January 1743 to Hutcheson in which he stresses that an ‘artificial Horror’ is inspired in children against licentiousness (letter 19, Grieg edition). For an excellent discussion of Hume on chastity, see Baier, Annette ‘Good Men's Women: Hume on Chastity and Trust,’ Hume Studies, 5 (1979) 1–19.Google Scholar

13 David Falk has suggested this opposing interpretation to me.

14 See also E164.

15 Believing that for the sake of social stability, the people must be lied to, Hume surely would not have wished to expose the lie to the vast numbers who he expected - in vain - would read the Treatise.

16 An inconsistency might arise here if humility were a natural virtue, but humility, on Hume's view, is no more virtuous than pride (T596-600).

17 I am grateful to Annette Baier, Stephen Darwall, David Falk, Judith Lichtenberg, Greg Pence and Laurence Thomas for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper, and to participants in colloquia at Stanford University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and the 1981 meetings of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, to whom an earlier draft of this paper was read.