Enquiry Concerning Principles of Morals

Quick Facts

• Full title: An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
• Author: David Hume
• First published: 1751
• Kind of text: moral philosophy, written as Hume's shorter and clearer public version of the moral theory from A Treatise of Human Nature
• Main labels: Empiricism, moral sentimentalism, Scottish Enlightenment
• Famous ideas: moral sentiment, utility, sympathy, justice, artificial virtues, useful and agreeable character traits
• Best quick description: Hume argues that morality rests on human approval and disapproval, not on pure reason alone.

The Problem

Hume is asking a basic question: when we call someone honest, cruel, generous, fair, selfish, or corrupt, what are we actually responding to?

One answer says morality comes from pure reason. On that view, the mind discovers moral truths the way it might discover a geometry proof. Hume thinks that misses how moral judgment works. Reason can tell us facts: who did what, what the consequences were, whether someone broke a promise, whether a policy helped or harmed people. But after the facts are known, reason by itself does not produce the feeling of praise or blame.

For example, suppose a politician takes public money for private use. Reason can trace the transaction, read the law, and calculate the damage. But the moral force of the judgment comes when we feel disapproval toward dishonesty, abuse of trust, and harm to the public. Hume's point is not that facts do not matter. Facts matter a lot. His point is that facts need to touch human concern before they become moral approval or moral condemnation.

So the problem is double. Hume wants to reject cold rationalism, but he also does not want morality to collapse into "whatever I personally feel today." His answer is sentiment corrected by a wider social point of view. We judge character by asking whether traits are useful or agreeable to people, either to the person who has them or to others who live with their effects.

In One Minute

An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals is Hume's mature, polished ethics book. He thought it was among his best work. It takes the moral material from the Treatise and presents it in a cleaner, more public form.

The core claim is simple: morality is grounded in sentiment. A sentiment is a feeling of approval or disapproval. We call a trait virtuous when it produces approval in a spectator who is looking at the case fairly. We call a trait vicious when it produces disapproval.

This does not mean "morality is just random emotion." Hume thinks human beings share enough common nature to make moral life possible. We care about pain, happiness, trust, cooperation, friendship, safety, reputation, and social order. Because of sympathy, we can be affected by what happens to people beyond ourselves. Because of utility, we approve traits and rules that make life work better.

The book is especially famous for its treatment of justice. Hume says justice is not a natural feeling like kindness toward a child or gratitude toward a friend. Justice is an artificial virtue, meaning it depends on human conventions such as property, promises, contracts, courts, and stable rules. "Artificial" does not mean fake. It means socially built because creatures like us need rules to live together without constant conflict.

The Main Argument

Hume begins with ordinary moral experience. People across societies praise benevolence, fairness, honesty, courage, prudence, generosity, gratitude, and good manners. They blame cruelty, treachery, useless severity, cowardice, selfishness, and destructive pride. Hume asks what these approved traits have in common.

His answer is that virtue usually falls into two broad families. Some traits are useful. They help people live, cooperate, avoid harm, or reach good ends. Honesty is useful because trust makes ordinary life possible. Prudence is useful because it helps a person avoid needless ruin. Justice is useful because property, promises, and law create stable expectations.

Other traits are agreeable. They make life pleasant, admirable, or easier to share. Wit, cheerfulness, good manners, courage, and dignity may not always solve a practical problem, but they make a person pleasing to themselves or to others. Hume's rough formula is this: we approve qualities that are useful or agreeable to the person who has them or to other people.

Utility matters more than Hume's predecessors often admitted. If a practice does no good for anyone, Hume thinks it becomes hard to see why we should praise it. This is why he attacks what he calls "monkish virtues," such as extreme self-denial, useless mortification, or withdrawal from ordinary human life. He thinks these habits were praised by some religious traditions even though they do not make the person happier, kinder, more useful, or better company. Hume's reaction is basically: if it helps nobody and improves nothing, why call it virtue?

But Hume is not a crude "everything is selfish" thinker. He rejects the idea that all moral approval is secretly self-interest. You can admire a just judge in another country, praise a generous person from the past, or feel disgust at cruelty that never touches your life. That happens because humans have sympathy. We are not perfectly impartial saints, but we can imaginatively enter other people's situations enough to approve what helps them and condemn what hurts them.

This leads to Hume's account of moral judgment. When we judge well, we do not stay trapped in our private advantage. We take up a more general point of view. You may hate your enemy, but you can still admit that your enemy showed courage. You may benefit from a corrupt favor, but from a public point of view you can see why corruption is bad. Moral language works because people can step back from narrow personal interest and talk from a shared human standpoint.

Justice is the hardest case and one of the most important parts of the book. Hume asks us to imagine two extremes. If the world had unlimited abundance, property rules would be pointless. If everyone could grab whatever they needed without depriving anyone else, nobody would need strict rules of mine and yours. On the other extreme, if people were perfectly generous, property rules would also matter less. But real humans live between those extremes. Resources are limited, people are partially selfish, and cooperation is fragile. So we create conventions of property, promise-keeping, law, and government.

That is why justice is an artificial virtue. It arises from the human need for stable social rules. A single just act may not always maximize immediate happiness. Returning a weapon to a dangerous owner might be bad in one case. But the general practice of stable property, promise, and law is useful enough that we learn to approve justice as a virtue.

Key Ideas With Examples

• Moral sentiment: a feeling of approval or disapproval toward a character trait or action. If you hear that someone lied to exploit a grieving family, you do not merely register a fact. You feel disapproval. That feeling is part of the moral judgment.

• Reason versus sentiment: reason discovers facts and relations; sentiment gives moral praise or blame. Reason can show that a company dumped poison into a river and that people got sick. Sentiment is what makes that fact feel blameworthy instead of morally neutral data.

• Utility: usefulness for human life. A rule, trait, or institution has utility when it supports safety, cooperation, happiness, trust, or social order. Keeping promises has utility because people can plan together without constantly guarding against betrayal.

• Sympathy: the human ability to be affected by another person's happiness or suffering. Hume does not mean only pity. He means a broader fellow-feeling. If a stranger is cheated, you can feel anger on their behalf even if you lost nothing.

• General point of view: a steadier standpoint that corrects private bias. If your friend behaves badly, your private loyalty may excuse it. The general point of view asks how the conduct looks when judged as a human case, not just as your friend's case.

• Virtue: a stable quality of character that people approve. Courage, honesty, generosity, prudence, and fairness are virtues because they are useful or agreeable in human life. A virtue is not just one lucky action; it is a trait people can rely on.

• Vice: a stable quality of character that people disapprove. Cruelty, treachery, useless arrogance, and destructive selfishness are vices because they harm people, make social life worse, or make the person worse company.

• Artificial virtue: a virtue that depends on human conventions. Justice is Hume's main example. Property rights, contracts, courts, inheritance rules, and promises do not grow on trees. People build these practices because society needs them.

• Justice: for Hume, justice mainly means stable rules around property, promises, and public order. If everyone steals whenever convenient, trust dies. Justice is praised because the whole system makes peaceful cooperation possible.

• Moral anti-rationalism: Hume's rejection of the view that reason alone creates moral distinctions. He is not anti-reason. He is saying reason needs human concern. Without some feeling of approval, disapproval, care, or aversion, facts do not move us.

Why It Matters

This book matters because it gives one of the clearest statements of moral sentimentalism: the view that moral life depends on feeling, sympathy, and human nature, not just abstract proof.

It also helps explain why moral debate is not only about rules. People argue about what helps, what harms, what builds trust, what corrupts character, what makes social life possible, and what kind of person is admirable. Hume gives a language for that without grounding morality in theology or pure rational deduction.

It is also an important bridge toward Utilitarianism, though Hume is not simply a utilitarian in the later Benthamite sense. He does not give a strict calculator for adding up pleasure and pain. But his focus on utility, social usefulness, happiness, and public benefit becomes part of the background for Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill.

The book is also useful because it makes justice feel less mysterious. Justice is not magic dust sprinkled on property rules. It is a human solution to a human problem: limited resources, partial selfishness, and the need for stable cooperation.

Proponents, Critics, and Opponents

Francis Hutcheson is an important background figure. Hutcheson defended a moral-sense tradition, and Hume develops that kind of approach in a more naturalistic and psychologically detailed way.

Thomas Hobbes is a useful contrast. Hobbes often explains morality and political order through fear, self-preservation, and covenant. Hume thinks self-interest matters, but he rejects the idea that moral approval is only disguised selfishness.

Adam Smith is the closest neighbor. Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments also explains morality through sympathy and spectatorship. Smith gives a richer account of the impartial spectator; Hume puts heavier emphasis on utility and the approval of useful or agreeable traits.

Immanuel Kant is the major opponent on the reason side. Kant thinks morality must be grounded in rational duty, not in feeling, usefulness, or social approval. From a Kantian angle, Hume makes morality too dependent on human psychology.

Later Utilitarianism builds on Hume's stress on usefulness and human happiness. Bentham turns utility into a more explicit reform principle. Mill keeps utility but adds a more developed account of higher pleasures, liberty, and moral education.

Critics of Hume worry that sentiment may be too soft a foundation. What if people feel approval for cruel customs? What if a society's shared point of view is racist, sexist, or class-bound? Hume's best reply is that moral judgment should be corrected by wider sympathy, better information, and attention to real human effects. But the worry remains: feeling needs education, or it can approve ugly shit.

Related Pages

• David Hume
• A Treatise of Human Nature
• An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
• The Theory of Moral Sentiments
• Francis Hutcheson
• Thomas Hobbes
• Adam Smith
• Immanuel Kant
• Jeremy Bentham
• John Stuart Mill
• Utilitarianism
• Empiricism
• Enlightenment