Nicholas L. Sturgeon is Professor of Philosophy, Sage School of Philosophy, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-3201, USA.
e-mail: nls6@cornell.edu
Earlier versions of some of the material included here—Section II and some of the points in Sections IV and VI—were presented to a conference on the Scottish Enlightenment at Cornell University's Society for the Humanities in 1976, and to the Philosophy Department at the University of Pittsburgh in 1980. A version much closer to this one was presented to a workshop on Hume's Ethics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1993. I am grateful for discussion on those occasions. I have also benefited from specific comments by Stephen Ferg, Richard W. Miller, and Kenneth Winkler, and from more extensive discussion of earlier drafts with John Carriero, Michael Condylis, Paul Hoffman, Terence Irwin, and Abe Roth. I have learned most from conversations with Elizabeth Radcliffe.
1. References in the text prefaced by "T" are to David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, 2nd ed., revised by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978). References prefaced by "EHU" are to An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, and those prefaced by "EPM" are to An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, as they appear in David Hume, Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, 3rd ed., revised by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975).
2. Barry Stroud, Hume (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977), 265 (n. 7 to p. 187).
3. A point first noted in recent discussion, so far as I am aware, by Geoffrey Hunter in "Hume on Is and Ought," Philosophy 37 (1962), repr. in The Is-Ought Question, ed. W. D. Hudson (London: St. Martin's, 1969), 59-63.
4. As pointed out by A. C. MacIntyre, "Hume on 'Is' and Ought'," The Philosophical Review 68 (1959), repr. in Hudson, 42-3; by Hunter, 60-1; and more recently by Annette Baier, A Progress of Sentiments (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 176-7.
5. As Jonathan Harrison notes in Hume's Moral Epistemology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 69-70.
6. In section 1 (EPM 169-75) and Appendix 1 (EPM 285-94), especially the latter, of the Enquiry concerning Morals.
7. E.g., T 296, 300-1, 475-6, 546-7, 574-5, 614; EPM 289; and see also, in Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. T. H. Green and T. H. Grose, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1889), 2: 173, the note concerning the wording of section 1 of the Enquiry concerning Morals in editions G through N. On whose feelings: In the matter-of-fact paragraph and in the text at T 546-7 they appear simply to be the assessor's current feelings, whatever her circumstances. But other passages (T 372, 472, 536, 581-5, 593; and see 547n) offer grounds for discounting some actual feelings as a ground for evaluation: that one lacks the appropriate (and equal) "distance" from the objects judged, that one is influenced by "comparison," that one's imagination is not influenced by the right "general rules." And at T 581-5 and 603 (and at EPM 227-8) Hume is explicit that the relevant feelings need not even be actual: they are the ones one would have under conditions idealized by the removal of these distortions. In the Enquiry the relevant sentiments are those of "a spectator" (EPM 289) or of the generality of mankind (in editions G through N of section 1). I discuss the importance of these differences in Section III. On which feelings: In the matter-of-fact paragraph it is disapprobation or blame (for vice; and so, surely, approbation, for virtue) that matter. Hume more often says, however, simply that the relevant feelings are a particular kind of pleasure and pain (T 470-3, 575-6). I return to issues about moral feelings in Section VI.
8. For noncognitivist suggestions, see for example A. G. N. Flew, "On the Interpretation of Hume," Philosophy 38 (1963), repr. in Hudson, 68-9; W. D. Hudson, "Hume on Is and...