Mahkamah Konstitusi

Mahkamah Konstitusi adalah salah satu kekuasaan kehakiman di Indonesia. Sesuai dengan UUD 1945 (Perubahan Ketiga), kekuasaan kehakiman di Indonesia dilakukan oleh Mahkamah Agung dan Mahkamah Konstitusi.

Kewajiban dan wewenang

Menurut Undang-Undang Dasar 1945, kewajiban dan Wewenang Mahkamah Konstitusi adalah:

* Berwenang mengadili pada tingkat pertama dan terakhir yang putusannya bersifat final untuk menguji Undang-Undang terhadap Undang-Undang Dasar, memutus sengketa kewenangan lembaga negara yang kewenangannya diberikan oleh UUD 1945, memutus pembubaran partai politik, dan memutus perselisihan tentang hasil Pemilihan Umum
* Wajib memberi putusan atas pendapat Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat mengenai dugaan pelanggaran oleh Presiden dan/atau Wakil Presiden menurut UUD 1945.

Ketua Mahkamah Konstitusi

Ketua Mahkamah Konstitusi dipilih dari dan oleh Hakim Konstitusi untuk masa jabatan 3 tahun. Saat ini Ketua Mahkamah Konstitusi dijabat oleh Prof. Dr. Jimly Asshiddiqie, S.H, pada masa bakti 2006-2009 (masa jabatan kedua kalinya), disumpah pada tanggal 22 Agustus 2006.

Hakim Konstitusi

Mahkamah Konstitusi mempunyai 9 Hakim Konstitusi yang ditetapkan oleh Presiden. Hakim Konstitusi diajukan masing-masing 3 orang oleh Mahkamah Agung, 3 orang oleh Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat, dan 3 orang oleh Presiden. Masa jabatan Hakim Konstitusi adalah 5 tahun, dan dapat dipilih kembali untuk 1 kali masa jabatan berikutnya.

Hakim Konstitusi Periode 2003-2008 adalah:

1. Jimly Asshiddiqie
2. Mohammad Laica Marzuki
3. Abdul Mukthie Fadjar
4. Achmad Roestandi
5. H. A. S. Natabaya
6. Harjono
7. I Dewa Gede Palguna
8. Maruarar Siahaan
9. Soedarsono

Sejarah

Sejarah berdirinya lembaga Mahkamah Konstitusi diawali dengan Perubahan Ketiga UUD 1945 dalam Pasal 24 ayat (2), Pasal 24C, dan Pasal 7B yang disahkan pada 9 November 2001. Setelah disahkannya Perubahan Ketiga UUD 1945, maka dalam rangka menunggu pembentukan Mahkamah Konstitusi, MPR menetapkan Mahkamah Agung menjalankan fungsi MK untuk sementara sebagaimana diatur dalam Pasal III Aturan Peralihan UUD 1945 hasil Perubahan Keempat.

DPR dan Pemerintah kemudian membuat Rancangan Undang-Undang tentang Mahkamah Konstitusi. Setelah melalui pembahasan mendalam, DPR dan Pemerintah menyetujui secara bersama Undang-Undang Nomor 24 Tahun 2003 tentang Mahkamah Konstitusi pada 13 Agustus 2003 dan disahkan oleh Presiden pada hari itu. Dua hari kemudian, pada tanggal 15 Agustus 2003, Presiden mengambil sumpah jabatan para hakim konstitusi di Istana Negara pada tanggal 16 Agustus 2003.

Ketua Mahkamah Konstitusi RI yang pertama adalah Prof. Dr. Jimly Asshiddiqie SH. Guru besar hukum tata negara Universitas Indonesia kelahiran 17 April 1956 ini terpilih pada rapat internal antar anggota hakim Mahkamah Konstitusi tanggal 19 Agustus 2003.

Pengadilan Militer Utama

Pengadilan Militer Utama merupakan badan pelaksana kekuasaan peradilan di bawah Mahkamah Agung di lingkungan militer yang bertugas untuk memeriksa dan memutus pada tingkat banding perkara pidana dan sengketa Tata Usaha Angkatan Bersenjata yang telah diputus pada tingkat pertama oleh Pengadilan Militer Tinggi yang dimintakan banding.

Selain itu, Pengadilan Militer Utama juga dapat memutus pada tingkat pertama dan terakhir semua sengketa tentang wewenang mengadili antar Pengadilan Militer yang berkedudukan di daerah hukum Pengadilan Militer Tinggi yang berlainan, antar Pengadilan Militer Tinggi, dan antara Pengadilan Militer Tinggi dengan Pengadilan Militer.

Kedudukan

Pengadilan Militer Utama berada di ibu kota negara yang daerah hukumnya meliputi seluruh wilayah negara Republik Indonesia. Pengadilan Militer Utama melakukan pengawasan terhadap penyelenggaraan peradilan di semua lingkungan Pengadilan Militer, Pengadilan Militer Tinggi, dan Pengadilan Militer Pertempuran di daerah hukumnya masing-masing.

Susunan Persidangan

Dalam persidangannya, Pengadilan Militer Utama dipimpin 1 orang Hakim Ketua dengan pangkat minimal Brigadir Jenderal atau Laksamana Pertama atau Marsekal Pertama, kemudian 2 orang Hakim Anggota dengan pangkat paling rendah adalah Kolonel yang dibantu 1 orang Panitera (minimal berpangkat Mayor dan maksimal Kolonel).

Pengadilan Militer Tinggi

Pengadilan Militer Tinggi merupakan badan pelaksana kekuasaan peradilan di bawah Mahkamah Agung di lingkungan militer yang bertugas untuk memeriksa dan memutus pada tingkat pertama perkara pidana yang terdakwanya adalah prajurit yang berpangkat Mayor ke atas.

Selain itu, Pengadilan Militer Tinggi juga memeriksa dan memutus pada tingkat banding perkara pidana yang telah diputus oleh Pengadilan Militer dalam daerah hukumnya yang dimintakan banding.

Pengadilan Militer Tinggi juga dapat memutuskan pada tingkat pertama dan terakhir sengketa kewenangan mengadili antara Pengadilan Militer dalam daerah hukumnya.

Visum et repertum

Visum et repertum disingkat VeR adalah keterangan tertulis yang dibuat oleh dokter atas permintaan penyidik yang berwenang mengenai hasil pemeriksaan medik terhadap manusia, baik hidup atau mati ataupun bagian atau diduga bagian tubuh manusia, berdasarkan keilmuannya dan di bawah sumpah, untuk kepentingan peradilan.

Jenis Visum et repertum

Jenis VeR pada umumnya adalah:

* VeR perlukaan (termasuk keracunan)
* VeR kejahatan susila
* VeR jenazah
* VeR psikiatrik

[sunting] Lima bagian tetap VeR

Ada lima bagian tetap dalam laporan Visum et repertum, yaitu:

* Pro Justisia. Kata ini diletakkan di bagian atas untuk menjelaskan bahwa visum et repertum dibuat untuk tujuan peradilan. VeR tidak memerlukan materai untuk dapat dijadikan sebagai alat bukti di depan sidang pengadilan yang mempunyai kekuatan hukum.
* Pendahuluan. Kata pendahuluan sendiri tidak ditulis dalam VeR, melainkan langsung dituliskan berupa kalimat-kalimat di bawah judul. Bagian ini menerangkan penyidik pemintanya berikut nomor dan tanggal, surat permintaannya, tempat dan waktu pemeriksaan, serta identitas korban yang diperiksa.
* Pemberitaan. Bagian ini berjudul "Hasil Pemeriksaan", berisi semua keterangan pemeriksaan. Temuan hasil pemeriksaan medik bersifat rahasia dan yang tidak berhubungan dengan perkaranya tidak dituangkan dalam bagian pemberitaan dan dianggap tetap sebagai [[rahasia kedokteran].
* Kesimpulan. Bagian ini berjudul "kesimpulan" dan berisi pendapat dokter terhadap hasil pemeriksaan.
* Penutup. Bagian ini tidak berjudul dan berisikan kalimat baku "Demikianlah visum et repertum ini saya buat dengan sesungguhnya berdasarkan keilmuan saya dan dengan mengingat sumpah sesuai dengan kitab undang-undang hukum acara pidana/KUHAP".

Dasar hukum

Dalam KUHAP pasal 186 dan 187.

* Pasal 186: Keterangan ahli adalah apa yang seorang ahli nyatakan di sidang pengadilan.
* Pasal 187(c): Surat keterangan dari seorang ahli yang dimuat pendapat berdasarkan keahliannya mengenai sesuatu hal atau sesuatu keadaan yang diminta secara resmi daripadanya.

Kedua pasal tersebut termasuk dalam alat bukti yang sah sesuai dengan ketentuan dalam KUHAP.

Pengadilan Tata Usaha Negara

Pengadilan Tata Usaha Negara (biasa disingkat: PTUN) merupakan sebuah lembaga peradilan di lingkungan Peradilan Tata Usaha Negara yang berkedudukan di ibu kota kabupaten atau kota. Sebagai Pengadilan Tingkat Pertama, Pengadilan Tata Usaha Negara berfungsi untuk memeriksa, memutus, dan menyelesaikan sengketa Tata Usaha Negara.

Pengadilan Tata Usaha Negara dibentuk melalui Keputusan Presiden dengan daerah hukum meliputi wilayah Kota atau Kabupaten.

Susunan Pengadilan Tata Usaha Negara terdiri dari Pimpinan (Ketua PTUN dan Wakil Ketua PTUN), Hakim Anggota, Panitera, dan Sekretaris

Pengadilan Tinggi Tata Usaha Negara

Pengadilan Tinggi Tata Usaha Negara (biasa disingkat: PTTUN) merupakan sebuah lembaga peradilan di lingkungan Peradilan Tata Usaha Negara yang berkedudukan di ibu kota Provinsi. Sebagai Pengadilan Tingkat Banding, Pengadilan Tinggi Tata Usaha Negara memiliki tugas dan wewenang untuk memeriksa dan memutus sengketa Tata Usaha Negara di tingkat banding.

Selain itu, Pengadilan Tinggi Tata Usaha Negara juga bertugas dan berwenang untuk memeriksa dan memutus di tingkat pertama dan terakhir sengketa kewenangan mengadili antara Pengadilan Tata Usaha Negara di dalam daerah hukumnya.

Pengadilan Tinggi Tata Usaha Negara dibentuk melalui Undang-Undang dengan daerah hukum meliputi wilayah Provinsi. Susunan Pengadilan Tinggi Tata Usaha Negara terdiri dari Pimpinan (Ketua PTTUN dan Wakil Ketua PTTUN), Hakim Anggota, Panitera, dan Sekretaris

Pengadilan Agama

Pengadilan Agama (biasa disingkat: PA) merupakan sebuah lembaga peradilan di lingkungan Peradilan Agama yang berkedudukan di ibu kota kabupaten atau kota.

Sebagai Pengadilan Tingkat Pertama, Pengadilan Agama memiliki tugas dan wewenang untuk memeriksa, memutus, dan menyelesaikan perkara-perkara antara orang-orang yang beragama Islam di bidang:

* perkawinan
* warisan, wasiat, dan hibah, yang dilakukan berdasarkan hukum Islam
* wakaf dan shadaqah
* ekonomi syari'ah

Pengadilan Agama dibentuk melalui Undang-Undang dengan daerah hukum meliputi wilayah Kota atau Kabupaten. Susunan Pengadilan Agama terdiri dari Pimpinan (Ketua PA dan Wakil Ketua PA), Hakim Anggota, Panitera, Sekretaris, dan Juru Sita.

Pengadilan Tinggi Agama

Pengadilan Tinggi Agama merupakan sebuah lembaga peradilan di lingkungan Peradilan Agama yang berkedudukan di ibu kota Provinsi. Sebagai Pengadilan Tingkat Banding, Pengadilan Tinggi Agama memiliki tugas dan wewenang untuk mengadili perkara yang menjadi kewenangan Pengadilan Agama dalam tingkat banding.

Selain itu, Pengadilan Tinggi Agama juga bertugas dan berwenang untuk mengadili di tingkat pertama dan terakhir sengketa kewenangan mengadili antar Pengadilan Agama di daerah hukumnya.

Pengadilan Tinggi Agama dibentuk melalui Undang-Undang dengan daerah hukum meliputi wilayah Provinsi. Susunan Pengadilan Tinggi Agama terdiri dari Pimpinan (Ketua dan Wakil Ketua), Hakim Anggota, Panitera, dan Sekretaris

Pengadilan Tinggi

Pengadilan Tinggi merupakan sebuah lembaga peradilan di lingkungan Peradilan Umum yang berkedudukan di ibu kota Provinsi sebagai Pengadilan Tingkat Banding terhadap perkara-perkara yang diputus oleh Pengadilan Negeri.

Pengadilan Tinggi juga merupakan Pengadilan tingkat pertama dan terakhir mengenai sengketa kewenangan mengadili antar Pengadilan Negeri di daerah hukumnya.

Susunan Pengadilan Tinggi dibentuk berdasarkan Undang-Undang dengan daerah hukum meliputi wilayah Provinsi. Pengadilan Tinggi terdiri atas Pimpinan (seorang Ketua PT dan seorang Wakil Ketua PT), Hakim Anggota, Panitera, dan Sekretaris.

Pengadilan Negeri

Pengadilan Negeri (biasa disingkat: PN) merupakan sebuah lembaga peradilan di lingkungan Peradilan Umum yang berkedudukan di ibu kota kabupaten atau kota. Sebagai Pengadilan Tingkat Pertama, Pengadilan Negeri berfungsi untuk memeriksa, memutus, dan menyelesaikan perkara pidana dan perdata bagi rakyat pencari keadilan pada umumnya.

Daerah hukum Pengadilan Negeri meliputi wilayah Kota atau Kabupaten.

Susunan Pengadilan Negeri terdiri dari Pimpinan (Ketua PN dan Wakil Ketua PN), Hakim Anggota, Panitera, Sekretaris, dan Jurusita.


Pengadilan Negeri di masa kolonial Hindia Belanda disebut landraad.

Kekuasaan Kehakiman di Indonesia

Kekuasaan Kehakiman, dalam konteks negara Republik Indonesia, adalah kekuasaan negara yang merdeka untuk menyelenggarakan peradilan guna menegakkan hukum dan keadilan berdasarkan Pancasila, demi terselenggaranya Negara Hukum Republik Indonesia.

Perubahan (Amandemen) Undang-Undang Dasar 1945 telah membawa perubahan dalam kehidupan ketatanegaraan dalam pelaksanaan kekuasaan kehakiman. Berdasarkan perubahan tersebut ditegaskan bahwa kekuasaan kehakiman dilaksanakan oleh:

* Mahkamah Agung dan badan peradilan yang ada di bawahnya dalam lingkungan peradilan umum, lingkungan peradilan agama, lingkungan peradilan militer, dan lingkungan peradilan tata usaha negara.
* Mahkamah Konstitusi

Selain itu terdapat pula Peradilan Syariah Islam di Provinsi Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, yang merupakan pengadilan khusus dalam Lingkungan Peradilan Agama (sepanjang kewenangannya menyangkut kewenangan peradilan agama) dan Lingkungan Peradilan Umum (sepanjang kewenangannya menyangkut kewenangan peradilan umum).

Disamping perubahan mengenai penyelenggaraan kekuasaan kehakiman, UUD 1945 juga mengintroduksi suatu lembaga baru yang berkaitan dengan penyelenggaraan kekuasaan kehakiman yaitu Komisi Yudisial. Komisi Yudisial bersifat mandiri yang berwenang mengusulkan pengangkatan hakim agung dan mempunyai wewenang lain dalam rangka menjaga dan menegakkan kehormatan, keluhuran martabat serta perilaku hakim

Undang-Undang Nomor 4 Tahun 2004

Perubahan UUD 1945 yang membawa perubahan mendasar mengenai penyelengaraan kekuasaan kehakiman, membuat perlunya dilakukan perubahan secara komprehensif mengenai Undang-Undang Ketentuan-ketentuan Pokok Kekuasaan Kehakiman.

Undang-Undang Nomor 4 Tahun 2004 tentang Kekuasaan Kehakiman mengatur mengenai badan-badan peradilan penyelenggara kekuasaan kehakiman, asas-asas penyelengaraan kekuasaan kehakiman, jaminan kedudukan dan perlakuan yang sama bagi setiap orang dalam hukum dan dalam mencari keadilan.

Pengalihan Badan Peradilan

Konsekuensi dari UU Kekuasaan Kehakiman adalah pengalihan organisasi, administrasi, dan finansial badan peradilan di bawah Mahkamah Agung. Sebelumnya, pembinaan badan-badan peradilan berada di bawah eksekutif (Departemen Kehakiman dan HAM, Departemen Agama, Departemen Keuangan) dan TNI, namun saat ini seluruh badan peradilan berada di bawah Mahkamah Agung dan Mahkamah Konstitusi.

Berikut adalah peralihan badan peradilan ke Mahkamah Agung:

* Organisasi, administrasi, dan finansial pada Direktorat Jenderal Badan Peradilan Umum dan Peradilan Tata Usaha Negara Departemen Kehakiman dan Hak Asasi Manusia, Pengadilan Tinggi, Pengadilan Tinggi Tata Usaha Negara, Pengadilan Negeri, dan Pengadilan Tata Usaha Negara, terhitung sejak tanggal 31 Maret 2004 dialihkan dari Departemen Kehakiman dan Hak Asasi Manusia ke Mahkamah Agung
* Organisasi, administrasi, dan finansial pada Direktorat Pembinaan Peradilan Agama Departemen Agama, Pengadilan Tinggi Agama/Mahkamah Syariah Propinsi, dan Pengadilan Agama/Mahkamah Syariah, terhitung sejak tanggal 30 Juni 2004 dialihkan dari Departemen Agama ke Mahkamah Agung
* Organisasi, administrasi, dan finansial pada Pengadilan Militer, Pengadilan Militer Tinggi, dan Pengadilan Militer Utama, terhitung sejak tanggal 1 September 2004 dialihkan dari TNI ke Mahkamah Agung. Akibat perlaihan ini, seluruh prajurit TNI dan PNS yang bertugas pada pengadilan dalam lingkup peradilan militer akan beralih menjadi personel organik Mahkamah Agung, meski pembinaan keprajuritan bagi personel militer tetap dilaksanakan oleh Mabes TNI.

Peralihan tersebut termasuk peralihan status pembinaan kepegawaian, aset, keuangan, arsip/dokumen, dan anggaran menjadi berada di bawah Mahkamah Agung.

Peradilan Tata Usaha Negara

Peradilan Tata Usaha Negara adalah lingkungan peradilan di bawah Mahkamah Agung yang melaksanakan kekuasaan kehakiman bagi rakyat pencari keadilan terhadap sengketa Tata Usaha Negara.

Peradilan Tata Usaha Negara meliputi:

1. Pengadilan Tata Usaha Negara
2. Pengadilan Tinggi Tata Usaha Negara

Peralihan ke Mahkamah Agung

Perubahan UUD 1945 membawa perubahan mendasar mengenai penyelengaraan kekuasaan kehakiman, dan diatur lebih lanjut dengan Undang-Undang Nomor 4 Tahun 2004 tentang Kekuasaan Kehakiman. Konsekuensi dari perubahan ini adalah pengalihan organisasi, administrasi, dan finansial badan peradilan di bawah Mahkamah Agung.

Sebelumnya, pembinaan Peradilan Tata Usaha Negara berada di bawah eksekutif, yakni Direktorat Jenderal Badan Peradilan Umum dan Peradilan Tata Usaha Negara Departemen Kehakiman dan HAM. Terhitung sejak 31 Maret 2004, organasi, administrasi, dan finansial PTUN dialihkan dari Departemen Kehakiman dan HAM ke Mahkamah Agung.

Peralihan tersebut termasuk peralihan status pembinaan kepegawaian, aset, keuangan, arsip/dokumen, dan anggaran menjadi berada di bawah Mahkamah Agung.

Peradilan Agama

Peradilan Agama adalah lingkungan peradilan di bawah Mahkamah Agung bagi rakyat pencari keadilan yang beragama Islam mengenai perkara perdata tertentu yang diatur dalam Undang-Undang.

Lingkungan Peradilan Agama meliputi:

* Pengadilan Tinggi Agama
* Pengadilan Agama

[sunting] Peralihan ke Mahkamah Agung

Perubahan UUD 1945 yang membawa perubahan mendasar mengenai penyelengaraan kekuasaan kehakiman, membuat perlunya dilakukan perubahan secara komprehensif mengenai Undang-Undang Ketentuan-ketentuan Pokok Kekuasaan Kehakiman.

Undang-Undang Nomor 4 Tahun 2004 tentang Kekuasaan Kehakiman mengatur mengenai badan-badan peradilan penyelenggara kekuasaan kehakiman, asas-asas penyelengaraan kekuasaan kehakiman, jaminan kedudukan dan perlakuan yang sama bagi setiap orang dalam hukum dan dalam mencari keadilan.

Konsekuensi dari UU Kekuasaan Kehakiman adalah pengalihan organisasi, administrasi, dan finansial badan peradilan di bawah Mahkamah Agung. Sebelumnya, pembinaan peradilan agama berada di bawah Direktorat Pembinaan Peradilan Agama Departemen Agama. Terhitung sejak tanggal 30 Juni 2004, organisasi, administrasi, dan finansial peradilan agama dialihkan dari Departemen Agama ke Mahkamah Agung. Peralihan tersebut termasuk peralihan status pembinaan kepegawaian, aset, keuangan, arsip/dokumen, dan anggaran menjadi berada di bawah Mahkamah Agung.

Peradilan Pajak

Peradilan Pajak adalah lingkungan peradilan di bawah Mahkamah Agung yang melaksanakan kekuasaan kehakiman bagi Wajib Pajak atau penanggung Pajak yang mencari keadilan terhadap Sengketa Pajak.

Pengadilan Pajak dibentuk berdasarkan Undang-Undang Nomor 14 Tahun 2002 tentang Pengadilan Pajak. Kedudukan Pengadilan Pajak berada di ibu kota negara. Persidangan oleh Pengadilan Pajak dilakukan di tempat kedudukannya, dan dapat pula dilakukan di tempat lain berdasarkan ketetapan Ketua Pengadilan Pajak.

Susunan Pengadilan Pajak terdiri atas: Pimpinan, Hakim Anggota, Sekretaris, dan Panitera. Pimpinan Pengadilan Pajak sendiri terdiri dari seorang Ketua dan sebanyak-banyaknya 5 orang Wakil Ketua.

Menurut UU Nomor 14 Tahun 2002 tetang Pengadilan Pajak, pembinaan teknis peradilan bagi Pengadilan Pajak dilakukan oleh Mahkamah Agung. Sedangkan pembinaan organisasi, administrasi, dan keuangan dilakukan oleh Departemen Keuangan.

Peradilan Militer

Peradilan Militer adalah lingkungan peradilan di bawah Mahkamah Agung yang melaksanakan kekuasaan kehakiman mengenai kejahatan-kejahatan yang berkaitan dengan tindak pidana militer[rujukan?].

Peradilan Militer meliputi:

1. Pengadilan Militer
2. Pengadilan Militer Tinggi
3. Pengadilan Militer Utama

Peralihan ke Mahkamah Agung

Perubahan (Amandemen) UUD 1945 membawa perubahan mendasar mengenai penyelengaraan kekuasaan kehakiman, dan diatur lebih lanjut dengan Undang-Undang Nomor 4 Tahun 2004 tentang Kekuasaan Kehakiman. Konsekuensi dari perubahan ini adalah pengalihan organisasi, administrasi, dan finansial badan peradilan di bawah Mahkamah Agung.

Sebelumnya, pembinaan Peradilan Militer berada di bawah Markas Besar Tentara Nasional Indonesia. Terhitung sejak 1 September 2004, organasi, administrasi, dan finansial Peradilan Militer dialihkan dari TNI ke Mahkamah Agung. Akibat perlaihan ini, seluruh prajurit TNI dan PNS yang bertugas pada pengadilan dalam lingkup peradilan militer akan beralih menjadi personel organik Mahkamah Agung, meski pembinaan keprajuritan bagi personel militer tetap dilaksanakan oleh Mabes TNI.

Peradilan Umum

Peradilan Umum adalah lingkungan peradilan di bawah Mahkamah Agung yang menjalankan kekuasaan kehakiman bagi rakyat pencari keadilan pada umumnya[rujukan?].

Peradilan umum meliputi:

1. Pengadilan Negeri, berkedudukan di ibukota kabupaten/kota, dengan daerah hukum meliputi wilayah kabupaten/kota
2. Pengadilan Tinggi, berkedudukan di ibukota provinsi, dengan daerah hukum meliputi wilayah provinsi

Peralihan ke Mahkamah Agung

Perubahan UUD 1945 membawa perubahan mendasar mengenai penyelengaraan kekuasaan kehakiman, dan diatur lebih lanjut dengan Undang-Undang Nomor 4 Tahun 2004 tentang Kekuasaan Kehakiman. Konsekuensi dari perubahan ini adalah pengalihan organisasi, administrasi, dan finansial badan peradilan di bawah Mahkamah Agung.

Sebelumnya, pembinaan Peradilan Umum berada di bawah eksekutif, yakni Direktorat Jenderal Badan Peradilan Umum dan Peradilan Tata Usaha Negara Departemen Kehakiman dan HAM. Terhitung sejak 31 Maret 2004, organasi, administrasi, dan finansial peradilan umum dialihkan dari Departemen Kehakiman dan HAM ke Mahkamah Agung. Peralihan tersebut termasuk peralihan status pembinaan kepegawaian, aset, keuangan, arsip/dokumen, dan anggaran menjadi berada di bawah Mahkamah Agung.

Peradilan Dokter (United States of America vs Karl Brandt)

Peradilan Dokter atau The Doctor's Trial (resminya adalah : United States of America vs Karl Brandt) adalah merupakan peradilan pertama dari 12 rangkaian peradilan atas kejahatan perang yang ditangani oleh kewenangan Amerika pada wilayah pendudukannya di Nuremberg, Jerman setelah Perang Dunia II. Peradilan ini dilaksanakan pada ruangan yang sama dengan ruangan Peradilan Militer Amerika ataupun Peradilan Militer Internasional namun dilaksanakan pada saat kedua peradilan tersebut belum diberlakukan. Peradilan tersebut secara kolektif dikenal sebagai lanjutan dari Peradilan Nuremberg, yang secara resminya disebut "peradilan atas kejahatan perang sebelum Peradilan Militer Nuremberg" (Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals-NMT).

20 dari 23 terdakwa adalah dokter (yang 3 adalah Brack, Rudolf Brandt, dan Sievers yang merupakan staf Nazi) yang kesemuanya dituntut berdasarkan keterlibatannya dalam percobaan kemanusiaan Nazi.

Hakim dalam perkara ini yang juga merupakan hakim dalam Peradilan Militer I yaitu Walter B. Beals (ketua majelis hakim) dari Washington, Harold L. Sebring dari Florida, dan Johnson T. Crawford dari Oklahoma, dengan Victor C. Swearingen, sebagai hakim cadangan. Ketua dewan untuk penuntutan pada perkara ini adalah Telford Taylor dan ketua jaksa penuntut umum adalah James M. McHaney. Dakwaan diajukan pada tanggal 25 Oktober 1946; peradilan terakhir dimulai pada tanggal 9 December 1946 hingga tanggal 20 Agustus 1947. Dari ke 23 terdakwa tersebut, 7 diantaranya dibebaskan dan 7 orang lagi dijatuhi hukuman mati sedangkan sisanya dijatuhi hukuman penjara antara 10 tahun hingga seumur hidup.

Dakwaan

Dakwaan dibuat berdasarkan 4 tuduhan yaitu :

1. Persekongkolan (konspirasi) dalam melakukan kejahatan perang dan kejahatan kemanusiaan sebagaimana dimaksud dalam butir 2 dan 3;
2. Kejahatan perang: melakukan eksperimen medis tanpa persetujuan pasien yang merupakan tahanan perang dan penduduk sipil dari negara yang diduduki serta turut serta melakukan pembunuhan massal atas penghuni kamp konsentrasi
3. Kejahatan kemanusiaan: melakukan kejahatan sebagaimana dimaksud dalam butir 2 juga terhadap warga negara Jerman.
4. Keanggotaan pada organisasi kriminal yaitu SS, dimana SS telah dinyatakan sebagai organisasi kriminal pada peradilan Nuremberg.

Seluruh terdakwa mengajukan pembelaan bahwa mereka tidak bersalah.

Peradilan membatalkan dakwaan butir ke 1 mengenai persekongkolan dengan alasan bahwa dakwaan tersebut berada diluar jurisdiksi (kewenangan) peradilan Dokter.

Para terhukum mati telah dieksekusi dengan cara digantung pada tanggal 2 Juni 1948 di Penjara Landsberg, Bavaria.

Pada umumnya yang dihukum mati adalah anggota dari suatu organisasi yang telah dinyatakan sebagai organisasi kriminal oleh putusan Peradilan Militer Internasional yaitu SS


Catatan kaki

1. ^ Ruff, Siegfried, et al. Sicherheit und Rettung in der Luftfahrt. Koblenz : Bernard & Graefe, c1989.

The Natural Law Tradition in Ethics

‘Natural law theory’ is a label that has been applied to theories of ethics, theories of politics, theories of civil law, and theories of religious morality. We will be concerned only with natural law theories of ethics: while such views arguably have some interesting implications for law, politics, and religious morality, these implications will not be our focus here.

This article has two central objectives. First, it aims to identify the defining features of natural law moral theory. Second, it aims to identify some of the main theoretical options that natural law theorists face in formulating a precise view within the constraints set by these defining features and some of the difficulties for each of these options. It will not, however, attempt to recount the history of the development of natural law thought. (For a very helpful detailed history of natural law thought up to the beginning of the modern period, see Crowe 1977. For a very helpful detailed history of natural law thought in the modern period, see Haakonssen 1996. For an article-length recap of the entire history of natural law thought, see Haakonssen 1992.)

* 1. Key Features of Natural Law Theories
o 1.1 Natural law and divine providence
o 1.2 Natural law and practical rationality
o 1.3 The substance of the natural law view
o 1.4 Paradigmatic and nonparadigmatic natural law theories
* 2. Theoretical Options for Natural Law Theorists
o 2.1 Natural goodness
o 2.2 Knowledge of the basic goods
o 2.3 The catalog of basic goods
o 2.4 From the good to the right
* Bibliography
* Other Internet Resources
* Related Entries

1. Key Features of Natural Law Theories
Even though we have already confined ‘natural law theory’ to its use as a term that marks off a certain class of ethical theories, we still have a confusing variety of meanings to contend with. Some writers use the term with such a broad meaning that any moral theory that is a version of moral realism -- that is, any moral theory that holds that some positive moral claims are literally true (for this conception of moral realism, see Sayre-McCord 1988)-- counts as a natural law view. Some use it so narrowly that no moral theory that is not grounded in a very specific form of Aristotelian teleology could count as a natural law view. It might be thought that there is nothing that can be done to begin a discussion of natural law theory in ethics other than to stipulate a meaning for ‘natural law theory’ and to proceed from there. But there is a better way of proceeding, one that takes as its starting point the central role that the moral theorizing of Thomas Aquinas plays in the natural law tradition. If any moral theory is a theory of natural law, it is Aquinas's. (Every introductory ethics anthology that includes material on natural law theory includes material by or about Aquinas; every encyclopedia article on natural law thought refers to Aquinas.) It would seem sensible, then, to take Aquinas's natural law theory as the central case of a natural law position: of theories that exhibit all of the key features of Aquinas's natural law view we can say that they are clearly natural law theories; of theories that exhibit few of them we can say that they are clearly not natural law theories; and of theories that exhibit many but not all of them we can say that they are in the neighborhood of the natural law view but nonetheless must be viewed as at most deviant cases of that position. There remain, no doubt, questions about how we determine what are to count as the key features of Aquinas's position. But we may take as the key features those theses about natural law that structure his overall moral view and which provide the basis for other theses about the natural law that he affirms.

For Aquinas, there are two key features of the natural law, features the acknowledgment of which structures his discussion of the natural law at Question 94 of the Prima Secundae of the Summa Theologiae. The first is that, when we focus on God's role as the giver of the natural law, the natural law is just one aspect of divine providence; and so the theory of natural law is from that perspective just one part among others of the theory of divine providence. The second is that, when we focus on the human's role as recipient of the natural law, the natural law constitutes the principles of practical rationality, those principles by which human action is to be judged as reasonable or unreasonable; and so the theory of natural law is from that perspective the preeminent part of the theory of practical rationality.
1.1 Natural law and divine providence
While our main focus will be on the status of the natural law as constituting the principles of practical rationality, we should consider for a moment at least the importance within Aquinas's view of the claim that the natural law is an aspect of divine providence. The fundamental thesis affirmed here by Aquinas is that the natural law is a participation in the eternal law (ST IaIIae 91, 2). The eternal law, for Aquinas, is that rational plan by which all creation is ordered (ST IaIIae 91, 1); the natural law is the way that the human being “participates” in the eternal law (ST IaIIae 91, 2). While nonrational beings have a share in the eternal law only by being determined by it -- their action nonfreely results from their determinate natures, natures whose existence results from God's will in accordance with God's eternal plan -- rational beings like us are able to grasp our share in the eternal law and freely act on it (ST IaIIae 91, 2). It is this feature of the natural law that justifies, on Aquinas's view, our calling the natural law ‘law.’ For law, as Aquinas defines it (ST IaIIae 90, 4), is a rule of action put into place by one who has care of the community; and as God has care of the entire universe, God's choosing to bring into existence beings who can act freely and in accordance with principles of reason is enough to justify our thinking of those principles of reason as law.
1.2 Natural law and practical rationality
When we focus on the recipient of the natural law, that is, us human beings, the thesis of Aquinas's natural law theory that comes to the fore is that the natural law constitutes the basic principles of practical rationality for human beings, and has this status by nature (ST IaIIae 94, 2). The notion that the natural law constitutes the basic principles of practical rationality implies, for Aquinas, both that the precepts of the natural law are universally binding by nature (ST IaIIae 94, 4) and that the precepts of the natural law are universally knowable by nature (ST IaIIae 94, 4; 94, 6).

The precepts of the natural law are binding by nature: no beings could share our human nature yet fail to be bound by the precepts of the natural law. This is so because these precepts direct us toward the good as such and various particular goods (ST IaIIae 94, 2). The good and goods provide reasons for us rational beings to act, to pursue the good and these particular goods. As good is what is perfective of us given the natures that we have (ST Ia 5, 1), the good and these various goods have their status as such naturally. It is sufficient for certain things to be good that we have the natures that we have; it is in virtue of our common human nature that the good for us is what it is.

The precepts of the natural law are also knowable by nature. All human beings possess a basic knowledge of the principles of the natural law (ST IaIIae 94, 4). This knowledge is exhibited in our intrinsic directedness toward the various goods that the natural law enjoins us to pursue, and we can make this implicit awareness explicit and propositional through reflection on practice. Aquinas takes it that there is a core of practical knowledge that all human beings have, even if the implications of that knowledge can be hard to work out or the efficacy of that knowledge can be thwarted by strong emotion or evil dispositions (ST IaIIae 94, 6).

If Aquinas's view is paradigmatic of the natural law position, and these two theses -- that from the God's-eye point of view, it is law through its place in the scheme of divine providence, and from the human's-eye point of view, it constitutes a set of naturally binding and knowable precepts of practical reason --- are the basic features of the natural law as Aquinas understands it, then it follows that paradigmatic natural law theory is incompatible with several views in metaphysics and moral philosophy. On the side of metaphysics, it is clear that the natural law view is incompatible with atheism: one cannot have a theory of divine providence without a divine being. It is also clear that the paradigmatic natural law view rules out a deism on which there is a divine being but that divine being has no interest in human matters. Nor can one be an agnostic while affirming the paradigmatic natural law view: for agnosticism is the refusal to commit either to God's existence or nonexistence, whereas the paradigmatic natural law view involves a commitment to God's existence. On the side of moral philosophy, it is clear that the natural law view is incompatible with a nihilism about value, that is, the rejection of the existence of values. It is also incompatible with relativist and conventionalist views, on which the status of value is entirely relative to one's community or determined entirely by convention. It is also incompatible with a wholesale skepticism about value, for the natural law view commits one to holding that certain claims about the good are in fact knowable, indeed, knowable by all.
1.3 The substance of the natural law view

The center of Aquinas's natural law view as described thus far concerns what we might call the metaphysics of morals: its role in divine providence and the universally authoritative character of its norms. What, though, of the normative content of Aquinas's natural law position? Is there anything distinctive about the normative natural law position? Here it is difficult to say much that is uncontroversial, but we can say a sufficient amount about Aquinas's natural law theory to make clear that it is an interesting alternative to utilitarian (and more generally consequentialist) ethics, Kantian views, and standard Aristotelian positions. (For a magisterial treatment of Aquinas's natural law ethic, see Rhonheimer 2000.)

Aquinas says that the fundamental principle of the natural law is that good is to be done and evil avoided (ST IaIIae 94, 2). This is, one might say, a principle of intelligibility of action (cf. Grisez 1965): only action that can be understood as conforming with this principle, as carried out under the idea that good is to be sought and bad avoided, can be understood as an intelligible action. But no one can in acting simply pursue good -- one has to pursue some particular good. And Aquinas holds that we know immediately, by inclination, that there are a variety of things that count as good and thus to be pursued -- life, procreation, knowledge, society, and reasonable conduct (ST IaIIae 94, 2; 94, 3) are all mentioned by Aquinas (though it is not clear whether the mentioned items are supposed to constitute an exhaustive list).

So on Aquinas's view it is the good that is fundamental: whether an action, or type of action, is right is logically posterior to whether that action brings about or realizes or is some good. The good is, on Aquinas's view, prior to the right. But on Aquinas's view we are, somehow, able to reason from these principles about goods to guidelines about how these goods are to be pursued. Aquinas's thoughts are along the following lines: first, there are certain ways of acting in response to the basic human goods that are intrinsically flawed; and second, for an act to be right, or reasonable, is for it to be an act that is in no way intrinsically flawed (ST IaIIae 18, 1).

The important task, then, is to identify the ways in which an act can be intrinsically flawed. Aquinas does not obviously identify some master principle that one can use to determine whether an act is intrinsically flawed (though for an attempt to identify such a master principle in Aquinas's work see Finnis 1998, p. 126), though he does indicate where to look -- we are to look at the features that individuate acts, such as their objects (ST IaIIae 18, 2), their ends (ST IaIIae 18, 3), their circumstances (ST IaIIae 18, 4), and so forth. An act might be flawed through a mismatch of object and end -- that is, between the immediate aim of the action and its more distant point. If one were, for example, to regulate one's pursuit of a greater good in light of a lesser good -- if, for example, one were to seek friendship with God for the sake of mere bodily survival rather than vice versa -- that would count as an unreasonable act. An act might be flawed through the circumstances: while one is bound to profess one's belief in God, there are certain circumstances in which it is inappropriate to do so (ST IIaIIae 3, 2). An act might be flawed merely through its intention: to direct oneself against a good -- as in murder (ST IIaIIae 64, 6), and lying (ST IIaIIae 110, 3), and blasphemy (ST IIaIIae 13, 2) -- is always to act in an unfitting way. Aquinas has no illusions that we will be able to state principles of conduct that exhaustively determine right conduct, as if for every situation in which there is a correct choice to be made there will be a rule that covers the situation. He allows for the Aristotelian insight that the particulars of the situation always outstrip one's rules, so that one will always need the moral and intellectual virtues in order to act well (Commentary on NE, II, 2, 259). But he denies that this means that there are no principles of right conduct that hold everywhere and always, and some even absolutely. On Aquinas's view, killing of the innocent is always wrong, as is lying, adultery, sodomy, and blasphemy; and that they are always wrong is a matter of natural law. (These are only examples, not an exhaustive list of absolutely forbidden actions.)

Part of the interest of Aquinas's substantive natural law ethic lies in its not falling into the neat contemporary categories for moral theories. His natural law view understands principles of right to be grounded in principles of good; on this Aquinas sides with utilitarians, and consequentialists generally, against Kantians. But Aquinas would deny that the principles of the right enjoin us to maximize the good -- while he allows that considerations of the greater good have a role in practical reasoning, action can be irremediably flawed merely through (e.g.) badness of intention, flawed such that no good consequences that flow from the action would be sufficient to justify it -- and in this Aquinas sides with the Kantians against the utilitarians and consequentialists of other stripes. And while Aquinas is in some ways Aristotelian, and recognizes that virtue will always be required in order to hit the mark in a situation of choice, he rejects the view commonly ascribed to Aristotle (for doubts that it is Aristotle's view; see Irwin 2000) that there are no universally true general principles of right. The natural law view rejects wholesale particularism.
1.4 Paradigmatic and nonparadigmatic natural law theories

To summarize: the paradigmatic natural law view holds that (1) the natural law is given by God; (2) it is naturally authoritative over all human beings; and (3) it is naturally knowable by all human beings. Further, it holds that (4) the good is prior to the right, that (5) right action is action that responds nondefectively to the good, that (6) there are a variety of ways in which action can be defective with respect to the good, and that (7) some of these ways can be captured and formulated as general rules.

Aquinas was not the only historically important paradigmatic natural law theorist. Thomas Hobbes, for example, was also a paradigmatic natural law theorist. He held that the laws of nature are divine law (Leviathan, xv, ¶41), that all humans are bound by them (Leviathan, xv, ¶¶36), and that it is easy to know at least the basics of the natural law (Leviathan, xv, ¶35). He held that the fundamental good is self-preservation (Leviathan, xiii, ¶14), and that the laws of nature direct the way to this good (Leviathan, xiv, ¶3). He offered a catalog of laws of nature that constitute the “true moral philosophy” (Leviathan, xv, ¶40). There are also a number of contemporary writers that affirm the paradigmatic view. These writers, not surprisingly, trace their views to Aquinas as the major influence, though they do not claim to reproduce his views in detail. (See, for example, Grisez 1983, Finnis 1980, MacIntyre 1999, and Murphy 2001.)

It is also easy to identify a number of writers, both historical and contemporary, whose views are easily called natural law views, through sharing all but one or two of the features of Aquinas's paradigmatic position. Recently there have been nontheistic writers in the natural law tradition, who deny (1): see, for example, the work of Michael Moore (1982, 1996) and Philippa Foot (2000). There were a number of post-Thomistic writers in the medieval and modern periods who in some way denied (2), the natural authority of the natural law, holding that while the content of the natural law is fixed either wholly or in part by human nature, its preceptive power could only come from an additional divine command: the views of John Duns Scotus, Francisco Suarez, and John Locke fit this mold. Arguably the Stoics were natural law thinkers, but they seem to deny (4), holding the right to be prior to the good (see Striker 1986). Some contemporary theological ethicists called ‘proportionalists’ (e.g. Hallett 1995) have taken up the natural law view with a consequentialist twist, denying (6). And while some see Aristotle as being the source of the natural law tradition, some have argued that his central appeal to the insight of the person of practical wisdom as setting the final standard for right action precludes the possibility of the sort of general rules that would (at least in a theistic context) make Aristotle's ethics a natural law position. There is of course no clear answer to the question of when a view ceases to be a natural law theory, though a nonparadigmatic one, and becomes no natural law theory at all.
2. Theoretical Options for Natural Law Theorists
Even within the constraints set by the theses that constitute the paradigmatic natural law position, there are a number of variations possible in the view. Here we will consider several issues that must be addressed by every particular natural law view, and some difficulties that arise for possible responses to these issues.
2.1 Natural goodness

It is essential to the natural law position that there be some things that are universally and naturally good. But how is universal, natural goodness possible? Given the variability of human tastes and desires, how could there be such universal goods?

Natural law theorists have at least three answers available to them. The first answer is Hobbesian, and proceeds on the basis of a subjectivist theory of the good. On subjectivist theories of the good, what makes it true that something is good is that it is desired, or liked, or in some way is the object of one's pro-attitudes, or would be the object of one's pro-attitudes in some suitable conditions. One might think that to affirm a subjectivist theory of the good is to reject natural law theory, given the immense variation in human desire. But this is not so. For one might hold that human beings’ common nature, their similarity in physiological constitution, makes them such as to have some desires in common, and these desires may be so central to human aims and purposes that we can build important and correct precepts of rationality around them. This is in fact what Hobbes claims. For while on the Hobbesian view what is good is what is desired, Hobbes thinks that humans are similarly constructed so that for each human (when he or she is properly biologically functioning) his or her central aim is the avoidance of violent death. Thus Hobbes is able to build his entire natural law theory around a single good, the good of self-preservation, which is so important to human life that exceptionlessly binding precepts can be formulated with reference to its achievement.

The second answer is Aristotelian. The idea here is to reject a subjectivism about the good, holding that what makes it true that something is good is not that it stands in some relation to desire but rather that it is somehow perfective or completing of a being, where what is perfective or completing of a being depends on that being's nature. So what is good for an oak is what is completing or perfective of the oak, and this depends on the kind of thing that an oak is by nature; and what is good for a dog is what is completing or perfective of the dog, and this depends on the kind of thing that a dog is by nature; and what is good for a human depends on what is completing or perfective of a human, and this depends on the kind of thing a human is by nature. So the fact of variability of desire is not on its own enough to cast doubt on the natural law universal goods thesis: as the good is not defined fundamentally by reference to desire, the fact of variation in desire is not enough to raise questions about universal goods. This is the view affirmed by Aquinas, and the majority of adherents to the natural law tradition.

The third answer is Platonic. Like the Aristotelian view, it rejects a subjectivism about the good. But it does not hold that the good is to be understood in terms of human nature. The role of human nature is not to define or set the good, but merely to define what the possibilities of human achievement are. So one might think that some things -- knowledge, beauty, etc. -- are just good in themselves, apart from any reference to human desire or perfection, but hold that the pursuit of these are only part of the natural law insofar as they fall within the ambit of human practical possibility. This view of the good is not much defended -- in part because of the scathing criticism offered of Plato's view by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics (NE I, 6) -- but it was affirmed by Iris Murdoch (1970), and forms part of the natural law view defended by Michael Moore (1982).

None of these answers is without difficulties. While there are contemporary defenders of Hobbesian moral theories (see Gauthier 1986), there is no one who is on record defending Hobbes's interesting combination of a thoroughgoing subjectivism about the good along with an account of a dominant substantive good around which the moral rules are formulated. The basic reason for this just seems to be that Hobbes's arguments that the human desire for self-preservation is such an entirely dominant desire are implausible, and there do not seem to be any better arguments available. The Platonic version of the view has struck many as both too metaphysically ornate to be defensible, on one hand, and as not fitting very well with a conception of ethics grounded in nature, on the other. While the Aristotelian version of the view has also been charged with some of the metaphysical excesses that the Platonist view allegedly countenances, most contemporary natural law theory is Aristotelian in its orientation, holding that there is still good reason to hold to an understanding of flourishing in nature and that none of the advances of modern science has called this part of the Aristotelian view into question.
2.2 Knowledge of the basic goods

Another central question that the natural law tradition has wrestled with concerns our knowledge of the basic goods. How can we come to know these fundamental goods?

Return to Aquinas's paradigmatic natural law position. His account of our knowledge of the fundamental goods has been understood in different ways (Murphy 2001, ch. 1). Some have understood Aquinas as affirming a theory of our knowledge of the fundamental precepts of the natural law that we can label ‘derivationism.’ The idea here is that we can derive from a metaphysical study of human nature and its potentialities and actualizations the conclusion that certain things are good for human beings, and thus that the primary precepts of the natural law bid us to pursue these things (cf. Lisska 1996). One can imagine a Hobbesian version of this view as well. One might say that by a careful study of the human being's desire-forming mechanisms, one can see that there are certain things that would be necessarily desired by biologically sound human beings, and thus that the human good includes these items. (Hobbes in fact produces such arguments at EL, I, 7.) While a natural law theorist might downplay the importance of derivationist knowledge of the natural law, it is hard to see how a consistent natural law theorist could entirely reject the possibility of such knowledge, given the view that we can provide a substantial account of how the human good is grounded in nature: for to show that the human good is grounded in nature is to show that human nature explains why certain things are goods, and it is hard to see how one could affirm that claim while entirely rejecting the possibility of derivationist knowledge of the human good (see Murphy 2001, pp. 16-17). Some have thought, echoing criticisms of natural law theory by those entirely hostile to it, that derivationist theories of practical knowledge fall prey to ‘Hume's Law,’ that it is impossible to derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is,’ that is, any normative truth from any set of nonnormative truths. The most that this can show, though, is that the natural law theorist needs an account of those bridge truths that enable us to move between claims about human nature and claims about human goods.

It must be conceded, however, that a consistent natural law theorist could hardly hold that derivationist knowledge of the human good is the only such knowledge possible. For it is part of the paradigm natural law view that the basic principles of the natural law are known by all, and the sort of arguments that would need to be made in order to produce derivationist knowledge of the human good are certainly not had (or even have-able) by all. Another way that Aquinas's account of knowledge of the fundamental goods has been understood -- and it is an understanding better able to come to grips with the widespread knowledge of fundamental goods -- can be labeled ‘inclinationism.’ On this view, one's explicit grasp of the fundamental goods follows upon but is not derived from one's persistent directedness toward the pursuit of certain ends, which directedness involves an implicit grasp of these items as good. So human beings exhibit a tendency to pursue life, and knowledge, and friendship, and so forth; and reflection on this tendency occasions an immediate grasp of the truth that life, and knowledge, and friendship, and so forth are goods. The affirmation of the claims ‘life is good,’ ‘knowledge is good,’ ‘friendship is good,’ etc. makes intelligible the persistent pursuit of these ends by rational beings like us.

While inclinationism and derivationism are distinct methods, they are by no means exclusive: one can hold that knowledge of fundamental goods is possible in both ways. Indeed, it may well be that one way of knowing can supplement and correct the other. There may be some goods that are easier to recognize when taking the speculative point of view, the point of view of the observer of human nature and its potentialities, and some that are easier to recognize when taking the practical point of view, the point of view of the actively engaged in human life. Indeed, by connecting nature and the human good so tightly, the natural law view requires that an account of the good reconcile these points of view.

There are, of course, reasons to be worried about both of these ways of knowing basic goods -- worries that go beyond general skeptical doubts about how we could know any normative truths at all. Derivationists have to explain how we come to know what counts as an actualization of a human potency, and have to explain how we connect these via bridge principles with human goods. Inclinationists have their own troubles. In particular, they need to deal with the fact that, even if they are not in the business of deriving goods from inclinations or identifying the goods precisely with what we tend to pursue, they take as their starting point human directedness. And it has been rightly noted that human directedness is not always a lovely thing. Power and prestige seem to be a matter of human directedness -- at least as much so as, say, aesthetic enjoyment and speculative knowledge -- but they do not make it to the natural law theorist's catalog of goods (though they do appear to be part of the good in Aristotle's picture; cf. the discussion in Hare 2001, p. 14). While these difficulties persist for inclinationist and derivationist accounts of knowledge of the basic goods, they may well be eased if one affirms both accounts: one might be able to use inclinationist knowledge to provide some basis for bridge principles between knowledge of human nature and knowledge of human goods, and one might be able to use derivationist knowledge to modify, in a non-ad-hoc way, the objectionable elements of the account that one might be bound to give if proceeding on an inclinationist basis alone.
2.3 The catalog of basic goods

A developed natural law theory includes within it a catalog of the fundamental goods, the basic values upon which the principles of right are founded. Suppose that we follow at least the inclinationist line, taking it to be faithful to the natural law idea that knowledge of the basic goods is widely distributed. Our task then is to provide an explicit account of those goods implicit knowledge of which is manifested in human inclination toward certain ends. What are the goods affirmation of which makes intelligible these inclinations?

It is clear from this way of putting the question that even if natural law theorists are right that this implicit knowledge is widely distributed, it would be easy for natural law theorists to disagree in their catalogs of basic goods. For the task here is that of formulating propositionally, and in as illuminating a way as possible, what items need be affirmed as intrinsically good in order to make sense out of our inclinations. And there are, unsurprisingly, disagreements in catalogs of basic goods. The goods that Aquinas mentions in his account include life, procreation, social life, knowledge, and rational conduct. Grisez 1983 includes self-integration, practical reasonableness, authenticity, justice and friendship, religion, life and health, knowledge of truth, appreciation of beauty, and playful activities (pp. 121-122). Finnis 1980 includes life, knowledge, aesthetic appreciation, play, friendship, practical reasonableness, and religion (pp. 86-90). Chappell 1995 includes friendship, aesthetic value, pleasure and the avoidance of pain, physical and mental health and harmony, reason, rationality, and reasonableness, truth and the knowledge of it, the natural world, people, fairness, and achievements (p. 43). Finnis 1996 affirms a list much like Grisez 1983, but includes in it “the marital good” (p. 5). Murphy 2001 includes life, knowledge, aesthetic experience, excellence in work and play, excellence in agency, inner peace, friendship and community, religion, and happiness (p. 96). Gomez-Lobo 2002 includes life, the family, friendship, work and play, experience of beauty, theoretical knowledge, and integrity (pp. 10-23).

Aside from the inevitable differences in lists of goods produced by natural law theorists, there are also more focused debates about the inclusion of particular alleged goods within the natural law theorists’ lists. Note, for example, that of the lists above, only Chappell's includes pleasure and the absence of pain. Whatever else we say here, it seems that common sense is initially on Chappell's side: what seems more obvious than that pleasure and the avoidance of pain are basic reasons for action? The reasons for rejecting pleasure and the absence of pain from the list of goods are various: some writers argue, following Aristotle, that pleasure is not a good in abstraction from the activity in which pleasure is taken; some that the absence of pain is not a completion or a fulfillment of human nature, and thus cannot be among the basic goods; some that the avoidance of pain is simply an instance of some other basic good, such as inner peace. What this debate illustrates is the extent to which the formulation of a catalog of goods is not a straightforward matter. Everyone agrees that one who avoids touching a hot stove in part to avoid the awful pain has some reason to avoid touching the stove. The difficulty is to bring together our various sources of knowledge about the good to formulate an account that explains well precisely why it is that such an act is reasonable. These sorts of debates reappear with respect to goods like life (is life intrinsically or instrumentally good? is merely being alive intrinsically good, or is life only intrinsically good when one is enjoying a certain level of vitality?), religion (is harmony with God really a human good? is it merely a kind of friendship? does its status as a good depend on whether there is a being such as God?), and what Finnis and Grisez now call the ‘marital good’ (is the good of marriage simply an amalgam of various other goods, as friendship, procreation, rational agency, or is it really a distinct, analytically separable value?).
2.4 From the good to the right

Suppose that we were to have in hand satisfactory accounts of natural goodness and our knowledge of it, along with a rationally defensible account of the basic goods that are the fundamental reasons for action. All that we would have so far is the natural law theorist's account of what we might call minimally rational action -- action that seeks to realize some good. What we would not have yet is a full account of right action. For we are frequently in situations in which there are various different courses of action that we might pursue, each of which promises to realize some good; are there no guidelines to which we might appeal in order to show some of these choices superior to others? After all, some of even the most obviously morally wrong actions can be seen to promise some good -- a robber might kill dozens in order to get the money he needs to pursue genuine goods -- and the natural law theorist wants to be able to say why these obviously morally wrong actions are morally wrong. As we have seen, the paradigmatic natural law view holds that there are some general rules of right that govern our pursuit of the various goods, and that these rules of right exclude those actions that are in some way defective responses to the various basic goods. How, though, are we to determine what counts as a defective response to the goods?

There are at least three possibilities. One might appeal to a master rule of right that can be used to generate further rules; call this the master rule approach. One might appeal to a methodological principle by which particular rules can be generated; call this the method approach. Or one might appeal to some standard for distinguishing correct and incorrect moral rules that is not understandable as a method; call this (for reasons we shall see shortly) the virtue approach.

On the master rule approach, the task of the natural law theorist is to identify some master rule which bears on the basic goods and, perhaps in conjunction with further factual premises, is able to produce a stock of general rules about what sorts of responses to the basic goods are or are not reasonable. While it is far from clear whether there was a single way that Aquinas proceeded in establishing moral norms from the primary precepts of the natural law in the Summa Theologiae, John Finnis has argued (Finnis 1998, p. 126) that Aquinas employed this master rule approach: on his view, Aquinas held that this master rule is the rule of universal love, that one should love one's neighbor as oneself. This rule bids us to respond to the good lovingly wherever it can be realized, and from it we can see that certain ways of responding to the good are ruled out as essentially unloving. Grisez clearly employs this approach: he writes that the first principle of morality is that “In voluntarily acting for human goods and avoiding what is opposed to them, one ought to choose and otherwise will those and only those possibilities whose willing is compatible with a will toward integral human fulfillment” (Grisez 1983, p. 184). This first principle, Grisez says, contains implicitly within it various “modes of responsibility” from which particular moral rules can be derived.

The central difficulty with this employment of the master rule approach is that of explaining how we are to grasp this first principle of morality as correct. What is the relationship between our knowledge of the basic goods and our knowledge of the master rule? When Grisez defends his master rule, he writes that its status is due to a certain function that a first principle of morality must perform: “It must provide the basis for guiding choices toward overall human fulfillment. As a single principle, it will give unity and direction to a morally good life. As the same time, it must not exclude ways of living which might contribute to a complete human community” (Grisez 1983, p. 184). But this presupposes an awful lot: why should we assume in advance that a proper response to the basic goods must be one that is oriented toward a “complete human community”?

On the method approach, by contrast, there is no need for a master principle that will serve as the basis for deriving some particular moral rules. The idea here is the natural law theorist needs not a master rule but a test for distinguishing correct moral rules from incorrect ones. We know from our earlier consideration of the paradigmatic natural law view that the test for distinguishing correct moral rules from incorrect ones must be something like the following: if a moral rule rules out certain choices as defective that are in fact defective, and rules out no choices as defective that are not in fact defective, then it is a correct moral rule. What would distinguish different employments of the method approach is their accounts of what features of a choice we appeal to in order to determine whether it is defective. The knowledge that we have to go on here is our knowledge of the basic goods. If a certain choice presupposes something false about the basic goods, then it responds defectively to them. So a moral rule can be justified by showing that it rules out only choices that presuppose something false about the basic goods.

This is very abstract. Here is an example of an employment of this approach. While Finnis now affirms Grisez's master rule approach, in his 1980 work he defends various principles of practical reasonableness without adverting to a master rule. He argues, for example, that it is always wrong to intend the destruction of an instance of a basic good (Finnis 1980, pp. 118-123). (So, no lying, for lying is an intentional attack on knowledge; no murder, for murder is an intentional attack on life, and so forth.) Why is it always wrong to do so? It would be unreasonable simply to try to destroy an instance of a basic good, for no further purpose: for that would treat an instance of a basic good as something that it is not -- that is, as valueless. And it would be wrong to destroy an instance of a basic good for the sake of bringing about some other instance of a basic good: for that would make sense only if the good brought about were more valuable than the good destroyed, but on Finnis's view all distinct instances of basic goods are incommensurable -- none is of more, less, or equal value with any other. So the rule forbidding intentional destruction of an instance of a basic good is justified because it rules out only choices that presuppose something false about the nature of the basic goods.

The method approach presupposes less of substance about morality than the master rule approach presupposes. But it requires us to draw upon an interesting and rich knowledge of the features of the basic goods. Whether this information is available is a matter for debate. But the method approach has the advantage of firmly rooting natural law arguments for moral principles in the goods the pursuit of which those moral principles are supposed to regulate.

Neither the master rule nor the method approach implies that the natural law theorist must hold that all right action can be captured in general rules. The natural law view is only that there are some such rules. It is consistent with the natural law position that there are a number of choice situations in which there is a right answer, yet in which that right answer is not dictated by any natural law rule or set of rules, but rather is grasped only by a virtuous, practically wise person. It is, however, open to the natural law theorist to use this appeal to the judgment of the practically wise person more widely, holding that the general rules concerning the appropriate response to the goods cannot be properly determined by any master rule or philosophical method, but can be determined only by appeal to the insight of the person of practical wisdom. If it really is wrong in all cases to tell lies, as Aquinas and Grisez and Finnis have argued, our grasp of this moral truth is dependent on our possessing, or our being able to recognize the possessor of, practical wisdom. If such a person never tells lies, because she or he just sees that to tell lies would be to respond defectively to the good, then that lying is always wrong is a rule of the natural law.

It may be true that by the virtue approach we can learn of some general rules of the natural law. What is more interesting is whether a defender of the virtue approach would be right to dismiss the claims of the master rule or method approaches. (For, after all, one might be able to learn that lying is wrong either through moral argument or through the perceptive insight of practical wisdom.) And it does not seem that the defender of the master rule or method approach should be particularly concerned to discredit the virtue approach. For if defenders of the master rule or method approach recognize the existence of a capacity of judgment like practical wisdom, then it would be strange to allow that it can be correctly exercised on a number of particular occasions while denying that we might learn of general rules from observing patterns of its exercise on various occasions.

A more radical critique of the paradigmatic natural law account of the connection between the good and the right calls into question the very idea that one can get principles of moral rightness merely from what constitutes a defective response to the good. According to this critique, while it is true that one might be able to come up with some notion of unreasonableness by appeal to the notion of what is defective response to the human goods, the notion of moral rightness belongs to a family of concepts distinct from that to which the notion of reasonableness belongs. On this view, moral rightness belongs to the obligation family, and the concept of obligation is irreducibly social: one is under an obligation only if one is subject to some sort of demand in the context of a social relationship (see, for example, Adams 1999, pp. 238-241). It is part of the logic of obligation that when one is under an obligation, that condition has resulted from a demand imposed on him or her by some other party. So, according to this line of criticism, the paradigmatic natural law view is unable to show that the natural law is intrinsically morally authoritative: the precepts of the natural law can be rules that all of us human beings are obligated to obey, that it would be wrong for us to disobey, and that we would be guilty for flouting only if these precepts are imposed upon us by an authoritative being -- a being like God.

The intrinsic moral authority of the natural law has been a matter of debate since Aquinas: it was a central issue dividing Aquinas's view from those of Scotus, Ockham, and Suarez. It continues to be an issue between natural law theorists like Grisez (1983) and Finnis (1980) on one hand and theological voluntarists like Adams (1999) and Hare (2001) on the other. Natural law theorists have several options: they can argue against any meaningful distinction between morality and the reasonable more generally (Foot 2000, pp. 66-80); or they can embrace the distinction, but hold that on the clearest conception of the moral that we possess, the natural law account of reasonableness in action adequately satisfies that conception (Murphy 2001, pp. 222-227); or they can hold that the notion of ‘morally right’ is so muddled that it should be jettisoned, leaving in its stead the notion of the reasonable (cf. Anscombe 1958). It is at present far from clear which of these avenues of response the natural law theorist has most reason to embrace.
Bibliography

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* Finnis, John. 1980. Natural Law and Natural Rights. Oxford University Press.
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Hume's Moral Philosophy

Hume's position in ethics, which is based on his empiricist theory of the mind, is best known for asserting four theses: (1) Reason alone cannot be a motive to the will, but rather is the “slave of the passions” (see Section 3) (2) Morals are not derived from reason (see Section 4). (3) Morals are derived from the moral sentiments: feelings of approval (esteem, praise) and disapproval (blame) felt by spectators who contemplate a character trait or action (see Section 7). (4) While some virtues and vices are natural (see Section 13), others, including justice, are artificial (see Section 9). There is heated debate about what Hume intends by each of these theses and how he argues for them. They are best understood in the context of Hume's meta-ethical theory and his ethic of virtue and vice.

Hume's main ethical writings are Book 3 of his Treatise of Human Nature, “Of Morals” (which builds on Book 2, “Of the Passions”), his Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, and some of his Essays. In part the moral Enquiry simply recasts central ideas from the moral part of the Treatise in a more accessible style; but there are important differences. The ethical positions and arguments of the Treatise are set out below, noting where the moral Enquiry agrees; differences between the Enquiry and the Treatise are discussed afterwards.

* 1. Issues from Hume's Predecessors
* 2. The Passions and the Will
* 3. The Influencing Motives of the Will
* 4. Ethical Anti-rationalism
* 5. Is and Ought
* 6. The Nature of Moral Judgment
* 7. Sympathy, and the Nature and Origin of the Moral Sentiments
* 8. The Common Point of View
* 9. Artificial and Natural Virtues
* 10. Honesty with Respect to Property
o 10.1 The Circle
o 10.2 The Origin of Material Honesty
o 10.3 The Motive of Honest Actions
* 11. Fidelity to Promises
* 12. Allegiance to Government
* 13. The Natural Virtues
* 14. Differences between the Treatise and the Moral Enquiry
* Bibliography
* Other Internet Resources
* Related Entries

1. Issues from Hume's Predecessors

Hume inherits from his predecessors several controversies about ethics and political philosophy.

One is a question of moral epistemology: how do human beings become aware of, or acquire knowledge or belief about, moral good and evil, right and wrong, duty and obligation? Ethical theorists and theologians of the day held, variously, that moral good and evil are discovered: (a) by reason in some of its uses (Hobbes, Locke, Clarke), (b) by divine revelation (Filmer), (c) by conscience or reflection on one's (other) impulses (Butler), or (d) by a moral sense as understood by Shaftesbury or Hutcheson (an emotional responsiveness manifesting itself in approval or disapproval). Hume sides with the moral sense theorists: we gain awareness of moral good and evil by experiencing the pleasure of approval and the uneasiness of disapproval when we contemplate a character trait or action from an imaginatively sensitive and unbiased point of view. Hume argues against the rationalists that although reason is needed to discover the facts of any concrete situation and the general social impact of a trait of character or a practice over time, reason alone is insufficient to yield a judgment that something is virtuous or vicious. In the last analysis, the facts as known must trigger a response by sentiment or “taste.”

A related but more metaphysical controversy would be stated thus today: what is the source or foundation of moral norms? In Hume's day this is the question what is the ground of moral obligation (as distinct from what is the faculty for acquiring moral knowledge or belief). Moral rationalists of the period such as Clarke (and in some moods, Hobbes and Locke) argue that moral standards or principles are requirements of reason — that is, that the very rationality of right actions is the ground of our obligation to perform them. Divine voluntarists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as Samuel Pufendorf claim that moral obligation or requirement, if not every sort of moral standard, is the product of God's will. The moral sense theorists (Shaftesbury and Hutcheson) and Butler see all requirements to pursue goodness and avoid evil as consequent upon human nature, which is so structured that a particular feature of our consciousness (whether moral sense or conscience) evaluates the rest. Hume sides with the moral sense theorists on this question: it is because we are the kinds of creatures we are, with the dispositions we have for pain and pleasure, the kinds of familial and friendly interdependence that make up our life together, and our approvals and disapprovals of these, that we are bound by moral requirements at all.

Closely connected with the issue of the foundations of moral norms is the question whether moral requirements are natural or conventional. Hobbes and Mandeville see them as conventional, and Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Locke, and others see them as natural. Hume mocks Mandeville's contention that the very concepts of vice and virtue are foisted on us by scheming politicians who plan thereby to manage us more easily. If there were nothing in our experience and no sentiments in our minds to give rise to the concept of virtue, Hume says, no lavish praise of heroes could generate such a concept. Nonetheless, Hume thinks natural impulses of humanity and dispositions to approve cannot entirely account for our virtue of justice; a correct analysis of that requires the thesis that mankind, an “inventive species,” has cooperatively constructed rules of property and promise. Thus he takes an intermediate position.

Linked with these meta-ethical controversies is the dilemma of understanding the ethical life either as the “ancients” do, in terms of virtues and vices of character, or as the “moderns” do, primarily in terms of principles of duty or natural law. While even so law-oriented a thinker as Hobbes has a good deal to say about virtue, the ethical writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries predominantly favor a rule- or law-governed understanding of morals, giving priority to laws of nature or principles of duty. The chief exception here is the moral sense school, which advocates an analysis of the moral life more like that of the Greek and Hellenistic thinkers, in terms of settled traits of character — although they too find a place for principles in their ethics. Hume explicitly favors an ethic of character along “ancient” lines. Yet he insists on a role for rules of duty within the domain of what he calls the artificial virtues.

Hume's predecessors famously took opposing positions on whether human nature was essentially selfish or benevolent, some arguing that man was so dominated by self-interested motives that for moral requirements to govern us at all they must serve our interests in some way, and others arguing that uncorrupted human beings naturally care about the weal and woe of others and here morality gets its hold. Hume roundly criticizes Hobbes for his insistence on psychological egoism or something close to it, and for his dismal, violent picture of a state of nature. Yet Hume resists the view of Hutcheson that all moral principles can be reduced to our benevolence, in part because he doubts that benevolence can sufficiently overcome our perfectly normal acquisitiveness. According to Hume's observation, we are both selfish and humane. We possess greed, and also “limited generosity” — dispositions to kindness and liberality which are more powerfully directed toward kin and friends and less aroused by strangers. While for Hume the condition of humankind in the absence of organized society is not a war of all against all, neither is it the law-governed and highly cooperative domain imagined by Locke. It is a hypothetical condition in which we would care for our friends and cooperate with them, but in which self-interest and preference for friends over strangers would make any wider cooperation impossible. It is Hume's empirically-based thesis that we are fundamentally loving, parochial, and also selfish creatures that underlies his political philosophy.

In the realm of politics, Hume again takes up an intermediate position. He objects both to the doctrine that a subject must passively obey his government no matter how tyrannical it is and to the Lockean thesis that citizens have a natural right to revolution whenever the rulers violate their contractual commitments to the people. He famously criticizes the notion that all political duties arise from an implicit contract that binds later generations who were not party to the original explicit agreement. Hume maintains that the duty to obey one's government has an independent origin that parallels that of promissory obligation: both are invented to enable people to live together successfully. On his view, human beings can create a society without government, ordered by rules of ownership, transfer of property by consent, and promise-keeping. We superimpose government on such a pre-civil society when it grows large and prosperous; only then does it become necessary to enforce these rules of justice to preserve social cooperation. So the duty of allegiance to government, far from depending on the duty to fulfill promises, provides needed assurance that promises of all sorts will be kept. The duty to submit to our rulers results from the fact that unquestioning submission is necessary to preserve order. The legitimacy of particular governments and the justification of revolution turn on the usefulness of government to preserve society, not the fact of its rulers having been chosen by God or having received promises of obedience from the people. In a long-established civil society, whatever ruler or type of government happens to be in place and successfully maintaining order and justice is legitimate, and is owed allegiance. However, there is some legitimate recourse for victims of tyranny: the people may rightly overthrow any government that is so oppressive as not to provide the benefits (peace and security from injustice) for which governments are formed. In his political essays Hume certainly advocates the sort of constitution that protects the people's liberties, but the justification he offers is not individual natural rights or contractual obligations but the greater long-range good of society.
2. The Passions and the Will

According to Hume's theory of the mind, the passions are impressions rather than ideas. The direct passions, which include desire, aversion, hope, fear, grief, and joy, are those that “arise immediately from good or evil, from pain or pleasure” that we experience or think about in prospect (T 2.1.1.4, T 2.3.9.2); however he also groups with them some instincts of unknown origin, such as the bodily appetites and the vengeful impulse, which do not proceed from pain and pleasure but produce them (T 2.3.9.7). The indirect passions, primarily pride, humility (shame), love and hatred, are generated in a more complex way, but still one involving either the thought or experience of pain or pleasure.

Hume is traditionally regarded as a compatibilist about freedom and determinism, because of his discussion in the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, where he argues that if we understand the doctrines of liberty and necessity properly, all mankind consistently believe both that human actions are the products of causal necessity and that they are free. In the Treatise, however, he explicitly repudiates the doctrine of liberty as “absurd... in one sense, and unintelligible in any other” (T 2.3.2.1). The two treatments, however, are entirely consistent. Hume construes necessity to mean the same as causal connection (or rather, intelligible causal connection), as he himself analyzes this notion in his own theory of causation: either the “constant union and conjunction of like objects,” or that together with “the inference of the mind from the one to the other” (ibid.). In both works he argues that just as we discover necessity (in this sense) to hold between the movements of material bodies, we discover just as much necessity to hold between human motives, character traits, and circumstances of action, on the one hand, and human behavior on the other. He says in the Treatise that the liberty of indifference is the negation of necessity in this sense; this is the notion of liberty that he there labels absurd, and identifies with chance or randomness (which can be no real power in nature) both in the Treatise and the first (epistemic) Enquiry. Human actions are not free in this sense. However, Hume allows in the Treatise that they are sometimes free in the sense of ‘liberty’ which is opposed to violence or constraint. This is the sense on which Hume focuses in EcHU: “a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will;” which everyone has “who is not a prisoner and in chains” (EcHU 8.1.23, Hume's emphasis). It is this that is entirely compatible with necessity in Hume's sense. So the positions in the two works are the same, although the polemical emphasis is so different — iconoclastic toward the libertarian view in the Treatise, and conciliatory toward “all mankind” in the first Enquiry.

Hume argues, as well, that the causal necessity of human actions is not only compatible with moral responsibility but requisite to it. To hold an agent morally responsible for a bad action, it is not enough that the action be morally reprehensible; we must impute the badness of the fleeting act to the enduring agent. Not all harmful or forbidden actions incur blame for the agent; those done by accident, for example, do not. It is only when, and because, the action's cause is some enduring passion or trait of character in the agent that she is to blame for it.
3. The Influencing Motives of the Will

For Hume the will is merely that impression we feel when we knowingly give rise to an action. Once he has shown in his treatment of liberty and necessity that “all actions of the will have particular causes,” (T 2.3.2.8), he can identify these.

Hume famously sets himself in opposition to most moral philosophers, ancient and modern, who talk of the combat of passion and reason, and who urge human beings to regulate their actions by reason and grant it dominion over their contrary passions. He claims to prove that “reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will,” and that reason alone “can never oppose passion in the direction of the will” (T 413). His view is not, of course, that reason plays no role in the generation of action; he grants that reason provides information which makes a difference to the direction of the will. His thesis is that reason alone cannot motivate to action; the impulse to act itself must come from passion. The doctrine that reason alone is merely the “slave of the passions” is defended in the Treatise, not in the second Enquiry, although in the latter he briefly asserts it without support. Hume gives three arguments in the Treatise for the motivational “inertia” of reason alone.

The first is a largely empirical argument based on the two rational functions of the understanding. The understanding judges — from demonstration — the abstract relations of ideas (as in mathematical reasoning); and it also judges — from probability — the relations of objects (especially their causal relations) that are revealed in experience. Demonstrative reasoning is never the cause of any action by itself: it deals in ideas rather than realities, and we only find it useful in action when we have some purpose in view and intend to use its discoveries to inform our inferences about (and so to manipulate) causes and effects. Probable or cause-and-effect reasoning does play a role in deciding what to do, but we see that it only functions as an auxiliary, and not on its own. When we anticipate pain or pleasure from some source, we feel aversion or propensity to that object and “are carry'd to avoid or embrace what will give us” the pain or pleasure (T2.3.3.3). Our emotion makes us seek the causes of these sources of pain or pleasure, and we use causal reasoning to discover them. Once we do, our emotion naturally extends itself to those causes, and we act to avoid or embrace them. Plainly the impulse to act does not arise from the reasoning but is only directed by it. “'Tis from the prospect of pain or pleasure that the aversion or propensity arises...” (ibid.). Probable reasoning is merely the discovery of causal connections, and knowledge of these never concerns us if we are indifferent to the causes and the effects so conjoined. Thus, neither demonstrative nor probable reasoning alone causes action.

The second argument is a corollary of the first. It concludes that reason alone cannot prevent volition or resist passion in controlling the will. It takes as a premise the conclusion of the previous argument, that reason alone cannot produce any volition. What is requisite to arrest a volition or retard the impulse of an existing passion is a contrary impulse. If reason alone were to resist a passion, then, it would need to give rise to such a contrary impulse. But could it do that, it would have an original influence on the will (a capacity to cause a volition, when unopposed); which, according to the previous argument, it does not have. Therefore reason alone cannot resist any impulse to act. Therefore, whatever it may be in the mind that offers resistance to our passions, it cannot be reason. Hume later proposes that when we restrain our imprudent or immoral impulses, the contrary impulse comes also from passion, but often from a passion so “calm” that we confuse it with reason.

The third or Representation argument is different in kind. Hume offers it initially only to show that a passion cannot be opposed by or be contradictory to “truth and reason”; later (T 3.1.1.9), he repeats it to argue that volitions and actions as well cannot be so. It looks as if Hume is about to give another argument to show that reason alone cannot provide a force to resist passion or volition. Yet the Representation Argument is not empirical, and does not talk of forces or impulses. Passions (and volitions and actions), Hume says, do not refer to other entities; they are “original existence[s],” (T 2.3.3.5), “original facts and realities” (T3.1.1.9), not mental representations of other things. Since Hume here understands representation in terms of copying, he says a passion has no “representative quality, which renders it a copy of any other existence or modification” (T 2.3.3.5). Contradiction to truth and reason, however, consists in “the disagreement of ideas, consider'd as copies, with those objects, which they represent” (ibid.). Therefore, a passion (or volition or action), not having this feature, cannot be opposed by truth and reason. Hume says the argument, as applied to actions, proves two points. First, it shows that actions cannot be reasonable or unreasonable. Secondly, it shows that “reason cannot immediately prevent or produce any action by contradicting or approving of it” (T3.1.1.10). The point here is not merely the earlier, empirical observation that the rational activity of the understanding does not generate an impulse in the absence of an expectation of pain or pleasure. It is a conclusion about the relevance of ratiocination alone to action. Because passions, volitions, and actions have no content suitable for assessment by reason, reason cannot assess prospective motives or actions as rational or irrational, and therefore reason cannot, by so assessing them, create or obstruct them. By contrast, reason can assess a potential opinion as rational or irrational; and by endorsing the opinion, reason will (that is, we will) adopt it, while by contradicting the opinion, reason will destroy our credence in it. The Representation Argument, then, makes a point a priori about the relevance of the functions of the understanding to the generation of actions. Interpreters disagree about exactly how to parse this argument, whether it is sound, and its importance to Hume's project.

Hume allows that, speaking imprecisely, we often say a passion is unreasonable because it arises in response to a mistaken judgment or opinion, either that something (a source of pleasure or uneasiness) exists, or that it may be obtained or avoided by a certain means. In just these two cases a passion may be called unreasonable, but strictly speaking even here it is not the passion but the judgment that is so. Once we correct the mistaken judgment, “our passions yield to our reason without any opposition,” so there is still no combat of passion and reason (T 2.3.3.7). And there is no other instance of passion contrary to reason. Hume famously declaims, “'Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. ‘Tis not contrary to reason for me to chuse my total ruin, to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian or person wholly unknown to me. ‘Tis as little contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledg'd lesser good to my greater, and have a more ardent affection for the former than for the latter.” (2.3.3.6)

Interpreters disagree as to whether Hume is an instrumentalist or a skeptic about practical reason. Either way, Hume denies that reason can evaluate the ends people set themselves; only passions can select ends. Instrumentalists understand the claim that reason is the slave of the passions to allow that reason not only discovers the causally efficacious means to our ends (a task of theoretical causal reasoning) but also requires us to take them. If Hume regards the failure to take the known means to one's end as contrary to reason, then on Hume's view reason has a genuinely practical aspect; it can indeed classify some actions as unreasonable. Skeptical interpreters read Hume, instead, as denying that reason imposes any requirements on action, even the requirement to take the known, available means to one's end. They point to the list of extreme actions that are not contrary to reason (such as preferring one's own lesser good to one's greater), and to the Representation Argument, which denies that any passions, volitions, or actions are of such a nature as to be contrary to reason. Hume never says explicitly that failing to take the known means to one's end is either contrary to reason or not contrary to reason (it is not one of the extreme cases in his list). The classificatory point in the Representation Argument favors the reading of Hume as a skeptic about practical reason. But that argument is absent from the moral Enquiry.
4. Ethical Anti-rationalism

In part because he is convinced that reason alone cannot motivate action, and in part for other reasons, Hume claims that moral distinctions are not derived from reason but rather from sentiment. His rejection of ethical rationalism is at least two-fold. Moral rationalists tend to say, first, that moral properties are discovered by reason, and also that moral goodness is in accord with reason (even that goodness consists in reasonableness) and moral evil is unreasonable. Hume rejects both theses. Some of his arguments are apparently directed to one and some to the other thesis, but ambiguities in the text make it unclear which he means to attack in certain places.

In the Treatise he argues against the epistemic thesis (that we discover good and evil by reasoning) by showing that neither demonstrative nor probable/causal reasoning has vice and virtue as its proper objects. Demonstrative reasoning discovers relations of ideas, and vice and virtue are not identical with any of the four philosophical relations (resemblance, contrariety, degrees in quality, or proportions in quantity and number) whose presence can be demonstrated. Nor can they be identical with any other abstract relation; for such relations can also obtain between items such as trees that are incapable of moral good or evil. Furthermore, were moral vice and virtue discerned by demonstrative reasoning, such reasoning would have to reveal their inherent power to cause volitions in all who discern them; but no causal connections can be discovered a priori. Causal reasoning, by contrast, does infer matters of fact pertaining to actions, in particular their causes and effects; but the vice of an action (its wickedness) is not found in such matters, but only in the sentiments of the observer. Therefore moral good and evil are not discovered by reason alone.

However, much attention in the Treatise is devoted to establishing the other anti-rationalist thesis, that virtue is not the same as reasonableness and vice is not contrary to reason. Hume gives two arguments to this end. The first he says follows directly from the Representation Argument, whose conclusion was that passions, volitions, and actions can be neither reasonable nor unreasonable. Actions, he observes, can be laudable or blamable. Therefore it follows that “[l]audable and blameable are not the same with reasonable or unreasonable” (T 458). The properties are not identical.

The second and more famous Motivation Argument makes use of the prior conclusion that reason alone cannot motivate action. As we have seen, reason alone “can never immediately prevent or produce any action by contradicting or approving of it” (T 458). Morality — this argument goes on — influences our passions and actions: we are often impelled to or deterred from action by our opinions of obligation or injustice. Therefore morals cannot be derived from reason alone. This argument is first introduced as showing it impossible “from reason alone... to distinguish betwixt moral good and evil” (T 457) — that is, it is billed as establishing the epistemic thesis. But Hume also says that, like the little direct argument above, it proves that “actions do not derive their merit from a conformity to reason, nor their blame from a contrariety to it” (T458).

The Motivation Argument concludes that moral judgments or evaluations are not the products of reason alone, either demonstrative or probable. From this many draw the sweeping conclusion that for Hume moral evaluations are not beliefs or opinions of any kind, but lack all cognitive content. That is, they take the Motivation Argument to show that Hume holds a non-propositional view of moral evaluations — and indeed, given his sentimentalism, that he is an emotivist. Such a reading should be met with caution, however. For Hume, to say that something is not a product of reason is not equivalent to saying it is not a truth-evaluable judgment or belief. Hume does not regard all our (propositional) beliefs and opinions to be products of reason; some arise directly from sense perception, for example, and some from sympathy. Also, perhaps there are (propositional) beliefs we acquire via probable reasoning but not by such reasoning alone. One possible example is the belief that some object is a cause of pleasure, a belief we reach by means of prior impressions of reflection plus probable reasoning.

Another concern about the Motivation Argument is how it could be sound. In order for it to yield its conclusion, its premise that morality (or a moral judgment) influences the will must be construed to say that moral evaluations alone motivate us to action, without the help of some (further) passion. This is a controversial claim and not one of which Hume offers any defense. The premise that reason alone cannot influence action is also difficult to interpret. Presumably, given his prior arguments for this claim (e.g. that the mere discovery of a causal relation does not produce an impulse to act), Hume means by it not only that the faculty of reason or the activity of reasoning alone cannot motivate, but also that the conclusions of such activity alone (such as recognition of a relation of ideas or belief in a causal connection) cannot motivate. Yet it is hard to see how Hume, given his theory of causation, can argue that no mental item of a certain type (such as a causal belief) can possibly cause motivating passion or action. Such a claim could not be supported a priori. And in Treatise 1.3.10, “Of the influence of belief,” he seems to observe that some causal beliefs do exactly that. It is possible that Hume only means to say, in the premise that reason alone cannot influence action, that reasoning processes cannot generate actions as their logical conclusions; but that would introduce an equivocation, as he surely does not mean to say, in the other premise, that moral evaluations generate actions as their logical conclusions. The transition from premises to conclusion also seems to rely on a principle of transitivity (If A alone cannot produce X and B produces X, then A alone cannot produce B), which needs defense but receives none.
5. Is and ought

Hume famously closes the section of the Treatise that argues against moral rationalism by observing that other systems of moral philosophy, proceeding in the ordinary way of reasoning, at some point make an unremarked transition from premises linked only by “is” to propositions linked by “ought” (expressing a new relation) — a deduction that seems to Hume “altogether inconceivable” (T3.1.1.27). Attention to this transition would “subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceiv'd by reason” (ibid.).

Few passages in Hume's work have generated more interpretive controversy.

On the orthodox reading Hume says here that no ought-judgment may be correctly inferred from a set of premises expressed only in terms of ‘is,’ and the vulgar systems of morality commit this logical fallacy. This is usually thought to mean something much more general: that no ethical or indeed evaluative conclusion whatsoever may be validly inferred from any set of purely factual premises. A number of present-day philosophers, including R. M. Hare, endorse this putative thesis of logic, calling it “Hume's Law.” (As Francis Snare observes, on this reading Hume must simply assume that no purely factual propositions are themselves evaluative, as he does not argue for this.) Some interpreters think Hume commits himself here to a non-propositional or noncognitivist view of moral judgment — the view that moral judgments do not state facts and are not truth-evaluable. (If Hume has already used the Motivation Argument to establish noncognitivism, then the is/ought paragraph may merely draw out a trivial consequence of it. If moral evaluations are merely feelings without propositional content, then of course they cannot be inferred from any propositional premises.) Some see the paragraph as denying ethical realism, excluding values from the domain of facts.

Other interpreters — the more cognitivist ones — see the paragraph about ‘is' and ‘ought’ as doing none of the above. Some read it as simply providing further support for Hume's extensive argument that moral properties are not discernible by demonstrative reason, leaving open whether ethical evaluations may be conclusions of valid probable arguments. Others interpret it as making a point about the original discovery of virtue and vice, which must involve the use of sentiment. On this view, one cannot make the initial discovery of moral properties by inference from nonmoral premises using reason alone; rather, one requires some input from sentiment. However, on this reading it is compatible with the is/ought paragraph that once a person has the moral concepts as the result of prior experience of the moral sentiments, he or she may reach moral conclusions by inference from causal, factual premises (stated in terms of ‘is') about the effects of character traits on the sentiments of observers. They point out that Hume himself makes such inferences frequently in his writings.
6. The Nature of Moral Judgment

On Hume's view, what is a moral evaluation? Three main interpretations have strong textual support. First, the nonpropositional view says that for Hume a moral evaluation does not express any proposition or state any fact. Either it gives vent to a feeling, or it is itself a feeling. (A more refined form of this interpretation allows that moral evaluations have some propositional content, but claims that for Hume their essential feature, as evaluations, is non-propositional.) The subjective description view, by contrast, says that for Hume moral evaluations describe the feelings of the spectator, or the feelings a spectator would have were she to contemplate the trait or action from the common point of view. Often grouped with the latter view is the dispositional interpretation, which understands moral evaluations as factual judgments to the effect that the evaluated trait or action is so constituted as to cause feelings of approval or disapproval in a (suitably characterized) spectator. On the dispositional view, in saying some trait is good we attribute to the trait the dispositional property of being such as to elicit approval. There is some textual support for each reading.
7. Sympathy, and the Nature and Origin of the Moral Sentiments

Our moral evaluations of persons and their character traits, on Hume's positive view, arise from our sentiments. The virtues and vices are those traits the disinterested contemplation of which produces approval and disapproval, respectively, in whoever contemplates the trait, whether the trait's possessor or another. These moral sentiments are emotions (in the present-day sense of that term) with a unique phenomenological quality, and also with a special set of causes. They are caused by contemplating the person or action to be evaluated without regard to our self-interest, and from a common or general perspective that compensates for any distortion in the observer's sympathies resulting from physical or temporal closeness to or distance from the person judged, or extra degrees of resemblance (in language, appearance, or the like). Approval (approbation) is a pleasure, and disapproval (disapprobation) a pain or uneasiness. The moral sentiments are typically calm rather than violent, although they can be intensified as a result of our awareness of the moral responses of others. They are the sort of pleasure and uneasiness that are associated with the passions of pride and humility, love and hatred: when we feel moral approval for another we tend to love or esteem her, and when we approve a trait of our own we are proud of it. Some interpreters analyze the moral sentiments as themselves forms of these four passions; others argue that Hume's moral sentiments are pleasures and pains that tend to cause the latter passions. We distinguish which traits are virtuous and which are vicious by means of our feelings of approval (approbation) and disapproval (disapprobation) toward the traits; our approval of actions is derived from approval of the traits we believe to have given rise to them. We can determine, by observing the various sorts of traits toward which we feel approval, that every such trait — every virtue — has at least one of the following four characteristics: it is either immediately agreeable to the person who has it or to others, or it is useful (advantageous over the longer term) to its possessor or to others. Vices prove to have the parallel features: they are either immediately disagreeable or disadvantageous either to the person who has them or to others. These are not definitions of ‘virtue’ and ‘vice’ but empirical generalizations about the traits as first identified by their effects on the moral sentiments.

In the Treatise Hume details the causes of the moral sentiments, in doing so explaining why agreeable and advantageous traits prove to be the ones that generate approval. He claims that the sentiments of moral approval and disapproval are caused by the operations of sympathy, a psychological mechanism that enables one person to receive by communication the sentiments of another.

Sympathy in general operates as follows. First, observation of the effects of another person's “affection” and its outward expressions in his “countenance and conversation” conveys the idea of his passion into my mind. So does observing the typical cause of a passion: if we contemplate the instruments laid out for another's surgery, even someone unknown to us, they evoke ideas in us of fear and pain. Now, we at all times possess a maximally vivid and forceful impression of ourselves. According to Hume's associationism, vivacity of one perception is automatically transferred to those others that are related to it by resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect. The relations relevant here are primarily resemblance and contiguity. All human beings, regardless of their differences, are generally similar in body and in their possession of parallel passions. The observed or considered person and myself may further resemble one another in more specific shared features such as character or nationality. Because of the resemblance and my contiguity to the observed person, the idea of his passion is associated in my mind with my impression of myself, and acquires great vivacity from it. The sole difference between an idea and an impression is the degree of liveliness or vivacity each possesses. So great is this acquired vivacity that the idea of his passion in my mind becomes an impression, and I actually experience the passion. When I come to share in the affections of strangers, and feel pleasure because they are pleased, as I do when I experience an aesthetic enjoyment of a well-designed ship or fertile field that is not my own, that pleasure of mine can only be caused by sympathy (T 2.2.2-8, 3.3.1.7-8). Similarly, Hume argues, when we reflect upon a character or mental quality knowing its tendency either to the benefit or enjoyment of strangers or to their harm or uneasiness, we come to feel enjoyment when the trait is beneficial or agreeable to them, and uneasiness when the trait is harmful or disagreeable to them. This reaction of ours to the tendency of a character trait to affect the sentiments of strangers (those with whom we have no special affectionate ties) can only be explained by sympathy.

We greatly approve the artificial virtues (justice with respect to property, allegiance to government, and the laws of nations, of modesty, and of good manners), which (Hume argues) are inventions contrived solely for the interest of society. We approve them in all times and places, even where our own interest is not at stake, solely for their tendency to benefit the whole society of that time or place. This instance confirms that “the reflecting on the tendency of characters and mental qualities, is sufficient to give us the sentiments of approbation and blame” (T 3.3.1.9). The sympathy-generated pleasure, then, is the moral approbation we feel toward these traits of character. We find the character traits — the causes — agreeable because they are the means to ends we find agreeable as a result of sympathy. Hume extends this analysis to the approval of most of the natural virtues. Those traits of which we approve naturally (without any social contrivance), such as beneficence, clemency, and moderation, also tend to the good of society. So our approval of those can be explained in precisely the same way, via sympathy with the pleasure of those who receive benefit. And since the imagination is more struck by what is particular than by what is general, manifestations of the natural virtues, which directly benefit any individual to whom they are directed, are even more apt to give pleasure via sympathy than are the manifestations of justice, which may harm identifiable individuals in some cases though they contribute to a pattern of action beneficial to society as a whole (T 3.3.1.13).
8. The Common Point of View

As we saw, the moral sentiments are produced by sympathy with those affected by a trait or action. Such sympathetically-acquired feelings are distinct from our self-interested responses, and an individual of discernment learns to distinguish her moral sentiments (which are triggered by contemplating another's character trait “in general”) from the pleasure or uneasiness she may feel when responding to a trait with reference to her “particular interest,” for example when another's strength of character makes him a formidable opponent (T 3.1.2.4).

However, the sympathetic transmission of sentiments can vary in effectiveness depending upon the degree of resemblance and contiguity between the observer and the person with whom he sympathizes. I receive the sentiments of someone very much like me or very close to me far more strongly than I do those of someone unlike me or farther away. Yet the moral assessments we make do not vary depending upon whether the person we evaluate resembles us in language, sex, or temperament, or is near or far. Indeed, our moral assessments of people remain stable even though our position with respect to them changes over time. Furthermore, sympathy only brings us people's actual sentiments or what we believe to be their actual sentiments; yet we feel moral approval of character traits that we know produce no real happiness for anyone, because, for example, their possessor is isolated in a prison. To handle these objections to the sympathy theory, and to explain more generally how, on a sentiment-based ethical theory, moral evaluations made by one individual at different times and many individuals in a community tend to be fairly uniform, Hume claims that people do not make their moral judgments from their own individual points of view, but instead select “some common point of view, from which they might survey their object, and which might cause it to appear the same to all of them” (T 3.3.1.30). At least with respect to natural virtues and vices, this common point of view is composed of the intimate perspectives of the various individuals who have direct interactions with the person being evaluated. To make a moral evaluation I must sympathize with each of these persons in their dealings with the subject of my evaluation; the blame or praise I give as a result of this imaginative exercise is my genuine moral assessment of the subject's character. In that assessment I also overlook the small external accidents of fortune that might render an individual's trait ineffectual, and respond to traits that render a character typically “fitted to be beneficial to society,” even if circumstances do not permit it to cause that benefit (T 3.3.1.20). Thus I acquire by sympathy the pleasure or uneasiness that I imagine people would feel were the trait able to operate as it ordinarily does. “Experience soon teaches us this method of correcting our sentiments, or at least, of correcting our language, where the sentiments are more stubborn and inalterable” (T 3.3.1.16).
9. Artificial and Natural Virtues

The standard object of moral evaluation is a “quality of mind,” a character trait. (As we have seen, for Hume evaluation of an action is derived from evaluation of the inner quality we infer to have given rise to it.) The typical moral judgment is that some trait, such as a particular person's benevolence or laziness, is a virtue or a vice. A character trait, for Hume, is a psychological disposition consisting of a tendency to feel a certain sentiment or combination of sentiments, ones that often move their possessor to action. We reach a moral judgment by feeling approval or disapproval upon contemplating the trait in a disinterested way from the common point of view. So moral approval is a favorable sentiment in the observer elicited by the observed person's disposition to have certain motivating sentiments.

In the Treatise Hume emphasizes that “our sense of every kind of virtue is not natural; but … there are some virtues, that produce pleasure and approbation by means of an artifice or contrivance, which arises from the circumstances and necessities of mankind” (T 3.2.1.1). He divides the virtues into those that are natural — in that our approval of them does not depend upon any cultural inventions or jointly-made social rules — and those that are artificial (dependent both for their existence as character traits and for their ethical merit on the presence of conventional rules for the common good), and he gives separate accounts of the two kinds. The traits he calls natural virtues are more refined and completed forms of those human sentiments we could expect to find even in people who belonged to no society but cooperated only within small familial groups. The traits he calls artificial virtues are the ones we need for successful impersonal cooperation; our natural sentiments are too partial to give rise to these without intervention. In the Treatise Hume includes among the artificial virtues honesty with respect to property (which he often calls equity or “justice,” though it is a strangely narrow use of the term), fidelity to promises (sometimes also listed under “justice”), allegiance to one's government, conformity to the laws of nations (for princes), chastity (refraining from non-marital sex) and modesty (both primarily for women and girls), and good manners. A great number of individual character traits are listed as natural virtues, but the main types discussed in detail are greatness of mind (“a hearty pride, or self-esteem, if well-concealed and well-founded,” T 3.2.2.11), goodness or benevolence (an umbrella category covering generosity, gratitude, friendship, and more), and such natural abilities as prudence and wit, which, Hume argues, have a reasonably good claim to be included under the title moral virtue, though traditionally they are not. Hume does not explicitly draw a distinction between artificial and natural virtues in the moral Enquiry.

In the Treatise Hume argues in turn that the virtues of material honesty and of faithfulness to promises and contracts are artificial, not natural virtues. Both arguments fall into at least two stages: one to show that if we think of the given character trait as existing and winning our approval without help from any mutual social arrangement, paradoxes arise; and another, longer stage to explain how the relevant convention might have come into being and to refute those with a different genetic story. He also explains the social construction of the other artificial virtues and what social good they serve.
10. Honesty with respect to Property
10.1 The Circle

Hume offers a rather cryptic argument to show that our approval of material honesty must be the product of collaborative human effort (convention). When we approve an action, he says, we regard it merely as the sign of the motivating passion in the agent's “mind and temper” that produced it; our evaluation of the action is derived from our assessment of this inner motive. Therefore all actions deemed virtuous derive their goodness only from virtuous motives — motives we approve. It follows from this that the motive that originally “bestows a merit on any action” can never be moral approval of that action (awareness of its virtue), but must be a non-moral, motivating psychological state — that is, a state distinct from the “regard to the virtue” of an action (moral approval or disapproval) (T 3.2.1.4). For if the virtue-bestowing motive of the action were the agent's sense that the act would be virtuous to do — if that were why he did it, and why we approved it — then we would be reasoning in a vicious circle: we would approve of the action derivatively, because we approve of the agent's motive, and this motive would consist of approval of the action, which can only be based on approval of a motive... The basis of our approval could not be specified. For every virtue, therefore, there must be in human nature some non-moral motive that characteristically motivates actions expressive of that virtue, which motive, by eliciting our approval, makes the actions so motivated virtuous. The virtue of a action of this species would be established by its being done from this non-moral motive, and only then could an agent also or alternatively be moved so to act by her derivative regard to the virtue of the act. However, Hume observes that there is no morally approved (and so virtue-bestowing), non-moral motive of honest action. The only approved, reliable motive that we can find for acts of “equity” is a moral one, the sense of virtue or "regard to the honesty" of the actions. The honest individual repays a loan not (merely) out of self-interest or concern for the well-being of the lender (who may be a “profligate debauchee” who will reap only harm from his possessions), but from a “regard to justice, and abhorrence of villainy and knavery” (T 3.2.1.9, 13). This, however, is “evident sophistry and reasoning in a circle…” Now nature cannot have “establish'd a sophistry, and render'd it necessary and unavoidable…”; therefore, “the sense of justice and injustice is not deriv'd from nature, but arises artificially… from education, and human conventions” (T 3.2.1.17). Whatever, exactly, the logic of this argument is supposed to be, Hume's intent is to show that if we imagine equity to be a natural virtue we commit ourselves to a sophistry, and therefore honesty is instead man-made.

Hume offers an account of the genesis of the social convention that on his view creates honesty with respect to property, and this is meant to cope in some way with the circularity he identifies. How it does so is a matter of interpretive controversy, as we will see.
10.2 The Origin of Material Honesty

Hume poses two questions about the rules of ownership of property and the associated virtue of material honesty: what is the artifice by which human beings create them, and why do we attribute moral goodness and evil to the observance and neglect of these rules?

By nature human beings have many desires but are individually ill-equipped with strength, natural weapons, or natural skills to satisfy them. We can remedy these natural defects by means of social cooperation: combination of strength, division of labor, and mutual aid in times of individual fragility. People think of the idea to form a society as a consequence of their experience with the small family groups into which they are born, groups united initially by sexual attraction and familial love, but illustrating the practical advantages of working together with others. However, in the conditions of moderate scarcity in which we find ourselves, and given the portable nature of the goods we desire, our untrammeled greed and naturally “confined generosity” (generosity to those dear to us in preference to others) tends to create conflict or undermine cooperation, destroying collaborative arrangements among people who are not united by ties of affection, and leaving us all materially poor. No remedy for this natural partiality is to be found in “our natural uncultivated ideas of morality” (T 3.2.2.8); an invention is needed.

Hume argues that we create the rules of ownership of property originally in order to satisfy our avidity for possessions for ourselves and our loved ones, by linking material goods more securely to particular individuals so as to avoid conflict. Within small groups of cooperators, individuals signal to one another a willingness to conform to a simple rule: to refrain from the material goods others come to possess by labor or good fortune, provided those others will observe the same restraint toward them. (This rule will in time require more detail: specific rules determining who may enjoy which goods initially and how goods may be transferred.) This signalling is not a promise (which cannot occur without another, similar convention), but an expression of conditional intention. The usefulness of such a custom is so obvious that others will soon catch on and express a similar intention, and the rest will fall in line. The convention develops tacitly, as do conventions of language and money. When an individual within such a small society violates this rule, the others are aware of it and exclude the offender from their cooperative activities. Once the convention is in place, justice (of this sort) is defined as conformity with the convention, injustice as violation of it; indeed, the convention defines property rights, ownership, financial obligation, theft, and related concepts, which had no application before the convention was introduced. So useful and obvious is this invention that human beings would not live for long in isolated family groups or in fluctuating larger groups with unstable possession of goods; their ingenuity would quickly enable them to invent property so as to reap the substantial economic benefits of cooperation in larger groups in which there would be reliable possession of the product, and they would thus better satisfy their powerful natural greed by regulating it with rules of justice.

Greed, and more broadly, self-interest, is the motive for inventing property; but we need a further explanation why we think of justice (adherence to the rules of ownership) as virtuous, and injustice (their violation) as vicious. Hume accounts for the moralization of property as follows. As our society grows larger, we may cease to see our own property violations as a threat to the continued existence of a stable economic community, and this reduces our motivation to conform. But when we consider violations by others, we partake by sympathy in the uneasiness they cause to their victims and all of society. Such disinterested uneasiness, and the concomitant pleasure we feel on contemplating the public benefits of adherence, are instances of moral disapproval and approval. This we extend to our own behavior as a result of general rules. This process is “forwarded by the artifice of politicians” (T 3.2.2.25), who assist nature by inspiring esteem for justice and abhorrence of injustice in order to govern more easily. Private education assists in this further artifice. Thus material honesty becomes a virtue.
10.3 The Motive of Honest Actions

Does this account resolve the circularity problem? Is there any non-moral motive of honest action? Some interpreters say yes, it is greed redirected, which removes the circle. But this presents two difficulties: first, our greed is not in fact best satisfied by just action in every case, and second, Hume denies that this motive is approved. Some interpret Hume as coping with the first difficulty by supposing that politicians and parents deceive us into thinking, falsely, that every individual just act advances the interests of the agent; or that Hume himself mistakenly thought so, at least in the Treatise (see Baron, Haakonssen, and Gauthier). Others say there is no non-moral motive of honest action, and Hume escapes from the circle by relaxing this ostensibly universal requirement on virtuous types of behavior, limiting it to the naturally virtuous kinds. These interpreters either claim that there is no particular motive needed to evoke approval for conformity to the rules of property — mere behavior is enough (Mackie) — or that we approve of a new sort of motive, either a new pattern of practical reasoning (Darwall) or a motivating form of the moral sentiment itself (Cohon).

Hume's genetic account of property is striking for its lack of patriarchal assumptions about the family, its explicit denial that the creation of ownership does or can depend on any promise or contract, and its concept of convention as an informal practice of mutual compromise for mutual advantage that arises incrementally and entirely informally, without the use of central authority or force.
11. Fidelity to Promises

Fidelity is the virtue of being disposed to keep promises and contracts. Hume has in mind promises made “at arm's length” that parties undertake to promote their own interest, not affectionate exchanges of favors between friends. While he sees the same circularity puzzle about the approved motive of fidelity that he tackles at length in connection with honesty, in the case of fidelity he focuses on a different conundrum that arises with the misguided attempt to analyze fidelity as a non-conventional (natural) virtue. Unlike Hobbes and Locke, who help themselves to the concept of a promise or contract in their imagined state of nature, Hume argues that the performative utterance “I promise” would be unintelligible in the absence of background social conventions, and that the moral obligation of a promise is dependent upon such conventions as well.

Suppose the practice of giving and receiving promises did not depend on a socially-defined convention. In that case, what could we mean by the utterances we use to make them, and what would be the origin of our obligation to fulfill them? Where the words are used (uncharacteristically) in a way that does not purport to reveal the agent's will, we do not understand a promise as really being made; we only take a speaker to have promised, and so to be bound to perform, if he understands the words he uses, in particular as purporting to obligate him. Thus for effective use there must be some act of the speaker's mind expressed by the special phrase “I promise” and its synonyms, and our moral obligation results from this act of the mind. (This seems to be Hobbes's assumption in Leviathan, where the implicit signs of covenant — as distinct from the explicit ones — are clear signs of the person's will.) The requisite mental act or mental state, though, could not be one of mere desire or resolution to act, since it does not follow from our desiring or resolving to act that we are morally obligated to do so; nor could it be the volition to act, since that does not come into being ahead of time when we promise, but only when the time comes to act. And of course, one can promise successfully (incur obligation by promising) even though one has no intention to perform; so the mental act requisite to obligation is not that one. The only likely act of mind that might be expressed in a promise is a mental act of willing to be obligated to perform the promised action, as this conforms to our common view that we bind ourselves by choosing to be bound.

But, Hume argues, it is absurd to think that one can actually bring an obligation into existence by willing to be obligated. What makes an action obligatory is that its omission is disapproved by unbiased observers. But no act of will within an agent can cause a previously neutral act to become one that engenders moral disapproval in observers (even in the agent herself). Sentiments are not subject to such voluntary control. Even on a moral rationalist view the thesis is absurd: to create a new obligation would be to change the abstract relations in which such objects as actions and persons stand to one another, and while one can do this by acting, surely one cannot do it by performing in one's own mind an act of willing such a relation to exist. Thus, there is no such act of the mind. Even if people in their natural (pre-conventional) condition “cou'd perceive each other's thoughts by intuition,” they could not understand one another to bind themselves by any act of promising, and could not be obligated thereby. Since the necessary condition for a natural obligation of promises cannot be fulfilled, we may conclude that this obligation is instead the product of group invention to serve the interests of society.

Although the invention of property suffices to make possession stable and to introduce transfer by consent, as described so far it only permits simultaneous swapping of visible commodities. Great advantages could be gained by all if people could be counted on to provide goods or services later for benefits given now, or exchange goods that are distant or described generically. But for people without the capacity to obligate themselves to future action, such exchanges would depend upon one party performing first (presumably from self-interest) and the second performing in his turn out of gratitude alone; and since that motive cannot generally be counted on in self-interested transactions, people would hardly ever provide one another benefits of these kinds. Moralists and politicians cannot alter human selfishness and ingratitude, but they can teach us better to satisfy our appetites "in an oblique and artificial manner..." (T 3.2.5.9). First, people can easily recognize that additional kinds of mutual exchanges would serve their interests. They need only express this interest to one another in order to motivate everyone to invent and to keep such agreements. They create a form of words to mark these exchanges (and distinguish them from the generous reciprocal acts of friendship and gratitude). When someone utters this form of words, he is understood to express a resolution to do the action in question, and he "subjects himself to the penalty of never being trusted again in case of failure" (T 3.2.5.10), a penalty made possible by the practice of the group, who enforce the requirement to keep promises by the simple expedient of refusing to contract with those whose word cannot be trusted . This "concert or convention" (ibid.) alters human motives to act. One is moved by self-interest to give the promising sign (in order to obtain the other party's cooperation), and once one has given it, self-interest demands that one do what one promised to do so as to insure that people will exchange promises with one in the future. Some interpreters say that this enlightened self-interest remains the only motive for keeping one's promise, once the practice of promising has been created. But Hume says the sentiment of morals comes to play the same role in promise-keeping that it does in the development of honesty with respect to property (T 3.2.5.12); so there is evidence he thinks the moral sentiment not only becomes “annex'd” to promise-keeping but further motivates it. In larger, more anonymous communities, a further incentive is needed besides the fear of exclusion; and a sentiment of moral approval of promise-keeping arises as the result of sympathy with all who benefit from the practice, aided by a “second artifice,” the well-meaning psychological manipulation of the people by parents and politicians, yielding a near-universal admiration of fidelity and shame at breaking one's word (T 3.2.5.12). This may yield a moral motive for promise-keeping even in anonymous transactions.
12. Allegiance to Government

A small society can maintain a subsistence-level economy without any dominion of some people over others, relying entirely on voluntary compliance with conventions of ownership, transfer of goods, and keeping of agreements, and relying on exclusion as the sole means of enforcement. But an increase in population and/or material productivity, Hume thinks, tends to stimulate a destabilizing rate of defection from the rules: more luxury goods greatly increase the temptation to act unjustly, and more anonymous transactions make it seem likely that one will get away with it. Though people are aware that injustice is destructive of social cooperation and so ultimately detrimental to their own interests, this knowledge will not enable them to resist such strong temptation, because of an inherent human weakness: we are more powerfully drawn to a near-term good even when we will pay for it with a greater long-term harm. This creates the need for government to enforce the rules of property and promise (the “laws of nature,” as Hume sometimes rather ironically calls them, since on his view they are not natural). This is the reason for the invention of government. Once in power, rulers can also make legitimate use of their authority to resolve disputes over just what the rules of justice require in particular cases, and to carry out projects for the common good such as building roads and dredging harbors.

Hume thinks it unnecessary to prove that allegiance to government is the product of convention and not mere nature, since governments are obviously social creations. But he does need to explain the creation of governments and how they solve the problem he describes. He speculates that people who are unaccustomed to subordination in daily life might draw the idea for government from their experience of wars with other societies, when they must appoint a temporary commander. To overcome the preference for immediate gain over long-term security, the people will need to arrange social circumstances so that the conformity to justice is in people's immediate interest. This cannot be done with respect to all the people, but it can be done for a few. So the people select magistrates (judges, kings, and the like) and so position them (presumably with respect to rank and wealth) that it will be in those magistrates' immediate interest not only to follow but to enforce the rules of justice throughout society. Hume is vague about the motivation of the magistrates, but apparently they are so pleased with their own share of wealth and status that they are not tempted by the possessions of others; and since they are “indifferent… to the greatest part of the state,” they have no incentive to assist anyone in any crimes (T3.2.7.6). Thus the magistrates' most immediate interest lies in preserving their own status and wealth by protecting society. (Perhaps more directly, they stand to lose their favored status if they are found by the people not to enforce the rules of justice.)

It is possible for the people to agree to appoint magistrates in spite of the incurable human attraction to the contiguous good even when smaller than a remote good, because this only takes effect when the lesser good is immediately at hand. When planning for the future, people always prefer the greater good and make decisions accordingly. So looking to the future, people can decide now to empower magistrates to force them to conform to the rules of justice in the time to come. When the time comes and individuals are tempted to violate the rules, the threat this poses to society will not move them to desist, but the immediate efforts of the magistrates will.

We initially obey our magistrates from self-interest. But once government is instituted, we come to have a moral obligation to obey our governors; this is another artificial duty that needs to be explained. On Hume's view it is independent of promissory obligation. We are bound to our promises and to obey the magistrates' commands on parallel grounds: because conformity to promises and contracts, and the other “laws of nature,” are so manifestly beneficial for all. Governors merely insure that the rules of justice are generally obeyed in the sort of society where purely voluntary conventions would otherwise break down. As in the case of fidelity to promises, the character trait of allegiance to our governors generates sympathy with its beneficiaries throughout society, making us approve the trait as a virtue. The duty of allegiance to our present governors does not depend upon their or their ancestors' divine right to govern, Hume says, nor on any promise we have made to them, but rather on the general social value of having a government. A government that maintains conditions preferable to what they would be without it retains its legitimacy and may not rightly be overthrown; but rebellion against a cruel tyranny is no violation of our duty of allegiance. Although governments exist to serve the interests of their people, changing magistrates and forms of government for the sake of small advantages to the public would yield disorder and upheaval, defeating the purpose of government; so our duty of allegiance does forbid this. Rulers thus need not be chosen by the people in order to be legitimate. Consequently, who is the ruler will often be a matter of salience and imaginative association; and it will be no ground for legitimate rebellion that a ruler was selected arbitrarily. Rulers identified by long possession of authority, present possession, conquest, succession, or positive law will be suitably salient and so legitimate, provided their rule tends to the common good.

Hume does advocate some forms of government as being preferable to others, particularly in his Essays. Governments structured by laws are superior to those controlled by the edicts of rulers or ruling bodies (“That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science”). Representative democracy is superior to direct democracy, and “free” (popular) governments are more hospitable to trade than “absolute” governments (ibid.). Hume speculates that a perfect government would be a representative democracy of property-holders with division of powers and some features of federalism (“Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth”). He defends his preferences by arguing that certain forms of government are less prone to corruption, faction (with the concomitant threat of civil war), and oppressive treatment of the people than others; that is, they are more likely to enforce the rules of justice, adjudicate fairly, and encourage peace and prosperity.

Hume famously criticizes the social contract theory of political obligation. According to his own theory, our duty to obey our governors is not reducible to an instance of our duty to fulfill promises, but arises separately though in a way parallel to the genesis of that duty. The duty to obey magistrates, when widely recognized, assures the fulfillment of promises and the other artificial duties as well; so in a way, fulfillment of promissory duty depends upon fulfillment of the duty of allegiance, and not vice versa. Furthermore, Hume thinks it impossible that anyone should have made even a tacit promise to obey the government, given that citizens do not think they did any such thing, but rather think they are born to obey it. Even tacit contract requires that the will be engaged, and we have no memory of this; nor do governments refrain from punishing disloyalty in citizens who have given no tacit promise.
13. The Natural Virtues

In the Treatise Hume's principle interest in the natural virtues lies in explaining the causes of our approval of them. The mechanism of sympathy ultimately accounts for this approval and the corresponding disapproval of the natural vices. Sympathy also explains our approval of the artificial virtues; the difference is that we approve of those as a result of sympathy with the cumulative effects produced by the general practice of the artificial virtues on the whole of society (individual acts of justice not always producing pleasure for anyone); whereas we approve each individual exercise of such natural virtues as modesty and friendship because we sympathize with those who are affected by each such action when we consider it from the common point of view. As we saw, he argues that the traits of which we approve fall into four groups: traits immediately agreeable to their possessor or to others, and traits advantageous to their possessor or to others. In all four of these groups of approved traits, our approval arises as the result of sympathy bringing into our minds the pleasure that the trait produces for its possessor or for others. This is especially clear with such self-regarding virtues as prudence and industry, which we approve in those who provide no benefit to us observers; this can only be explained by our sympathy with the benefits prudence and industry bring to their possessors.

According to Hume, different levels and manifestations of the passions of pride and humility make for virtue or for vice. An obvious and “over-weaning conceit” is disapproved by any observer (is a vice) (T 3.3.2.1); while a well-founded but concealed self-esteem is approved (is a virtue). Hume explains these opposite reactions to such closely related character traits by means of the interplay of the observer's sympathy with a distinct psychological mechanism he calls comparison. The mechanism of comparison juxtaposes a sympathetically-communicated sentiment with the observer's own inherent feeling, causing the observer to feel a sentiment opposite to the one she observes in another (pleasure if the other is suffering, pain if the other is pleased) when the sympathetically-communicated sentiment is not too strong. A person who displays excessive pride irritates others because via sympathy they come to feel the other's pleasant sentiment of pride (to some degree) but to feel a greater uneasiness as a result of comparison of this great pride (in whose objects they do not believe) with their own lesser amount of it; this is why conceit is a vice. Self-esteem founded on an accurate assessment of one's strengths and politely concealed from others, though, is both agreeable and advantageous to its possessor without being distressing to others, and so is generally approved. (Thus the professed preference of Christians for humility over self-esteem does not accord with the judgments of most observers.) Although excessive pride is a natural vice and self-esteem a natural virtue, human beings in society create the artificial virtue of good breeding (adherence to customs of slightly exaggerated mutual deference in accordance with social rank) to enable us each to conceal our own pride so that it does not shock the pride of others.

Courage and military heroism are also forms of pride. Though the student of history can see that military ambition has mostly been disadvantageous to human society, when we contemplate the “dazzling” character of the hero, immediate sympathy irresistibly leads us to approve it (T 3.3.2.15).

Our approval of those traits that may be grouped together under the heading of goodness and benevolence, such as generosity, humanity, compassion, and gratitude, arises from sympathy with people in the individual's “narrow circle” of friends and associates, since, given natural human selfishness, we cannot expect people's concerns to extend farther (T 3.3.3.2). By adopting the common point of view we correct for the distortions of sympathy by entering into the feelings of those close to the person being evaluated even if they are remote from us. The vice of cruelty is most loathed because the suffering of the person's victims that reaches us via sympathy readily becomes hatred of the perpetrator.

Although natural abilities of the mind are not traditionally classified as moral virtues and vices, the difference between these types of traits is unimportant, Hume argues. Intelligence, good judgment, application, eloquence, and wit are also mental qualities that bring individuals the approbation of others, and their absence is disapproved. As is the case with many of the traditionally-recognized virtues, the various natural abilities are approved either because they are useful to their possessor or because they are immediately agreeable to others. It is sometimes argued that moral virtues are unlike natural abilities in that the latter are involuntary, but Hume argues that many traditional moral virtues are involuntary as well. The sole difference is that the prospect of reward or punishment can induce people to act as the morally virtuous would (as justice requires, for example), but cannot induce them to act as if they had the natural abilities.
14. Differences between the Treatise and the Moral Enquiry

Late in his life Hume deemed the Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals his best work, and in style it is both elegant and spare. His method in that work differs from that of the Treatise: instead of explicating the nature of virtue and vice and our knowledge of them in terms of underlying features of the human mind, he proposes to collect all the traits we know from common sense to be virtues and vices, observe what those in each group have in common, and from that observation discover the “foundation of ethics” (EPM 1.10). The conclusions largely coincide with those of the Treatise. Some topics in the Treatise are handled more fully in the moral Enquiry, for example Hume's account of the motivation to just action is enriched by his discussion of a challenge from a “sensible knave.” However, without the detailed background theories of the mind, the passions, motivation to action, and social convention presented in the Treatise, and without any substitute for them, some of the conclusions of the moral Enquiry stand unsupported.

In the latter work, Hume's main argument that reason alone is not adequate to yield moral evaluations (in Appendix 1 of EPM) depends on his having demonstrated throughout the book that at least one foundation of moral praise lies in the usefulness to society of the praised character trait. We use reason extensively to learn the effects of various traits and to identify the useful and pernicious ones. But utility and disutility are merely means; were we indifferent to the weal and woe of mankind, we would feel equally indifferent to the traits that promote those ends. Therefore there must be some sentiment that makes us favor the one over the other. This could only be humanity, “a feeling for the happiness of mankind, and resentment of their misery” (EPM App. 1.3). This argument presupposes that the moral evaluations we make are themselves the expression of sentiment rather than reason alone. (The alternative position would be that while of course we do feel approval and disapproval for vice and virtue, the judgment as to which is which is itself the deliverance of reason.) So Hume appends some arguments directed against the hypothesis of moral rationalism. One of these is an enriched version of the argument of Treatise 3.1.1 that neither demonstrative nor causal reasoning has moral distinctions as its proper object, since moral vice and virtue cannot plausibly be analyzed as either facts or relations. He adds that while in our reasonings we start from the knowledge of relations or facts and infer some previously-unknown relation or fact, moral evaluation cannot proceed until all the relevant facts and relations are already known. At that point, there is nothing further for reason to do; therefore moral evaluation is not the work of reason alone but of another faculty. He bolsters this line of argument by expanding his Treatise analogy between moral and aesthetic judgment, arguing that just as our appreciation of beauty awaits full information about the object but requires the further contribution of taste, so in moral evaluation our assessment of merit or villainy awaits full knowledge of the person and situation but requires the further contribution of approbation or disapprobation. He also offers the argument that since the chain of reasons why one acts must finally stop at something that is “desirable on its own account… because of its immediate accord or agreement with sentiment…” (EPM App.1.19), sentiment is needed to account for ultimate human ends; and since virtue is an end, sentiment and not reason alone must distinguish moral good and evil.

In the moral Enquiry Hume omits all arguments to show that reason alone does not move us to act, and he does not appeal to that thesis as a premise to establish the claim that moral properties are not discerned by reason alone. Strikingly absent from this work, consequently, is the Representation Argument about the irrelevance of reason to passions and actions, and the arguments based on it intended to show that moral goodness and evil are not identical with reasonableness and unreasonableness; as well as the other arguments for the “impotence” of reason that support the Motivation Argument. Hume instead relies solely on the above epistemic and descriptive arguments to show that reason on its own is unable to discern vice and virtue in order to reject ethical rationalism in favor of sentimentalism. He does say that reason alone is no motive to action, but does not provide arguments for this claim.

Why did Hume omit the more fundamental arguments based on the motivational inertia of reason? He may have reconsidered and rejected them. For example, he may have given up his unmotivated claim that passions have no representative character, a premise of the Representation Argument on which some of his more fundamental anti-rationalist arguments depend. Or he may have retained these views but opted not to appeal to anything so arcane in a work aimed at a broader audience and intended to be as accessible as possible. The moral Enquiry makes no use of ideas and impressions, and so no arguments that depend on that distinction can be offered there, including the Representation Argument. Apparently Hume thought he could show that reason and sentiment rule different domains without using those arguments.

The causal analysis of sympathy as a mechanism of vivacity-transferal is entirely omitted from the moral Enquiry. Hume still appeals to sympathy there to explain the origin of all moral approval and disapproval, but he explains our sympathy with others simply as a manifestation of the sentiment of humanity. Since on Hume's view any sentiment-based theory of ethical evaluation is vulnerable to the same objections that concerned him in the Treatise (that sentiments vary with distance from the object of evaluation in space and time, yet moral assessments are not altered by these differences alone), he addresses them there as well, and resolves them by appealing once again to the common point of view. In the Enquiry he places more emphasis on the phenomenon of sympathy with the whole of society, in part achieved by conversation, as the means to correcting our initial sentiments.

The distinction between artificial and natural virtues that dominates the virtue ethics of the Treatise is almost entirely absent from the moral Enquiry; the term ‘artificial’ occurs in the latter only once in a footnote. Gone are the paradoxes of property and promises intended to prove that particular virtues are devised on purpose; also missing is what some commentators think Hume's most original contribution to the theory of justice, his account of convention. Yet Hume briefly sketches part of the same story of the quasi-historical origin of justice that he gives in the Treatise; and while the emphasis has shifted, Hume not only tries to show that justice has merit only because of its beneficial consequences, but that “public utility is the sole origin of justice” — were we not to find it useful (and in some conditions we might not) we would not even have such a thing (EPM 3.1.1). While any explanation of this shift and these omissions is merely speculative, here it seems that Hume does not change his mind about the arguments of the Treatise but chooses to lead the reader to the same conclusions by more subtle and indirect means.

In the moral Enquiry Hume is more explicit about what he takes to be the errors of Christian (or, more cautiously, Roman Catholic) moralists. Not only have they mistakenly elevated craven humility to a virtue, but they also favor penance, fasting, and other “monkish” virtues that are in fact disapproved by all reasonable folk for their uselessness and disagreeableness, and so are vices.
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