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ABSTRACT
If one looks for the notion of conscience in Hume, there appears to be a contrast between the loose use of it that can be found in his History of England, and the stricter use of it Hume makes in his philosophical works. It is my belief that, notwithstanding the problems Hume’s philosophy raises for a notion such as conscience, it is possible to frame a positive Humean explanation of it. I want to suggest that, far from corresponding to a mental power or to a faculty of some sort, conscience for Hume can be understood as a reflective form of self-surveying. This becomes apparent if the discussion about conscience as presented in A Treatise of Human Nature is integrated with other notions Hume introduces in An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals when discussing the case of the ‘sensible knave’, such as those of inward peace of mind, consciousness of integrity, and reflection on one’s own conduct. To further explicate my line of argument, I shall also contrast Hume’s conclusions with some arguments presented by other authors in this regard, such as Bernard Mandeville and Joseph Butler.
Acknowledgements
Previous versions of this essay were given at the following conferences: Conscience and Moral Consciousness, University of Oxford, June 7, 2014; 14th Humean Readings, Sapienza University of Rome, June 20–21, 2014; Mandeville in Rome – Mandevillian Readings, Royal Dutch Academy in Rome and the American University of Rome, September 4–6, 2014; 4th Oxford Brookes International Hume Workshop: Hume and the Social, Oxford Brookes University, November 28, 2015. I would like to thank all those who attended them, and in particular Federico Boccaccini, Alessandro Chiessi, Angela Coventry, Roger Crisp, Julia Driver, Max Hayward, Peter Kail, Eugenio Lecaldano, Emilio Mazza, Amyas Merivale, Peter Millican, Dan O’Brien, Paul Russell, Constantine Sandis, Mikko Tolonen, Gabriel Watts, and two referees from The British Journal for the History of Philosophy, for their helpful comments.
Notes
1 I shall quote Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature in the body of the text as T followed by book, part, section, paragraph, and SBN with the page in the Selby-Bigge edition. I shall quote An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding and An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals as EHU and EPM respectively, followed by section, paragraph, and SBN with the page in the Selby-Bigge edition.
2 I shall quote The History of England in the body of the text as HE, followed by the volume and the page.
3 These various meanings can be recognized in the definition of conscience given by the OED: ‘The internal acknowledgement or recognition of the moral quality of one's motives and actions; the sense of right and wrong as regards things for which one is responsible; the faculty or principle which judges the moral quality of one's actions or motives’. The OED continues thus: ‘Now also in weakened sense: one’s awareness of what is advisable or acceptable for one to do’. As it will become clear, Hume’s way of understanding conscience is closer to this latter meaning.
4 It is worth quoting at length what Hume adds in the Appendix regarding the nature of the will:
Some have asserted, that we feel an energy, or power, in our own mind; and that having in this manner acquir’d the idea of power, we transfer that quality to matter, where we are not able immediately to discover it. The motions of our body, and the thoughts and sentiments of our mind (say they) obey the will; nor do we seek any farther to acquire a just notion of force or power. But to convince us how fallacious this reasoning is, we need only consider, that the will being here consider’d as a cause, has no more a discoverable connexion with its effects, than any material cause has with its proper effect. So far from perceiving the connexion betwixt an act of volition, and a motion of the body; ’tis allow’d that no effect is more inexplicable from the powers and essence of thought and matter. Nor is the empire of the will over our mind more intelligible. The effect is there distinguishable and separable from the cause, and cou’d not be foreseen without the experience of their constant conjunction. We have command over our mind to a certain degree, but beyond that lose all empire over it: And ’tis evidently impossible to fix any precise bounds to our authority, where we consult not experience.
5 This reference by Hume to ‘a sense of morals’ closely reminds us of Francis Hutcheson. In An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue he observes that ‘We must then certainly have other Perceptions of moral Actions than those of Advantage: And that Power of receiving these Perceptions may be call’d a Moral Sense’ (Treatise 2, 90). However, many scholars argue that there is ultimately a difference between Hutcheson’s moral sense theory and that of Hume, one which is based in the principle of sympathy; see, for example, Darwall, The British Moralists and the Internal ‘Ought’, chap. 10, esp. 288; Driver, ‘Moral Sense and Sentimentalism’; Gill, The British Moralists on Human Nature and the Birth of Secular Ethics, chap. 19; Taylor, Reflecting Subjects, chaps. 1 and 2. For a survey of the problem, and of the debate among experts that has followed, see Kail, ‘Concerning Moral Sentiment’. I do not examine here the intricate issue of how much Hume’s explanation of morality depends or not on Hutcheson’s theory of moral sense; nonetheless, as it will become clearer later, I believe that the most promising way of reading Hume’s ethics is that of seeing it not as a moral sense theory but as hinging on sympathy. On the relation existing in Hutcheson between the moral sense and conscience, see Carey, ‘Francis Hutcheson’s Philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment’; Haakonssen, ‘Natural Rights or Political Prudence?’.
6 Hume’s conclusion is supported by contemporary studies on conscience, as exemplified, for example, by Alberto Giubilini’s entry on conscience in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. According to Giubilini,
[t]here is no such a thing as the notion of conscience, both in a philosophical and in a psychological sense. … [T]he concept of conscience has been given different interpretations throughout history, sometimes on the basis of underlying systematic philosophical theories of the mind and of morality, and sometimes serving religious or political purposes.
7 On the ambiguity of the notion of conscience, especially in relation to the use Hume makes of it in The History of England, see Viano, La scintilla di Caino, chap. 6, esp. 152–6. According to Viano, conscience has to be seen in the light of the explanation, provided by Hume in the History of England, of the progressive transformation of honour from a savage and unrestrained form into a civilized one. For a history of the notion of conscience, see Sorabji, Moral Conscience Through the Ages.
8 I shall quote Mandeville’s The Fable of the Bees in the body of the text by providing the title of the enquiry, the essay, or the remark I refer to, and the page.
9 On the relation between Mandeville and Hume, see Lecaldano, ‘Orgoglio e società in Mandeville e Hume’; Tolonen, Mandeville and Hume.
10
This Foundation of Politicks being once laid, it is impossible that Man should long remain uncivilized: For even those who only strove to gratify their Appetites, being continually cross’d by others of the same Stamp, could not but observe, that whenever they check’d their Inclinations or but followed them with more Circumspection, they avoided a world of Troubles, and often escap’d many of the Calamities that generally attended the too eager Pursuit after Pleasure.
11 ‘[W]hile they purpose to cheat with moderation and secrecy’, Hume observes, ‘a tempting incident occurs, nature is frail, and they give into the snare; whence they can never extricate themselves, without total loss of reputation, and the forfeiture of all future trust and confidence with mankind’ (EPM 9.24; SBN 283).
12
If his [the knave’s] heart rebel not against such pernicious maxims, if he feel no reluctance to the thoughts of villainy or baseness, he has indeed lost a considerable motive to virtue; and we may expect that his practice will be answerable to his speculation. (EPM 9.23; SBN 283)
13 On extensive sympathy in Hume see Driver, ‘The Secret Chain’, ‘Meta-Cognition, Mind-Reading, and Humean Moral Agency’, and ‘Moral Sense and Sentimentalism’; Greco, ‘The Force of Sympathy in the Ethics of David Hume’; Herdt, Religion and Faction in Hume’s Moral Philosophy, chap. 2; Lecaldano, Simpatia, 39–52; Taylor, Reflecting Subjects, chap. 2.
14 On the centrality of reflection in Hume’s ethics, see Baier, A Progress of Sentiments; Taylor, Reflecting Subjects.
15 Consider also the following passages: ‘the humblest Man alive must confess, that the Reward of a Virtuous Action, which is the Satisfaction that ensues upon it, consists in a certain Pleasure he procures to himself by Contemplating on his own Worth’ (‘An Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue’, 57). ‘Ashamed of the many Frailties they feel within, all Men endeavour to hide themselves, their Ugly Nakedness, from each other, and wrapping up the true Motives of their Hearts in the Specious Cloke of Sociableness, and their Concern for the publick Good, they are in hopes of concealing their filthy Appetites and the Deformity of their Desires; while they are conscious within of the Fondness for their darling Lusts, and their Incapacity, barefac’d, to tread the arduous, rugged Path of Virtue’ (‘Remark [T.]’, 234–5). ‘The feverish, empty amusements of luxury and expense’ mentioned by Hume are for Mandeville exactly the things that all human beings fundamentally long for – no one excluded, be they aware of this or not. And if any ‘calm Serenity of the Mind’ can be admitted, it represents the condition of people who ‘rest satisfy’d with the Station they are in’ (‘Remark [V.]’, 242), that is, laziness, which is the surest guarantee of total ruin for the prosperity of a nation.
16 Note that what I am saying here is that acting conscientiously is indeed a real option on the table for Hume when one has to decide how to behave. Whether the knave will actually always end up being persuaded to act according to conscience, or else will be left untouched by its injunctions, is another matter altogether. For a discussion of whether Hume’s strategy eventually succeeds in addressing the knave, especially with reference to the relation of the knave with the rules of justice, see Baier, ‘Artificial Virtues and the Equally Sensible Non-Knave’; Baldwin, ‘Hume’s Knave and the Interests of Justice’; Costa, ‘Why Be Just?’; Gauthier, ‘Artificial Virtues and the Sensible Knave’; King, ‘Pride and Hume’s Sensible Knave’; Postema, ‘Hume’s Reply to the Sensible Knave’; Welchman, ‘Hume and the Prince of Thieves’.
17 An understanding of acting conscientiously that recalls the second part of the OED definition of conscience, which was given in footnote 3: ‘one's awareness of what is advisable or acceptable for one to do’.
18 I shall quote Butler’s Fifteen Sermons in the body of the text by providing the number of the sermon I refer to, and the page.
19 ‘But Interest and Passion do come in, and are often too strong for and prevail over Reflection and Conscience’ (2, 29).
20 ‘It is manifest great Part of common Language, and of common Behaviour over the World, is formed upon Supposition of such a Moral Faculty; whether called Conscience, moral Reason, moral Sense, or divine Reason; whether considered as a Sentiment of the Understanding, or as a Perception of the Heart; or, which seems the Truth, as including both’. Joseph Butler, ‘Dissertation 2: Of the Nature of Virtue’, in Butler, The Analogy of Religion, 452. On the structural role played by God and the Divine Providence in shaping Butler’s justification of the faculty of conscience, and of its function as the core ruling principle within human nature, see McNaughton, ‘Butler’s Ethics’.
21 On the refusal of final causes in Hume’s theory of human nature, see Gill, The British Moralists on Human Nature and the Birth of Secular Ethics, esp. chap. 15, and Taylor, Reflecting Subjects, chap. 1. Note that both Mandeville and Hume are moved by the ambition of being the ‘anatomists’ of human nature as it is revealed in action and society (Mandeville, ‘Remark [N.]’; Hume, T 3.3.6.6; SBN 620–1; EHU 1.8; SBN 9–10. See Tolonen, Mandeville and Hume). But at least for what concerns the theme of conscience, it seems to me that Hume’s conclusions are closer to an unbiased observation of human nature than Mandeville’s. The latter appears to be excessively eager to prove that one can be virtuous only by adopting a form of self-denial of all one’s passions and sentiments; ‘I see no Self-denial, without which there can be no Virtue’ (‘Remark [O.]’, 156). Moreover, Mandeville’s ‘Definition of Virtue’ as ‘our Endeavours … to proceed from a rational Ambition of being Good’ (‘An Essay on Charity and Charity-Schools’, 260) reveals a conception of ethics that is still rationalist. This both prevents him from recognizing a sense of morals as a legitimate passion among those that constitute human nature (see ‘An Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue’, 48–9), and makes him reduce sympathy to just a form of pity or compassion – which is another symptom for Mandeville of the fact that we are inevitably guided by self-love (see ‘An Essay on Charity and Charity-Schools’, 254–9).
22 For some doubts on this, see McNaughton, ‘Butler’s Ethics’.
23 It would be interesting to examine in detail how many of those historical characters depicted in the History of England who explicitly appeal to conscience are really responding to genuine self-reflection. Such a task, however, would take me too far away from the main discussion of this essay.