An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals summary

Name: An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
Rating: 4.5 (11 reviews)
Author: David Hume

David Hume

An exploration of where our sense of right and wrong comes from.

4.5 (11 ratings)

24 mins

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An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals by David Hume presents a philosophical exploration of morality, prioritizing human sentiment as the foundation of ethical principles and arguing for a naturalistic approach to understanding virtue and vice.

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An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
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What’s in it for me? Discover a radical view of morality.

Step into the cobblestone streets of 18th century Edinburgh, Scotland – a city so vibrant with intellectual energy it earned the nickname “Athens of the North.” Here, amid coffee houses buzzing with debate and university halls crackling with new ideas, David Hume developed a theory of morality that would challenge centuries of philosophical thought.

At the height of the Scottish Enlightenment, Hume published An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, refining ideas he had first explored decades earlier in his Treatise of Human Nature. While the earlier Treatise had been largely ignored, this more accessible work – which Hume himself considered his finest – would go on to transform Western thinking about ethics.

When philosophers and theologians across Europe located morality in divine commands or abstract reasoning, Edinburgh's foremost skeptic made the revolutionary claim: our moral judgments arise primarily from sentiment – from feeling, rather than thinking.

But if morality stems from sentiment rather than reason, what becomes of religious authority? Locating morality within human nature, instead of religion or rationality, set in motion ideas that would shape philosophy for centuries to come.

Hume developed insights that would eventually influence fields from psychology to economics. But it all began with a deceptively straightforward observation about human nature that continues to challenge how we understand morality today. To find out what, let’s now dive straight in to Hume’s remarkable vision.

A philosophy of the heart

At the center of David Hume's moral philosophy lies a bold and, for his time, radical claim: that moral judgments do not come from logic or reason, but from sentiment or feeling. He observed that pure reasoning, as powerful as it might be in other domains, simply cannot motivate human action on its own. You might reason endlessly about facts, but facts by themselves don’t tell you what you ought to do. This insight led to what philosophers now call the is-ought problem.

Indeed, Hume noted that a great many thinkers before him routinely made precisely this unwarranted leap: they would move from describing how things are in the world, to claiming how things ought to be, all without proper justification. He saw this as a fundamental error in moral reasoning. For him, moral distinctions are not derived from some abstract, rational thought. Instead, they emerge from moral sentiments that exist naturally within all humans.

How does this look in practice? Well, say you approve of someone’s action, or maybe a character trait. Hume explains that this approval comes from a feeling, not a logical deduction. Reason can inform you about facts and relationships, but ultimately, moral judgments are grounded in your sentiments.

This does not mean that Hume believed moral judgments are entirely personal or arbitrary, however. Far from it. Hume strongly believed human nature includes common sentiments that create shared moral feelings across humanity. These shared feelings make morality possible as a social phenomenon, rather than just an individual preference.

This view directly challenged the rationalist approaches to ethics that were dominant in European philosophy at the time. Most thinkers before Hume assumed that virtue must be based on rational principles that transcended human feelings. Hume reversed this perspective, grounding morality both in human nature, and our human capacity for feeling.

By placing sentiment at the foundation of morality, Hume created a pioneering naturalistic ethical theory. His approach explained moral judgments as natural human responses rather than conformity to abstract, rational principles or divine commands. This naturalistic view would influence numerous later philosophers in profound ways, sparking new avenues of ethical inquiry.

On sympathy

Central to Hume's moral theory is the concept of sympathy, a multifaceted capacity that allows humans to share and respond to the feelings of others. Sympathy, for Hume, is not merely feeling sorry for someone. Instead, it represents our fundamental ability to resonate with other people's emotions, both their joys and their sorrows.

Hume observed that humans naturally mirror the emotions they witness in others. When you see someone in pain, you feel a version of that pain yourself. Similarly, when you witness joy, you experience a similar, pleasant feeling. It’s quite remarkable that this observation was supported by research in neuroscience nearly 250 years later In 1992, when neuroscientists led by Giacomo Rizzolatti at the University of Parma discovered mirror neurons – brain cells that activate both when you perform an action, and when you observe someone else performing that very same action. This discovery provided a potential neurological basis for Hume’s earlier insight.

The social dimension

While Hume grounded morality in individual human sentiments, he understood that these sentiments operate within a broader social context. Your moral feelings do not exist in isolation, but are shaped by and expressed through your interactions with others in society.

The sympathy you feel toward others naturally extends beyond immediate personal connections to encompass wider social circles. Hume observed that humans live in communities, and our moral judgments inescapably reflect this fundamentally social existence. Your approval or disapproval of actions is influenced by considering their effects not just on specific individuals but on society as a whole.

Utility and the common good

Building on his understanding of sympathy and its social dimensions, Hume developed a sophisticated theory about utility and its vital relation to moral approval. For Hume, utility refers to the usefulness or tendency of actions and character traits to promote happiness and prevent misery, not just for individuals but for society as a whole.

This connection between utility and moral approval appears remarkably consistent across different cultures and historical periods. Qualities like benevolence, fidelity, and honesty receive universal praise largely because they promote social welfare. So, even when you examine supposedly diverse moral systems, Hume believed you would find this shared foundation of utility underneath any surface differences.

Justice as an artificial virtue

One of Hume's most original contributions to moral philosophy was his analysis of justice as an artificial virtue. Unlike natural virtues like benevolence or compassion, which arise spontaneously from human sentiment, Hume argued that justice emerges through social convention and agreement.

For Hume, justice primarily concerns rules about property, contracts, and promises. These rules do not spring directly from sentiments. Indeed, if you probe your immediate emotional reactions, you might not feel natural approval toward abstract principles of property rights or contract enforcement. Instead, these principles developed because humans gradually recognized the overall utility of social cooperation over time.

Character and the virtues

While many moral philosophers focus on abstract rules or individual actions, Hume placed significant emphasis on character traits and virtues. For him, moral evaluation primarily concerns the qualities of a person's character, rather than just their isolated acts. When you make moral judgments, you are typically assessing what kind of person someone is, not merely what they have done in a particular circumstance.

Hume believed that virtues are those character traits that evoke approval from moral sentiments. These traits fall into four main categories based on their effects: traits useful to others, traits useful to the person possessing them, traits immediately agreeable to others, and traits immediately agreeable to the person possessing them. This classification shows how Hume integrated both utility and sentiment in his account of virtue.

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What is An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals about?

An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751) is a revolutionary guide to moral philosophy based on human nature and sentiment. It’s refined from Hume’s earlier work, which established a naturalistic foundation for ethics that would challenge religious authorities. This work went on to influence the Enlightenment – and reshaped philosophical thinking for centuries to come.

Who should read An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals?

Psychology buffs exploring the historical roots of moral psychology
Contemporary thinkers grappling with secular morality
Anyone interested in the origins of moral intuitions

About the Author

David Hume was an 18th-century Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist who became one of the most influential thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment – all despite being denied academic positions due to his controversial religious views. Beyond his philosophical works, including A Treatise of Human Nature and Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, Hume achieved recognition for his six-volume History of England, which earned him considerable wealth and acclaim in his lifetime.

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