A Study Of Hume's Ethics

Hume, an outstanding philosopher in modern England, had made special contributions in some subjects, such as epistemology, ethics, politics and aesthetics. Hume's ethics holds an important position in western ethical thoughts. An enquiry into Hume's ethical thoughts could make us grasp the whole skeleton of western ethical history. Recently as the revival of classical liberalism, scholars have paid attentions to Hume's ethics. They maintain many different opinions on Hume's thoughts because of its complexity and tediousness. In particular, A. MycIntyre, an American philosopher, took Hume's ethics as "England subversion", which strengthened the misunderstandings of scholars. Thus, there are great significances in clarifying such misunderstandings by drawing the outline of Hume's theory frame, evaluating the characteristics of his ethics and his historical status. Further more, the enquiry into Hume's moral and ethical category could provide us some practical enlightenment to our moral cultivation.Influenced by ancient and contemporary thinkers, Hume's ethics stemmed from England historical background in 18 century. The vigorous Scotland enlightenment constructed the culture environment of Hume's ethics. Hume takes epistemology as premises of his ethics. The theory of idea, the law of cause and effect and skepticism are regarded as tools to explain morality. In the meantime, Hume based his ethics on the theory about human nature, and the human nature as primitive principle is the basis of morality. We could not say anything about origination of human nature, but we can observe its basic principles and contents. Both the principle as sympathy, comparison, general rules and sentiment of self-love and benevolence give us theorem to explain morality.Hume's ethics thoughts consist of two parts: moral basic theories in purity and basic moral virtues in practical area. In the purity part, we...