Of The Standard of Sentiments: Hume on Virtue and Beauty

Some critics of Hume’s sentimentalist moral theory charge that a system of morality grounded in sentiments cannot provide us with a set of standards that are stable across times and places. Hume addresses this sort of worry in his appeal to what he calls the General Point of View, accounting for how we correct sentiments. Many explanations of the General Point of View rely heavily on the perceptual analogy, comparing moral judgment to sense-perceiving physical objects. I explain the perceptual analogy, and then show its limitations for explaining Hume’s theory of correcting moral sentiments. In the second section, I explain Hume’s analogy between virtue and beauty. I show how Hume characterizes the correction of aesthetic sentiments in his essay “Of The Standard of Taste,” and then I show how the analogy between beauty and virtue can help us to better defend Hume against his objectors, helpfully explaining Hume’s theory of morals.