| to have a set of universal morals? There are many
questions that surround the mystery of morals. They seem to drive our every
action. We base our decisions on what is right and what is wrong. But what is it
that actually determines what is right and what is wrong? Is it our sense of
reason? Is it our sense of sentiment? This is a question that David Hume
spent much of his life pondering. What exactly is it that drives our
actions? Yes, morals drive them, but what determines what our morals are? What
is it that ultimately drives our actions; our feelings or our minds?
Hume
would say that it is our sentiment that ultimately drives our actions.
According to Hume,
reason is incapable of motivating an action. According to
Hume, reason cannot fuel an action and
therefore cannot motivate it. Hume
feel that all actions are motivated by our sentiment. For example, on page
84 Appendix I, he gives the example of a criminal. "It resides in the mind of
the person, who is ungrateful. He must, therefore, feel it, and be conscious
of it." Here, it is evident that Hume is saying that unless the person, or
criminal in this case, sincerely believes in what he wants to do, he will not be
able to motivate the action. In other words, unless the sentiment is there,
the action cannot be willed into being.
Hence, the sentiment is the driving
force behind the action. Hume does not however say that reason is incapable
of determining wether an action is virtuous or vicious (moral or immoral),
but instead he tries to say that the reason for the morality of an action does
not dictate the execution or perversion of an act so far as determination of
wether the action is executed or not. In simpler terms, reason has it's
place in determining morality, but it is not in the motivation of an action.
Motivation must come from the heart, or better yet, from within the person; from
their beliefs. Reason merely allows the person to make moral distinctions.
Without reason, there would be no morality. Without reason, one moral clause
would not be differentiable from another. That is to say that below all
morals, there must be some underlying truth because "Truth is disputable;
not taste" (p.14). If truth were not disputable, there would be no way to
prove that a truth was just that... a truth. To make an analogy to
mathematics, truth is a function of reason, whereas taste is a function of
sentiment. Sentiment is a function of the individual whereas reason is a
function of the universe.
The universe as a whole must follow reason, but
the catch is that each individual's universe is
slightly different in that
each individual perceives his or her universe differently. "What each man feels
within himself is the standard of sentiment." (p.14) That is to say each
person's individual universe has
truths. These truths are based on reason.
These truths/reasons are what help to determine the person's sentiment.
However, it should be noted that because the reasons are NOT necessarily the
person's sentiments, they do not motivate actions. One other reason why
reason does not impel action is because reason is based on truths. Truths
are never changing whereas sentiments are dynamic and are in a constant
change of flux. At one moment, the criminal could feel sympathy for his victims
and decide to spare a life, and the very next, the same criminal could
become enraged at the pimple on a hostage's forehead and shoot him.
Of
course these are extreme cases, but the point is clear. Reason would dictate
that only the first
action would be moral. If reason drove actions, then
moral behavior would prevail and there would be no immoral actions and hence
there would be no crimes. This shows how sentiments can change as the
individual's perception of the universe changes. Obviously, the driving
force behind the criminal shooting the victim because of a skin blemish is
not one based on reason, but instead it is based on feeling, emotion,
sentiment. Although it is an abstract idea and a seemingly tiny
technicality, it is easy to see that indeed reason is not the ultimate motivator
but instead sentiment is.
|
|