Hume holds that artificial virtues are those arising from conventions that have originated to meet the need for social cooperation, whereas natural virtues are independent of 'the artifice and contrivance of men' He states that the main difference between natural and artificial virtues is that every single act of the former produces good, whereas isolated instances of the latter may not be beneficial, and it is only the overall system that promotes the general good. I will argue that this distinction is not as clear as it at first appears to be and that there are a number of problems with Hume's account of virtue and vice.
I will firstly examine the nature of the artificial virtues, concentrating specifically on Hume's discussion of justice and property. I will then turn to a consideration of the natural virtues and examine what Hume takes to be the fundamental differences between the two. I will raise a number of significant difficulties for Hume's view arising from the fact that Hume makes morality a man-made system, incompatible with objective and absolute God-given commands.
In formulating his moral theory, Hume is concerned with accounting for our motivations to perform certain actions and seeks to explain why we praise some people for acting in a particular way and blame others. He argues that this motivation to act and to praise and blame stems from our passions and not our reason. So we make moral judgements according to whether the effect on us of a particular action is pleasure or pain. Hume also argues that the only relevant factor in our making a moral judgement is the motivation of the agent and that there can be no intrinsically right or wrong actions:
"No action can be virtuous, or morally good, unless there be in human nature some motive to produce it, distinct from the sense of its morality"
It seems to me that Hume is wrong in arguing that there can be no virtuous actions independent of any particular virtuous motivation. We can easily imagine a good action performed for the wrong reason, and likewise a good person whose circumstances prevent him from performing a virtuous action. So I would argue against Hume's claim that the only thing that is important is a virtuous motive and actions cannot be virtuous in themselves.
The examples that Hume gives of artificial virtues are honesty; justice, especially respect for private property rules; and keeping promises. These are distinct from natural virtues in that they have evolved over time rather than being embedded in human nature. As Mackie puts it:
"Both the tendency to act in each of these ways and the tendency to approve of such actions can be seen as inventions, artificial devices which have somehow been added to whatever...instinctive moral sense men already had"
As a consequence, they cannot be understood in isolation, but only make sense when viewed as part of a general beneficial system. Hume argues that individual acts of, say, justice are not self-contained because the person the just action is directed towards may have been unknown to the agent, or indeed an enemy of the agent or undeserving of the action. However, it seems to me that the same case can be made for benevolence, which Hume classes as a natural virtue. You can, and I would argue ought to, tend someone else's wounds even if you do not know them, or if they are a disreputable person. So this distinction between justice as an artificial virtue and benevolence as a natural one does not seem to be correct.
It is important to note that Hume does not view artificial virtues as arbitrary, but rather sees them as obvious and necessary inventions.This leads us to examine why they are necessary and how they come about. I will focus my discussion, as Hume does, on the rules of justice and property. Hume's argument is that since justice is a necessary requirement for social cooperation on a large scale, and since social cooperation is desirable, it is inevitable that general rules of justice will be formed. So if social cooperation, given a relative scarcity of resources, is not possible without rules of justice, we have to show that social cooperation is important in order to show that the rules of justice are important.
Hume gives three main reasons why we need a structured society. Firstly, the labour of each individual is combined so as to give each person the benefit of a greater force than he could achieve apart from society. Secondly, society enables people to specialise in a particular field and reap the benefits of other people's specialist knowledge. Thirdly, since each person in society is dependent on the others, the individual has a greater security than if each person was working to further his own ends as the expense of everyone else.
Granted these arguments, it seems that Hume can show that social cooperation is a desirable standard to achieve.
Hume now needs to show that general rules of justice are necessary in order to achieve widespread social cooperation. He states that there was no need for justice or private property rules in small family units, as natural benevolence and partiality towards family members would suffice to support cooperation on a small scale. However, this can be challenged, even in the case where there are plenty of resources to go round. It is natural for people to attach sentimental value to certain objects and it is just as natural for siblings, or other close family members, to be jealous. So it seems that Hume is somewhat over-optimistic with regard to the cooperation and natural propensity to perform actions displaying the natural virtues, even within the confines of the family unit. According to Hume's view, "if men were thoroughly and universally benevolent there would be no need for justice" But is this true? Would there be no need for justice, or simply no need to express the rules of justice? Surely in this situation we could say that everyone acts justly all the time, which is very different from saying that the whole concept of justice would be alien to the people in that situation.
This aside, Hume's argument that social cooperation on a large scale is only possible if we establish universal rules of justice is, I think, fairly obviously correct. However, acknowledging that we need rules governing our behaviour and motivating us to act honestly does not entail that honesty itself is just a man-made device. Honesty could still be intrinsically virtuous. It seems a worrying consequence of Hume's argument that for some action to be intrinsically morally worthy we must have a natural tendency towards it. This assumption seems to rest on an over-optimistic view of human nature. Surely we can say that it is morally admirable to think of others before yourself, whilst acknowledging that most of us do not do this most of the time. It seems as though Hume is making the mistake of believing that 'man is the measure of all things' and that our moral code is a descriptive one which reflects the way we do behave, rather than a prescriptive one which tells us how we ought to behave.
So Hume has shown why we need general rules of justice, and he now goes on to examine why we approve of justice and disapprove of injustice, that is to say, why justice is regarded as a virtue. He argues that our approval of justice is maintained by sympathy (taking on of the view of an impartial spectator). This is what helps us to adhere to a general principle even when it goes against our self-interest on a particular occasion, and it is what makes us disapprove of an unjust action that is far removed from us. Hume states:
"Self-interest is the original motive to the establishment of justice: but a sympathy with public interest is the source of the moral approbation which attends that virtue"
Even though a particular act of justice may not benefit anyone involved, it is still required because it supports the whole beneficial system. Presumably, Hume would say that the only benefit of a good man honestly returning a fortune to a miser, is to show a respect for the laws of justice and provide encouragement for others to do the same. But supposing there existed a society in which every instance of a just action would produce no benefits to the agents involved, would Hume argue that we ought never to act justly? There is a strong intuitive reason for saying, in response to Hume, that justice is valuable in itself, and not simply in virtue of its consequences. Similarly it can be objected that Hume cannot explain why we feel a sense of duty to perform a right action even when performing the wrong action would not affect anyone adversely and no-one would know we had done it. If our duty is to other people alone then what is there to prevent us telling a lie in the above circumstances? Surely duty does not arise purely out of socially convened rules and out of a desire to work towards everyone's benefit. It can be argued that it is possible to have a duty towards God that has nothing to do with our desire to promote the general good and our sympathy for other people. A strong criticism that I would make of Hume's moral theory is that it separates morality from any divine authority. Under his view morals are grounded solely in human relations.
So Hume's argument is that we need to form general rules regarding justice, and our obligation to these rules is maintained by our internalising a 'social will'. But we can agree with Hume that general rules of justice are necessary in order for society to be effective, whilst maintaining that there is something intrinsically valuable about justice, and indeed all the things that Hume would term 'artificial virtues', which sets it apart from other socially convened rules. I would argue that we cannot decide by social convention which actions are right and which are wrong. The following example should serve to illustrate my point. It is clear that there is a morally significant difference between a just action and the action of stopping at a red traffic light. Yet they both seem to be explained in the same way by Hume's view, which seems to me to be a serious defect in his theory.
I will now discuss Hume's view of natural virtues and examine the reasons why Hume argues that they differ from the artificial virtues. A natural virtue "is a tendency which human beings normally and naturally possess and...that human beings tend naturally to approve of" Hume lists some examples in his discussion:
"Meekness, benefice, charity, generosity, clemency, moderation [and] equity" as well as "'greatness of mind' and 'industry, perseverance, patience, activity, vigilance, application, constancy...temperance, frugality, economy and resolution'"
It is argued that these are adequate to maintain small groups such as family units and are, like the artificial virtues, maintained by sympathy. But it is far from obvious that these do come naturally to us because I would argue that, in our fallen state, we do not have a natural desire to do good (It is clear that you do not have to teach a child to be bad, you have to teach it to be good). Also it is arguable whether some of the things on Hume's list of natural virtues are virtues at all, for example industry, activity, application and resolution. These can be good if applied to honourable ends but equally can be used to disastrous effect. It does not seem as though they are good in themselves, which is surely what a virtue should be. The important point about natural virtues according to Hume is that they produce good on every application and are always approved. In other words, the goodness is self-contained and it needs no reference to an overall beneficial system to explain particular acts. However, even this claim is not as strong as it seems. I would argue that not every instance of industry, or even generosity, is beneficial. We would want to say that overall it promotes the interests of society if people are hard-working and generous, but it does not seem to be the case that each individual act of industry cannot fail to benefit the agents involved. So it would seem that natural virtues are not as distinct from artificial virtues as Hume claims. As Mackie makes clear, fully developed natural virtues owe a lot to convention as they are supported by a "steady and general approval of them" They have to be considered at least as partly artificial because of the "systematic, interpersonal, impartial and objectifying way in which we approve of them"
Mackie's response to Hume's distinction between natural and artificial virtues is that natural virtues ought to be seen as being more artificial than Hume allows:
"One great improvement would be a partial breaking down of the distinction between the two groups, so that at least in their more extensive application such virtues as humanity, generosity...and fairness were seen to be artificial in the same sense as honesty..., and to be similarly supported by what we can understand as conventions."
My response is rather that Hume's whole idea of artificial virtues is ill founded because it does not account for the possibility of actions being intrinsically right or wrong and our motivation to perform those actions being simply a sense of duty to do what is right.
To conclude then, I would argue that Hume's distinction between natural and artificial virtues is not coherent for a number of reasons. My main criticism of Hume's approach is that he sees morality, not as instituted by a divine law giver, but rather as a human invention. As Norton notes:
"For Hume, morality is an artefact - the product of an entirely human activity that has enabled the species to organise itself"
I would argue that justice comes from God and that morality is an objective and absolute code laid down for us by him. Whilst I agree that we need general laws regarding justice to support the complex society we live in, we also need to have rules governing the natural virtues as well. So it seems to me that the only distinction we can make is between what is morally right and morally wrong. Hume is misguided in his denial that there can be actions which are intrinsically right or wrong, and in particular in denying that there is anything intrinsically valuable about justice. He has an overgenerous view of human nature in believing that we would naturally perform and approve of the natural virtues. I would argue, along with Lutheran and Calvinist thought, that human nature has been spoiled by sin and that we need to be taught to do good by complying with the obligation to behave in a certain way which comes ultimately from God.
© Anne Witton 1997. No part of this article may be copied without my permission.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Honderich, T (ed) The Oxford Companion to Philosophy Oxford University Press, 1995
Hume A Treatise on Human Nature Oxford University Press, 1978
Mackie, J Hume's Moral Theory Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980
Norton, D The Cambridge Companion to Hume Cambridge University Press, 1994
Holy Bible, New International Version Hodder and Stoughton, 1991
