Abstract

Traditionally, scholars have thought that Hume and Kant give conflicting answers to questions about moral motivation. This traditional view has recently been challenged by many-Stephen Darwall and Christine Korsgaard, for example---who find proto-Kantian elements in Hume's ethics. I argue that several such challenges are mistaken in both their philosophical and exegetical readings of Hume. Indeed, Hume's view of moral motivation is irreconcilably opposed to Kant's. ;I take as central the question: Does distinctively moral motivation require the retreat to second-order deliberation about one's own desires, natural motives, or intentions? Such a retreat, which I call deliberative second-order reflection, can be constituted by the question, "Are my motives or intentions morally permissible?" At least three questions can in turn be asked about this reflection, the answers to which may help delineate one's ethical theory: Does asking the second-order question involve or generate a fundamentally different sort of motive? Is asking the second-order question a sign of moral weakness or moral strength? Finally, how do we answer the second-order question once it has been asked? ;Chapter 1 introduces the problem, outlines the relevant history, and suggests some methodological principles that will be followed in the rest of the dissertation. The middle chapters examine the above questions in the context of contemporary philosophers' attempts to show that Hume commits himself to Kantian or neo-Kantian answers to them. These chapters discuss Hume's explication of the artificial virtue of justice, the nature and importance of obligation in Hume's ethics, Hume's 'reflective endorsement' of morality, and the role of the general point of view in moral judgment. Each of the arguments that I consider involves sacrificing the distinctiveness of Hume's theory for the sake of Kantian sympathies---a concern for autonomy, a rationalist motive, an emphasis on obligation as central to ethics, or a sharp divide between "natural" and moral motivation. In the final chapter, I suggest that Hume's ethics shares more affinities with neo-Aristotelian virtue theory than with neo-Kantianism.