Modern Secular Foundations of Moral Philosophy – 4 Classic Secular Ethics Treatises E-Book
David Hume
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Modern Secular Foundations of Moral Philosophy – 4 Classic Secular Ethics Treatises is an anthology that brings together influential works from towering figures of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thought. The collection spans a rich tapestry of ethical philosophy, drawing from rational empiricism, critical analysis, and utilitarianism. These essays decipher the human condition and moral reasoning in an age where religious paradigms were increasingly scrutinized. Within these pages, the collection beckons readers to confront the essential questions of morality through a secular lens, inviting reflection on reason's role in ethical discourse and pushing the boundaries of 18th and 19th-century philosophical thought. Contributing to this anthology are luminaries like David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, and Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche—each contributing foundational ideas to the modern secular ethics discourse. Their backgrounds navigated periods of great intellectual upheaval, from the Scottish Enlightenment to the heights of German idealism. The anthology aligns itself with prominent philosophical movements by weaving utilitarian principles, critical philosophy, and existential confrontations, culminating in a dialogue that challenges the ethical conventions of their times. As these varied voices converge, they construct a profound narrative that examines moral philosophy outside of religious influence. This collection is a unique opportunity for readers to immerse themselves in a diversity of perspectives that continue to shape modern ethical theory. Celebrated for its depth and breadth, it offers a panoramic view of secular ethics that connects philosophical milestones with contemporary discussions. Modern Secular Foundations of Moral Philosophy serves as an essential resource that educates and provokes discourse, making it a crucial acquisition for those yearning to deepen their understanding of ethical principles in the absence of theological prescriptiveness. Explore this compelling aggregation of treatises and broaden your philosophical horizons through the landmark works of Hume, Kant, Bentham, and Nietzsche. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - An Introduction draws the threads together, discussing why these diverse authors and texts belong in one collection. - Historical Context explores the cultural and intellectual currents that shaped these works, offering insight into the shared (or contrasting) eras that influenced each writer. - A collective Analysis highlights common themes, stylistic variations, and significant crossovers in tone and technique, tying together writers from different backgrounds. - Reflection questions encourage readers to compare the different voices and perspectives within the collection, fostering a richer understanding of the overarching conversation.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2026
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Modern Secular Foundations of Moral Philosophy – 4 Classic Secular Ethics Treatises
Table of Contents
Introduction
Curatorial Vision
This collection brings together David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, and Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche as four decisive voices in the secular study of morality. Though they differ sharply in method and conclusion, each asks how ethical judgment can be grounded without appeal to revealed authority. Presented side by side, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Ethics, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, and Beyond Good and Evil form a concentrated inquiry into moral feeling, rational obligation, utility, and critique. The selection emphasizes not agreement but a shared determination to make ethics answerable to human experience, reflection, and evaluation.
The guiding principle of the collection is to trace a major arc in modern moral philosophy: from sentiment, to duty, to calculation, to suspicion toward inherited values. Hume treats moral life through the operations of human nature and social sympathy. Kant seeks the binding form of obligation in reason itself. Bentham turns to consequences and the measurable relief of suffering as moral criteria. Nietzsche subjects the moral vocabulary of Europe to genealogical pressure, questioning the motives and histories concealed within accepted ideals. Together they reveal secular ethics not as a single doctrine, but as an arena of rigorous and transformative dispute.
These works were selected because each stands as more than an isolated argument; each reorients the terms in which moral philosophy can proceed. Hume asks what actually moves approval and disapproval. Kant asks what principles can claim necessity. Bentham asks how institutions and conduct should be judged by their effects on well-being. Nietzsche asks what forces and valuations produce the very standards by which conduct is praised or condemned. The collection therefore highlights ethical thought as a sequence of foundational redefinitions, where every attempt to ground morality also contests the legitimacy of rival grounds.
As a collection, these writings invite reading across positions rather than within one philosophical camp. Single works can be approached as self-contained statements, but gathered together they display modern secular ethics as a structured confrontation among incompatible yet enduring possibilities. The value of this arrangement lies in comparative perspective: Hume’s humane naturalism, Kant’s austere rationalism, Bentham’s reforming utilitarianism, and Nietzsche’s unsettling critique sharpen one another when read in proximity. What emerges is not a smooth lineage but a field of argument in which the central questions of moral authority, motivation, and value are repeatedly reopened and transformed.
Thematic & Aesthetic Interplay
The dialogue among these texts begins with a common concern for the source of moral judgment. Hume locates approval in sentiment informed by social life, while Kant insists that morality must arise from principles reason can will universally. Bentham shifts the discussion toward pleasure, pain, and public consequences, giving ethical thought an explicitly legislative and practical direction. Nietzsche then interrupts the confidence of all systematic moral grounding by asking how values are formed and whose interests they serve. In sequence, the works move from explanation, to justification, to social application, to radical diagnosis of moral language itself.
Several recurring moral dilemmas echo across the collection: whether intention or outcome should govern judgment, whether morality binds equally in all cases, and whether virtue is discovered in human nature or created through valuation. Hume’s emphasis on the agreeable and useful resonates with Bentham’s concern for consequences, though Hume preserves a richer account of character and social feeling than simple calculation allows. Kant stands apart by making the worth of action depend on principle rather than inclination or advantage. Nietzsche, in turn, presses on both virtue and duty, asking whether the language of moral elevation can conceal resentment, discipline, or weakness.
The contrast in tone is as revealing as the contrast in doctrine. Hume writes with measured clarity and sociable poise, presenting moral reflection as close to ordinary life and shared judgment. Kant’s style is more severe and architectonic, aiming to isolate what is unconditional in ethical law. Bentham introduces an analytic and reforming energy, linking moral philosophy to institutions, sanctions, and the organization of collective life. Nietzsche speaks in a probing and confrontational register that refuses settled pieties. This variation in manner gives the collection an aesthetic rhythm, as civility, rigor, programmatic analysis, and critique become part of the philosophical exchange.
Influence and opposition are woven throughout these works. Kant’s moral philosophy is commonly understood in part through its distance from sentimental and consequence-based ethics, making Hume and Bentham important counterpoints to his claims about duty and autonomy. Bentham’s utilitarian framework enters the same debate from another side, rejecting appeals to intuition or inherited moral language in favor of assessable effects. Nietzsche’s writing often gains force by challenging the universalism, moral seriousness, and inherited evaluative habits that Hume, Kant, and Bentham each address differently. Read together, the books illuminate not a neat succession but a sustained contest over ethical first principles.
Enduring Impact & Critical Reception
The continuing importance of this collection lies in how fully it gathers the major secular options for grounding morality. Public debate still turns on questions these authors made unavoidable: whether moral judgment depends on human sympathy, rational consistency, social welfare, or critical examination of value itself. Discussions of rights, punishment, responsibility, altruism, freedom, and moral education continue to draw on terms shaped by Hume, Kant, Bentham, and Nietzsche. Their arguments remain active because they do not merely answer ethical problems; they define what counts as an ethical problem and what kind of justification moral claims must seek.
The reception of these works has been marked by durable controversy and repeated renewal. Hume has often been valued for joining moral reflection to a subtle account of human nature and social life. Kant has been treated as a central representative of principle-based ethics, admired for rigor and challenged for abstraction. Bentham has remained indispensable wherever law, policy, and reform are judged by consequences and collective welfare. Nietzsche has provoked some of the strongest disagreements in modern thought, both for his critique of morality and for the style in which he conducts it. Debate has been one measure of their lasting authority.
Their afterlives extend far beyond philosophy in a narrow sense. Hume’s reflections on sympathy and convention have informed broader thinking about social judgment and the sentiments that hold communities together. Kant’s account of duty and dignity has become integral to moral and political vocabulary across many contexts. Bentham’s utilitarian reasoning has shaped discussions of institutions, punishment, welfare, and practical decision. Nietzsche’s critique of values has reverberated through literature, psychology, cultural theory, and artistic modernism. The collection therefore reflects not only four treatises in ethics, but four distinct repertoires of moral interpretation that continue to animate intellectual life.
Read now, these works retain their force because contemporary moral life remains divided between universal claims and local attachments, between ideals and incentives, between reform and suspicion, between the wish to justify values and the urge to unmask them. Hume, Kant, Bentham, and Nietzsche do not dissolve those tensions; they render them intelligible with unusual precision. Bringing these titles together underscores the endurance of secular moral philosophy as an unfinished argument about how human beings should judge, act, and live together. The collection offers a compact map of that argument, shaped by four authors whose disagreements remain indispensable to serious ethical thought.
Historical Context
Socio-Political Landscape
David Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals emerged in mid-eighteenth-century Britain, after the constitutional settlement that followed the upheavals of the seventeenth century had produced a comparatively stable commercial state. Parliamentary government, expanding imperial trade, and the growing authority of polite urban society formed the backdrop for moral reflection. Ethical questions were not confined to the academy; they were entangled with debates about sociability, luxury, civic virtue, and the management of a modern nation increasingly defined by commerce rather than feudal hierarchy. Hume writes within this world of clubs, salons, and print culture, where moral philosophy addressed conduct suitable for a civil society.
The Britain surrounding Hume was also marked by recurrent war and imperial competition, especially with France, which sharpened questions about patriotism, national character, and public interest. A society enriched by trade but anxious about corruption encouraged inquiry into whether morality rested on divine command, rational intuition, or sentiments cultivated in social life. The legal and political order remained stratified, yet the expanding reading public opened moral discussion to merchants, professionals, and educated women. Hume’s emphasis on usefulness and humanity reflects a setting in which practical governance, social harmony, and the evaluation of institutions mattered as much as inherited moral dogma.
Jeremy Bentham’s An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation belongs to the later eighteenth century, when Britain confronted rapid administrative expansion, imperial reach, and mounting scrutiny of legal institutions. Criminal law, poor relief, prisons, and representation were all subjects of controversy. The state’s power to punish stood beside a notoriously intricate and often severe legal code, inviting criticism from reformers who regarded inherited custom as irrational. Bentham addresses morality and legislation together because public life increasingly demanded calculable standards for policy. His project reflects a reformist environment in which lawmakers, magistrates, and commentators sought principles capable of justifying or condemning institutions in explicitly secular terms.
The age of Bentham was also shaped by the American and French Revolutions, events that transformed the language of rights, sovereignty, and reform across Europe. Even where British institutions proved more continuous than continental ones, fear of disorder coexisted with demands for rational improvement. Bentham’s suspicion of vague abstractions and his insistence on consequences can be read against an atmosphere charged by revolutionary rhetoric and reactionary alarm. Industrial and commercial change deepened urban poverty, sharpened the visibility of punishment, and widened the gap between legal theory and social reality. Moral philosophy in this setting became inseparable from proposals for codification, administrative efficiency, and measurable public welfare.
Immanuel Kant’s Ethics took shape within the late Enlightenment and the politically fragmented German lands, where absolutist states, bureaucratic administration, and limited civic participation framed intellectual life. Prussia exemplified a monarchy that could patronize learning while preserving rigid social hierarchy. Questions of obedience, autonomy, and law therefore had both metaphysical and civic resonance. Kant wrote in a Europe transformed by debates over enlightened rule, religious toleration, and the scope of reason, yet still constrained by censorship and inherited estate structures. His moral philosophy responds to a world in which personal freedom was increasingly valued intellectually even as political freedom remained unevenly distributed and institutionally restricted.
The French Revolution and the Napoleonic era profoundly altered the horizon within which Kant’s ethical thought was received. Revolutionary claims about universal citizenship, human dignity, and legislation by a people gave concrete historical force to themes of autonomy and law, while the violence of revolution and war raised doubts about the relation between moral principle and political reality. Kant’s rigorism could appear either as a safeguard against expediency or as insufficiently responsive to history’s emergencies. In the German context, foreign conquest and reform stimulated reflection on education, duty, and civic renewal. His ethics thus belongs to an age where universal norms were imagined amid state rivalry, military upheaval, and uncertain modernization.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil was written in the late nineteenth century, after German unification had created a powerful empire under authoritarian leadership and amid the wider transformations of industrial Europe. Mass politics, expanding bureaucracy, nationalist confidence, and intensified class conflict formed the social atmosphere. The prestige of science and historical scholarship was rising, while traditional religious authority was weakening without disappearing. Nietzsche’s assault on inherited moral certainties reflects this unsettled landscape, where democratic aspirations, bourgeois respectability, and cultural exhaustion seemed to coexist. His work speaks to a Europe proud of progress yet shadowed by militarism, conformity, and the spiritual consequences of rapid secularization.
Nietzsche also writes under the sign of cultural crisis generated by modern mass society. Industrial capitalism, urbanization, and the press altered how ideas circulated and how values were standardized. New social movements and broader literacy expanded public debate, but Nietzsche saw leveling tendencies in this democratized world. His suspicion of moral universalism can be linked to a period in which moral language was invoked by national states, churches, and reform movements alike, often as an instrument of discipline. Beyond Good and Evil intervenes in a Europe defined by imperial competition and social upheaval, challenging whether prevailing ideals of duty, utility, and benevolence conceal struggles for power and status.
Taken together, the four works trace the emergence of secular moral philosophy through changing political orders: commercial constitutionalism for Hume, reforming legal modernity for Bentham, late-Enlightenment state society for Kant, and nationalist-industrial modernity for Nietzsche. Across these contexts, religion remained socially powerful, yet ethical argument increasingly sought foundations independent of revelation. The anthology therefore belongs to a long transition in which moral thought moved into public arenas shaped by legislation, print culture, universities, and cultural criticism. Each work answers different pressures generated by modernity, but all are framed by the same historical question: how can moral authority be justified once inherited hierarchies and sacred certainties no longer command unquestioned assent?
Intellectual & Aesthetic Currents
Hume’s Enquiry stands at the center of the Enlightenment culture of observation, moderation, and sociable criticism. Philosophers and essayists increasingly treated human nature as an object for empirical inquiry rather than scholastic deduction. This broader movement encouraged attention to passions, manners, and the everyday mechanisms of approval and blame. In literary terms, Hume’s polished prose belongs to the age of periodical essay, conversation, and cultivated taste, where philosophical argument aimed to persuade educated readers beyond the university. His moral theory reflects a preference for clarity, experience, and psychological realism over metaphysical system-building, aligning ethics with the emerging sciences of mind, society, and history.
The intellectual world surrounding Hume also included disputes between rationalist and sentimental approaches to ethics, as well as contestation over the relation between religion and morality. Advances in natural philosophy had enlarged confidence in explanation by regular causes, and this confidence encouraged analogous inquiries into human conduct. Hume adopts neither purely mathematical certainty nor theological authority as the model for morals; instead he treats moral judgment as rooted in shared human responses shaped by social life. His style mirrors an aesthetic of balance and elegance valued in the eighteenth century, where philosophical seriousness often appeared in urbane and anti-dogmatic form rather than in the language of revelation or system.
Bentham belongs to a more aggressively reformist phase of Enlightenment thought, marked by confidence that institutions could be redesigned according to clear principles. The same century that prized sensibility and taste also cultivated classification, measurement, and administrative reason. Bentham’s method reflects this drive to render law and morals analyzable, comparable, and useful for policy. His prose can be technical and architectonic, showing the ambition to replace inherited legal language with a more exact vocabulary. In intellectual terms, his treatise participates in a secularizing turn that brought ethics into contact with economics, jurisprudence, and governance, making moral philosophy increasingly responsive to the practical machinery of modern states.
The wider currents informing Bentham include the expansion of statistics, political arithmetic, and projects of codification. These developments encouraged the belief that public welfare might be assessed through systematic comparison rather than deference to tradition. Bentham’s focus on pleasure, pain, sanction, and legislation belongs to a culture fascinated by mechanism and reform, one that treated social institutions as human constructions open to redesign. Aesthetic movements of sentiment had emphasized sympathy and feeling, but Bentham redirected moral inquiry toward consequences and institutional outcomes. In doing so, he sharpened a rivalry within secular ethics between descriptive psychology, rational principle, and utility, a rivalry that helps define the anthology as a whole.
Kant’s Ethics arose in a German intellectual landscape shaped by the Enlightenment’s faith in reason but also by dissatisfaction with empiricism and skepticism. His project seeks a form of moral necessity that neither theology nor observation alone can provide. In aesthetic and literary terms, the period saw the rise of criticism, systematic philosophy, and ambitious attempts to articulate the conditions of knowledge, freedom, and judgment. Kant’s severe style reflects this aspiration to foundational inquiry. Against approaches that grounded ethics in inclination, advantage, or sentiment, he formulated morality through autonomy, universality, and the lawgiving power of reason, establishing a rival model of secular ethics with lasting philosophical authority.
Kant’s moral thought also developed alongside new conceptions of human subjectivity and freedom that were transforming European culture. The late eighteenth century increasingly valued the dignity of persons, self-legislation, and inward conscience, themes that resonated beyond philosophy into broader literary and artistic life. Yet Kant resisted the idea that moral worth could rest simply on refined feeling or cultivated taste. He distinguished ethical obligation from aesthetic pleasure and from empirical anthropology, thereby disciplining Enlightenment enthusiasm for sentiment with a stricter account of reason. His work thus stands at a decisive crossroads: modern in its secular independence from revelation, but anti-reductionist toward both psychological explanation and utilitarian calculation.
Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil belongs to a later intellectual climate shaped by historicism, philology, evolutionary thinking, and the prestige of the natural sciences. Nineteenth-century culture had become deeply conscious of development, genealogy, and the contingency of values. Nietzsche turns these tendencies against moral philosophy itself, treating morality not as timeless truth but as something with a history and a style. His aphoristic form aligns him with modern experiments in fragmentation and critique rather than with system-building. Aesthetically, he writes after romanticism and realism, yet transforms philosophical prose into a performative act of reevaluation, challenging readers through tone, irony, and deliberate provocation.
The anthology’s internal intellectual drama can be read as a sequence of rival secular strategies. Hume grounds morals in human sentiment and social utility as observed in practice; Bentham seeks legislative clarity through calculated consequences; Kant defends unconditional obligation through reason’s own law; Nietzsche questions whether such foundations conceal historically conditioned valuations. These differences map major shifts in modern thought from Enlightenment empiricism to reform rationalization, from critical philosophy to genealogical suspicion. They also reflect changing literary ideals: essayistic ease, technical codification, architectonic rigor, and aphoristic brilliance. Together the works show that secular ethics did not progress along a single line but emerged through deep and enduring contest among forms of argument, style, and cultural self-understanding.
Legacy & Reassessment Across Time
The later history of these works is inseparable from the changing fortunes of liberalism, democracy, and secularization. Hume was long admired for elegance and moderation, yet later readers increasingly turned to him for a naturalistic account of morality that anticipated social science and moral psychology. Bentham’s treatise became central to debates over legal reform, administration, and public policy, though critics often reduced it to a crude arithmetic before more careful scholarship recovered its complexity. Kant’s ethics gained canonical status in discussions of dignity, rights, and duty, especially when modern societies sought principles that could restrain expediency. Nietzsche, initially unsettling and marginal for many, became a touchstone for critiques of moral universality and cultural complacency.
The nineteenth and twentieth centuries repeatedly reinterpreted the anthology through crisis. Industrialization and mass politics made Bentham’s concern with legislation and welfare appear newly urgent, while also provoking resistance to perceived mechanization of moral life. Hume’s emphasis on sympathy and convention suited emerging accounts of social cohesion in plural societies. Kant’s insistence on persons as ends gained renewed force when legal and political orders confronted the problem of how to ground equal respect amid religious decline. Nietzsche’s challenge to inherited morality seemed prophetic to some readers confronting nihilism and ideological conflict, though alarming to others who feared that critique without stable norms could license domination rather than liberation.
The catastrophes of the twentieth century intensified these reassessments. In the wake of war, genocide, and authoritarian politics, Kantian ethics often appeared as a crucial defense of inviolable human worth against instrumental reason. Benthamite calculation, by contrast, was sometimes blamed for reducing persons to aggregate welfare, though defenders argued that sophisticated consequentialism could address institutions, suffering, and rights with greater realism than caricatures allowed. Hume’s anti-fanatical temperament attracted readers seeking modest, humane ethics after ideological excess. Nietzsche’s reception became especially contested: some associated his rhetoric of rank and critique with destructive politics, while others insisted that such uses distorted a far more complex diagnosis of modern morality and culture.
Recent scholarship has emphasized how each work remains historically situated yet intellectually active. Hume is read through debates about moral sentimentalism, convention, and the social bases of normativity. Bentham is revisited in the contexts of jurisprudence, welfare economics, penal theory, and the ethics of public institutions. Kant continues to shape arguments about autonomy, obligation, cosmopolitanism, and the foundations of human rights. Nietzsche informs genealogy, critique of moral psychology, and analyses of power, value creation, and the instability of secular ideals. The anthology thus endures not because it offers one settled foundation for ethics, but because it preserves four powerful, conflicting answers to the modern problem of moral authority after the weakening of sacred certainties.
Modern Secular Foundations of Moral Philosophy – 4 Classic Secular Ethics Treatises
Systematic Moral Foundations: Rules, Consequences, and Sentiment
Critique and Revaluation: Skepticism, Genealogy, and the Limits of Moral Claims
David Hume
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
Most of the principles, and reasonings, contained in this volume,
were published in a work in three volumes, called A TREATISE OF HUMAN NATURE: A work which the Author had projected before he left College, and which he wrote and published not long after. But not finding it successful, he was sensible of his error in going to the press too early, and he cast the whole anew in the following pieces, where some negligences in his former reasoning and more in the expression, are, he hopes, corrected. Yet several writers who have honoured the Author's Philosophy with answers, have taken care to direct all their batteries against that juvenile work, which the author never acknowledged, and have affected to triumph in any advantages, which, they imagined, they had obtained over it: A practice very contrary to all rules of candour and fair-dealing, and a strong instance of those polemical artifices which a bigotted zeal thinks itself authorized to employ. Henceforth, the Author desires, that the following Pieces may alone be regarded as containing his philosophical sentiments and principles.
CONTENTS PAGE
APPENDIX.
AN ENQUIRY CONCERNING THE PRINCIPLES OF MORALS
SECTION I. OF THE GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF MORALS.
DISPUTES with men, pertinaciously obstinate in their principles, are, of all others, the most irksome; except, perhaps, those with persons, entirely disingenuous, who really do not believe the opinions they defend, but engage in the controversy, from affectation, from a spirit of opposition, or from a desire of showing wit and ingenuity, superior to the rest of mankind. The same blind adherence to their own arguments is to be expected in both; the same contempt of their antagonists; and the same passionate vehemence, in inforcing sophistry and falsehood. And as reasoning is not the source, whence either disputant derives his tenets; it is in vain to expect, that any logic, which speaks not to the affections, will ever engage him to embrace sounder principles.
Those who have denied the reality of moral distinctions, may be ranked among the disingenuous disputants; nor is it conceivable, that any human creature could ever seriously believe, that all characters and actions were alike entitled to the affection and regard of everyone. The difference, which nature has placed between one man and another, is so wide, and this difference is still so much farther widened, by education, example, and habit, that, where the opposite extremes come at once under our apprehension, there is no scepticism so scrupulous, and scarce any assurance so determined, as absolutely to deny all distinction between them. Let a man's insensibility be ever so great, he must often be touched with the images of Right and Wrong; and let his prejudices be ever so obstinate, he must observe, that others are susceptible of like impressions. The only way, therefore, of converting an antagonist of this kind, is to leave him to himself. For, finding that nobody keeps up the controversy with him, it is probable he will, at last, of himself, from mere weariness, come over to the side of common sense and reason.
There has been a controversy started of late, much better worth examination, concerning the general foundation of Morals; whether they be derived from Reason, or from Sentiment; whether we attain the knowledge of them by a chain of argument and induction, or by an immediate feeling and finer internal sense; whether, like all sound judgement of truth and falsehood, they should be the same to every rational intelligent being; or whether, like the perception of beauty and deformity, they be founded entirely on the particular fabric and constitution of the human species.
The ancient philosophers, though they often affirm, that virtue is nothing but conformity to reason, yet, in general, seem to consider morals as deriving their existence from taste and sentiment. On the other hand, our modern enquirers, though they also talk much of the beauty of virtue, and deformity of vice, yet have commonly endeavoured to account for these distinctions by metaphysical reasonings, and by deductions from the most abstract principles of the understanding. Such confusion reigned in these subjects, that an opposition of the greatest consequence could prevail between one system and another, and even in the parts of almost each individual system; and yet nobody, till very lately, was ever sensible of it. The elegant Lord Shaftesbury, who first gave occasion to remark this distinction, and who, in general, adhered to the principles of the ancients, is not, himself, entirely free from the same confusion.
It must be acknowledged, that both sides of the question are susceptible of specious arguments. Moral distinctions, it may be said, are discernible by pure reason: else, whence the many disputes that reign in common life, as well as in philosophy, with regard to this subject: the long chain of proofs often produced on both sides; the examples cited, the authorities appealed to, the analogies employed, the fallacies detected, the inferences drawn, and the several conclusions adjusted to their proper principles. Truth is disputable; not taste: what exists in the nature of things is the standard of our judgement; what each man feels within himself is the standard of sentiment. Propositions in geometry may be proved, systems in physics may be controverted; but the harmony of verse, the tenderness of passion, the brilliancy of wit, must give immediate pleasure. No man reasons concerning another's beauty; but frequently concerning the justice or injustice of his actions. In every criminal trial the first object of the prisoner is to disprove the facts alleged, and deny the actions imputed to him: the second to prove, that, even if these actions were real, they might be justified, as innocent and lawful. It is confessedly by deductions of the understanding, that the first point is ascertained: how can we suppose that a different faculty of the mind is employed in fixing the other? On the other hand, those who would resolve all moral determinations into sentiment, may endeavour to show, that it is impossible for reason ever to draw conclusions of this nature. To virtue, say they, it belongs to be amiable, and vice odious. This forms their very nature or essence. But can reason or argumentation distribute these different epithets to any subjects, and pronounce beforehand, that this must produce love, and that hatred? Or what other reason can we ever assign for these affections, but the original fabric and formation of the human mind, which is naturally adapted to receive them?
The end of all moral speculations is to teach us our duty; and, by proper representations of the deformity of vice and beauty of virtue, beget correspondent habits, and engage us to avoid the one, and embrace the other. But is this ever to be expected from inferences and conclusions of the understanding, which of themselves have no hold of the affections or set in motion the active powers of men? They discover truths: but where the truths which they discover are indifferent, and beget no desire or aversion, they can have no influence on conduct and behaviour. What is honourable, what is fair, what is becoming, what is noble, what is generous, takes possession of the heart, and animates us to embrace and maintain it. What is intelligible, what is evident, what is probable, what is true, procures only the cool assent of the understanding; and gratifying a speculative curiosity, puts an end to our researches.
Extinguish all the warm feelings and prepossessions in favour of virtue, and all disgust or aversion to vice: render men totally indifferent towards these distinctions; and morality is no longer a practical study, nor has any tendency to regulate our lives and actions.
These arguments on each side (and many more might be produced) are so plausible, that I am apt to suspect, they may, the one as well as the other, be solid and satisfactory, and that reason and sentiment concur in almost all moral determinations and conclusions. The final sentence, it is probable, which pronounces characters and actions amiable or odious, praise-worthy or blameable; that which stamps on them the mark of honour or infamy, approbation or censure; that which renders morality an active principle and constitutes virtue our happiness, and vice our misery; it is probable, I say, that this final sentence depends on some internal sense or feeling, which nature has made universal in the whole species. For what else can have an influence of this nature? But in order to pave the way for such a sentiment, and give a proper discernment of its object, it is often necessary, we find, that much reasoning should precede, that nice distinctions be made, just conclusions drawn, distant comparisons formed, complicated relations examined, and general facts fixed and ascertained. Some species of beauty, especially the natural kinds, on their first appearance, command our affection and approbation; and where they fail of this effect, it is impossible for any reasoning to redress their influence, or adapt them better to our taste and sentiment. But in many orders of beauty, particularly those of the finer arts, it is requisite to employ much reasoning, in order to feel the proper sentiment; and a false relish may frequently be corrected by argument and reflection. There are just grounds to conclude, that moral beauty partakes much of this latter species, and demands the assistance of our intellectual faculties, in order to give it a suitable influence on the human mind.
But though this question, concerning the general principles of morals, be curious and important, it is needless for us, at present, to employ farther care in our researches concerning it. For if we can be so happy, in the course of this enquiry, as to discover the true origin of morals, it will then easily appear how far either sentiment or reason enters into all determinations of this nature [Footnote: See Appendix I]. In order to attain this purpose, we shall endeavour to follow a very simple method: we shall analyse that complication of mental qualities, which form what, in common life, we call Personal Merit: we shall consider every attribute of the mind, which renders a man an object either of esteem and affection, or of hatred and contempt; every habit or sentiment or faculty, which, if ascribed to any person, implies either praise or blame, and may enter into any panegyric or satire of his character and manners. The quick sensibility, which, on this head, is so universal among mankind, gives a philosopher sufficient assurance, that he can never be considerably mistaken in framing the catalogue, or incur any danger of misplacing the objects of his contemplation: he needs only enter into his own breast for a moment, and consider whether or not he should desire to have this or that quality ascribed to him, and whether such or such an imputation would proceed from a friend or an enemy. The very nature of language guides us almost infallibly in forming a judgement of this nature; and as every tongue possesses one set of words which are taken in a good sense, and another in the opposite, the least acquaintance with the idiom suffices, without any reasoning, to direct us in collecting and arranging the estimable or blameable qualities of men. The only object of reasoning is to discover the circumstances on both sides, which are common to these qualities; to observe that particular in which the estimable qualities agree on the one hand, and the blameable on the other; and thence to reach the foundation of ethics, and find those universal principles, from which all censure or approbation is ultimately derived. As this is a question of fact, not of abstract science, we can only expect success, by following the experimental method, and deducing general maxims from a comparison of particular instances. The other scientific method, where a general abstract principle is first established, and is afterwards branched out into a variety of inferences and conclusions, may be more perfect in itself, but suits less the imperfection of human nature, and is a common source of illusion and mistake in this as well as in other subjects. Men are now cured of their passion for hypotheses and systems in natural philosophy, and will hearken to no arguments but those which are derived from experience. It is full time they should attempt a like reformation in all moral disquisitions; and reject every system of ethics, however subtle or ingenious, which is not founded on fact and observation.
We shall begin our enquiry on this head by the consideration of the social virtues, Benevolence and Justice. The explication of them will probably give us an opening by which the others may be accounted for.
SECTION II. OF BENEVOLENCE.
PART I.
It may be esteemed, perhaps, a superfluous task to prove, that the benevolent or softer affections are estimable; and wherever they appear, engage the approbation and good-will of mankind. The epithets SOCIABLE, GOOD-NATURED, HUMANE, MERCIFUL, GRATEFUL, FRIENDLY, GENEROUS, BENEFICENT, or their equivalents, are known in all languages, and universally express the highest merit, which HUMAN NATURE is capable of attaining. Where these amiable qualities are attended with birth and power and eminent abilities, and display themselves in the good government or useful instruction of mankind, they seem even to raise the possessors of them above the rank of HUMAN NATURE, and make them approach in some measure to the divine. Exalted capacity, undaunted courage, prosperous success; these may only expose a hero or politician to the envy and ill-will of the public: but as soon as the praises are added of humane and beneficent; when instances are displayed of lenity, tenderness or friendship; envy itself is silent, or joins the general voice of approbation and applause.
When Pericles, the great Athenian statesman and general, was on his death-bed, his surrounding friends, deeming him now insensible, began to indulge their sorrow for their expiring patron, by enumerating his great qualities and successes, his conquests and victories, the unusual length of his administration, and his nine trophies erected over the enemies of the republic. YOU FORGET, cries the dying hero, who had heard all, YOU FORGET THE MOST EMINENT OF MY PRAISES, WHILE YOU DWELL SO MUCH ON THOSE VULGAR ADVANTAGES, IN WHICH FORTUNE HAD A PRINCIPAL SHARE. YOU HAVE NOT OBSERVED THAT NO CITIZEN HAS EVER YET WORNE MOURNING ON MY ACCOUNT. [Plut. in Pericle]
In men of more ordinary talents and capacity, the social virtues become, if possible, still more essentially requisite; there being nothing eminent, in that case, to compensate for the want of them, or preserve the person from our severest hatred, as well as contempt. A high ambition, an elevated courage, is apt, says Cicero, in less perfect characters, to degenerate into a turbulent ferocity. The more social and softer virtues are there chiefly to be regarded. These are always good and amiable [Cic. de Officiis, lib. I].
The principal advantage, which Juvenal discovers in the extensive capacity of the human species, is that it renders our benevolence also more extensive, and gives us larger opportunities of spreading our kindly influence than what are indulged to the inferior creation [Sat. XV. 139 and seq.]. It must, indeed, be confessed, that by doing good only, can a man truly enjoy the advantages of being eminent. His exalted station, of itself but the more exposes him to danger and tempest. His sole prerogative is to afford shelter to inferiors, who repose themselves under his cover and protection.
But I forget, that it is not my present business to recommend generosity and benevolence, or to paint, in their true colours, all the genuine charms of the social virtues. These, indeed, sufficiently engage every heart, on the first apprehension of them; and it is difficult to abstain from some sally of panegyric, as often as they occur in discourse or reasoning. But our object here being more the speculative, than the practical part of morals, it will suffice to remark, (what will readily, I believe, be allowed) that no qualities are more intitled to the general good-will and approbation of mankind than beneficence and humanity, friendship and gratitude, natural affection and public spirit, or whatever proceeds from a tender sympathy with others, and a generous concern for our kind and species. These wherever they appear seem to transfuse themselves, in a manner, into each beholder, and to call forth, in their own behalf, the same favourable and affectionate sentiments, which they exert on all around.
PART II.
We may observe that, in displaying the praises of any humane, beneficent man, there is one circumstance which never fails to be amply insisted on, namely, the happiness and satisfaction, derived to society from his intercourse and good offices. To his parents, we are apt to say, he endears himself by his pious attachment and duteous care still more than by the connexions of nature. His children never feel his authority, but when employed for their advantage. With him, the ties of love are consolidated by beneficence and friendship. The ties of friendship approach, in a fond observance of each obliging office, to those of love and inclination. His domestics and dependants have in him a sure resource; and no longer dread the power of fortune, but so far as she exercises it over him. From him the hungry receive food, the naked clothing, the ignorant and slothful skill and industry. Like the sun, an inferior minister of providence he cheers, invigorates, and sustains the surrounding world.
If confined to private life, the sphere of his activity is narrower; but his influence is all benign and gentle. If exalted into a higher station, mankind and posterity reap the fruit of his labours.
As these topics of praise never fail to be employed, and with success, where we would inspire esteem for any one; may it not thence be concluded, that the utility, resulting from the social virtues, forms, at least, a PART of their merit, and is one source of that approbation and regard so universally paid to them?
When we recommend even an animal or a plant as USEFUL and BENEFICIAL, we give it an applause and recommendation suited to its nature. As, on the other hand, reflection on the baneful influence of any of these inferior beings always inspires us with the sentiment of aversion. The eye is pleased with the prospect of corn-fields and loaded vine-yards; horses grazing, and flocks pasturing: but flies the view of briars and brambles, affording shelter to wolves and serpents.
A machine, a piece of furniture, a vestment, a house well contrived for use and conveniency, is so far beautiful, and is contemplated with pleasure and approbation. An experienced eye is here sensible to many excellencies, which escape persons ignorant and uninstructed.
Can anything stronger be said in praise of a profession, such as merchandize or manufacture, than to observe the advantages which it procures to society; and is not a monk and inquisitor enraged when we treat his order as useless or pernicious to mankind?
The historian exults in displaying the benefit arising from his labours. The writer of romance alleviates or denies the bad consequences ascribed to his manner of composition.
In general, what praise is implied in the simple epithet USEFUL! What reproach in the contrary!
Your Gods, says Cicero [De Nat. Deor. lib. i.], in opposition to the Epicureans, cannot justly claim any worship or adoration, with whatever imaginary perfections you may suppose them endowed. They are totally useless and inactive. Even the Egyptians, whom you so much ridicule, never consecrated any animal but on account of its utility.
The sceptics assert [Sext. Emp. adrersus Math. lib. viii.], though absurdly, that the origin of all religious worship was derived from the utility of inanimate objects, as the sun and moon, to the support and well-being of mankind. This is also the common reason assigned by historians, for the deification of eminent heroes and legislators [Diod. Sic. passim.].
To plant a tree, to cultivate a field, to beget children; meritorious acts, according to the religion of Zoroaster.
In all determinations of morality, this circumstance of public utility is ever principally in view; and wherever disputes arise, either in philosophy or common life, concerning the bounds of duty, the question cannot, by any means, be decided with greater certainty, than by ascertaining, on any side, the true interests of mankind. If any false opinion, embraced from appearances, has been found to prevail; as soon as farther experience and sounder reasoning have given us juster notions of human affairs, we retract our first sentiment, and adjust anew the boundaries of moral good and evil.
Giving alms to common beggars is naturally praised; because it seems to carry relief to the distressed and indigent: but when we observe the encouragement thence arising to idleness and debauchery, we regard that species of charity rather as a weakness than a virtue.
Tyrannicide, or the assassination of usurpers and oppressive princes, was highly extolled in ancient times; because it both freed mankind from many of these monsters, and seemed to keep the others in awe, whom the sword or poinard could not reach. But history and experience having since convinced us, that this practice increases the jealousy and cruelty of princes, a Timoleon and a Brutus, though treated with indulgence on account of the prejudices of their times, are now considered as very improper models for imitation.
Liberality in princes is regarded as a mark of beneficence, but when it occurs, that the homely bread of the honest and industrious is often thereby converted into delicious cates for the idle and the prodigal, we soon retract our heedless praises. The regrets of a prince, for having lost a day, were noble and generous: but had he intended to have spent it in acts of generosity to his greedy courtiers, it was better lost than misemployed after that manner.
Luxury, or a refinement on the pleasures and conveniences of life, had not long been supposed the source of every corruption in government, and the immediate cause of faction, sedition, civil wars, and the total loss of liberty. It was, therefore, universally regarded as a vice, and was an object of declamation to all satirists, and severe moralists. Those, who prove, or attempt to prove, that such refinements rather tend to the increase of industry, civility, and arts regulate anew our MORAL as well as POLITICAL sentiments, and represent, as laudable or innocent, what had formerly been regarded as pernicious and blameable.
Upon the whole, then, it seems undeniable, THAT nothing can bestow more merit on any human creature than the sentiment of benevolence in an eminent degree; and THAT a PART, at least, of its merit arises from its tendency to promote the interests of our species, and bestow happiness on human society. We carry our view into the salutary consequences of such a character and disposition; and whatever has so benign an influence, and forwards so desirable an end, is beheld with complacency and pleasure. The social virtues are never regarded without their beneficial tendencies, nor viewed as barren and unfruitful. The happiness of mankind, the order of society, the harmony of families, the mutual support of friends, are always considered as the result of their gentle dominion over the breasts of men.
How considerable a PART of their merit we ought to ascribe to their utility, will better appear from future disquisitions; [Footnote: Sect. III. and IV.] as well as the reason, why this circumstance has such a command over our esteem and approbation. [Footnote: Sect. V.]
SECTION III. OF JUSTICE.
PART I.
THAT Justice is useful to society, and consequently that PART of its merit, at least, must arise from that consideration, it would be a superfluous undertaking to prove. That public utility is the SOLE origin of justice, and that reflections on the beneficial consequences of this virtue are the SOLE foundation of its merit; this proposition, being more curious and important, will better deserve our examination and enquiry.
Let us suppose that nature has bestowed on the human race such profuse ABUNDANCE of all EXTERNAL conveniencies, that, without any uncertainty in the event, without any care or industry on our part, every individual finds himself fully provided with whatever his most voracious appetites can want, or luxurious imagination wish or desire. His natural beauty, we shall suppose, surpasses all acquired ornaments: the perpetual clemency of the seasons renders useless all clothes or covering: the raw herbage affords him the most delicious fare; the clear fountain, the richest beverage. No laborious occupation required: no tillage: no navigation. Music, poetry, and contemplation form his sole business: conversation, mirth, and friendship his sole amusement. It seems evident that, in such a happy state, every other social virtue would flourish, and receive tenfold increase; but the cautious, jealous virtue of justice would never once have been dreamed of. For what purpose make a partition of goods, where every one has already more than enough? Why give rise to property, where there cannot possibly be any injury? Why call this object MINE, when upon the seizing of it by another, I need but stretch out my hand to possess myself to what is equally valuable? Justice, in that case, being totally useless, would be an idle ceremonial, and could never possibly have place in the catalogue of virtues.
We see, even in the present necessitous condition of mankind, that, wherever any benefit is bestowed by nature in an unlimited abundance, we leave it always in common among the whole human race, and make no subdivisions of right and property. Water and air, though the most necessary of all objects, are not challenged as the property of individuals; nor can any man commit injustice by the most lavish use and enjoyment of these blessings. In fertile extensive countries, with few inhabitants, land is regarded on the same footing. And no topic is so much insisted on by those, who defend the liberty of the seas, as the unexhausted use of them in navigation. Were the advantages, procured by navigation, as inexhaustible, these reasoners had never had any adversaries to refute; nor had any claims ever been advanced of a separate, exclusive dominion over the ocean.
It may happen, in some countries, at some periods, that there be established a property in water, none in land [Footnote: Genesis, chaps. xiii. and xxi.]; if the latter be in greater abundance than can be used by the inhabitants, and the former be found, with difficulty, and in very small quantities.
Again; suppose, that, though the necessities of human race continue the same as at present, yet the mind is so enlarged, and so replete with friendship and generosity, that every man has the utmost tenderness for every man, and feels no more concern for his own interest than for that of his fellows; it seems evident, that the use of justice would, in this case, be suspended by such an extensive benevolence, nor would the divisions and barriers of property and obligation have ever been thought of. Why should I bind another, by a deed or promise, to do me any good office, when I know that he is already prompted, by the strongest inclination, to seek my happiness, and would, of himself, perform the desired service; except the hurt, he thereby receives, be greater than the benefit accruing to me? in which case, he knows, that, from my innate humanity and friendship, I should be the first to oppose myself to his imprudent generosity. Why raise landmarks between my neighbour's field and mine, when my heart has made no division between our interests; but shares all his joys and sorrows with the same force and vivacity as if originally my own? Every man, upon this supposition, being a second self to another, would trust all his interests to the discretion of every man; without jealousy, without partition, without distinction. And the whole human race would form only one family; where all would lie in common, and be used freely, without regard to property; but cautiously too, with as entire regard to the necessities of each individual, as if our own interests were most intimately concerned.
In the present disposition of the human heart, it would, perhaps, be difficult to find complete instances of such enlarged affections; but still we may observe, that the case of families approaches towards it; and the stronger the mutual benevolence is among the individuals, the nearer it approaches; till all distinction of property be, in a great measure, lost and confounded among them. Between married persons, the cement of friendship is by the laws supposed so strong as to abolish all division of possessions; and has often, in reality, the force ascribed to it. And it is observable, that, during the ardour of new enthusiasms, when every principle is inflamed into extravagance, the community of goods has frequently been attempted; and nothing but experience of its inconveniencies, from the returning or disguised selfishness of men, could make the imprudent fanatics adopt anew the ideas of justice and of separate property. So true is it, that this virtue derives its existence entirely from its necessary USE to the intercourse and social state of mankind.
To make this truth more evident, let us reverse the foregoing suppositions; and carrying everything to the opposite extreme, consider what would be the effect of these new situations. Suppose a society to fall into such want of all common necessaries, that the utmost frugality and industry cannot preserve the greater number from perishing, and the whole from extreme misery; it will readily, I believe, be admitted, that the strict laws of justice are suspended, in such a pressing emergence, and give place to the stronger motives of necessity and self-preservation. Is it any crime, after a shipwreck, to seize whatever means or instrument of safety one can lay hold of, without regard to former limitations of property? Or if a city besieged were perishing with hunger; can we imagine, that men will see any means of preservation before them, and lose their lives, from a scrupulous regard to what, in other situations, would be the rules of equity and justice? The use and tendency of that virtue is to procure happiness and security, by preserving order in society: but where the society is ready to perish from extreme necessity, no greater evil can be dreaded from violence and injustice; and every man may now provide for himself by all the means, which prudence can dictate, or humanity permit. The public, even in less urgent necessities, opens granaries, without the consent of proprietors; as justly supposing, that the authority of magistracy may, consistent with equity, extend so far: but were any number of men to assemble, without the tie of laws or civil jurisdiction; would an equal partition of bread in a famine, though effected by power and even violence, be regarded as criminal or injurious?
Suppose likewise, that it should be a virtuous man's fate to fall into the society of ruffians, remote from the protection of laws and government; what conduct must he embrace in that melancholy situation? He sees such a desperate rapaciousness prevail; such a disregard to equity, such contempt of order, such stupid blindness to future consequences, as must immediately have the most tragical conclusion, and must terminate in destruction to the greater number, and in a total dissolution of society to the rest. He, meanwhile, can have no other expedient than to arm himself, to whomever the sword he seizes, or the buckler, may belong: To make provision of all means of defence and security: And his particular regard to justice being no longer of use to his own safety or that of others, he must consult the dictates of self-preservation alone, without concern for those who no longer merit his care and attention.
When any man, even in political society, renders himself by his crimes, obnoxious to the public, he is punished by the laws in his goods and person; that is, the ordinary rules of justice are, with regard to him, suspended for a moment, and it becomes equitable to inflict on him, for the BENEFIT of society, what otherwise he could not suffer without wrong or injury.
The rage and violence of public war; what is it but a suspension of justice among the warring parties, who perceive, that this virtue is now no longer of any USE or advantage to them? The laws of war, which then succeed to those of equity and justice, are rules calculated for the ADVANTAGE and UTILITY of that particular state, in which men are now placed. And were a civilized nation engaged with barbarians, who observed no rules even of war, the former must also suspend their observance of them, where they no longer serve to any purpose; and must render every action or recounter as bloody and pernicious as possible to the first aggressors.
Thus, the rules of equity or justice depend entirely on the particular state and condition in which men are placed, and owe their origin and existence to that utility, which results to the public from their strict and regular observance. Reverse, in any considerable circumstance, the condition of men: Produce extreme abundance or extreme necessity: Implant in the human breast perfect moderation and humanity, or perfect rapaciousness and malice: By rendering justice totally USELESS, you thereby totally destroy its essence, and suspend its obligation upon mankind. The common situation of society is a medium amidst all these extremes. We are naturally partial to ourselves, and to our friends; but are capable of learning the advantage resulting from a more equitable conduct. Few enjoyments are given us from the open and liberal hand of nature; but by art, labour, and industry, we can extract them in great abundance. Hence the ideas of property become necessary in all civil society: Hence justice derives its usefulness to the public: And hence alone arises its merit and moral obligation.
These conclusions are so natural and obvious, that they have not escaped even the poets, in their descriptions of the felicity attending the golden age or the reign of Saturn. The seasons, in that first period of nature, were so temperate, if we credit these agreeable fictions, that there was no necessity for men to provide themselves with clothes and houses, as a security against the violence of heat and cold: The rivers flowed with wine and milk: The oaks yielded honey; and nature spontaneously produced her greatest delicacies. Nor were these the chief advantages of that happy age. Tempests were not alone removed from nature; but those more furious tempests were unknown to human breasts, which now cause such uproar, and engender such confusion. Avarice, ambition, cruelty, selfishness, were never heard of: Cordial affection, compassion, sympathy, were the only movements with which the mind was yet acquainted. Even the punctilious distinction of MINE and THINE was banished from among the happy race of mortals, and carried with it the very notion of property and obligation, justice and injustice.
This POETICAL fiction of the GOLDEN AGE, is in some respects, of a piece with the PHILOSOPHICAL fiction of the STATE OF NATURE; only that the former is represented as the most charming and most peaceable condition, which can possibly be imagined; whereas the latter is painted out as a state of mutual war and violence, attended with the most extreme necessity. On the first origin of mankind, we are told, their ignorance and savage nature were so prevalent, that they could give no mutual trust, but must each depend upon himself and his own force or cunning for protection and security. No law was heard of: No rule of justice known: No distinction of property regarded: Power was the only measure of right; and a perpetual war of all against all was the result of men's untamed selfishness and barbarity.
