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Hume’s Moral Philosophy

Hume’s position in ethics, which is based on his empiricist theory of the mind , is best known for asserting four theses: (1) Reason alone cannot be a motive to the will, but rather is the “slave of the passions” (see Section 3 ) (2) Moral distinctions are not derived from reason (see Section 4 ). (3) Moral distinctions are derived from the moral sentiments: feelings of approval (esteem, praise) and disapproval (blame) felt by spectators who contemplate a character trait or action (see Section 7 ). (4) While some virtues and vices are natural (see Section 13 ), others, including justice, are artificial (see Section 9 ). There is heated debate about what Hume intends by each of these theses and how he argues for them. He articulates and defends them within the broader context of his metaethics and his ethic of virtue and vice.

Hume’s main ethical writings are Book 3 of his Treatise of Human Nature , “Of Morals” (which builds on Book 2, “Of the Passions”), his Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals , and some of his Essays . In part the moral Enquiry simply recasts central ideas from the moral part of the Treatise in a more accessible style; but there are important differences. The ethical positions and arguments of the Treatise are set out below, noting where the moral Enquiry agrees; differences between the Enquiry and the Treatise are discussed afterwards.

1. Issues from Hume’s Predecessors

2. the passions and the will, 3. the influencing motives of the will, 4. ethical anti-rationalism.

• 5. Is and Ought

6. The Nature of Moral Judgment

7. sympathy, and the nature and origin of the moral sentiments, 8. the common point of view, 9. artificial and natural virtues, 10.1 the circle, 10.2 the origin of material honesty, 10.3 the motive of honest actions, 11. fidelity to promises, 12. allegiance to government, 13. the natural virtues, 14. differences between the treatise and the moral enquiry, other internet resources, related entries.

Hume inherits from his predecessors several controversies about ethics and political philosophy.

One is a question of moral epistemology: how do human beings become aware of, or acquire knowledge or belief about, moral good and evil, right and wrong, duty and obligation? Ethical theorists and theologians of the day held, variously, that moral good and evil are discovered: (a) by reason in some of its uses (Hobbes, Locke, Clarke), (b) by divine revelation (Filmer), (c) by conscience or reflection on one’s (other) impulses (Butler), or (d) by a moral sense: an emotional responsiveness manifesting itself in approval or disapproval (Shaftesbury, Hutcheson). Hume sides with the moral sense theorists: we gain awareness of moral good and evil by experiencing the pleasure of approval and the uneasiness of disapproval when we contemplate a character trait or action from an imaginatively sensitive and unbiased point of view. Hume maintains against the rationalists that, although reason is needed to discover the facts of any concrete situation and the general social impact of a trait of character or a practice over time, reason alone is insufficient to yield a judgment that something is virtuous or vicious. In the last analysis, the facts as known must trigger a response by sentiment or “taste.”

A related but more metaphysical controversy would be stated thus today: what is the source or foundation of moral norms? In Hume’s day this is the question what is the ground of moral obligation (as distinct from what is the faculty for acquiring moral knowledge or belief). Moral rationalists of the period such as Clarke (and in some moods, Hobbes and Locke) argue that moral standards or principles are requirements of reason — that is, that the very rationality of right actions is the ground of our obligation to perform them. Divine voluntarists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as Samuel Pufendorf claim that moral obligation or requirement, if not every sort of moral standard, is the product of God’s will. The moral sense theorists (Shaftesbury and Hutcheson) and Butler see all requirements to pursue goodness and avoid evil as consequent upon human nature, which is so structured that a particular feature of our consciousness (whether moral sense or conscience) evaluates the rest. Hume sides with the moral sense theorists on this question: it is because we are the kinds of creatures we are, with the dispositions we have for pain and pleasure, the kinds of familial and friendly interdependence that make up our life together, and our approvals and disapprovals of these, that we are bound by moral requirements at all.

Closely connected with the issue of the foundations of moral norms is the question whether moral requirements are natural or conventional. Hobbes and Mandeville see them as conventional, and Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Locke, and others see them as natural. Hume mocks Mandeville’s contention that the very concepts of vice and virtue are foisted on us by scheming politicians trying to manage us more easily. If there were nothing in our experience and no sentiments in our minds to produce the concept of virtue, Hume says, no lavish praise of heroes could generate it. So to a degree moral requirements have a natural origin. Nonetheless,Hume thinks natural impulses of humanity and dispositions to approve cannot entirely account for our virtue of justice; a correct analysis of that virtue reveals that mankind, an “inventive species,” has cooperatively constructed rules of property and promise. Thus he takes an intermediate position: some virtues are natural, and some are the products of convention.

Linked with these meta-ethical controversies is the dilemma of understanding the ethical life either as the “ancients” do, in terms of virtues and vices of character, or as the “moderns” do, primarily in terms of principles of duty or natural law. While even so law-oriented a thinker as Hobbes has a good deal to say about virtue, the ethical writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries predominantly favor a rule- or law-governed understanding of morals, giving priority to laws of nature or principles of duty. The chief exception here is the moral sense school, which advocates an analysis of the moral life more like that of the Greek and Hellenistic thinkers, in terms of settled traits of character — although they too find a place for principles in their ethics. Hume explicitly favors an ethic of character along “ancient” lines. Yet he insists on a role for rules of duty within the domain of what he calls the artificial virtues.

Hume’s predecessors famously took opposing positions on whether human nature was essentially selfish or benevolent, some arguing that man was so dominated by self-interested motives that for moral requirements to govern us at all they must serve our interests in some way, and others arguing that uncorrupted human beings naturally care about the weal and woe of others and here morality gets its hold. Hume roundly criticizes Hobbes for his insistence on psychological egoism or something close to it, and for his dismal, violent picture of a state of nature. Yet Hume resists the view of Hutcheson that all moral principles can be reduced to our benevolence, in part because he doubts that benevolence can sufficiently overcome our perfectly normal acquisitiveness. According to Hume’s observation, we are both selfish and humane. We possess greed, and also “limited generosity” — dispositions to kindness and liberality which are more powerfully directed toward kin and friends and less aroused by strangers. While for Hume the condition of humankind in the absence of organized society is not a war of all against all, neither is it the law-governed and highly cooperative domain imagined by Locke. It is a hypothetical condition in which we would care for our friends and cooperate with them, but in which self-interest and preference for friends over strangers would make any wider cooperation impossible. Hume’s empirically-based thesis that we are fundamentally loving, parochial, and also selfish creatures underlies his political philosophy.

In the realm of politics, Hume again takes up an intermediate position. He objects both to the doctrine that a subject must passively obey his government no matter how tyrannical it is and to the Lockean thesis that citizens have a natural right to revolution whenever their rulers violate their contractual commitments to the people. He famously criticizes the notion that all political duties arise from an implicit contract that binds later generations who were not party to the original explicit agreement. Hume maintains that the duty to obey one’s government has an independent origin that parallels that of promissory obligation: both are invented to enable people to live together successfully. On his view, human beings can create a society without government, ordered by conventional rules of ownership, transfer of property by consent, and promise-keeping. We superimpose government on such a pre-civil society when it grows large and prosperous; only then do we need to use political power to enforce these rules of justice in order to preserve social cooperation. So the duty of allegiance to government, far from depending on the duty to fulfill promises, provides needed assurance that promises of all sorts will be kept. The duty to submit to our rulers comes into being because reliable submission is necessary to preserve order. Particular governments are legitimate because of their usefulness in preserving society, not because those who wield power were chosen by God or received promises of obedience from the people. In a long-established civil society, whatever ruler or type of government happens to be in place and successfully maintaining order and justice is legitimate, and is owed allegiance. However, there is some legitimate recourse for victims of tyranny: the people may rightly overthrow any government that is so oppressive as not to provide the benefits (peace and security from injustice) for which governments are formed. In his political essays Hume certainly advocates the sort of constitution that protects the people’s liberties, but he justifies it not based on individual natural rights or contractual obligations but based on the greater long-range good of society.

According to Hume’s theory of the mind, the passions (what we today would call emotions, feelings, and desires) are impressions rather than ideas (original, vivid and lively perceptions that are not copied from other perceptions). The direct passions, which include desire, aversion, hope, fear, grief, and joy, are those that “arise immediately from good or evil, from pain or pleasure” that we experience or think about in prospect (T 2.1.1.4, T 2.3.9.2); however he also groups with them some instincts of unknown origin, such as the bodily appetites and the desires that good come to those we love and harm to those we hate, which do not proceed from pain and pleasure but produce them (T 2.3.9.7). The indirect passions, primarily pride, humility (shame), love and hatred, are generated in a more complex way, but still one involving either the thought or experience of pain or pleasure. Intentional actions are caused by the direct passions (including the instincts). Of the indirect passions Hume says that pride, humility, love and hatred do not directly cause action; it is not clear whether he thinks this true of all the indirect passions.

Hume is traditionally regarded as a compatibilist about freedom and determinism, because in his discussion in the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding he argues that if we understand the doctrines of liberty and necessity properly, all mankind consistently believe both that human actions are the products of causal necessity and that they are free. In the Treatise , however, he explicitly repudiates the doctrine of liberty as “absurd... in one sense, and unintelligible in any other” (T 2.3.2.1). The two treatments, however, surprisingly enough, are entirely consistent. Hume construes causal necessity to mean the same as causal connection (or rather, intelligible causal connection), as he himself analyzes this notion in his own theory of causation: either the “constant union and conjunction of like objects,” or that together with “the inference of the mind from the one to the other” (ibid.). In both works he argues that just as we discover necessity (in this sense) to hold between the movements of material bodies, we discover just as much necessity to hold between human motives, character traits, and circumstances of action, on the one hand, and human behavior on the other. He says in the Treatise that the liberty of indifference is the negation of necessity in this sense; this is the notion of liberty that he there labels absurd, and identifies with chance or randomness (which can be no real power in nature) both in the Treatise and the first (epistemological) Enquiry . Human actions are not free in this sense. However, Hume allows in the Treatise that they are sometimes free in the sense of ‘liberty’ which is opposed to violence or constraint. This is the sense on which Hume focuses in EcHU: “ a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will; ” which everyone has “who is not a prisoner and in chains” (EcHU 8.1.23, Hume’s emphasis). It is this that is entirely compatible with necessity in Hume’s sense. So the positions in the two works are the same, although the polemical emphasis is so different — iconoclastic toward the libertarian view in the Treatise , and conciliatory toward “all mankind” in the first Enquiry .

Hume argues, as well, that the causal necessity of human actions is not only compatible with moral responsibility but requisite to it. To hold an agent morally responsible for a bad action, it is not enough that the action be morally reprehensible; we must impute the badness of the fleeting act to the enduring agent. Not all harmful or forbidden actions incur blame for the agent; those done by accident, for example, do not. It is only when, and because, the action’s cause is some enduring passion or trait of character in the agent that she is to blame for it.

According to Hume, intentional actions are the immediate product of passions, in particular the direct passions, including the instincts. He does not appear to allow that any other sort of mental state could, on its own, give rise to an intentional action except by producing a passion, though he does not argue for this. The motivating passions, in their turn, are produced in the mind by specific causes, as we see early in the Treatise where he first explains the distinction between impressions of sensation and impressions of reflection:

An impression first strikes upon the senses, and makes us perceive heat or cold, thirst or hunger, pleasure or pain, of some kind or other. Of this impression there is a copy taken by the mind, which remains after the impression ceases; and this we call an idea. This idea of pleasure or pain, when it returns upon the soul, produces the new impressions of desire and aversion, hope and fear, which may properly be called impressions of reflection, because derived from it. (T 1.1.2.2)

Thus ideas of pleasure or pain are the causes of these motivating passions. Not just any ideas of pleasure or pain give rise to motivating passions, however, but only ideas of those pleasures or pains we believe exist or will exist (T 1.3.10.3). More generally, the motivating passions of desire and aversion, hope and fear, joy and grief, and a few others are impressions produced by the occurrence in the mind either of a feeling of pleasure or pain, whether physical or psychological, or of a believed idea of pleasure or pain to come (T 2.1.1.4, T 2.3.9.2). These passions, together with the instincts (hunger, lust, and so on), are all the motivating passions that Hume discusses.

The will, Hume claims, is an immediate effect of pain or pleasure (T 2.3.1.2) and “exerts itself” when either pleasure or the absence of pain can be attained by any action of the mind or body (T 2.3.9.7). The will, however, is merely that impression we feel when we knowingly give rise to an action (T 2.3.1.2); so while Hume is not explicit (and perhaps not consistent) on this matter, he seems not to regard the will as itself a (separate) cause of action. The causes of action he describes are those he has already identified: the instincts and the other direct passions.

Hume famously sets himself in opposition to most moral philosophers, ancient and modern, who talk of the combat of passion and reason, and who urge human beings to regulate their actions by reason and to grant it dominion over their contrary passions. He claims to prove that “reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will,” and that reason alone “can never oppose passion in the direction of the will” (T 413). His view is not, of course, that reason plays no role in the generation of action; he grants that reason provides information, in particular about means to our ends, which makes a difference to the direction of the will. His thesis is that reason alone cannot move us to action; the impulse to act itself must come from passion. The doctrine that reason alone is merely the “slave of the passions,” i.e., that reason pursues knowledge of abstract and causal relations solely in order to achieve passions’ goals and provides no impulse of its own, is defended in the Treatise , but not in the second Enquiry , although in the latter he briefly asserts the doctrine without argument. Hume gives three arguments in the Treatise for the motivational “inertia” of reason alone.

The first is a largely empirical argument based on the two rational functions of the understanding. The understanding discovers the abstract relations of ideas by demonstration (a process of comparing ideas and finding congruencies and incongruencies); and it also discovers the causal (and other probabilistic) relations of objects that are revealed in experience. Demonstrative reasoning is never the cause of any action by itself: it deals in ideas rather than realities, and we only find it useful in action when we have some purpose in view and intend to use its discoveries to inform our inferences about (and so enable us to manipulate) causes and effects. Probable or cause-and-effect reasoning does play a role in deciding what to do, but we see that it only functions as an auxiliary, and not on its own. When we anticipate pain or pleasure from some source, we feel aversion or propensity to that object and “are carry’d to avoid or embrace what will give us” the pain or pleasure (T 2.3.3.3). Our aversion or propensity makes us seek the causes of the expected source of pain or pleasure, and we use causal reasoning to discover what they are. Once we do, our impulse naturally extends itself to those causes, and we act to avoid or embrace them. Plainly the impulse to act does not arise from the reasoning but is only directed by it. “’Tis from the prospect of pain or pleasure that the aversion or propensity arises...” (ibid.). Probable reasoning is merely the discovering of causal connections, and knowledge that A causes B never concerns us if we are indifferent to A and to B. Thus, neither demonstrative nor probable reasoning alone causes action.

The second argument is a corollary of the first. It takes as a premise the conclusion just reached, that reason alone cannot produce an impulse to act. Given that, can reason prevent action or resist passion in controlling the will? To stop a volition or retard the impulse of an existing passion would require a contrary impulse. If reason alone could give rise to such a contrary impulse, it would have an original influence on the will (a capacity to cause intentional action, when unopposed); which, according to the previous argument, it lacks. Therefore reason alone cannot resist any impulse to act. Therefore, what offers resistance to our passions cannot be reason of itself. Hume later proposes that when we restrain imprudent or immoral impulses, the contrary impulse comes also from passion, but often from a passion so “calm” that we confuse it with reason.

The third or Representation argument is different in kind. Hume offers it initially only to show that a passion cannot be opposed by or be contradictory to “truth and reason”; later (T 3.1.1.9), he repeats and expands it to argue that volitions and actions as well cannot be so. One might suppose he means to give another argument to show that reason alone cannot provide a force to resist passion. Yet the Representation Argument is not empirical, and does not talk of forces or impulses. Passions (and volitions and actions), Hume says, do not refer to other entities; they are “original existence[s],” (T 2.3.3.5), “original facts and realities” (T3.1.1.9), not mental representations of other things. Since Hume here understands representation in terms of copying, he says a passion has no “representative quality, which renders it a copy of any other existence or modification” (T 2.3.3.5). Contradiction to truth and reason, however, consists in “the disagreement of ideas, consider’d as copies, with those objects, which they represent” (ibid.). Therefore, a passion (or volition or action), not having this feature, cannot be opposed by truth and reason. The argument allegedly proves two points: first, that actions cannot be reasonable or unreasonable; second, that “reason cannot immediately prevent or produce any action by contradicting or approving of it” (T3.1.1.10). The point here is not merely the earlier, empirical observation that the rational activity of the understanding does not generate an impulse in the absence of an expectation of pain or pleasure. The main point is that, because passions, volitions, and actions have no content suitable for assessment by reason, reason cannot assess prospective motives or actions as rational or irrational; and therefore reason cannot, by so assessing them, create or obstruct them. By contrast, reason can assess a potential opinion as rational or irrational; and by endorsing the opinion, reason will (that is, we will) adopt it, while by contradicting the opinion, reason will destroy our credence in it. The Representation Argument, then, makes a point a priori about the relevance of the functions of the understanding to the generation of actions. Interpreters disagree about exactly how to parse this argument, whether it is sound, and its importance to Hume’s project.

Hume allows that, speaking imprecisely, we often say a passion is unreasonable because it arises in response to a mistaken judgment or opinion, either that something (a source of pleasure or uneasiness) exists, or that it may be obtained or avoided by a certain means. In just these two cases a passion may be called unreasonable, but strictly speaking even here it is not the passion but the judgment that is so. Once we correct the mistaken judgment, “our passions yield to our reason without any opposition,” so there is still no combat of passion and reason (T 2.3.3.7). And there is no other instance of passion contrary to reason. Hume famously declaims, “’Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. ‘Tis not contrary to reason for me to chuse my total ruin, to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian or person wholly unknown to me. ‘Tis as little contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledg’d lesser good to my greater, and have a more ardent affection for the former than for the latter.” (2.3.3.6)

Interpreters disagree as to whether Hume is an instrumentalist or a skeptic about practical reason. Either way, Hume denies that reason can evaluate the ends people set themselves; only passions can select ends, and reason cannot evaluate passions. Instrumentalists understand the claim that reason is the slave of the passions to allow that reason not only discovers the causally efficacious means to our ends (a task of theoretical causal reasoning) but also requires us to take them. If Hume regards the failure to take the known means to one’s end as contrary to reason, then on Hume’s view reason has a genuinely practical aspect: it can classify some actions as unreasonable. Skeptical interpreters read Hume, instead, as denying that reason imposes any requirements on action, even the requirement to take the known, available means to one’s end. They point to the list of extreme actions that are not contrary to reason (such as preferring one’s own lesser good to one’s greater), and to the Representation Argument, which denies that any passions, volitions, or actions are of such a nature as to be contrary to reason. Hume never says explicitly that failing to take the known means to one’s end is either contrary to reason or not contrary to reason (it is not one of the extreme cases in his list). The classificatory point in the Representation Argument favors the reading of Hume as a skeptic about practical reason; but that argument is absent from the moral Enquiry .

Hume claims that moral distinctions are not derived from reason but rather from sentiment. His rejection of ethical rationalism is at least two-fold. Moral rationalists tend to say, first, that moral properties are discovered by reason, and also that what is morally good is in accord with reason (even that goodness consists in reasonableness) and what is morally evil is unreasonable. Hume rejects both theses. Some of his arguments are directed to one and some to the other thesis, and in places it is unclear which he means to attack.

In the Treatise he argues against the epistemic thesis (that we discover good and evil by reasoning) by showing that neither demonstrative nor probable/causal reasoning has vice and virtue as its proper objects. Demonstrative reasoning discovers relations of ideas, and vice and virtue are not identical with any of the four philosophical relations (resemblance, contrariety, degrees in quality, or proportions in quantity and number) whose presence can be demonstrated. Nor could they be identical with any other abstract relation; for such relations can also obtain between items such as trees that are incapable of moral good or evil. Furthermore, were moral vice and virtue discerned by demonstrative reasoning, such reasoning would reveal their inherent power to produce motives in all who discern them; but no causal connections can be discovered a priori . Causal reasoning, by contrast, does infer matters of fact pertaining to actions, in particular their causes and effects; but the vice of an action (its wickedness) is not found in its causes or effects, but is only apparent when we consult the sentiments of the observer. Therefore moral good and evil are not discovered by reason alone.

Hume also attempts in the Treatise to establish the other anti-rationalist thesis, that virtue is not the same as reasonableness and vice is not contrary to reason. He gives two arguments for this. The first, very short, argument he claims follows directly from the Representation Argument, whose conclusion was that passions, volitions, and actions can be neither reasonable nor unreasonable. Actions, he observes, can be laudable or blamable. Since actions cannot be reasonable or against reason, it follows that “[l]audable and blameable are not the same with reasonable or unreasonable” (T 458). The properties are not identical.

The second and more famous argument makes use of the conclusion defended earlier that reason alone cannot move us to act. As we have seen, reason alone “can never immediately prevent or produce any action by contradicting or approving of it” (T 458). Morality — this argument goes on — influences our passions and actions: we are often impelled to or deterred from action by our opinions of obligation or injustice. Therefore morals cannot be derived from reason alone. This argument is first introduced as showing it impossible “from reason alone... to distinguish betwixt moral good and evil” (T 457) — that is, it is billed as establishing the epistemic thesis. But Hume also says that, like the little direct argument above, it proves that “actions do not derive their merit from a conformity to reason, nor their blame from a contrariety to it” (T458): it is not the reasonableness of an action that makes it good, or its unreasonableness that makes it evil.

This argument about motives concludes that moral judgments or evaluations are not the products of reason alone. From this many draw the sweeping conclusion that for Hume moral evaluations are not beliefs or opinions of any kind, but lack all cognitive content. That is, they take the argument to show that Hume holds a non-propositional view of moral evaluations — and indeed, given his sentimentalism, that he is an emotivist: one who holds that moral judgments are meaningless ventings of emotion that can be neither true nor false. Such a reading should be met with caution, however. For Hume, to say that something is not a product of reason alone is not equivalent to saying it is not a truth-evaluable judgment or belief. Hume does not consider all our (propositional) beliefs and opinions to be products of reason; some arise directly from sense perception, for example, and some from sympathy. Also, perhaps there are (propositional) beliefs we acquire via probable reasoning but not by such reasoning alone . One possible example is the belief that some object is a cause of pleasure, a belief that depends upon prior impressions as well as probable reasoning.

Another concern about the famous argument about motives is how it could be sound. In order for it to yield its conclusion, it seems that its premise that morality (or a moral judgment) influences the will must be construed to say that moral evaluations alone move us to action, without the help of some (further) passion. This is a controversial claim and not one for which Hume offers any support. The premise that reason alone cannot influence action is also difficult to interpret. It would seem, given his prior arguments for this claim (e.g. that the mere discovery of a causal relation does not produce an impulse to act), that Hume means by it not only that the faculty of reason or the activity of reasoning alone cannot move us, but also that the conclusions of such activity alone (such as recognition of a relation of ideas or belief in a causal connection) cannot produce a motive. Yet it is hard to see how Hume, given his theory of causation, can argue that no mental item of a certain type (such as a causal belief) can possibly cause motivating passion or action. Such a claim could not be supported a priori . And in Treatise 1.3.10, “Of the influence of belief,” he seems to assert very plainly that some causal beliefs do cause motivating passions, specifically beliefs about pleasure and pain in prospect. It is possible that Hume only means to say, in the premise that reason alone cannot influence action, that reasoning processes cannot generate actions as their logical conclusions; but that would introduce an equivocation, since he surely does not mean to say, in the other premise, that moral evaluations generate actions as their logical conclusions. The transition from premises to conclusion also seems to rely on a principle of transitivity (If A alone cannot produce X and B produces X, then A alone cannot produce B), which is doubtful but receives no defense.

Commentators have proposed various interpretations to avoid these difficulties. One approach is to construe ‘reason’ as the name of a process or activity, the comparing of ideas (reasoning), and to construe ‘morals’ as Hume uses it in this argument to mean the activity of moral discrimination (making a moral distinction). If we understand the terms this way, the argument can be read not as showing that the faculty of reason (or the beliefs it generates) cannot cause us to make moral judgments, but rather as showing that the reasoning process (comparing ideas) is distinct from the process of moral discrimination. This interpretation does not rely on an assumption about the transitivity of causation and is consistent with Hume’s theory of causation.

5. Is and ought

Hume famously closes the section of the Treatise that argues against moral rationalism by observing that other systems of moral philosophy, proceeding in the ordinary way of reasoning, at some point make an unremarked transition from premises whose parts are linked only by “is” to conclusions whose parts are linked by “ought” (expressing a new relation) — a deduction that seems to Hume “altogether inconceivable” (T3.1.1.27). Attention to this transition would “subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceiv’d by reason” (ibid.).

Few passages in Hume’s work have generated more interpretive controversy.

According to the dominant twentieth-century interpretation, Hume says here that no ought-judgment may be correctly inferred from a set of premises expressed only in terms of ‘is,’ and the vulgar systems of morality commit this logical fallacy. This is usually thought to mean something much more general: that no ethical or indeed evaluative conclusion whatsoever may be validly inferred from any set of purely factual premises. A number of present-day philosophers, including R. M. Hare, endorse this putative thesis of logic, calling it “Hume’s Law.” (As Francis Snare observes, on this reading Hume must simply assume that no purely factual propositions are themselves evaluative, as he does not argue for this.) Some interpreters think Hume commits himself here to a non-propositional or noncognitivist view of moral judgment — the view that moral judgments do not state facts and are not truth-evaluable. (If Hume has already used the famous argument about the motivational influence of morals to establish noncognitivism, then the is/ought paragraph may merely draw out a trivial consequence of it. If moral evaluations are merely expressions of feeling without propositional content, then of course they cannot be inferred from any propositional premises.) Some see the paragraph as denying ethical realism, excluding values from the domain of facts.

Other interpreters — the more cognitivist ones — see the paragraph about ‘is’ and ‘ought’ as doing none of the above. Some read it as simply providing further support for Hume’s extensive argument that moral properties are not discernible by demonstrative reason, leaving open whether ethical evaluations may be conclusions of cogent probable arguments. Others interpret it as making a point about the original discovery of virtue and vice, which must involve the use of sentiment. On this view, one cannot make the initial discovery of moral properties by inference from nonmoral premises using reason alone; rather, one requires some input from sentiment. It is not simply by reasoning from the abstract and causal relations one has discovered that one comes to have the ideas of virtue and vice; one must respond to such information with feelings of approval and disapproval. Note that on this reading it is compatible with the is/ought paragraph that once a person has the moral concepts as the result of prior experience of the moral sentiments, he or she may reach some particular moral conclusions by inference from causal, factual premises (stated in terms of ‘is’) about the effects of character traits on the sentiments of observers. They point out that Hume himself makes such inferences frequently in his writings.

On Hume’s view, what is a moral evaluation? Four main interpretations have significant textual support. First, as we have seen, the nonpropositional view says that for Hume a moral evaluation does not express any proposition or state any fact; either it gives vent to a feeling, or it is itself a feeling (Flew, Blackburn, Snare, Bricke). (A more refined form of this interpretation allows that moral evaluations have some propositional content, but claims that for Hume their essential feature, as evaluations, is non-propositional.) The subjective description view, by contrast, says that for Hume moral evaluations describe the feelings of the spectator, or the feelings a spectator would have were she to contemplate the trait or action from the common point of view. Often grouped with the latter view is the third, dispositional interpretation, which understands moral evaluations as factual judgments to the effect that the evaluated trait or action is so constituted as to cause feelings of approval or disapproval in a (suitably characterized) spectator (Mackie, in one of his proposals). On the dispositional view, in saying some trait is good we attribute to the trait the dispositional property of being such as to elicit approval. A fourth interpretation distinguishes two psychological states that might be called a moral evaluation: an occurrent feeling of approval or disapproval (which is not truth-apt), and a moral belief or judgment that is propositional. Versions of this fourth interpretation differ in what they take to be the content of that latter mental state. One version says that the moral judgments, as distinct from the moral feelings, are factual judgments about the moral sentiments (Capaldi). A distinct version, the moral sensing view, treats the moral beliefs as ideas copied from the impressions of approval or disapproval that represent a trait of character or an action as having whatever quality it is that one experiences in feeling the moral sentiment (Cohon). This last view emphasizes Hume’s claim that moral good and evil are like heat, cold, and colors as understood in “modern philosophy,” which are experienced directly by sensation, but about which we form beliefs.

Our moral evaluations of persons and their character traits, on Hume’s positive view, arise from our sentiments. The virtues and vices are those traits the disinterested contemplation of which produces approval and disapproval, respectively, in whoever contemplates the trait, whether the trait’s possessor or another. These moral sentiments are emotions (in the present-day sense of that term) with a unique phenomenological quality, and also with a special set of causes. They are caused by contemplating the person or action to be evaluated without regard to our self-interest, and from a common or general perspective that compensates for certain likely distortions in the observer’s sympathies, as explained in Section 8 . Approval (approbation) is a pleasure, and disapproval (disapprobation) a pain or uneasiness. The moral sentiments are typically calm rather than violent, although they can be intensified by our awareness of the moral responses of others. They are types of pleasure and uneasiness that are associated with the passions of pride and humility, love and hatred: when we feel moral approval of another we tend to love or esteem her, and when we approve a trait of our own we are proud of it. Some interpreters analyze the moral sentiments as themselves forms of these four passions; others argue that Hume’s moral sentiments tend to cause the latter passions. We distinguish which traits are virtuous and which are vicious by means of our feelings of approval and disapproval toward the traits; our approval of actions is derived from approval of the traits we suppose to have given rise to them. We can determine, by observing the various sorts of traits toward which we feel approval, that every such trait — every virtue — has at least one of the following four characteristics: it is either immediately agreeable to the person who has it or to others, or it is useful (advantageous over the longer term) to its possessor or to others. Vices prove to have the parallel features: they are either immediately disagreeable or disadvantageous either to the person who has them or to others. These are not definitions of ‘virtue’ and ‘vice’ but empirical generalizations about the traits as first identified by their effects on the moral sentiments.

In the Treatise Hume details the causes of the moral sentiments, in doing so explaining why agreeable and advantageous traits prove to be the ones that generate approval. He claims that the sentiments of moral approval and disapproval are caused by some of the operations of sympathy, which is not a feeling but rather a psychological mechanism that enables one person to receive by communication the sentiments of another (more or less what we would call empathy today).

Sympathy in general operates as follows. First, observation of the outward expression of another person’s “affection” (feeling or sentiment) in his “countenance and conversation” conveys the idea of his passion into my mind. So does observing the typical cause of a passion: for example, viewing the instruments laid out for another’s surgery will evoke ideas in me of fear and pain. We at all times possess a maximally vivid and forceful impression of ourselves. According to Hume’s associationism, vivacity of one perception is automatically transferred to those others that are related to it by resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect. Here resemblance and contiguity are primary. All human beings, regardless of their differences, are similar in bodily structure and in the types and causes of their passions. The person I observe or consider may further resemble me in more specific shared features such as character or nationality. Because of the resemblance and my contiguity to the observed person, the idea of his passion is associated in my mind with my impression of myself, and acquires great vivacity from it. The sole difference between an idea and an impression is the degree of liveliness or vivacity each possesses. So great is this acquired vivacity that the idea of his passion in my mind becomes an impression, and I actually experience the passion. When I come to share in the affections of strangers, and feel pleasure because they are pleased, as I do when I experience an aesthetic enjoyment of a well-designed ship or fertile field that is not my own, my pleasure can only be caused by sympathy (T 2.2.2–8, 3.3.1.7–8). Similarly, Hume observes, when we reflect upon a character or mental quality knowing its tendency either to the benefit or enjoyment of strangers or to their harm or uneasiness, we come to feel enjoyment when the trait is beneficial or agreeable to those strangers, and uneasiness when the trait is harmful or disagreeable to them. This reaction of ours to the tendency of a character trait to affect the sentiments of those with whom we have no special affectionate ties can only be explained by sympathy.

We greatly approve the artificial virtues (justice with respect to property, allegiance to government, and dispositions to obey the laws of nations and the rules of modesty and good manners), which (Hume argues) are inventions contrived solely for the interest of society. We approve them in all times and places, even where our own interest is not at stake, solely for their tendency to benefit the whole society of that time or place. This instance confirms that “the reflecting on the tendency of characters and mental qualities, is sufficient to give us the sentiments of approbation and blame” (T 3.3.1.9). The sympathy-generated pleasure, then, is the moral approbation we feel toward these traits of character. We find the character traits — the causes — agreeable because they are the means to ends we find agreeable as a result of sympathy. Hume extends this analysis to the approval of most of the natural virtues. Those traits of which we approve naturally (without any social contrivance), such as beneficence, clemency, and moderation, also tend to the good of individuals or all of society. So our approval of those can be explained in precisely the same way, via sympathy with the pleasure of those who receive benefit. And since the imagination is more struck by what is particular than by what is general, manifestations of the natural virtues, which directly benefit any individual to whom they are directed, are even more apt to give pleasure via sympathy than are the manifestations of justice, which may harm identifiable individuals in some cases though they contribute to a pattern of action beneficial to society as a whole (T 3.3.1.13).

As we saw, the moral sentiments are produced by sympathy with those affected by a trait or action. Such sympathetically-acquired feelings are distinct from our self-interested responses, and an individual of discernment learns to distinguish her moral sentiments (which are triggered by contemplating another’s character trait “in general”) from the pleasure or uneasiness she may feel when responding to a trait with reference to her “particular interest,” for example when another’s strength of character makes him a formidable opponent (T 3.1.2.4).

However, the sympathetic transmission of sentiments can vary in effectiveness depending upon the degree of resemblance and contiguity between the observer and the person with whom he sympathizes. I receive the sentiments of someone very much like me or very close to me in time or place far more strongly than I do those of someone unlike me or more remote from me in location or in history. Yet the moral assessments we make do not vary depending upon whether the person we evaluate resembles us in language, sex, or temperament, or is near or far. Indeed, our moral assessments of people remain stable even though our position with respect to them changes over time. Furthermore, sympathy only brings us people’s actual sentiments or what we believe to be their actual sentiments; yet we feel moral approval of character traits that we know produce no real happiness for anyone, because, for example, their possessor is isolated in a prison. To handle these objections to the sympathy theory, and to explain more generally how, on a sentiment-based ethical theory, moral evaluations made by one individual at different times and many individuals in a community tend to be fairly uniform, Hume claims that people do not make their moral judgments from their own individual points of view, but instead select “some common point of view, from which they might survey their object, and which might cause it to appear the same to all of them” (T 3.3.1.30). At least with respect to natural virtues and vices, this common point of view is composed of the intimate perspectives of the various individuals who have direct interactions with the person being evaluated. To make a moral evaluation I must sympathize with each of these persons in their dealings with the subject of my evaluation; the blame or praise I give as a result of this imaginative exercise is my genuine moral assessment of the subject’s character. In that assessment I also overlook the small external accidents of fortune that might render an individual’s trait ineffectual, and respond to traits that render a character typically “fitted to be beneficial to society,” even if circumstances do not permit it to cause that benefit (T 3.3.1.20). Thus I acquire by sympathy the pleasure or uneasiness that I imagine people would feel were the trait able to operate as it ordinarily does. “Experience soon teaches us this method of correcting our sentiments, or at least, of correcting our language, where the sentiments are more stubborn and inalterable” (T 3.3.1.16).

The standard object of moral evaluation is a “quality of mind,” a character trait. (As we have seen, for Hume evaluation of an action is derived from evaluation of the inner quality we suppose to have given rise to it.) The typical moral judgment is that some trait, such as a particular person’s benevolence or laziness, is a virtue or a vice. A character trait, for Hume, is a psychological disposition consisting of a tendency to feel a certain sentiment or combination of sentiments, ones that often move their possessor to action. We reach a moral judgment by feeling approval or disapproval upon contemplating someone’s trait in a disinterested way from the common point of view. So moral approval is a favorable sentiment in the observer elicited by the observed person’s disposition to have certain motivating sentiments. Thus moral approval is a sentiment that is directed toward sentiments, or the dispositions to have them.

In the Treatise Hume emphasizes that “our sense of every kind of virtue is not natural; but … there are some virtues, that produce pleasure and approbation by means of an artifice or contrivance, which arises from the circumstances and necessities of mankind” (T 3.2.1.1). He divides the virtues into those that are natural — in that our approval of them does not depend upon any cultural inventions or jointly-made social rules — and those that are artificial (dependent both for their existence as character traits and for their ethical merit on the presence of conventional rules for the common good), and he gives separate accounts of the two kinds. The traits he calls natural virtues are more refined and completed forms of those human sentiments we could expect to find even in people who belonged to no society but cooperated only within small familial groups. The traits he calls artificial virtues are the ones we need for successful im personal cooperation; our natural sentiments are too partial to give rise to these without intervention. In the Treatise Hume includes among the artificial virtues honesty with respect to property (which he often calls equity or “justice,” though it is a strangely narrow use of the term), fidelity to promises (sometimes also listed under “justice”), allegiance to one’s government, conformity to the laws of nations (for princes), chastity (refraining from non-marital sex) and modesty (both primarily for women and girls), and good manners. A great number of individual character traits are listed as natural virtues, but the main types discussed in detail are greatness of mind (“a hearty pride, or self-esteem, if well-concealed and well-founded,” T 3.2.2.11), goodness or benevolence (an umbrella category covering generosity, gratitude, friendship, and more), and such natural abilities as prudence and wit, which, Hume argues, have a reasonably good claim to be included under the title moral virtue, though traditionally they are not. Hume does not explicitly draw a distinction between artificial and natural virtues in the moral Enquiry .

In the Treatise Hume argues in turn that the virtues of material honesty and of faithfulness to promises and contracts are artificial, not natural virtues. Both arguments fall into at least two stages: one to show that if we suppose the given character trait to exist and to win our approval without help from any cooperative social arrangement, paradoxes arise; and another, longer stage to explain how the relevant convention might have come into being and to refute those with a different genetic story. He also explains the social construction of the other artificial virtues and what social good they serve.

10. Honesty with respect to Property

Hume offers a rather cryptic argument to show that our approval of material honesty must be the product of collaborative human effort (convention). When we approve an action, he says, we regard it merely as the sign of the motivating passion in the agent’s “mind and temper” that produced it; our evaluation of the action is derived from our assessment of this inner motive. Therefore all actions deemed virtuous derive their goodness only from virtuous motives — motives we approve. It follows from this that the motive that originally “bestows a merit on any action” can never be moral approval of that action (awareness of its virtue), but must be a non-moral, motivating psychological state — that is, a state distinct from the “regard to the virtue” of an action (moral approval or disapproval) (T 3.2.1.4). For if the virtue-bestowing motive of the action were the agent’s sense that the act would be virtuous to do — if that were why he did it, and why we approved it — then we would be reasoning in a vicious circle: we would approve of the action derivatively, because we approve of the agent’s motive, and this motive would consist of approval of the action, which can only be based on approval of a motive... The basis of our approval could not be specified. For every virtue, therefore, there must be some non-moral motive that characteristically motivates actions expressive of that virtue, which motive, by eliciting our approval, makes the actions so motivated virtuous. The virtue of an action of this species would be established by its being done from this non-moral motive, and only then could an agent also or alternatively be moved so to act by her derivative concern for the virtue of the act. However, Hume observes that there is no morally approved (and so virtue-bestowing), non-moral motive of honest action. The only approved, reliable motive that we can find for acts of “equity” is a moral one, the sense of virtue or “regard to the honesty” of the actions. The honest individual repays a loan not (merely) out of self-interest or concern for the well-being of the lender (who may be a “profligate debauchee” who will reap only harm from his possessions), but from a “regard to justice, and abhorrence of villainy and knavery” (T 3.2.1.9, 13). This, however, is “evident sophistry and reasoning in a circle…” Now nature cannot have “establish’d a sophistry, and render’d it necessary and unavoidable…”; therefore, “the sense of justice and injustice is not deriv’d from nature, but arises artificially… from education, and human conventions” (T 3.2.1.17). Whatever, exactly, the logic of this argument is supposed to be, Hume’s intent is to show that if we imagine equity to be a natural virtue we commit ourselves to a sophistry, and therefore honesty is instead man-made.

Hume offers an account of the genesis of the social convention that creates honesty with respect to property, and this is meant to cope in some way with the circularity he identifies. How it does so is a matter of interpretive controversy, as we will see.

Hume next poses two questions about the rules of ownership of property and the associated virtue of material honesty: what is the artifice by which human beings create them, and why do we attribute moral goodness and evil to the observance and neglect of these rules?

By nature human beings have many desires but are individually ill-equipped with strength, natural weapons, or natural skills to satisfy them. We can remedy these natural defects by means of social cooperation: shared strength, division of labor, and mutual aid in times of individual weakness. It occurs to people to form a society as a consequence of their experience with the small family groups into which they are born, groups united initially by sexual attraction and familial love, but in time demonstrating the many practical advantages of working together with others. However, in the conditions of moderate scarcity in which we find ourselves, and given the portable nature of the goods we desire, our untrammeled greed and naturally “confined generosity” (generosity to those dear to us in preference to others) tends to create conflict or undermine cooperation, destroying collaborative arrangements among people who are not united by ties of affection, and leaving us all materially poor. No remedy for this natural partiality is to be found in “our natural uncultivated ideas of morality” (T 3.2.2.8); an invention is needed.

Hume argues that we create the rules of ownership of property originally in order to satisfy our avidity for possessions for ourselves and our loved ones, by linking material goods more securely to particular individuals so as to avoid conflict. Within small groups of cooperators, individuals signal to one another a willingness to conform to a simple rule: to refrain from the material goods others come to possess by labor or good fortune, provided those others will observe the same restraint toward them. (This rule will in time require more detail: specific rules determining who may enjoy which goods initially and how goods may be transferred.) This signalling is not a promise (which cannot occur without another, similar convention), but an expression of conditional intention. The usefulness of such a custom is so obvious that others will soon catch on and express a similar intention, and the rest will fall in line. The convention develops tacitly, as do conventions of language and money. When an individual within such a small society violates this rule, the others are aware of it and exclude the offender from their cooperative activities. Once the convention is in place, justice (of this sort) is defined as conformity with the convention, injustice as violation of it; indeed, the convention defines property rights, ownership, financial obligation, theft, and related concepts, which had no application before the convention was introduced. So useful and obvious is this invention that human beings would not live for long in isolated family groups or in fluctuating larger groups with unstable possession of goods; their ingenuity would quickly enable them to invent property, so as to reap the substantial economic benefits of cooperation in larger groups in which there would be reliable possession of the product, and they would thus better satisfy their powerful natural greed by regulating it with rules of justice.

Greed, and more broadly, self-interest, is the motive for inventing property; but we need a further explanation why we think of justice (adherence to the rules of ownership) as virtuous, and injustice (their violation) as vicious. Hume accounts for the moralization of property as follows. As our society grows larger, we may cease to see our own property violations as a threat to the continued existence of a stable economic community, and this reduces our incentive to conform. But when we consider violations by others, we partake by sympathy in the uneasiness these violations cause to their victims and all of society. Such disinterested uneasiness, and the concomitant pleasure we feel on contemplating the public benefits of adherence, are instances of moral disapproval and approval. We extend these feelings to our own behavior as a result of general rules. This process is “forwarded by the artifice of politicians” (T 3.2.2.25), who assist nature by cultivating widespread esteem for justice and abhorrence of injustice in order to govern more easily. Private education assists in this further artifice. Thus material honesty becomes a virtue.

Does this account resolve the circularity problem? Is there any non-moral motive of honest action? Some interpreters say yes, it is greed redirected, which removes the circle. But this presents two difficulties: first, our greed is not in fact best satisfied by just action in every case, and second, Hume denies that this motive is approved. Some interpret Hume as coping with the first difficulty by supposing that politicians and parents deceive us into thinking, falsely, that every individual just act advances the interests of the agent; or they claim that Hume himself mistakenly thought so, at least in the Treatise (see Baron, Haakonssen, and Gauthier). Others claim that Hume identifies a non-moral motive of honest action (albeit an artificial one) other than redirected greed, such as a disposition to treat the rules of justice as themselves reason-giving (Darwall) or having a policy of conforming to the rules of justice as a system (Garrett). Still others say there is no non-moral motive of honest action, and Hume escapes from the circle by relaxing this ostensibly universal requirement on virtuous types of behavior, limiting it to the naturally virtuous kinds. These interpreters either claim that there is no particular motive needed to evoke approval for conformity to the rules of property — mere behavior is enough (Mackie) — or that we approve of a motivating form of the moral sentiment itself, the sense of duty (Cohon).

Hume’s genetic account of property is striking for its lack of patriarchal assumptions about the family, its explicit denial that the creation of ownership does or can depend on any promise or contract, and its concept of convention as an informal practice of mutual compromise for mutual advantage that arises incrementally and entirely informally, without the use of central authority or force.

Fidelity is the virtue of being disposed to fulfill promises and contracts. Hume has in mind promises made “at arm’s length” that parties undertake to promote their own interest, not affectionate exchanges of favors between friends. While he identifies the same circularity puzzle about the approved motive of fidelity that he tackles at length in connection with honesty, in the case of fidelity he concentrates on a different conundrum that arises with the misguided attempt to analyze fidelity as a non-conventional (natural) virtue. Unlike Hobbes and Locke, who help themselves to the concept of a promise or contract in their imagined state of nature, Hume argues that the performative utterance “I promise” would be unintelligible in the absence of background social conventions, and that the moral obligation of a promise is dependent upon such conventions as well.

Suppose the practice of giving and receiving promises did not depend on a socially-defined convention. In that case, what could we mean by the utterances we use to make them, and what would be the origin of our obligation to fulfill them? Where the words are used (uncharacteristically) in a way that does not purport to reveal the agent’s will (as when the person is joking or play-acting), we do not think a promise is really being made; we only take a speaker to have promised, and so to be bound to perform, if he understands the words he uses, in particular as purporting to obligate him. Thus for effective use there must be some act of the speaker’s mind expressed by the special phrase “I promise” and its synonyms, and our moral obligation results from this act of the mind. (This seems to be Hobbes’s assumption in Leviathan , where the implicit signs of covenant — as distinct from the explicit ones — are clear signs of the person’s will.) The requisite mental act or mental state, though, could not be one of mere desire or resolution to act, since it does not follow from our desiring or resolving to act that we are morally obligated to do so; nor could it be the volition to act, since that does not come into being ahead of time when we promise, but only when the time comes to act. And of course, one can promise successfully (incur obligation by promising) even though one has no intention to perform; so the mental act requisite to obligation is not the intention to perform. The only likely act of mind that might be expressed in a promise is a mental act of willing to be obligated to perform the promised action, as this conforms to our common view that we bind ourselves by choosing to be bound.

But, Hume argues, it is absurd to think that one can actually bring an obligation into existence by willing to be obligated. What makes an action obligatory is that its omission is disapproved by unbiased observers. But no act of will within an agent can directly change a previously neutral act into one that provokes moral disapproval in observers (even in the agent herself). Sentiments are not subject to such voluntary control. Even on a moral rationalist view the thesis would be absurd: to create a new obligation would be to change the abstract relations in which actions and persons stand to one another, and one cannot do this by performing in one’s own mind an act of willing such a relation to exist. Thus, there is no such act of the mind. Even if people in their natural (pre-conventional) condition “cou’d perceive each other’s thoughts by intuition,” they could not understand one another to bind themselves by any act of promising, and could not be obligated thereby. Since the necessary condition for a natural obligation of promises cannot be fulfilled, we may conclude that this obligation is instead the product of group invention to serve the interests of society.

Promises are invented in order to build upon the advantages afforded by property. The invention of mere ownership suffices to make possession stable. The introduction of transfer by consent permits some trade, but so far only simultaneous swapping of visible commodities. Great advantages could be gained by all if people could be counted on to provide goods or services later for benefits given now, or exchange goods that are distant or described generically. But for people without the capacity to obligate themselves to future action, such exchanges would depend upon the party who performs second doing so out of gratitude alone; and that motive cannot generally be relied on in self-interested transactions. However, we can devise better ways to satisfy our appetites “in an oblique and artificial manner...” (T 3.2.5.9). First, people can easily recognize that additional kinds of mutual exchanges would serve their interests. They need only express this interest to one another in order to encourage everyone to invent and to keep such agreements. They devise a form of words to mark these new sorts of exchanges (and distinguish them from the generous reciprocal acts of friendship and gratitude). When someone utters this form of words, he is understood to express a resolution to do the action in question, and he “subjects himself to the penalty of never being trusted again in case of failure” (T 3.2.5.10), a penalty made possible by the practice of the group, who enforce the requirement to keep promises by the simple expedient of refusing to contract with those whose word cannot be trusted . This “concert or convention” (ibid.) alters human motives to act. One is moved by self-interest to give the promising sign (in order to obtain the other party’s cooperation), and once one has given it, self-interest demands that one do what one promised to do so as to insure that people will exchange promises with one in the future. Some interpreters say that this enlightened self-interest remains the only motive for keeping one’s promise, once the practice of promising has been created. But Hume says the sentiment of morals comes to play the same role in promise-keeping that it does in the development of honesty with respect to property (T 3.2.5.12); so there is evidence he thinks the moral sentiment not only becomes “annex’d” to promise-keeping but further motivates it. In larger, more anonymous communities, a further incentive is needed besides the fear of exclusion; and a sentiment of moral approval of promise-keeping arises as the result of sympathy with all who benefit from the practice, aided by a “second artifice,” the well-meaning psychological manipulation of the people by parents and politicians, which yields a near-universal admiration of fidelity and shame at breaking one’s word (T 3.2.5.12). This may provide a moral motive for promise-keeping even in anonymous transactions.

A small society can maintain a subsistence-level economy without any dominion of some people over others, relying entirely on voluntary compliance with conventions of ownership, transfer of goods, and keeping of agreements, and relying on exclusion as the sole means of enforcement. But an increase in population and/or material productivity, Hume thinks, tends to stimulate a destabilizing rate of defection from the rules: more luxury goods greatly increase the temptation to act unjustly, and more anonymous transactions make it seem likely that one will get away with it. Though people are aware that injustice is destructive of social cooperation and so ultimately detrimental to their own interests, this knowledge will not enable them to resist such strong temptation, because of an inherent human weakness: we are more powerfully drawn to a near-term good even when we know we will pay for it with the loss of a greater long-term good. This creates the need for government to enforce the rules of property and promise (the “laws of nature,” as Hume sometimes rather ironically calls them, since on his view they are not natural). This is the reason for the invention of government. Once in power, rulers can also make legitimate use of their authority to resolve disputes over just what the rules of justice require in particular cases, and to carry out projects for the common good such as building roads and dredging harbors.

Hume thinks it unnecessary to prove that allegiance to government is the product of convention and not mere nature, since governments are obviously social creations. But he does need to explain the creation of governments and how they solve the problem he describes. He speculates that people who are unaccustomed to subordination in daily life might draw the idea for government from their experience of wars with other societies, when they must appoint a temporary commander. To overcome the preference for immediate gain over long-term security, the people will need to arrange social circumstances so that the conformity to justice is in people’s immediate interest. This cannot be done with respect to all the people, but it can be done for a few. So the people select magistrates (judges, kings, and the like) and so position them (presumably with respect to rank and wealth) that it will be in those magistrates’ immediate interest not only to obey but to enforce the rules of justice throughout society. Hume is vague about the incentives of the magistrates, but apparently they are so pleased with their own share of wealth and status that they are not tempted by the possessions of others; and since they are “indifferent… to the greatest part of the state,” they have no incentive to assist anyone in any crimes (T3.2.7.6). Thus the magistrates’ most immediate interest lies in preserving their own status and wealth by protecting society. (Perhaps more directly, they stand to lose their favored status if they are found by the people not to enforce the rules of justice.)

It is possible for the people to agree to appoint magistrates in spite of the incurable human attraction to the proximal good even when smaller than a remote good, because this predilection only takes effect when the lesser good is immediately at hand. When considering two future goods, people always prefer the greater, and make decisions accordingly. So looking to the future, people can decide now to empower magistrates to force them to conform to the rules of justice in the time to come so as to preserve society. When the time comes to obey and individuals are tempted to violate the rules, the long-range threat this poses to society may not move them to desist, but the immediate threat of punishment by the magistrates will.

We initially obey our magistrates from self-interest. But once government is instituted, we come to have a moral obligation to obey our governors; this is another artificial duty that needs to be explained. On Hume’s view it is independent of the obligation of promises. We are bound to our promises and to obey the magistrates’ commands on parallel grounds: because both kinds of conformity are so manifestly beneficial for all. Governors merely insure that the rules of justice are generally obeyed in the sort of society where purely voluntary conventions would otherwise break down. As in the case of fidelity to promises, the character trait of allegiance to our governors generates sympathy with its beneficiaries throughout society, making us approve the trait as a virtue.

The duty of allegiance to our present governors does not depend upon their or their ancestors’ divine right to govern, Hume says, nor on any promise we have made to them or any contract that transfers rights to them, but rather on the general social value of having a government. Rulers thus need not be chosen by the people in order to be legitimate. Consequently, who is the ruler will often be a matter of salience and imaginative association; and it will be no ground for legitimate rebellion that a ruler was selected arbitrarily. Rulers identified by long possession of authority, present possession, conquest, succession, or positive law will be suitably salient and so legitimate, provided their rule tends to the common good. Although governments exist to serve the interests of their people, changing magistrates and forms of government for the sake of small advantages to the public would yield disorder and upheaval, defeating the purpose of government; so our duty of allegiance forbids this. A government that maintains conditions preferable to what they would be without it retains its legitimacy and may not rightly be overthrown. But rebellion against a cruel tyranny is no violation of our duty of allegiance, and may rightly be undertaken.

Hume does advocate some forms of government as being preferable to others, particularly in his Essays . Governments structured by laws are superior to those controlled by the edicts of rulers or ruling bodies (“That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science”). Representative democracy is superior to direct democracy, and “free” (popular) governments are more hospitable to trade than “absolute” governments (ibid.). Hume speculates that a perfect government would be a representative democracy of property-holders with division of powers and some features of federalism (“Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth”). He defends his preferences by arguing that certain forms of government are less prone to corruption, faction (with the concomitant threat of civil war), and oppressive treatment of the people than others; that is, they are more likely to enforce the rules of justice, adjudicate fairly, and encourage peace and prosperity.

Hume famously criticizes the social contract theory of political obligation. According to his own theory, our duty to obey our governors is not reducible to an instance of our duty to fulfill promises, but arises separately though in a way parallel to the genesis of that duty. Hume denies that any native citizen or subject in his own day has made even a tacit promise to obey the government, given that citizens do not think they did any such thing, but rather think they are born to obey it. Even a tacit contract requires that the will be engaged, and we have no memory of this; nor do governments refrain from punishing disloyalty in citizens who have given no tacit promise.

In the Treatise Hume’s principle interest in the natural virtues lies in explaining the causes that make us approve them. The mechanism of sympathy ultimately accounts for this approval and the corresponding disapproval of the natural vices. Sympathy also explains our approval of the artificial virtues; the difference is that we approve of those as a result of sympathy with the cumulative effects produced by the general practice of the artificial virtues on the whole of society (individual acts of justice not always producing pleasure for anyone); whereas we approve each individual exercise of such natural virtues as gratitude and friendship because we sympathize with those who are affected by each such action when we consider it from the common point of view. As we saw, he argues that the traits of which we approve fall into four groups: traits immediately agreeable to their possessor or to others, and traits advantageous to their possessor or to others. In these four groups of approved traits, our approval arises as the result of sympathy bringing into our minds the pleasure that the trait produces for its possessor or for others (with one minor exception). This is especially clear with such self-regarding virtues as prudence and industry, which we approve even when they occur in individuals who provide no benefit to us observers; this can only be explained by our sympathy with the benefits that prudence and industry bring to their possessors.

According to Hume, different levels and manifestations of the passions of pride and humility make for virtue or for vice. An obvious and “over-weaning conceit” is disapproved by any observer (is a vice) (T 3.3.2.1); while a well-founded but concealed self-esteem is approved (is a virtue). Hume explains these opposite reactions to such closely related character traits by means of the interplay of the observer’s sympathy with a distinct psychological mechanism he calls comparison. The mechanism of comparison juxtaposes a sympathetically-communicated sentiment with the observer’s own inherent feeling, causing the observer to feel a sentiment opposite to the one she observes in another (pleasure if the other is suffering, pain if the other is pleased) when the sympathetically-communicated sentiment is not too strong. A person who displays excessive pride irritates others because, while others come to feel this person’s pleasant sentiment of pride (to some degree) via sympathy, they also feel a greater uneasiness as a result of comparing that great pride (in whose objects they do not believe) with their own lesser pride in themselves; this is why conceit is a vice. Self-esteem founded on an accurate assessment of one’s strengths and politely concealed from others, though, is both agreeable and advantageous to its possessor without being distressing to others, and so is generally approved. (Thus the professed preference of Christians for humility over self-esteem does not accord with the judgments of most observers.) Although excessive pride is a natural vice and self-esteem a natural virtue, human beings in society create the artificial virtue of good breeding (adherence to customs of slightly exaggerated mutual deference in accordance with social rank) to enable us each to conceal our own pride easily so that it does not shock the pride of others.

Courage and military heroism are also forms of pride. Though the student of history can see that military ambition has mostly been disadvantageous to human society, when we contemplate the “dazling” character of the hero, immediate sympathy irresistibly leads us to approve it (T 3.3.2.15).

Our approval of those traits that may be grouped together under the heading of goodness and benevolence, such as generosity, humanity, compassion, and gratitude, arises from sympathy with people in the individual’s “narrow circle” of friends and associates, since, given natural human selfishness, we cannot expect people’s concerns to extend farther (T 3.3.3.2). By adopting the common point of view we correct for the distortions of sympathy by entering into the feelings of those close to the person being evaluated even if they are remote from us. The vice of cruelty is most loathed because the suffering of the person’s victims that reaches us via sympathy readily becomes hatred of the perpetrator.

Although natural abilities of the mind are not traditionally classified as moral virtues and vices, the difference between these types of traits is unimportant, Hume argues. Intelligence, good judgment, application, eloquence, and wit are also mental qualities that bring individuals the approbation of others, and their absence is disapproved. As is the case with many of the traditionally-recognized virtues, the various natural abilities are approved either because they are useful to their possessor or because they are immediately agreeable to others. It is sometimes argued that moral virtues are unlike natural abilities in that the latter are involuntary, but Hume argues that many traditional moral virtues are involuntary as well. The sole difference is that the prospect of reward or punishment can induce people to act as the morally virtuous would (as justice requires, for example), but cannot induce them to act as if they had the natural abilities.

Late in his life Hume deemed the Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals his best work, and in style it is a model of elegance and subtlety. His method in that work differs from that of the Treatise : instead of explicating the nature of virtue and vice and our knowledge of them in terms of underlying features of the human mind, he proposes to collect all the traits we know from common sense to be virtues and vices, observe what those in each group have in common, and from that observation discover the “foundation of ethics” (EPM 1.10). The conclusions largely coincide with those of the Treatise . Some topics in the Treatise are handled more fully in the moral Enquiry ; for example Hume’s account of the motive to just action is enriched by his discussion of a challenge from a “sensible knave.” However, without the detailed background theories of the mind, the passions, motivation to action, and social convention presented in the Treatise , and without any substitute for them, some of the conclusions of the moral Enquiry stand unsupported.

In the latter work, Hume’s main argument that reason alone is not adequate to yield moral evaluations (in Appendix 1) depends on his having demonstrated throughout the book that at least one foundation of moral praise lies in the usefulness to society of the praised character trait. We use reason extensively to learn the effects of various traits and to identify the useful and pernicious ones. But utility and disutility are merely means; were we indifferent to the weal and woe of mankind, we would feel equally indifferent to the traits that promote those ends. Therefore there must be some sentiment that makes us favor the one over the other. This could only be humanity, “a feeling for the happiness of mankind, and resentment of their misery” (EPM App. 1.3). This argument presupposes that the moral evaluations we make are themselves the expression of sentiment rather than reason alone. (The alternative position would be that while of course we do feel approval and disapproval for vice and virtue, the judgment as to which is which is itself the deliverance of reason.) So Hume appends some arguments directed against the hypothesis of moral rationalism. One of these is an enriched version of the argument of Treatise 3.1.1 that neither demonstrative nor causal reasoning has moral distinctions as its proper object, since moral vice and virtue cannot plausibly be analyzed as either facts or relations. He adds that while in our reasonings we start from the knowledge of relations or facts and infer some previously-unknown relation or fact, moral evaluation cannot proceed until all the relevant facts and relations are already known. At that point, there is nothing further for reason to do; therefore moral evaluation is not the work of reason alone but of another faculty. He bolsters this line of argument by expanding his Treatise analogy between moral and aesthetic judgment, arguing that just as our appreciation of beauty awaits full information about the object but requires the further contribution of taste, so in moral evaluation our assessment of merit or villainy awaits full knowledge of the person and situation but requires the further contribution of approbation or disapprobation. He also offers the argument that since the chain of reasons why one acts must finally stop at something that is “desirable on its own account… because of its immediate accord or agreement with sentiment…” (EPM App.1.19), sentiment is needed to account for ultimate human ends; and since virtue is an end, sentiment and not reason alone must distinguish moral good and evil.

In the moral Enquiry Hume omits all arguments to show that reason alone does not move us to act; so the Representation Argument about the irrelevance of reason to passions and actions is absent. Without it he has no support for his direct argument that moral goodness and evil are not identical with reasonableness and unreasonableness, which relies on it for its key premise; and that too is absent from EPM. On the whole in EPM Hume does not appeal to the thesis that reason cannot produce motives in order to show that morals are not derived from reason alone, but limits himself to the epistemic and descriptive arguments showing that reason alone cannot discern virtue and vice in order to reject ethical rationalism in favor of sentimentalism. However, at Appendix I.21 he does assert (without support) that “Reason, being cool and disengaged, is no motive to action,” and perhaps this is intended to be a premise in a revised version of the famous argument that reason cannot produce motives but morals can, though what he writes here is tantalizingly different from that argument as it appears repeatedly in the Treatise .

Why did Hume omit the more fundamental arguments for the motivational inertia of reason? He may have reconsidered and rejected them. For example, he may have given up his undefended claim that passions have no representative character, a premise of the Representation Argument on which, as we saw, some of his fundamental anti-rationalist arguments depend. Or he may have retained these views but opted not to appeal to anything so arcane in a work aimed at a broader audience and intended to be as accessible as possible. The moral Enquiry makes no use of ideas and impressions, and so no arguments that depend on that distinction can be offered there, including the Representation Argument. Apparently Hume thought he could show that reason and sentiment rule different domains without using those arguments.

Thus, not surprisingly, the causal analysis of sympathy as a mechanism of vivacity-transferal from the impression of the self to the ideas of the sentiments of others is entirely omitted from the moral Enquiry . Hume still appeals to sympathy there to explain the origin of all moral approval and disapproval, but he explains our sympathy with others simply as a manifestation of the sentiment of humanity, which is given more prominence. He is still concerned about the objection that sympathetically-acquired sentiments vary with spatial and temporal distance from the object of evaluation while moral assessments do not; so he addresses it in the moral Enquiry as well, and resolves it by appealing once again to the common point of view. In the Enquiry he places more emphasis on sympathy with the interests of the whole of society, in part achieved by conversation using shared moral vocabulary, as a way to correct our initial sentiments to make them genuinely moral (Taylor 2002). He also attends more explicitly to the role of reason and reflection in moral evaluation. Some interpreters see him as offering an account of how to arrive at reliable moral judgment superior to that in the Treatise (Taylor 2015).

The distinction between artificial and natural virtues that dominates the virtue ethics of the Treatise is almost entirely absent from the moral Enquiry ; the term ‘artificial’ occurs in the latter only once in a footnote. Gone are the paradoxes of property and promises intended to prove that particular virtues are devised on purpose; also missing is what some commentators think Hume’s most original contribution to the theory of justice, his account of convention. Yet Hume briefly sketches part of the same quasi-historical account of the origin of justice that he gives in the Treatise ; and while the emphasis has shifted, Hume not only tries to show that justice has merit only because of its beneficial consequences, but that “public utility is the sole origin of justice” — were we not to find it useful (and in some conditions we might not) we would not even have such a thing (EPM 3.1.1). While any explanation of this shift and these omissions is merely speculative, here it seems that Hume does not change his mind about the arguments of the Treatise but chooses to lead the reader to the same conclusions by more subtle and indirect means while avoiding provocative claims.

In the moral Enquiry Hume is more explicit about what he takes to be the errors of Christian (or, more cautiously, Roman Catholic) moralists. Not only have they elevated craven humility to the status of a virtue, which he hints in the Treatise is a mistake, but they also favor penance, fasting, and other “monkish virtues” that are in fact disapproved by all reasonable folk for their uselessness and disagreeableness, and so are in fact vices.

Primary Sources: Works by Hume

• A Treatise of Human Nature: A Critical Edition , David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton (eds.), Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2007. (References to this work start with T and are followed by Book, Part, Section and paragraph number, in parentheses in the text.)
• A Treatise of Human Nature (Oxford Philosophical Texts), David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton (eds.), Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2000.
• A Treatise of Human Nature , L. A. Selby-Bigge (ed.), 2nd ed. revised by P.H. Nidditch, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.
• An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals , Tom L. Beauchamp (ed.) (The Claredon Edition of the Works of David Hume), Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998. (References to this work start with EPM and are followed by Part, Section (if any), and paragraph number, in parentheses within the text.)
• Enquiry concerning Human Understanding , in Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals , L. A. Selby-Bigge (ed.), 3rd ed revised by P. H. Nidditch, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975
• Essays Moral, Political, and Literary , Eugene Miller (ed.), Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985.

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III: The General Ethics of Human Actions

• First Online: 02 September 2022

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• Christian Erk 2  

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How can we determine whether an action is morally permissible or impermissible? This chapter explains how we can evaluate the morality and permissibility of human actions. It discusses the sources of morality, that is, the elements of an action from which its morality derives. Furthermore, it defines the terms “good” and “evil” and by doing so introduces the standard of morality, namely the nature of human beings, that is needed to assess the ethical quality of an action. The chapter then shows how the nature of human beings grounds their most fundamental duties and rights, namely their moral duties and moral rights—and along with them the moral duty to live and the moral right to life.

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When reading this chapter, the observant reader equipped with previous knowledge of ethics will notice that it presents an ethical theory that can be described as a “natural ethics” and that stands in the tradition of the moral theory commonly known as classical (also: traditional) natural law theory. This book’s position is therefore based on a version of classical natural law theory.

As the name indicates, there is not only a classical but also a new natural law theory. The latter theory was developed by Germain Grisez in the 1960s in an interpretative article on Thomas Aquinas’ first principle of practical reason (cf. Grisez 1965 ). For a useful brief overview of this theory and its proponents cf. Tollefsen ( 2008 ) as well as Lee ( 2019 ). New natural law theory differs from classical natural law theory in several crucial aspects. It has been severely criticised by traditional natural law theorists and others, such as Hittinger ( 1987 ) and Long ( 2013 ); a helpful compilation of additional works criticising new natural law theory can be found in Feser & Bessette ( 2017 : 87 (FN 120)). I agree with Feser & Bessette ( 2017 : 87) in that these criticisms “are reason enough to reject the theory”.

This is why the label “natural law theory” contains the term “law”.

This chapter is a revised and condensed version of and as such draws on, and in part reproduces verbatim, material published in Erk ( 2019 : 112–129).

In earlier publications, I have used the term “intentionalism” to characterise this type of moral theory. This choice of term was, however, somewhat unfortunate. For when acting, the agent not only intends the end of the agent but also the end of the exterior action. Strictly speaking, the term “intentionalism” is too broad to only apply to the agent’s motive or purpose for acting. In order to remedy this inaccuracy and align the term with the content, the term “intentionalism” has been substituted with the term “motivism”.

The English word “deontology” derives from the classical Greek word δέον (read: déon) which can be translated as “that which is binding” or simply as obligation or duty.

An example of a combination of consequentialism and deontology is the moral theory named “rule consequentialism”. According to this theory, “an act is morally wrong if and only if it is forbidden by rules justified by their consequences” (Hooker 2015 ). So, rule consequentialism stipulates that there is some set of rules that bind an agent and by doing so introduces a somewhat deontological element in an otherwise consequentialist moral theory.

An example of a combination of motivism and deontology is Immanuel Kant’s moral theory. In his “Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten” (“Fundamental principles of the metaphysics of ethics”) we read:

Denn bei dem, was moralisch gut sein soll, ist es nicht genug, daß es dem sittlichen Gesetze gemäß sei, sondern es muß auch um desselben willen geschehen. For in order that an action should be morally good, it is not enough that it conform to the moral law, but it must also be done for the sake of the law. (Kant 1785 : 390)

So, according to Kant it is not only the lawfulness of an action that makes it good; rather the agent must also act with the right purpose in mind, namely fulfilling his duty because it is his duty.

This statement holds true for the actual accidental consequences of an exterior action, that is, those actual consequences that are not the end of the agent or the end of the exterior action. Insofar as they have been successfully realised, the end of the agent and the end of the exterior action can also be counted among the consequences. As they are already taken into consideration qua their nature as separate elements of the human action, they need not be considered a second time.

The actualised end of the exterior action specifies the ethical quality of a human action because it is the end of the exterior action, not because it is a consequence of the exterior action. In the same fashion, the actualised end of the agent specifies the ethical quality of a human action because it is the end of the agent, not because it is a consequence of the exterior action.

The content of this chapter draws on, and in part reproduces verbatim, material published in Erk ( 2019 : 130–159).

As it is used here, the term “creator” is not necessarily synonymous with “God”. Rather, it is meant to give expression to the fact that every (contingent, i.e. non-necessary) being has an efficient cause. So, the creator of something is the being that has brought this something into existence by a conscious effort, as, for example, the carpenter who creates a chair.

For the concept of nature or essence cf. Chap. V , Sect. 1.3 .

A natural inclination (also: natural tendency, natural disposition, natural appetite; Latin: inclinatio naturalis , appetitus naturalis ) is an intrinsic behavioural disposition towards activity and operation that aids in the realisation of a being’s nature. As “the tendency to achieve its end which is imparted to a thing in virtue of its having a nature” (Pakaluk 2018 : 19), a natural inclination inclines a being to pursue its own good, that is, the realisation of its nature, in its own way. For a more detailed description of this concept cf. Erk ( 2019 : 167 (FN 17)).

For an overview of different compilations of basic human goods cf. Erk ( 2019 : 313–315).

One of the objects of knowledge is the good itself: “Without knowledge of the good, the good life as a whole could not even begin to be lived. […] In short, just as life and health are what perfect our bodies (and fulfil us thereby), so knowledge and understanding perfect our minds” (Oderberg 2000 : 42).

Because here Thomas Aquinas cites Dionysius Areopagita as the source of this principle, it is also called the “Dionysian Principle”. In Dionysius Areopagita’s original words the principle reads as follows:

Τὸ ἀγαθὸν ἐκ μιᾶς καὶ τῆς ὅλης αἰτίας, τὸ δὲ κακὸν ἐκ πολλῶν καὶ μερικῶν ἐλλείψεων. The good comes from the one and whole cause, but the evil is from many and partial defects. (Dionysius Areopagita, De Divinis Nominibus, Chapter IV, § 30)

As Rickaby ( 1918 : 31) points out, “whoever knows this principle, does not thereby know the right and wrong of every action, but he knows how to go about the enquiry. It is a rule of diagnosis”.

The content of this chapter draws on, and in part reproduces verbatim, material published in Erk ( 2019 : 188–192).

The content of this chapter draws on, and in part reproduces verbatim, material published in Erk ( 2019 : 192–200).

To be more precise: Because the will is the kind of thing it is (i.e. as it is its very nature) the will cannot but will the highest good which is beatitudo (English: beatitude, happiness; German: (Glück-)Seligkeit) and what is included in it: “ex necessitate volumus esse beati” (Iª q. 82 a. 2 co.; also cf. Iª q. 82 a. 1 co.; De Veritate, q. 22 a. 5 co.; De Malo, q. 6).

For an overview of philosophical proofs of the freedom of the will cf. Lehmen ( 1911 : 484ff).

This is why Thomas Aquinas can state that the object of the will is the good and the end: “Obiectum autem voluntatis est bonum et finis” (Iª-IIae q. 1 a. 3 co.).

Fagothey ( 1963 : 79f) expresses this as follows: “Every end is a good and every good is an end. An end would not be sought unless it were somehow good for the seeker, and the good by being sought is the end or purpose of the seeker’s striving”.

De Wulf ( 1922 : 108f) expresses this duty as follows: “In the first place we are bound to will our end, i.e., our well-being, and to seek it where it is to be found […] and not to look for it exclusively in those secondary goods which cease to be good when not controlled by reason. In the second place we are morally bound to will whatever is indispensable in order to reach this end, and to avoid that which must of necessity turn us away from it. […] Moral obligation consists in the necessity of willing our supreme good, combined with the liberty of choosing the concrete objects wherein it is in fact realized”.

When it comes to human persons the moral duty D Good is compulsory in a moral sense. This means that the human person is morally bound to realise D Good but is physically free to not do so: “The main difference between the law of nature as it applies to the life of man and to the actions of the rest of the universe is not a difference in the nature or degree of goodness, but simply a difference in the manner of subjection to the same law: both are bound by the same law, but in man its fulfillment must proceed from self-determination and its course must be self-directed, i.e. it is the moral law of his nature; whereas, in the rest of the universe, its fulfillment is by intrinsic necessity, i.e., it is the physical law of its nature. One of the consequences of this difference is that man may fail to attain his natural end, whereas the rest of the universe cannot fail” (Baschab 1937 : 256).

The content of this chapter draws on, and in part reproduces verbatim, material published in Erk ( 2019 : 200–203).

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Erk, C. (2022). III: The General Ethics of Human Actions. In: The Ethics of Killing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07183-6_3

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This book examines the moral and philosophical implications of developments in the science of ethics, the growing movement that seeks to use recent empirical findings to answer long-standing ethical questions. Efforts to make moral psychology a thoroughly empirical discipline have divided philosophers along methodological fault lines, isolating discussions that will profit more from intellectual exchange. This volume takes an even-handed approach, including chapters from advocates of empirical ethics as well as those who are skeptical of some of its central claims. Some of these chapters make novel use of empirical findings to develop philosophical research programs regarding such crucial moral phenomena as desire, emotion, and memory. Others bring new critical scrutiny to bear on some of the most influential proposals of the empirical ethics movement, including the claim that evolution undermines moral realism, the effort to recruit a dual-process model of the mind to support consequentialism against other moral theories, and the claim that ordinary evaluative judgments are seldom if ever sensitive to reasons, because moral reasoning is merely the post hoc rationalization of unthinking emotional response.

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• v.82(2); May, 2015

Integrity and virtue: The forming of good character

Moral character is formed by one's actions. The habits, actions, and emotional responses of the person of good character all are united and directed toward the moral and the good. Because human beings are body/soul unities, actions of the body are actions of the self, that is, human beings are self-possessing, self-governing, and self-determining. In order to be of good character, one must know the good, act in morally good ways, and be disposed and inclined toward the good through the development of virtues. Character and action are intertwined so intimately that one's professional duties, or even what is perceived by others as one's duties, cannot override one's conscience without negatively affecting (and changing) one's character. For the physician to be of good character, it is vital that he or she follow his or her conscience in all things: in private life and also in his or her profession, i.e., in the treatment of patients.

Lay summary: Character cannot be separated from the person. To be of good character means that one’s habits, actions, and emotional responses all are united and directed toward the moral and the good. In this, public actions cannot be separated from private actions. Both sets of actions affect one’s character. For example, a physician believes use of contraceptives to be immoral yet prescribes them in the office because he or she feels a duty to provide what the patient asks for, or a pharmacist who believes abortion to be immoral fills prescriptions for the abortifacient RU-486. These public acts affect one’s character even if one’s private belief is the opposite of the action. They leave traces on one’s character. Not only do actions reflect the goodness or badness of one’s character, one’s actions also change one’s character. The more one does an immoral action or recommends an immoral action for others, the more it becomes part of one’s character to be the type of person who condones that immoral action. In order to be of good character one must not only know and desire the good, one must also pursue it in both private and public actions. Virtue is an aid in this; it is the act of good character. Growing in the virtues, especially prudence (knowing what to seek and what to avoid) forms good character. What is at stake is the integrity of the person. The physician who believes that use of contraception is immoral must also act in ways that display that belief and avoid actions that promote contraception use by his or her patients.

There is much controversy in bioethics today, especially in areas such as abortion, contraception, reproductive technologies, and end-of-life issues; and there is much confusion over the role of physician. 1 One side says that physicians should be involved in physician-assisted suicide, abortion, contraception, etc.; it is their duty to provide the services the patient wants; and, even, they endanger the patient's health by refusing. Another side says that physicians should never be forced to go against their consciences; they should never have to do things that they think are wrong (and even evil). 2 Can one's professional duties override one's conscience? 3 Is such a conflict even possible? There are many variations of these positions, and some even seek a middle ground between them. The issue is becoming more and more urgent as many US states consider rejecting existing laws that allow conscientious objection or enacting laws specifically to allow it.

What seems even more insidious, and more crucial, is the claim of some physicians that they can involve themselves with these things in their public life and still be against them privately. They insist that they can compartmentalize their life in such a way that the two do not affect one another. It could be that they do not consider contraceptives to be abortifacient, and so, there is no moral problem with prescribing them, or that they should not push their Catholic beliefs on non-Catholic patients or other reasons. “If women who come into my practice ask for contraception, as is the culture in our society today, I prescribe it. That's what I do. I'm trained to be an ob-gyn,” said Lester Ruppersberger, D.O., who later stopped prescribing contraceptives ( Schierhorn 2013 ; see also Brinker 2010 and Grisez 1997 ). Mary Davenport, M.D., explains what happened when she first joined the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG):

I asked if one could prescribe IUDs, oral contraceptives, and post-coital contraception and be a member of the organization. I was told that organization existed to fight surgical and medical abortion of established pregnancies, and that the IUDs and hormonal [contraception] didn't violate that principal … . This didn't make sense to me, but I figured if the distinguished physicians who started this organization at the time of Roe v. Wade could live with that contradiction, I could too. I later found out that many AAPLOG doctors actually do not believe that oral contraceptives act as abortifacients, which was a complete surprise to me! (Davenport 1998 , 23)

This paper will examine the relationship between one's actions and one's character. When one is pressured or convinced or even willing to perform an action that one considers to be bad or wrong, does it corrupt one's (good) character or can one maintain a separation of character from action? Does one's character regulate one's actions or generate a specific or required set of actions? These seem to be key issues in discussions of conscience, conscientious objection, and character.

Paul Ricoeur describes character as something, which cannot be separated from the person ( Ricoeur 1992 , 122). It has “a permanence which we say belongs to us” ( Ricoeur 1992 , 118). Ricoeur defines “character” as “the set of distinctive marks which permit the re-identification of a human individual as being the same.” 4 We cannot separate character from the person and say here is the person and there is his or her character. A person can be distinguished from his or her actions, what was done is different from who did it. But the same distinction cannot be made between character and action. But Ricoeur's discussion of character seems to include much more than moral character as can be seen from the following statement:

By means of this stability, borrowed from acquired habits and identifications—in other words, from dispositions—character assures at once numerical identity, qualitative identity, uninterrupted continuity across change, and, finally, permanence in time which defines sameness. ( Ricoeur 1992 , 122)

“Personality” might be a more comprehensive term for such a broad definition than “character” ( Audi 1991 , 307). This broader category can then include nature or traits, about which one could turn to biology for explanations ( Ricoeur 1992 , 120 note 5); and position or capacity or reputation, which is the expertise of sociology or the like; and many other aspects of the person.

The rational side, including “moral excellence and firmness,” can more easily be found under the term “moral character.” 5 From this moral aspect come evaluation, judgment, decision, choice resulting in right or wrong, and moral or immoral action. 6 It is this last aspect—moral character—which is most involved in a physician's moral decisions. Character then involves goodness and wickedness, that is, ethics. In this case, one must turn to philosophy (and anthropology), and especially the study of ethics, for assistance and understanding.

A more detailed definition of character, or, more specifically, being of good character, can be found in the three facets of dispositions, desires, and tendencies:

having steady and permanent dispositions to do what is right and to refrain from doing what is wrong; having morally desirable wishes, desires, purposes, and goals; and having the tendency to respond emotionally toward things in the morally appropriate way. 7

The habits, actions, and emotional responses of the person of good character all are united and directed toward the moral and the good.

Aristotle's famous four categories of character (the virtuous, the continent, the incontinent, and the vice-filled 8 ) in the Nicomachean Ethics reflect aspects of this deeper definition. 9 In the vice-filled person, reason and appetite are united; and reason is a slave to passions and appetites. The vice-filled person chooses what his or her appetites command. In the incontinent person, reason and appetite are not united; and appetite wins out more often than reason. There is correct knowledge of the right thing to do and desire to do it, to be a virtuous person, but one fails more than one wins; and appetite overrides reason. In the continent person, reason and appetite are not united; but reason wins out more often than appetite. The desire is there; and the right thing gets done more frequently than not. In the virtuous person, reason and appetite are united; and appetite is controlled by reason so the right thing gets done (most of the time). In addition, these categories admit of degrees; one person may be more continent or less incontinent. Also, persons are not static; they (usually) move within a category or between categories during the course of their lifetime. Most persons fall into the categories of continent and incontinent; they know the good and are more or less able to do it.

The physician who writes a prescription for contraceptives knowing that it is wrong may fall into the category of the incontinent. 10 For example, he may be under pressure from his colleagues or society and be acting out of fear or timidity. Or he may think he is acting for a greater good—an obligation to his patient to provide what is requested. This second case does not seem to quite fit into Aristotle's categories as the physician seems to be choosing the good (fulfilling the requests of his patients) and overriding his emotions (toward contraception). Reason seems to be in control of appetites and passions. The problem here is not that appetite is controlling reason, but that reason is faulty. The knowledge of the good is not lacking in one respect—the evil of contraception is recognized—but is lacking in another, the knowledge of the relationship between character and action is insufficient resulting in bad choices. Here then is another facet of character: one must have right reason or, more specifically, a rightly formed reason—that is, not just knowledge of the good but correct knowledge of the good, in this case, correct knowledge of the human person, a sufficient anthropology, if you will. 11 The physician also needs correct knowledge of the ends of medicine (more on this later). This is why truth is so important for character (and human action, and moral decision making).

One's character is based upon the truth (as one knows it). That the truth about something (and about everything) makes a difference can be seen in terms such as “dirty money.” It makes a difference to a person of good character where money they have received as a gift comes from. Donations are usually accepted at face value, but when the truth about the source of the money is revealed, another determination is made about its acceptability. A donation of hard-earned money from honest work is seen as acceptable; while a donation from stolen funds or money made from illegal drug trade or other illegal activities would be refused. “Dirty” money is seen as tainting the character even of one who simply receives it as a gift.

It is a trait of human beings, not non-human animals, that they need right reason in order to become fully human beings. It is a trait of human beings, not spirits, that they are in the process of change, of becoming what they are. Edith Stein makes this clear.

The human soul must gradually gain possession of its essence or nature, and its life is the way that leads to that goal. This is why in the case of the human soul formation is possible and necessary. But so that this formation may be free , … the human soul must have self-knowledge and be capable of taking a stand with respect to its own self. It must find itself in a dual sense: It must learn to know itself, and it must come to be what it is destined to be. 12

Therefore, the more one knows the truth about reality, the world, the human being, the better able one is to form a good character. A consequence of this is that the one who thinks he knows the good is harder to correct than the one who is incontinent yet has right reasoning, “because reasoning does not teach the principles” ( Aquinas 1993 , bk. 7, lec. 8, n. 1432). The incontinent person knows he is doing something wrong, and wants to and tries to change. The person who thinks he is doing something right when he is not is hard to convince, because he thinks he is right. In other words, he thinks he has the truth. 13

In both cases described above, the physician may think he or she can perform a bad act yet stay of good character. As a physician, he or she writes prescriptions for contraception, but in his or her private life, he or she thinks use of contraception is immoral. This belief—ultimately about the separation of character and action—is the reasoning for continuing the behavior (writing prescriptions for contraception). If this belief is true, then these physicians are upholding good character (at least in this area). If it is false, then they are changing their character. However, any truth found may not lead the physicians in this example to change: the one may still be unable to overcome passions, and the other may then become obstinate ( Aquinas 1993 , bk. 7)—but on the other hand, truth is an essential component of good character and a better understanding may lead to better reasoning and improved moral character.

Can character be compartmentalized either so that it is unaffected by certain actions or that one has more than one character (say a character in one's role as physician and a different character in one's private life)? Fundamental to answering these questions is the relationship of character to the person, the amount of control over character development a person has, and the effects of one's actions on character.

A United States flag is a sign. It conveys more meaning than a rectangle of the colors red, white, and blue, and stars and stripes. It stands for honor and courage, blood shed in battles, freedom, the unity of fifty states, and more. A traffic light indicates more than three circles of red, amber, and green lights. It controls actions of cars and pedestrians, makes busy intersections safe, and allows people moving in opposing and conflicting directions to progress safely.

In the same manner, the character of a human being means more than “this is a human being”; it also indicates what manner of human being this is (good or evil, virtuous or vice-filled, saint or beast, etc.). Being of good character is not a description of the uniqueness of Joe in the same way that physical indicators, such as fingerprints or DNA, are, but Joe does have a unique character in that it is a unique mixture of strengths, weaknesses, virtues, vices, knowledge, and experience.

While a sign, such as a flag or a traffic light, expresses its meaning through its physical presence, a human being expresses character through actions. I cannot determine Joe's character through watching him stand in one spot (unless that spot is atop a pole in the desert like the desert Fathers) or through his physical description. To find out about his character, I must observe Joe's actions. Does he kick the cat or pet it? Does he give a coin to the beggar or turn his face away? It is not even any one action that resolves the issue, but the accumulation of all my observations and interactions with the person, which reveals his or her character. But even then, I cannot know Joe's character fully. One action can cause one to re-evaluate the whole of a person's character, just as a single pebble can cause ripples across much of a small pond. A multitude of good actions can confirm the good character of a person, but one bad action leads the observer to question that good character. 14 Maybe the person is of less good character than one thought, or maybe in this particular area, the person has a weakness 15 (The same can be said of someone who is vice-filled but does something truly charitable; maybe they are less bad then at first seems.) Even further, because human beings change over time, character cannot really be fully known until after changes stop (at death). And one can hardly know one's own character without some external input ( Crosby 1996 , 152–57). This does not mean that character is completely unknowable. Character does express itself through actions. Others help us by reflecting back to us what our actions are telling them about our character. If we know Joe well enough, we can generally predict his actions. This is why one bad action from an otherwise good character mostly seems to come as a shock to those who are familiar with the person.

It also seems that we are better able to know another's character when the other person is closer to the virtuous or vice-filled ends of the spectrum. The more one's moral character tends toward one end of the spectrum (good or bad), the less unique it becomes but the more rare. Good character is an ideal outside of oneself that all strive for. In Christianity, the ideal is Christ; we are to constantly strive to be Christ-like, having the character of Christ. 16 The human being's “salvation, his perfect realization, will be accomplished when he is fully conformed to the risen, glorified Christ … . Revelation has as its end this perfect assimilation to Christ” ( Caffara 1987 , 170). At the extremes of moral character, uniqueness is found more in personality, rather than in character. All the saints have similar characters, and all the beastly humans have similar characters. The virtue of prudence (or fortitude or temperance or justice, etc.) is the same in all who possess it though it may express itself differently depending on circumstances and personalities. We recognize Joe as different from Jane or Peter, but we recognize patience as being the same virtue in Joe and in Jane and in Peter.

Another facet of character is that it is able to be changed. Sometimes a child who was a “little angel” (or “little devil”) when young is the opposite as an adult. One reason criminals are imprisoned is to give them a chance to reform. One of the big issues in the education of children recently, especially in the US in light of school shootings such as Columbine, is character formation. 17 Even traits acquired whether through DNA or environment seem to be redirectable or even reversible. Shyness can sometimes be (more or less) overcome through training and practice in social or group settings. Aggressiveness can be directed toward useful or good purposes rather than bad or criminal ones. Anecdotal evidence for the changeability of character abounds. It is generally observable that character is subject to change over time, whether the change is small or a complete reversal.

Aristotle, in a more philosophical examination of character and the human being, found three things in the soul: passions (appetite and emotions), faculties (the capability to experience passions), and states of character (being well- or ill-disposed to each passion, the best state being moderation between extremes, for example, feeling anger moderately rather than too weakly or too violently) (Aristotle n.d., bk. 2, chap. 5). Aquinas took these up interpreting them as passion ( passio ), power ( potentia ), and habit ( habitus ). He then analyzed in which of these three character resides. Character is not a passion because passions come and go but character is indelible. Character is not a habit because a bad habit cannot be good nor a good habit bad, but character can be good or bad, in other words, it is indifferent to goodness and badness. Therefore, character must be a power, a potentia . 18 Here then is the root of the mutability of character, namely, a power is an ability or potential for change of some sort. There is movement from potential to actual, from power to action.

Ricoeur sees this power of character as a disposition acquired over time ( Ricoeur 1992 , 120–21). This disposition is both immutable and mutable, stable and changeable. The source of these two seemingly incompatible traits is habit, that is, one is continually forming habits (mutability) and making use of already realized habits (a type of immutability). This last is what Ricoeur refers to as “sedimentation”: that “which confers on character [a] sort of permanence in time” ( Ricoeur 1992 , 121). Therefore, through the acquiring and the breaking of habits, character is formed and formable. 19

Once a physician starts writing prescriptions for contraception when a patient asks and no longer thinks about it overmuch but just does it, then this becomes a habit and consequently becomes part of his or her character. This does not mean that only habits form character. Rather, character is something incomplete in a sense. It develops over time. Dispositions, inclinations, and desires, which stabilize over time, are also part of the formation of character.

The other side of the relation between moral character and action is the effect of action on character. Three aspects of action relevant to this are repetition of action and its effect on the person, the type of action, and intention and responsibility.

Habits, skills, and habitus

Actions can be repetitive or automatic in (at least) three different ways: by habit, by education, and by habitus . When an action is constantly repeated, over time it can become a habit. Every time I see the straggly haired man in the orange beanie and three sweaters, I give him a dollar; the orange caught my eye at some time in the past, and ever since then, I respond with a dollar. Or I habitually put my keys on the bookshelf by the front door. The action gradually becomes unconscious or automatic, and the will is less involved in the initiation of the action. Consequently, a habit takes away some freedom ( Aquinas 1993 , bk. 7, lec. 6, n. 1403). I am no longer as free to do something different. I can change my habit, but it usually requires continual, conscious effort and much struggle (until a new habit is established). I put the keys on the bookshelf again when I really wanted to put them on the new hook by the door, so I take them off the shelf and put them on the hook. Eventually, I will remember to put them on the hook instead of the bookshelf, and that will then become a new habit. The physician who automatically writes a prescription for contraception for patients who ask and no longer thinks it through has acquired a habit. The physician who automatically says no to such a request also has acquired a habit.

Another type of automatic action is a skill. Actions become skills through repetition and experience. The rugged-terrain hiker automatically reaches a hand out to steady the inexperienced hiker who is losing his or her balance on the steep path. The potter's hands automatically smooth out the small bumps in the clay pot he or she is making. The baker automatically stops kneading the bread dough when it reaches a certain elasticity. These actions are done without consciously thinking through all the steps and reasoning and judgments. These actions are skills.

Physical education thus means much more than merely bodily hygiene, physical exercise, or physical habituation. It means directing the will to a planful, conscientious, and free forming of the body. And such a free forming is possible because of the fact that the soul is the form of the body, so that the soul's attitude expresses itself naturally in the body. ( Stein 2002 , 428–29, original emphasis)

One trains one's body through experience and repetition in how to act and react in a certain environment or under certain circumstances. This functions as a kind of physical memory, a memory in the body. These are skills.

A third way actions become automatic is through what Aquinas calls habitus , that is, inclination or disposition. I may give a dollar to the man in the orange beanie every time I see him, and that is a habit. But if every time I see someone begging, I give them a dollar; and I regularly give my restaurant leftovers to a homeless person; and I see a person without a coat shivering in the middle of winter and give them my coat, and on and on, example after example, that is a habitus , an inclination, a will-ingness, to respond charitably to anyone in need as the situation arises. The will has been trained to recognize the situation when it arises and to be willing to act in a charitable way. Rather than a habit as a type of muscle memory (always putting my keys on the bookshelf), the repeated actions of a specific kind (e.g., charitable) in different situations become a disposition to act in a specific way in all situations, in this case, in a charitable way. With habitus , one becomes a charitable person rather than a person with a habit. The source of this last type of action is character. In order for the physician to write a prescription for contraception (or not) out of a habitus rather than a habit, he or she needs to act out of the detailed definition of character discussed at the beginning of this paper: desires, inclinations, tendencies, knowledge, and virtue.

While this example is about charity, there is nothing about habitus that requires it to be good. One may also will to be miserly and act in a miserly way and therefore develop a bad disposition or habitus of miserliness. The morality of the action also determines the morality of the habitus . But not all acts can be cataloged as moral or immoral. There are different types or categories of actions.

Moral action

Because human beings are body/soul unities, actions of the body are actions of the self. “As an instrument of my acts, my body is an integral part of the unity of my personality” ( Stein 2002 , 367). Even the biological functions of the body are (or can be) part of the self. When my stomach growls, I do not say “my body is hungry” but “I am hungry.” I do not say “my body has a fever,” but “I have a fever.”

Digestion of food is certainly an action, as is jumping when startled or yawning when tired. Aquinas calls these acts of a human being ( actus humanus ) and distinguishes them from human acts ( actus humanis ). Human acts are rational acts, “those springing from man's will following the order of reason” ( Aquinas 1993 , bk 1, lec. 1, n. 3) those “of which man is master … through his reason and will.” 20 Consequently, they are moral acts. Human acts are more closely associated with character than are acts of human beings, because the former actions come from the whole person. They are a commitment of the whole person 21 ; the body did what the will willed. In other words, the person threw the whole of themselves, as a psycho-somatic unity, into the action. The person could have chosen to do something different, but chose this particular action.

In contrast, an act of a human is not a matter of choice. A person cannot choose to stop the physical act of their stomach growling. A growling stomach is not a choice. One can choose to eat something and thereby stop the growling but cannot choose to stop the growling directly by willing it. Even laughing at funny things is a moral act, in contrast to laughing because one is being tickled, which is an act of a human being. In the former, there is choice. One can choose to laugh or not. Laughing that is ridicule is a bad moral act. Laughing at oneself can be good (e.g., humbling). In fact, training oneself to not laugh at racist jokes or sexual innuendos is considered by many to be a moral responsibility. 22 Writing a prescription, likewise, is a human, and therefore moral, act; it is a matter of choice. One can write it or not write it as one wills and chooses. In Karol Wojtyla's thought, this sort of “action draws together all of the elements in the experience of the person.” 23 And so, “action reveals the person.” 24

Responsibility and intention

Two important aspects of the revelatory nature of action are responsibility and intention. To ask who did a specific action is to ask who is responsible, and to say that “Joe did it” is to assign responsibility to Joe for his actions. In other words, human beings own their actions and the consequences of them. This even applies to actions that are accidental rather than willed and chosen. If I unintentionally bump into someone while walking on a crowded sidewalk, the person I bumped into does not stop to ask if I did it on purpose but instead automatically expects an apology, and I automatically (hopefully) give it.

This intimacy between an action and the person who performs it is also recognized when a “why” is added to the “who did it.” And while an external observer can see who did an action, the why is more intimate and internal to the agent. In non-human animals, the why is instinct and nature, in human acts of human beings, it is a combination of will, freedom, and choice. The will is the rational power of human beings to act. It is the ability to choose what is good (or what one thinks is good) directed by reason. 25 In the will, then, is found intention. Voluntary actions have their source in intention while involuntary actions, such as being startled, do not. 26 There are forward-looking motives or intentions, such as “to heal”; backward-looking motives or reasons, such as fear of ridicule or loss of job or loss of reputation; and motives-in-general, such as love of God or wanting to do the right thing. The incontinent physician mentioned above is writing the prescription out of a backward-looking motive, fear. The continent (or continent-like) physician is writing the prescription out of a forward-looking motive, health of the patient. Both are acting for a good end (keeping job or reputation, and health of patient). But both are acting out of a limited freedom. The former's freedom is limited by fear, the latter's by ignorance or obstinacy. Most importantly, the actions of both are coming from what is internal and inseparable from them, the will ( John Paul II 1993 , n. 67).

Responsibility and intention are rooted in the will, which is the source of the self-possession and self-governance of human beings. Self-possession is different from possession of an object. One can own or hold an object, such as a rock, and therefore have possession of it. But one owns and holds oneself internally in a way one cannot with a rock. We are conscious of the rock as something that is external, but we are conscious of ourselves from the inside. We are both the object of our consciousness and the subject. 27 As such, we have possession of ourselves in a more intimate way than we have possession of a rock.

Human beings are what they possess; they possess what they themselves are. Even under duress, a person is self-possessing. One can be stopped from doing something through external sources such as obstacles put in one's way or even physical restraint, but no one can be forced to do something. The interesting thing here is that a physician may feel forced to write prescriptions for contraception through fear of ostracism or losing his job, but at the point at which he actually writes the prescription, he is no longer forced but actually willing the writing of the prescription. One can be prevented from doing something by external forces, but carrying through with an action has an element of the voluntary, of willing to do it and therefore cannot be forced. 28

Another way the will can be hindered is by lack of knowledge. 29 One may attempt to drive across a flooded bridge thinking the water is low enough to get through but then get stuck, because it was really two feet above the bridge. But if one knows that the water is that high, one would not drive across it or will to drive across it, because one knows the car will stall in the middle. In other words, while the will cannot be forced to will something, it can be hindered from doing what is willed ( Aquinas 1948 , I-II, q. 6, a. 4).

A corollary of self-possession is self-governance. Self-governance includes self-control but is farther and wider reaching into the interior of the self ( Wojtyla 1979 , 107). It is not mere control, but rule, which includes control and more. The human being is self-governing in that he can carry out a human action or not carry it out as he wills. He can choose to write a prescription or chose not to write it. Because of self-possession and self-governance, human beings both intend their actions and have responsibility for their actions.

Integration

Along with self-possession and self-governance, comes self-determination. To say that one's actions have no effect on one's character is a form of Cartesian dualism in which the mind controls the body as it would a machine. In this case, the body has no effect on the mind or the person; and one's character is only what one makes of it. The person is self-directed and formed in an internal process isolated from external events and influences. 30

Paul Ricoeur seems to lend support to this view when he says that one can separate an action from an agent, but cannot separate character from agent. For character, what I am and who I am are the same: “Character is truly the ‘what’ of the ‘who’” ( Ricoeur 1992 , 122). The what is internal to the who. Whereas, for action, they are separable; we can isolate the what, writing a prescription, from the who, the physician. The what is external to the who. One can “distinguish between what someone does and the one who does something” ( Ricoeur 1992 , 122). Certainly, it is true that the who can be distinguished from the what, but they cannot really be separated from each other. A particular person did this specific action.

If one changes perspective, from an external examination of the action performed and the person performing, to an internal examination of the person performing this action, then one can see that while there is distinction there is not separation. The person is the source and cause of his or her own actions.

All voluntary action upon the body, however, and all formative influence which the I—through the instrumentality of the body—exerts upon the external world rest upon the fact that human freedom is not restricted to the purely spiritual realm and that the realm of the spirit is not a separate, isolated sphere. The foundation upon which the spiritual life and free acts arise and to which they remain attached is the matter which is placed at the disposal of the human being's intellect and free will to be illuminated, formed, and used. In this way the bodily sentient life of the human being becomes a personally formed life and a constituent part of the human person. ( Ricoeur 1992 , 372–73)

Ricoeur's separation of an agent from an act is a separation only externally and on the surface. Internally the agent, possessing will, self-governing, and self-possessing, is the direct cause of his or her action and therefore inseparable from it. Therefore, whichever choice is made (to write a prescription or not), the action is an expression of one's character and also reinforces or changes one's character, i.e., human beings are self-determining.

When a person recognizes a habit in himself as bad (e.g., smoking or biting one's nails), he or she usually seeks to change it. We recognize when someone is acting out of character. Our character allows others to predict, in a way, the types of actions we will do. We do not expect Mother Teresa of Calcutta to throw a sick person into the gutter, such an action would be out of character for her, rather we expect her to pick up a person out of the gutter. Being of good character means that some actions are excluded, but also that some are included and expected. We expect to perceive the virtues being expressed in the actions of one of good character. At the same time, one of good character tries to increase the virtues in oneself. Actions are expressive of character precisely because human beings are self-possessing, self-governing, and self-determining.

Acts which are “deliberate and chosen are essentially self-determining—that is, internal to and constitutive of an individual's character.” 31 A simple way in which this happens is when a bad (or good) action becomes a habit. That habit then becomes part of one's character. As previously noted, Ricoeur called this sedimentation, a permanence acquired over time that therefore is seen as expressive of one's character ( Ricoeur 1992 , 121).

Another way in which action becomes character is through inclinations or virtues. Recall the difference noted above between the habit of giving a dollar to a beggar in an orange beanie and the habitus of acting charitably in any situation in which one finds someone in need. Virtues are acquired only after hard work, attention to one's actions, and much repetition:

More than a crackerjack lecture on temperance is going to be required if you are to become temperate. You must change your heart. Only by dint of repeated acts, performed with difficulty and against the grain, will temperance become your good such that acting in accord with it in changing circumstances is merely a matter of your acting in character. ( McInerny 2004 , 109)

Even a single act forms character in that it expresses one's will and one's acceptance of the action. 32 Since the human being is continually maturing and changing, actions leave “traces” on the human being. 33

It is neither the intellect that knows nor the will that decides, but it is the human being as acting person who recognizes, initiates, and determines. To act with efficacy is to integrate the rich complexity of the embodied human agent in a way that transforms him or her … .

Action, then, redounds upon the whole person, so that self-determination is also self-formation and self-development. 34

Moral actions especially have a significant effect on the person, because they are determinative of good or bad character.

Because action draws upon the whole person as agent, it affects the whole person; and because ethical action engages the good of the person through personalistic values, it cannot leave the person indifferent to his or her action. It transforms the person, for better or for worse. 35

Self-determination is key to becoming of good moral character. Paul Taylor sees four ways in which we can train ourselves to be morally good: (1) simply doing good and avoiding evil; (2) deliberately placing ourselves in situations of moral significance (e.g., volunteering at a soup kitchen); (3) imagining ourselves in such situations and acting rightly; and (4) “reflective thinking about moral matters” ( Taylor 1964 , 22).

If a physician sees use of contraception as morally bad, then acting out of his good moral character or if he wants to develop good character, he will not facilitate the use of contraception by writing prescriptions for it. It is intrinsic to the definition of a prescription that the physician is recommending and expecting that it will be filled and the medication taken by the patient, and this for the good of the health of the patient. It cannot be separated from this context.

If a physician acts against his judgment that contraception is morally bad and still writes a prescription for it, his character is affected. By his action, he actually wills that contraception be used, he wills what he considers an evil. If it becomes a habit then he may no longer even be thinking of the evil but just doing it automatically. Through repetition, it may become an inclination or habitus such that he starts recommending it (in appropriate situations) even to patients who do not ask for it. Through his actions, he also risks being associated with the category of physicians who write prescriptions for contraception thinking it morally good. For, acts are not only self-determinative of an individual but also self-determinative of a group or community ( Finnis 1998 , 41). He may not recognize himself in that group but others will, simply due to the fact that one of the group's traits is that they write prescriptions for contraception ( Ricoeur 1992 , 121–22). According to Aquinas, this is hypocrisy, that is, “simulat[ing] a character which is not his own” ( Aquinas 1948 , II-II, q. 111, a. 3). This in fact indicates a fifth way of training one's character that we can add to Taylor's four above: associating with a group or community which embodies the character traits one wishes to acquire. 36 In such association one can seek to imitate the group's traits and character.

So far, we have seen that one's actions reflect one's character, and they also form one's character. Consequently, the morality of one's actions also reflects and forms one's character. Good moral actions come from a good character and form a good character. Bad moral actions come from and form a bad character.

Being of Good Character

One of the most essential—if not the most essential—requirements of good moral action is knowledge of the good. Knowledge of the good frees us to act well, that is, to act in accordance with the good that we have come to know. “Moral behavior is a response to reality and therefore requires a knowledge of reality” ( Ratzinger 1984 , 10). This knowledge is not made up by the person, nor is it found exclusively in Revelation or the Scriptures ( Caffara 1987 , 162). Knowledge of the good is found in study of the world around us and in study of human beings (anthropology, biology, medicine, etc., and including philosophy and theology), in other words, in reality and in truth. 37

Everyone chooses the good (or what they believe to be the good), even someone acting immorally or breaking the law has some good in mind. 38 The thief steals a jacket, because he thinks looking cool is a good or steals money, because he thinks being able to buy things is a good. The physician who writes a prescription for contraception is choosing the good of keeping a job or a reputation or (what he or she thinks is) the good of the patient's health. But to know only an apparent good is to be hampered in choosing the good. Full(er) knowledge of the good frees us to choose the true good rather than an apparent good and therefore frees us to act in a truly moral way. 39 More concretely, choosing the good is “do[ing] those things which truly constitute our fulfillment and perfection.” 40 The good is not only goods outside the person or goods for the person, it is also the very human being per se. 41 These goods are knowable to us and perfective of us:

Intelligible human goods such as bodily life itself, health, knowledge of the truth, etc., are “goods of the person” in the sense that they are goods intrinsically perfecting the person: they are “noble goods” ( bona honesta ), not mere “useful goods” ( bona utilia ), that is, merely instrumental goods extrinsic to the person. ( Melina 2001 , 43 note 13)

For the physician, choosing the good also includes choosing the good for him or her as physician, that is, pursuing the ends medicine—the health of the patient and all that that entails. 42 The act of choosing the good is the process of self-determination with its roots in self-possession and self-governance (see Wojtyla 1979 , 106, 107). In this way, we are responsible for our own character. 43

Some theologians, for example, McCormick (1968 , 7–18), have contended that if one chooses God then even mortal sin cannot cut one off from God unless one consciously chooses to turn away from God; this is known as the “fundamental option” theory.

[This theory] maintains that for a mortal sin to be committed an action must be accompanied by an option against God, or one's ultimate Good. Failing this, even actions which are knowingly and willingly committed in grave matter, such as taking life, adultery, … , may not be mortal sins in the sense of cutting the person off from the life of God and communion with Him … . External behavior according to this, is only a partial indicator of interior orientation and attitudes. ( Bristow 2009 , 195–96)

On the contrary, our responsibility is more than for a (single) fundamental option for the good or for God, and it is more than having a good intention or choosing actions with good consequences ( John Paul II 1993 , nn. 67, 74, 77, 78). The object of the action must be good, one cannot choose evil means even for a good end, and still say one is choosing the good. 44 “Freedom is not only the choice for one or another particular action; it is also, within that choice, a decision about oneself and a setting of one's own life for or against the Good, for or against the Truth” ( John Paul II 1993 , n. 65). The true “fundamental option” is not a single choice for the good (or for God) made at one point in one's life. It is a decision made for or against the good in each and every moral act. Therefore, even at this most basic level, to say that one is against contraception and then to write prescriptions for contraception is in fact to be for contraception because one chooses it by the act of writing the prescription. This is to choose contraception as in some way a good.

Good character and virtue

In order to be of good character, then, once one knows the good, one must also desire it. In the simple case, the physician who knows that the use of contraception specifically to avoid pregnancy is not good—whether for the patient's health or from a Christian moral perspective—yet still prescribes it, does not desire the good. This seems a rather strong statement, but when one knows that (1) contraception is only an apparent good, not a true good; and (2) one knows that evil means may not be used even for good consequences or from a good intention, then (3) to still act on the apparent good is to be obstinate, to desire the apparent good not the true good. “The original or originating practical situation calls out not only for reason but also for affectivity and desire; thus it is that the grasp of the Good depends on the dispositions of the subject.” 45 The will must actually desire and incline itself to the good.

Choosing for or against the good, for or against the evil, is something that the will is constantly struggling with. It is easy to fall into evil; it is hard to continuously do good moral acts, this requires constant work. It is difficult to ascertain knowledge and establish truth. Human beings'

struggle to arrive at a deeper and deeper knowledge of the demands of God's divine and eternal law can be impeded because of their own biases and passions and because of the prejudices and misconceptions common to the cultures in which they live. The heart of the problem is human sinfulness, which afflicts the whole human race and each individual personally. ( May 2003 , 88)

Our reason can be overcome by (unreasonable) passions or mislead by false or incomplete knowledge ( Aquinas 1993 , bk. 7, lec. 3, n. 1348). Our conscience guides us to judging right or wrong action but that needs training and informing also. Conscience needs to know the good and to be listened to in order for us to act according to it. To listen and to act both require dispositions, desires, and tendencies ordered to the good.

Morality is therefore that ordering of desire and of will required for a good life: this ordering is not an external regulation of acts because they are in harmony with law or because they produce better results in the world; it is rather that interior harmony that reason introduces into our passions and choices precisely so that man might be himself. It is a harmony, an order that is not only a subjectivistic psychological expression but the reflection of the truth about the Good that fulfills man's desire. ( Melina 2001 , 45)

As we saw above, Aquinas calls this habitus , that is, inclination or disposition. When speaking of moral or good character, this then is an inclination or disposition to the good, in other words, virtue. While habits diminish freedom, virtue and virtues diminish potency ( Melina 2001 , 54). Potency is diminished by being put into act. Character is a potency, and when it is put into act, it becomes good character or bad character. Virtue is the act of good character, and virtues are the “principles of good action.” 46 Virtues are formative of the moral life, are developed through education, and are linked to time and the incompleteness (that is, potency) of the human being ( Melina 2001 , 56). One could say that virtue is habit, skill, and habitus . Virtues “forge” character. 47 They perfect the will and freedom ( Caffara 1987 , 166). Consequently, they perfect the human being. “The realization of the human person is not principally in morally good actions, but in the acquisition of the moral virtues.” 48 The virtues then are not just dispositions but an actualization of the human being, a changing from wanting to be of good character to actually being of good character ( Von Hildebrand and Von Hildebrand 1966 , 87). The human being “acquires right evaluation regarding the principle of things to be done, that is, the end, by the habitus of virtue either natural or learned by custom.” 49 This even leads one of virtuous character to act with regret when the right choice in a situation is not ideal ( Anscombe 1963 , 89–90). While all human beings have a natural inclination to the good and therefore to virtue, 50 the virtues need to be trained and developed so that they become a “second nature,” an actuality rather than a potency, a habitus of good character ( Melina 2001 , 51–53).

The most important of the virtues is prudence: good character and moral action depend on it. 51 Prudence is right judgment in moral matters.

This is not some prim conformity to convention or rule, but excellence and strength ( virtus ) of character involving a disposition and readiness to act with intelligent love in pursuit of real goods—the basic human goods towards which the primary practical principles direct—and successful resistance to the ultimately unreasonable lure of bad options. ( Finnis 1998 , 84, original emphasis)

As Aquinas says, quoting Augustine, “Prudence is the knowledge of what to seek and what to avoid.” 52 It is the virtue “which perfects the reason [and] surpasses in goodness the other moral virtues which perfect the appetitive power” ( Aquinas 1948 , I-II, q. 66, a. 1). The more prudence one has, the more one judges correctly the right action to take. At the same time, prudence depends on the other virtues: one may determine through prudence that fortitude is required in a particular situation, but if one does not have fortitude then one cannot carry out what prudence concludes is the right course of action. 53 It is prudence that ties all the other virtues together; by judging the right thing to do, it steers all the virtues to right action and the good. 54

In the case of the physician who sees contraception as immoral, it may seem prudent for him to write prescriptions for contraception, because, for instance, he has to support his family and so cannot afford to lose his position or patients. 55 But the effect on his character, changing him into someone he does not want to be—that is, a physician who wills the writing of prescriptions for contraception and therefore wills the evil of contraception—may be unwelcome and unwanted. Therefore, it may be more prudent for him to look for a different place in which to practice in which he does not feel compelled to write prescriptions for contraception.

Hypocrisy or Integrity

What is at stake then is the integrity of the human being. As Pope John Paul II said: “To separate the fundamental option from concrete kinds of behavior means to contradict the substantial integrity or personal unity of the moral agent in his body and in his soul.” 56 In the case under discussion, to separate one's view that use of contraception is immoral from one's action of writing prescriptions for it is a contradiction of the unity of the physician as moral agent. In fact, such a separation is not really possible, because character and action interact with each other. One could say that they spontaneously tend toward assimilation and amalgamation. This is the meaning and the consequence of self-possession, self-governance, and self-determination.

It is in ourselves that the drama of our liberty is played out, and it is played through what we do. The human person is more than his or her liberty; but it is in action that the whole person is gathered into the task of responsible freedom. If we are to possess ourselves and to govern ourselves through our liberty, then we are faced with the task of integration—not only of coordinating the various strands of our consciousness, but of integrating into our actions our whole human being, body and soul, physis and psyche . 57

To be of good moral character, a person must have knowledge of the good, act in morally good ways, and be disposed and inclined toward the good through the virtues. The physician who believes that use of contraception is immoral must also act in ways that display that belief and avoid actions that promote contraception use by his patients.

Louise A. Mitchell, PhD (Cand.), MA, MTS, is associate editor of The Linacre Quarterly and a graduate student studying bioethics at the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and the Family in Melbourne, VIC, Australia. Her email address is moc.liamtoh@99llehctimal .

1 I will limit this paper to physicians, but similar questions arise for hospitals and for pharmacists and other healthcare personnel.

2 Similarly, should pharmacists be allowed to refuse to fill contraception prescriptions in the name of conscientious objection or should they be forced to fill them? Should employers be forced to provide contraception in their prescription drug insurance plans? See, for example, Curlin et al. (2007) and Stein (2006a , 2006b) .

3 Some call this “value neutrality”; for a discussion of this, see Pellegrino (2000) .

4 Ricoeur (1992 , 119). This, he says, is “the overlapping of ipse by idem ” ( Ricoeur 1992 , 121).

5 See Merriam-Webster Dictionary , s.v. “character,” http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/character .

6 Ricoeur (1992 , 122): “the aspects of evaluative preference … define the moral aspect of character.”

7 Taylor (1964 , 21). See also Melina (2001 , 46): “[According to St. Augustine] for happiness, subjective satisfaction (to have everything one wants is not enough; it is also necessary that there be rectitude of the will (not to want anything evil) … . ‘To desire happiness is nothing other than to desire the satisfaction of the will,’ but then he affirms that only the true Good can fully satisfy the will.”

8 Rather than “vicious,” which is how W.D. Ross translates Aristotle's word, I will use “vice-filled.” Aristotle uses φαύλος (low in rank, mean, and common) vs. ε̉πιεικης (reasonable, fair, kind, gentle, and good); with related terms κα˘κός (bad, evil, and wicked) vs. α̉γα˘θός (good); and αι̉σχρόν (shameful, disgraceful, base, and infamous) vs. καλόν (well and rightly). See Aristotle (n.d.), for example, bk. 3, n. 5 (1113b10).

9 See especially bk. 7 in the Nicomachean Ethics ; and Thomas Aquinas's discussion of bk. 7 in Aquinas (1993) . There are also two more categories: the godlike and the brutish, but, Aristotle says, such persons as these are rare. See Aristotle (n.d. , bk. 7, chap. 1, 1145a15–30).

10 Other examples are assisting in euthanasia, writing prescriptions for euthanasia drugs, referring for abortions, etc. I will use the contraception example throughout. Also, contraception can be prescribed to treat medical conditions such as endometriosis. In this example, I will be discussing it purely as contraception, leaving aside medicinal uses.

11 Aquinas (1975 , bk. 3, chap. 106, n. 7); Ratzinger (1984 , 10): “Moral behavior is a response to reality and therefore requires a knowledge of reality.”

12 Stein (2002 , 429–30). See also Wojtyla (1979 , 158–59).

13 See Aquinas (1993 , bk. 3, lec. 8, n. 474), on ends; also Audi (1991 , 313), on changing beliefs.

14 This also is Pope John Paul's point about the fundamental option: one bad act can change one's orientation to the good. Each action must orient one towards the good. See John Paul II (1993 , n. 70).

15 Keep in mind that character does not go from good to neutral to bad, but all along the scale the good and the bad overlap. On the side of good character, the person is mostly good and maybe a little bad, and on the bad side, the person is mostly bad and maybe a little good.

16 See, for example, Gal 2:20 and Eph 4:15. See also John Paul II (1993 , n. 73) and Clarke (1993 , 96): “No one can reach mature development as a person without the experience of opening oneself, giving oneself to another in self-forgetting love of some kind.” For more on this self-transcendence, see Clarke (1993) , esp. “Personal Being as Self-Transcending,” 94–108: the loss of oneself in becoming united with God, a movement from self-centeredness to God-centeredness, is a “finding of one's true self at a deeper level” ( Clarke 1993 , 99). It would be interesting to see how Stein's thoughts, in Stein (2002 , esp. 510–27), on the unity of human beings in Christ relate to this.

17 See, for example, CNN (2000) and Wright and the Associated Press (2006) .

18 Aquinas (1948 , III, q. 63, a. 2, s.c.; q. 72, a. 5, obj. 2).

19 Though this is limited more or less by one's DNA, environment, and other factors as discussed above. Some interesting comments on the formability of character have been made, which cannot be explored in detail in this paper but are worth mentioning. Aquinas says, in Aquinas (1948 , I-II, q. 96, a. 4), that “a law that inflicts unjust hurt on its subjects” (ad 3) that is “wicked laws,” “often bring loss of character” (obj. 3). Leo XIII (1878 , nn. 14–15) said that character is “reformed” through teaching, “pursuit of virtue,” and obedience; and weakened by “seeking after self-interest alone”; also Leo XIII (1893 , n. 15), “discover[ing] the true relation between time and eternity … form[s] strong and noble characters.” And Vatican Council II (1975) said, in Gaudium et spes , n. 61, that understanding of others “refines man's character.”

20 Aquinas (1948 , I-II, q. 1, a. 1, c.) and John Paul II (1993 , n. 71). See also, Wojtyla (1979 , 207–19).

21 Von Hildebrand and Von Hildebrand (1966 , 88). Even what seem to be purely mental acts, such as believing in God, manifest themselves bodily (e.g., worship, prayer, almsgiving, and admitting one's faith to others). When the mental act does not manifest itself physically, one is labeled either deluded about oneself or a hypocrite. More on this later.

22 Even something seemly mundane such as choosing which color dress to buy is still a moral act: I am choosing a purple dress because my sister hates purple (choosing the evil or uncharitable) vs. because purple looks good on me or it is my favorite color (choosing the good).

23 Schmitz (1993 , 66). Schmitz continues: “The basis and source of action is … the whole person … . The whole person is caught up in and fully engaged through his or her own action.” See also Von Hildebrand and Von Hildebrand (1966 , 87–92).

24 Wojtyla (1979 , 11), quoted in Schmitz (1993 , 66).

25 See Aquinas (1948 , I-II, q. 1, a. 1, c.; q. 8, a. 1) and Wojtyla (1979 , 124–39, 161).

26 For this discussion of intention, see Anscombe (1981 , 75–82) and Anscombe (1963 , nn. [19–20], 21–28b, 45–49).

27 See Wrathall (2005 , 111–12); also, the body is “a third term in between mind and matter” (113).

28 Aristotle (n.d. , bk. 3, ch. 1) and Aquinas (1993 , bk. 3, lec. 1).

29 Aristotle (n.d. , bk. 3, ch. 1), Aquinas (1993 , bk. 3, lec. 3), and John Paul II (1993 , n. 52).

30 Maurice Merleau-Ponty says that to even consider the relationship of soul to body is to engage in dualism. See Wrathall (2005 , 111–12).

31 Finnis (1998 , 41). Schmitz (1993 , 83): “Through our human acts ( actus humanus ) we effect ourselves and other persons and things; and in this efficacy lies the root of our responsibility.”

32 Finnis (1998 , 41 note 68): “Even though a single choice (Aquinas thinks) cannot form a habitual disposition in the strict sense (which is formed by reiteration of acts: I-II q. 51, a. 3), still a choice lasts in, and shapes, one's will(ingness) until one repudiates or repents of it (see e.g., Ver . q. 24, a. 12, c.).”

33 Stein (2002 , 429): “[Human beings'] free modes of action are not co-extensive with the soul's total being but are rather an exertion of influence on something that is engaged in a process of evolution, and these free modes of action leave certain traces in the soul by virtue of which the soul attains to its final structural formation and firm contour.”

34 Schmitz (1993 , 85–86). See also, John Paul II (1993 , n. 52).

35 Schmitz (1993 , 89). Wojtyla (1979 , 99): “The becoming of man in his moral aspect that is strictly connected with the person is the decisive factor in determining the concrete realistic character of goodness and badness, of the moral values themselves as concretized in human acting. Without in any way constituting the content of consciousness itself they belong integrally to the personal, human becoming. Man not only concretizes them in action and experiences them but because of them he himself, as a being, actually becomes good or bad. Moral conduct partakes of the reality of human actions as expressing a specific type and line of becoming of the man-subject, the type of becoming that is most intrinsically related to his nature, that is, his humanness, and to the fact of his being a person.” See also, John Paul II (1993 , nn. 39, 71).

36 Audi (1991 , 311–12). See also Aquinas (1948 , III, q. 63, obj. 1 and 2, and c).

37 Wojtyla (1979 , 162): “Without truthfulness (or while out of touch with it) the conscience or, more broadly speaking, the whole specific system of the moral function and order cannot be properly grasped and correctly interpreted.”

38 Aquinas (1948 , I, q. 63, a. 1, ad 4; I-II, q. 10, a. 1; q. 74, a. 1, ad 1; q. 75, a. 1, ad 3).

39 John Paul II (1993 , n. 72): “ The morality of acts is defined by the relationship of man's freedom with the authentic good … . Acting is morally good when the choices of freedom are in conformity with man's true good . The rational ordering of the human act to the good in its truth and the voluntary pursuit of that good, known by reason, constitute morality. Hence human activity cannot be judged as morally good merely because it is a means for attaining one or another of its goals, or simply because the subject's intention is good. Activity is morally good when it attests to and expresses … the conformity of a concrete action with the human good as it is acknowledged in its truth by reason. If the object of the concrete action is not in harmony with the true good of the person, the choice of that action makes our will and ourselves morally evil.” See also Vatican Council II (1975, n. 17).

40 McInerny (2004 , 100): “The moral task is to acquire a character which enables us to maneuver through the contingencies of life in such a way that we act well and thus achieve what is perfective of us. The desire for the good is a given, that is what is meant by calling it natural. However, reflection not only reveals the notion of ultimate end, but makes clear that we must do those things which truly constitute our fulfillment and perfection. The criteria for the true good must be sought in our nature as rational agents.”

41 Melina (2001 , 43): “When one speaks of the ‘moral good’ one understands, first of all, the moral good that is the very person who chooses, that is, it is the ‘good of the person’—what makes the person good—insofar as he becomes good by means of his choices. This is only possible because his will has the unique characteristic of being ‘sealed’ by the way in which the subject freely realizes himself with respect to different intelligible human goods … the moral goodness of the person is determined not only by the subjective intentionality of ‘willing the good’ but also by the adequate relationship that the will establishes regarding these concrete good objects of choices, on the basis of a rational knowledge that has a connotation specifically practical.”

42 See John Paul II (1995 , n. 4), Ashley and O'Rourke (1997 , 47–48) (Ashley and O'Rourke word it a little too strongly, physicians can make some ethical judgments autonomously just based on the ends of medicine), Hauser (2005) , Pellegrino and Thomasma (1993 , 38), and Melina (1998 , 392): “the act of recognizing the value of life is laden with consequences for the subject who performs it. Not only does it immediately reveal definite moral obligations that he is bound to observe, but it also dramatically mirrors the very human identity of the person who makes a judgment about life's value … . To recognize the personal dignity of a nascent human embryo or fetus, or of a terminally ill person, means at the same time to perceive definite moral obligations towards him.”

43 Taylor (1964 , 21–23) and Audi (1991 , 304 note 1) (and other places): “See, e.g., Nicomachean Ethics , bk. 1, in which Aristotle says that moral virtue is formed by habit … , and that we are praised and blamed for virtues and vices … . Compare his remarks, in bk. 3, that our character is determined by our choosing good or evil … , and that the virtues ‘are in our power and voluntary.’”

44 John Paul II (1993 , n. 78). See also Caffara (1987 , 162): “To say, then, that an act is good by its nature is to say that it has in itself the capacity to realize the human person as such, so that a properly ordered will can choose to perform it without destroying the will's rectitude. The act is in itself able to mediate, to concretize, a true self-determination of the person.”

45 Melina (2001 , 44). See also Wojtyla (1979 , 124–39).

46 Melina (2001 , 51), see also 51–53.

47 Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994 , n. 1810) and Leo XIII (1891 , n. 50).

48 Caffara (1987 , 167). See also Finnis (1998 , 84–85) and Melina (2001 , 44): “by means of a connaturality of the subject with the true Good, they [the virtues] make it possible for what really is good in itself and in accordance with the truth also to appear good to the virtuous person. By means of a virtuous connaturality, that which is good ‘in itself’ ( bonum simpliciter ) is perceived also as good ‘for me’ ( bonum conveniens ).”

49 Aquinas (1993 , bk. 7, lec. 8, n. 1431), see also n. 1432.

50 Finnis (1998 , 84–85 note 114): “[All human] virtues pre-exist in one's natural orientation towards the good of virtue [ naturali ordinatione ad bonum virtutis ], which exists in one's reason in so far as one is aware of this kind of good, and in one's will in so far as one is naturally interested in that good, and also exists somehow in one's lower powers in so far as they are naturally subject to one's reason.”

51 Caffara (1987 , 168) and Finnis (1998 , 119).

52 Aquinas (1948 , II-II, q. 47, a. 1, s.c.). See also, Ratzinger (1984 , 10): “It was not without reason that the ancients placed prudence as the first cardinal virtue: They understood it to mean the willingness and the capacity to perceive reality and respond to it in an objective manner.”

53 Melina (2001 , 53–54). See also Aquinas (1948 , I-II, q. 65, a. 4, ad 1).

54 Aquinas (1948 , I-II, q. 73, a. 1): “the intention of every man acting according to virtue is to follow the rule of reason, wherefore the intention of all the virtues is directed to the same end, so that all the virtues are connected together in the right reason of things to be done, namely, prudence.”

55 John Paul II (1993 , n. 67): “Judgments about morality cannot be made without taking into consideration whether or not the deliberate choice of a specific kind of behavior is in conformity with the dignity and integral vocation of the human person. Every choice always implies a reference by the deliberate will to the goods and evils indicated by the natural law as goods to be pursued and evils to be avoided. In the case of the positive moral precepts, prudence always has the task of verifying that they apply in a specific situation, for example, in view of other duties which may be more important or urgent. But the negative moral precepts, those prohibiting certain concrete actions or kinds of behavior as intrinsically evil, do not allow for any legitimate exception. They do not leave room, in any morally acceptable way, for the “creativity” of any contrary determination whatsoever. Once the moral species of an action prohibited by a universal rule is concretely recognized, the only morally good act is that of obeying the moral law and of refraining from the action which it forbids.” I am leaving aside here, as beyond the scope of this paper, a discussion of whether or not writing a prescription for contraception (as opposed to using contraception) is intrinsically evil and allows for no legitimate exception.

56 John Paul II (1993 , n. 67). See also Stein (2002 , 367).

57 Schmitz (1993 , 77); see also 79, 85–86, 118.

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The Different Meanings of Human Acts In the Culture of Life and the Culture of Death - Part 2

by Dr. William E. May

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In this article Dr. William May presents the understanding of human acts as self-determining and constitutive of personal moral identity operative in the culture of life.

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Culture of Life Foundation, March 17, 2009

See: The Different Meanings of Human Acts In the Culture of Life and the Culture of Death - Part 1

(c) 2009 Culture of Life Foundation . Reproduction granted with attribution required.

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Human Acts: An Essay in Their Moral Evaluation

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Review Essay: Crime and Moral Conundrums (Book Review of Leo Katz's Bad Acts and Guilty Minds) 

March 19, 2024

Evidence Does Not Support the Use of the Death Penalty

Capital punishment must come to an end. It does not deter crime, is not humane and has no moral or medical basis

By The Editors

A death penalty vigil, held in 2021 outside an Indiana penitentiary.

Bryan Woolston/Reuters/Redux

It is long past time to abolish the death penalty in the U.S.

Capital punishment was halted in the U.S. in 1972 but reinstated in 1976, and since then, nearly 1,600 people have been executed. To whose gain? Study after study shows that the death penalty does not deter crime, puts innocent people to death , is racially biased , and is cruel and inhumane. It is state-sanctioned homicide, wholly ineffective, often botched, and a much more expensive punishment than life imprisonment. There is no ethical, scientifically supported, medically acceptable or morally justifiable way to carry it out.

The recent execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith demonstrates this barbarity. After a failed attempt at lethal injection by prison officials seemingly inexperienced in the placement of an IV, the state of Alabama killed Smith in January using nitrogen gas . The Alabama attorney general claimed that this method of execution was fast and humane , despite no supporting evidence. Eyewitnesses recounted that Smith thrashed during the nitrogen administration and took more than 20 minutes to die.

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Opposition to the death penalty is growing among the American public , and the Biden administration must follow through on its promise to end this horror. The Department of Justice must heed its own admission that the death penalty doesn’t stop crime, and our legislators must continue to take up the issue on the congressional floor. The few states that still condemn people to death must follow the lead of states that have considered the evidence and rejected capital punishment.

Programs such as the Innocence Project have shown, over and over, that innocent people have been sentenced to death. Since 1973 nearly 200 people on death row have been exonerated, based on appeals, the reopening of cases, and the entrance of new and sometimes previously suppressed evidence. People have recanted testimony, and supposedly airtight cases have been poked full of evidentiary holes.

Through the death penalty, the criminal justice system has killed at least 20 people now believed to have been innocent and uncounted others whose cases have not been reexamined . Too many of these victims have been Black or Hispanic. This is not justice. These are state-sanctioned hate crimes.

Using rigorous statistical and experimental control methods, both economics and criminal justice studies have consistently found that there is no evidence for deterrence of violent crimes in states that allow capital punishment. One such study, a 2009 paper by criminology researchers at the University of Dallas, outlines experimental and statistical flaws in econometrics-based death penalty studies that claim to find a correlated reduction in violent crime. The death penalty does not stop people from killing. Executions don’t make us safer.

The methods used to kill prisoners are inhumane. Electrocution fails , causing significant pain and suffering. Joel Zivot, an anesthesiologist who criticizes the use of medicines in carrying out the death penalty, has found (at the request of lawyers of death row inmates) that the lungs of prisoners who were killed by lethal injection were often heavy with fluid and froth that suggested they were struggling to breathe and felt like they were drowning. Nitrogen gas is used in some veterinary euthanasia, but based in part on the behavior of rats in its presence, it is “unacceptable” for mammals , according to the American Veterinary Medical Association. This means that Smith, as his lawyers claimed in efforts to stop his execution, became a human subject in an immoral experiment.

Courts have often decided, against the abundant evidence, that these killings are constitutional and do not fall under the “cruel and unusual punishment” clause of the 8th Amendment or, in Smith’s appeal , both the 8th Amendment and the due process protection clause of the 14th amendment.

A small number of prosecutors and judges in a few states, mostly in the South, are responsible for most of the death sentences being handed down in the U.S. today. It’s a power they should not be able to wield. Smith was sentenced to life in prison by a jury before the judge in his case overruled the jury and gave him the death sentence.

A furious urge for vengeance against those who have done wrong—or those we think have done wrong—is the biggest motivation for the death penalty. But this desire for violent retribution is the very impulse that our criminal justice system is made to check, not abet. Elected officials need to reform this aspect of our justice system at both the state and federal levels. Capital punishment does not stop crime and mocks both justice and humanity. The death penalty in the U.S. must come to an end.

This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American .

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There is no moral argument that justifies the sale of weapons to Israel

Israel has shown it will use these arms indiscriminately against Palestinians. Why does the west continue to supply them?

E arlier this month, a doctor who had recently returned from Gaza provided shocking testimony about the scale of human suffering that Palestinians are enduring under an Israeli military onslaught that has entered its sixth month. There exist no moral arguments that can justify the continued sale of weapons to Israel by states that respect the principle of the universality of human rights.

During my work as the United Nations’ special rapporteur on human rights defenders, Palestinian human rights defenders have emphasized to me the importance of a ban being placed on such sales, given that Israel has demonstrated time and again that it will use such weapons indiscriminately against Palestinians.

Any claims of Israeli self-defense in reaction to Hamas’s illegal, immoral and appalling attacks on 7 October – which, according to the UN special representative of the secretary-general on sexual violence in conflict, probably included horrific acts of sexual violence – have long since been invalidated by the disproportionality of the response.

The concept of proportionality in conflict is included in article 51 of the first additional protocol to the Geneva conventions. What we now have, instead, are ideological arguments for continued weapons sales, which I can only conclude place the value of Israeli lives over and above the value of Palestinian ones. This is unconscionable.

Human rights defenders work to uphold the rights agreed upon as universal in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and codified in the various covenants and treaties adopted since then. Last December, to mark the 75th anniversary of the UDHR, more than 150 countries made pledges outlining how they would make those rights a reality. Some of the strongest pledges came from the US, the UK, Germany, France and Canada, all of whom highlighted their steadfast support for human rights defenders.

Yet these same states continue to arm Israel, with devastating consequences for human rights and for human rights defenders. Between 2013 and 2022, 68% of weapon sales to Israel came from the US. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said four months ago that “far too many Palestinians have been killed”, yet the Biden administration has maintained its steady supply of arms to Israel, apparently unable to make the connection between Palestinian deaths and US supply of weaponry.

The cognitive dissonance is striking. Similarly, Germany increased military exports to Israel nearly tenfold in 2023 compared with 2022, according to data from the German economic ministry cited by Al Jazeera.

Earlier this month, I received the awful news that another two female human rights defenders in Gaza, along with scores of their family members, had been killed by Israeli bombs. Nour Naser Abu Al-Nour and Dana Yaghy both worked for the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, where they documented violations against women and children. I knew Nour personally and also know that in her last days she continued to gather testimony to add to the mounting evidence of war crimes committed by Israel.

These are two of thousands of women killed in what must be described as a war on women and children, who account for a reported 72% of the more than 30,000 Palestinians estimated by the ministry of health in Gaza to have died since the beginning of the recent conflict. On 12 March, the commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief Works Agency (Unrwa) wrote on X that “[t]he number of children reported killed in just over 4 months in #Gaza is higher than the number of children killed in 4 years of wars around the world combined”. That number is 12,300.

Canada, France and Germany have all proudly subscribed to a feminist foreign policy that “aspire[s] to transforming the practice of foreign policy to the greater benefit of women and girls everywhere”. In its 2023 National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security, the US stated : “Wherever the rights of women and girls are under threat, so, too, is democracy, peace and stability.” I fully agree, which is why I am horrified by the situation in Gaza and what may follow.

Some human rights defenders may have been explicitly targeted , including journalists whose role in bearing witness to the horrors have helped us understand the levels of destruction wrought. As colleagues in UN special procedures and I wrote last month, the information we have received about the targeting of clearly identifiable journalists by the Israeli Defence Forces suggests a deliberate strategy to obstruct coverage of the conflict and to silence critical reporting. Some journalists in Gaza have been killed at work, covering the war while clearly visible in press vests and helmets, and some reportedly received death threats before the attacks. This is also a war on journalists.

We further noted that more than 122 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since 7 October, according to UN reports. The US, UK, France, Canada and Germany are all members of the Media Freedom Coalition and signatories to the global pledge on media freedom, which commits them to promoting media freedom at home and abroad; Germany is currently co-chair. Recently, in remarks celebrating the work of Ukrainian journalists, the US under secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs said : “[I]t is our commitment to continue to lift up, empower, advocate for, and resource the voices that are showing what is happening on the ground.”

Not, it would seem, if those voices are Palestinian.

Health workers are another category of human rights defenders who have been killed or wounded by Israeli weapons in alarming numbers. Israeli attacks on hospitals, medical facilities, ambulances and now aid convoys continue as if there were no international legal prohibitions, including in the first and fourth Geneva conventions , against such attacks. This is a war against humanitarian personnel: 162 staff members of Unrwa have been killed , as have 404 internally displaced persons sheltering in their premises.

Late last month, an Israeli tank attacked a “clearly marked” Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders) shelter in Al-Mawasi, killing two people. The MSF said it had provided the Israeli army with the shelter’s precise location as a precaution. No warning was given before the shelter was shelled.

Ambulances have been targeted. An Israeli air strike on an ambulance outside Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital in November reportedly killed at least 15 people. MSF reports that in recent weeks “patients have voiced their fear of entering the hospital due to systematic attacks in and around healthcare facilities across Gaza”. The UN security council, on which the US, UK and France hold permanent seats, has adopted repeated resolutions on the protection of humanitarian personnel and healthcare facilities in armed conflict.

All of this may have repercussions outside Israel-Palestine, too. While I was on an official country visit to Algeria in December, a human rights defender there told me that he was seeing increasing resistance to his promotion of international human rights standards and mechanisms because of the slaughter that was being permitted in Gaza. In meetings I have had on the sidelines of the human rights council in Geneva this week, states from the global south have railed against the “lecturing” they say they have traditionally received from states in the global north on the promotion and protection of human rights, while those same states now veto or abstain on votes at the security council calling for a ceasefire.

The international human rights architecture is creaking under the weight of the hypocrisy of countries who profess support for a rules-based order yet continue to provide weapons to Israel that kill more innocent Palestinians. Above all, this is a war on human rights.

Mary Lawlor is the UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders

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