PHILOS 104 Study Guide - Quiz Guide: David Hume
Document Summary
Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason (hume, treatise , p. 457). David hume presents an argument that reason alone can never be any motive to the action of will nor oppose the direction (hume 261). With this, hume is asserting his belief that morals create the feeling of passion that directs our course of action, or the lack thereof. Reason, on the other hand, has no implication in one"s initial will. In this essay i will begin by deconstructing his argument in order to explain how, in his mind, reason cannot have the same effect as morality. Secondly, i will explain why he believes morality, in contrast, can excite passion and be the force to produce or prevent action.
