PHL275H1 Chapter week 4: PHL275H1 Chapter week : Hume
Document Summary
Overview: reason supplies no motives: at best tells us how to achieve what we independently desire, reason is the slave of passions and is not the source of moral judgments. When we judge something to be good/bad we project our own feelings onto it: these feelings don"t reflect whether we are being benefited/harmed but reflect what we feel through sympathetic identification with other parties. If the objects themselves don"t affect us, connection doesn"t give them their influence. A passion is an original existence, not a copy: contradicting passion with reason would be putting an idea up against an impression (copies of original objects) Passions can be contrary to reason if they are accompanied by some judgment/opinion. If morality had no natural influence on human passions and actions, moral rules would be useless: morality is understood as a practical and not speculative part of philosophy: supposed to influence our passions.
