Morality is a subject that interests us above all others: we fancy the peace of society to be at stake in every decision concerning it;

and ‘ tis evident, that this concern must make our speculations appear more real and solid, than where the subject is, in a great measure, indifferent to us. What affects us, we conclude can never be a chimera; and as our passion is engag’d on the one side or the other, we naturally think that the question lies within human comprehension; which, in other cases of this nature, we are apt to entertain some doubt of.¹

Having discussed, in the previous two chapters, Hume’s attack on rationalist ethics and his own sentiment-based moral theory, as well as the meaning of moral language and thought, I want to alter the emphasis.

This focus on the explanatory level, of explaining moral feelings in terms of their psychological and sociological causes, is perfectly in keeping with Hume’s descriptive, naturalistic perspective. Recall that Hume seeks to keep separate the motivational will or appetite (J.e. desires, propensities and preferences) and cognitive beliefs.

In these next two chapters it is that conventionalist Humean account which I will consider and assess. This chapter prepares the way by introducing and clarifying the principle of sympathy, which lies at the heart of Hume’s convention-based explanation, and by further elaborating on the notion of virtue. Chapter five, ‘The Making of an Interpersonal System of Constraints on Action’, then follows with a sustained discussion of the virtue justice and of the search for a disinterested perspective.

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