A Summary
Hume’s negative claim that moral distinctions are not solely derived from reason and that subjective desires, wants and propensities play an inescapable part remains unscathed. Neither intuitionism, nor normative realism, nor utilitarianism offers convincing grounds for rationalism in morality.
My view is that the evidence in fact points the other way. Intuitionism and normative realism do not provide persuasive arguments that Hume unduly narrows and restricts the scope of reason. Utilitarianism does not attempt such a head-on attack at all and turns out, on inspection, to be far less ‘rational’ than at first sight it seems. Indeed, utilitarianism can mesh quite well with Hume’s negative claims.50 Moreover it has the virtue of offering an inter-subjective criterion without reliance on objective, real, or true values and standards. Where one of utilitarianism’s major weaknesses lies is in the typically Humean realm of explaining how and why humans come to make and sustain moral distinctions. It is not the usefulness of such distinctions, as suggested in the Enquiries, that explains this process but the much more interesting account Hume offers in his earlier written Treatise. For now though, his sentimentalist moral theory, and subjectivist moral theories generally, are the subject of the next chapter. The ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions I leave until chapters four and five.
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