Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1 Assistant Professor, 3 Allameh Institute of Islamic & Humanities sciences, University of Tabriz
2 Associate Professor, University of Payam-e noor
3 Associate Professor of Philosophy Department, University of Tabriz
4 Assistant Professor, University of Tabriz
Abstract
During the history of philosophy, morals and beauty, and finding a diagnostic criterion for them, was a very important problem for philosophers. Most of the philosophers maintained that such criterion rooted in reason, but Hume presented a noble idea and said that moral sense based on feeling and sentiment. Everything which through its utility or beauty, leads to pleaser is virtuous. Sometimes directly and sometimes through the beauty and appearing beautiful, the utility leads to pleaser. Also, according to Hume, beauty is a subjective thing measured by the criterion of the pleaser. Thus, pleaser and pain are the criteria of taste and sentiment to the diagnosis of virtue and vice, as well as, the beauty and value of art.
In this paper, after comparing and monitoring morals and beauty from four aspects, through brief surveying of certain commentators of Hume, we attempt to explain the relationship between beauty, utility, and pleaser. Finally, we assert that the beauty is very important components in Hume’s explain of Morals, but at the same time aesthetics has no superiority to morals; and thus, we defend the originality of morals to aesthetics.
Highlights
The Relationship between Morals and Aesthetics in Hume’s Philosophy
Zolfaghar Hemmati1, Jalal Peykani2, Mostafa Shahraini3, Mahmoud Soufiani4
1 Assistant Professor, 3 Allameh Institute of Islamic & Humanities sciences, (corresponding author), E-mail: hemmati@tabrizu.ac.ir
2 Associate Professor, University of Payam-e noor, E-mail: j_peykani@pnu.ac.ir
3 Associate Professor, University of Tabriz, E-mail: m_shahraeen@yahoo.com
4 Assistant Professor, University of Tabriz, E-mail: m.sufiani@yahoo.com
Abstract
During the history of philosophy, morals and beauty, and finding a diagnostic criterion for them, was a very important problem for philosophers. Most of the philosophers maintained that such criterion rooted in reason, but Hume presented a noble idea and said that moral sense based on feeling and sentiment. Everything which through its utility or beauty, leads to pleaser is virtuous. Sometimes directly and sometimes through the beauty and appearing beautiful, the utility leads to pleaser. Also, according to Hume, beauty is a subjective thing measured by the criterion of the pleaser. Thus, pleaser and pain are the criteria of taste and sentiment to the diagnosis of virtue and vice, as well as, the beauty and value of art.
In this paper, after comparing and monitoring morals and beauty from four aspects, through brief surveying of certain commentators of Hume, we attempt to explain the relationship between beauty, utility, and pleaser. Finally, we assert that the beauty is very important components in Hume’s explain of Morals, but at the same time aesthetics has no superiority to morals; and thus, we defend the originality of morals to aesthetics.
Keywords: Hume, Morals, aesthetics, taste, feeling.
Introduction
For Hume, like many other philosophers, morals and moral philosophy was a very important enterprise. But, to institute morals, as a rigid enterprise as science was his peculiar characteristics. On the other hand, criticism was at the center of his reflections. Thus, his moral debates contain certain references to aesthetics and vice versa. Above this, there is a close connection between morals and aesthetics in Hume's philosophy. This connection could be compared and explored from these aspects: (i) origin and epistemology; (ii) constitutive characteristics; (iii) criterion; and (iv) function and end. Comparing these two, this paper aimed to illustrate the important and colored role of beauty in Hume's moral philosophy.
1. The core elements of Hume's Moral philosophy and aesthetics
According to Hume, Morals and its criteria do not come from the reason but are based on the sentiments, because while the morality deals with the practice, the reason is unable to excite, nor to create an actor make an obstacle against its occurring. Thus, morality is based on taste, sense, or moral sense. He illustrates the foundations of morality through studying behaviors and psychological qualities and through extracting everything which leads to respect, honor, pleasuer and so on. Hume suggests that virtues could be divided into four categories including pleasant for ourselves and others and utilized for ourselves and others. Human actions and practices are seen as virtues if they confer pleaser and as vises of confer pain. Pleaser and pain are related to the personal sphere whereas morality involves Human behavior in relation to others. To relate these two seemingly unrelated aspects, Hume appeals to sympathy. Through sympathy, with the help of imagination, one participates in feelings of the others. Utilized feeling as well as permanent ones, which commonly partake of beauty, are generalized in the form of moral principles. Moral expert says which sentiment is seen as a moral one.
Hume suggests that just as morals, beauty is grasped by the taste, which is dependent on personal feelings and is subjective. Its constitutive component is pleaser, and whatever gives pleaser to the mind is beautiful. Despite our suspension regard to Hume's philosophy, variety of tastes and the truth of phenomena, as a common thesis between empiricists, people agree on certain themes of beauty. Human beings enjoy some qualities and at the same time suffer other ones. Since all aesthetic judgments aren't true, we need criteria to distinguish between true and false judgments. Saying Sancho story, Hume identifies five characteristics of True Judge, who has the capacity of the true perception of art: "Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice, can alone entitle critics to this valuable character; and the joint verdict of such, wherever they are to be found, is the true standard of taste and beauty."
2. The relation between Morals and aesthetics
2.1. From the origin and epistemological point of view
For Hume, perceptions are the only content of the mind and are divided into two kinds; impressions and ideas, which everyone, in turn, has several subdivisions. Morals and beauty belong to calm reflective impressions. The mutual connections between impressions and ideas serve as evidence for the relation between Morals and beauty. Being well-favored and the beauty of actions, among others, are two kinds of beauty. If bodily and moral beauty were our owns, it's pleaser would confer pride (T.2.1.1.3). Thus, if their effect were the same, their causes, too, would be the same. Form this, Hume concludes that natural, artificial, and moral beauties belong to the same category.
2.2. of constitutive characteristics
The beauty's most constitutive component is a pleaser. The essence of virtue and beauty is a pleaser. In the absence of pleaser, we aren't able to percept the beauty, whether artistic or moral.
2.3. of the standard
The feeling is peculiar for the individual whereas morality contains some general rules. Hume connects these two field by means of sympathy. In the field of art, the central role of the utility shows the importance of sympathy. Beside sympathy, in the Of the standard of Taste, Hume introduces the true judge who is the most talented of people to percept beauty. In the same way, in morals, he introduces the moral expert as the beast one to grasp general moral rules.
2.4. of the function and end
There are certain phrases for this conception that for Hume, as Plato and many other philosophers, Art must have moral ends, or at least, an immoral component in art is denied. On the other hand, the utility serves as the most outstanding end of art as well as morals. But that is not the sole end and function of the beauty and morals, but Human beings find many things as beautiful and good which there is no utility in them.
Conclusions
We showed that there is a Quadruple relation between beauty and morals in Hume's philosophy. Despite this common interpretation that according to Hume's Moral philosophy and aesthetics, the utility and beauty are common components, and go hand by hand, we showed that for Hume, at least in some cases, the beauty is more important. It seems that, for Hume, the utility, such as the convenience of home and eventually is some kind of beauty. Thus, the utility is pleasant and agreeable for us. At the same way, the virtue and vise are grasped by taste as beauty or deformity.
But there is no implication to the priority of aesthetics. There are many pieces of evidence for the priority of morals in all of Hume's philosophy. The beauty has priority in perception morality but morality, in turn, has priority to aesthetics.
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