David Hume and Immanuel Kant on our ideas of right and wrong - Essay Example

Compare and contrast David Hume and Immanuel Kant on our ideas of right and wrong. Whose position is stronger The human soul is always on the look out for the answers that haunt their reasoning. Philosophy provides one with the answers to all the questions concerned with the universe, human existence, understanding, morality, ethics and the like. One of the major questions that have been asked all through the history is about the meaning and ideology of right and wrong. What is right and what is wrong How can you identify something as right or wrong These are some of the questions that involve the awareness of the philosophy concerning right and wrong. Philosophical ethics, as termed by David Hume, deal with such questions and this branch of philosophy methodizes and, sometimes, corrects the practice in which human beings engage in everyday life. Accordingly, we try to understand the right things of life in difficult situations trying to do the good in respect of what we are and how we act in order to strive to do the right things as human beings and to avoid the things that are bad. Sometimes called meta-ethics, the specific part of the philosophical ethics discusses what right and good mean and how to act out for a life of good avoiding the bad in daily life. David Hume and Immanuel Kant are two of the most prominent philosophers to deal with the ides of right and wrong. David Hume (1711-1776), philosopher, historian, political theorist, social scientist, and essayist in his An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1758) and A Treatise of Human Nature (1739) provide a good knowledge about the understanding of right and wrong. Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804), through his works The Metaphysics of Morals and Critique of Pure Reason (1781) give us a stronger understanding about the idea of right and wrong. The concepts of right and wrong includes in the branch of Philosophy called Ethics that encompasses right conduct and good living. The concepts of right and wrong involve great faculties of human understanding. David Hume, the extremely influential figure of the Enlightenment, was the torch bearer of the Empiricist movement in Philosophy which seeks sense data as the basis of all knowledge. A skeptic, empiricist, and radical atheist, Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding may be understood as a concise statement of his central philosophical positions. The ideas of Hume had their impact on Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Psychology. "Hume is remarkable in that he does not shy away from conclusions that might seem unlikely or unreasonable. Ultimately, he concludes that we have no good reason to believe almost everything we believe about the world, but that this is not such a bad thing. Nature helps us to get by where reason lets us down." (Hume. 2006). The empiricist philosopher tries to make clear the rigidity of scientific methodology rely on philosophical reasoning. According to him, we can understand the world only as a matter of fact and so only experience can prove this. Relations of ideas cannot speak exactly for the existence of human beings, the universe or God. Thus, right and wrong are concepts that need to be experienced rather than described. This empirical understanding of the ideas of right and wrong is needed to have the clear picture of things. In the work An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Hume discusses the origin and association of ideas. He distinguishes between impressions and ideas which will give us his notion of idea in general. Idea, for him, is livelier than impressions. Also, Hume talks about the train of thoughts, associating different ideas and explains the three kinds of relations between ideas. They are resemblance, contiguity in space-time, and cause-and-effect. Hume discusses the concepts of right and wrong and other related ideas of ethics, prolifically, in his A Treatise of Human Nature (1739). This is an expanded form of the discussions in the short essay An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals. In an empirical way, Hume argues that the moral judgments on right, wrong and other related ideas are not based on self interest only. He puts forward the sympathy-based concept of moral sentimentalism, which refutes the view that our moral behavior is controlled just by reason. The first book of A Treatise of Human Nature, "Of the Understanding" opens with a statement on the validity of empiricism and based on this concept or premise he examines the various philosophical concepts. "First, he demonstrates that all of our complex ideas are formed out of simpler ideas, which were themselves formed on the basis of impressions we received through our senses. Therefore, ideas are not fundamentally different from experiences. Second, Hume defines "matters of fact" as matters that must be experienced, not reasoned out or arrived at instinctually." (Hume. 2006). The theories formulated by Hume on human understanding are influenced by Locke and Berkeley. The denial of innate idea and other such key concepts can be traced in the philosophies of all these thinkers. Based on the claim of Berkeley that the specific experience originates the general ideas, Hume discusses on the concept of abstract idea. The explanation of Hume that several specific experiences can be included in a general idea or term. Thus, Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature, which is "an extensive investigation of the origin, nature, aims, and limits of human knowledge and understanding," gives the empiricist view of idea. (Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature. 2004). Based on this argument, our understanding of the concepts of right and wrong are limited. Everything is subject to experience and so is our understanding of right and wrong. There is no right or wrong unless one experiences them as they are. "According to Hume, the idea of cause and effect may be based on ideas about four kinds of relations: 1) contiguity in time or place (i.e. the finding that a cause and an effect are contiguous in time or place), 2) temporal precedence (i.e. the finding that a cause always occurs prior to an effect), 3) constant conjunction (i.e. the finding that a cause and an effect always occur in regular succession), and 4) necessary connection (i.e. the finding that a cause and an effect are necessarily connected with each other)." (Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature. 2004). His skepticism applies to his approach to the questions of religion and metaphysics. He also argues that it is not our reasoning power but our passion that determines our action. The difference between right or wrong cannot be determined by our reason but impressions determine them. Thus the ideas of Hume on right and wrong are determined by our sensory experience of them or better they are based on the empirical principles that are developed by the empiricists. Immanuel Kant in his great work, The Metaphysics of Morals, provides us a stronger and better picture about the concepts of right and wrong. In the work, Kant makes clear that all the duties are either duties of right, or of virtue and the work goes on to explicate both these concepts in order to give a good understanding of right and wrong and duties of virtue. We get a rather complete notion of what right means through the philosophical explication in the book. "The conception of right -- as referring to a corresponding obligation which is the moral aspect of it -- in the first place, has regard only to the external and practical relation of one person to another, in so far as they can have influence upon each other, immediately or mediately, by their actions as facts." (Kant). The concept "does not indicate the relation of the action of an individual to the wish or the mere desire of another, as in acts of benevolence or of unkindness, but only the relation of his free action to the freedom of action of the other." (Kant). The notion of right, in this mutual relation of voluntary actions, "does not take into consideration the matter of the matter of the act of will in so far as the end which any one may have in view in willing it is concerned. In other words, it is not asked in a question of right whether any one on buying goods for his own business realizes a profit by the transaction or not; but only the form of the transaction is taken into account, in considering the relation of the mutual acts of will. Acts of will or voluntary choice are thus regarded only in so far as they are free, and as to whether the action of one can harmonize with the freedom of another, according to a universal law." (Kant). According to Kant, the concept realizes the conditions wherein the voluntary actions of an individual may be related with the voluntary actions of other persons in line with the universal law of freedom. When the action or the condition of a person coexists with others' freedom, on the basis of universal law, if someone blocks him/her in the particular action, we can identify this as wrong. It is because the obstruction made on the performance of the action cannot coexist with the freedom according to universal law. Ethics enforces upon a person "the obligation to make the fulfillment of right a maxim of my conduct." The universal law of right, according to Kant, acts externally in a way so that the free exercise of one's will can to coexist with others' freedom, according to a universal law. The universal law is clearly demonstrated in the work. The work further makes it clear that right is conjoined with the title or authority to compel and that strict right may be also represented as the possibility of a universal reciprocal compulsion in harmony with the freedom of all according to universal laws. According to Kant there is only one innate right and that is the birthright of freedom. The Critique Of Pure Reason (1781) is the most influential work in the by Kant that treats the empiricism of Hume and rejects it. This is work that provides the most influential idea regarding human understanding. The treatise may be understood as an attempt of Kant to find out the answers to what can be known, what should be known, and what may be hoped for. What Kant tries through the work is to find the answers of these questions by establishing the relationship between understanding on the basis of reason ('priory') and experience ('posteriori'). In the work he distinguishes between priori knowledge and posteriori knowledge. "It is a question worth investigating, whether there exists any knowledge independent of experience and all sense impressions. Such knowledge is called a priori and is distinguished from a posteriori knowledge which has its sources in experience. That there is genuine a priori knowledge, that we can advance independent of all experience, is shown by the brilliant example of mathematics...." (Dr. Boeree. 1999). Thus, it is an extensive work that treats the philosophical matters of disputes. Now, that we have thoroughly analyzed the philosophies of Hume and Kant on the ideas of right and wrong, we can very well make a comparison and contrast between the two on the concepts of right and wrong and on human understanding in general. Whereas, Hume's idea is entirely based on the empirical experience of all the matter, we get only the part of the reality. The notion that human understanding is completely dependent on the sensory experience is subject to debate. There have been many other philosophers, like John Locke, who hold the same view. The idea is rather given in part and the understanding of the concepts like right and wrong is not entirely possible based on this partial knowledge. But as we come to the understanding of these concepts in Kant, there is a greater clarity of the concepts and our awareness is illumined by the works of Kant. The method used by Kant, likewise, is far superior compared to that of Hume. That is to conclude that the understanding of the concepts of right and wrong in Kant is stronger than that of Hume. Consequently, we may safely conclude from this discussion on the comparative analysis of David Hume and Immanuel Kant that the latter makes a stronger exposition of the concepts of right and wrong. An analysis based on the works Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1758) and A Treatise of Human Nature (1739) by Hume and The Metaphysics of Morals and Critique of Pure Reason (1781) by Kant justifies this conclusion as right. Kant had been dogmatically accepting the traditional ideas of human reason and it is a popular misconception that Kant was enlightened by Hume. Works cited Hume, David. An enquiry concerning human understanding. Overall Analysis and Themes. SparkNotes. 2006. 26 Nov. 2007 . Hume. David. A Treatise of Human Nature. Summary. Book I: Of the Understanding. 2006. 26 Nov. 2007 . Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature. Angelfire.com. 2004. 26 Nov. 2007 . Kant, Immanuel. The Metaphysics of Morals. Division of the Metaphysics of Morals as a System of Duties Generally. 26 Nov. 2007 . Dr. Boeree, C. George. Hume and Kant. 1999. 26 Nov. 2007 . Read More