“Artificial Virtue” in Hume's Treatise

Abstract

This paper tries to understand Hume's concept of “artificial virtue” in Treaise after the following manner. Firstly, it shows Francis Hutcheson, his predecessor, had a program to establish a new system of moral philosophy including the theory of property right founded on his “moral sense” theory. Secondly, it scrutinizes Hume's argument against this program, and show that Hume pointed to “reasoning in a circle” in explaining the morality of justice according to “natural” moral sense theory. Finally, it attends to two implications in Hume's own explanation about “the rules of justice”. The one is that the sense of “natural virtue” cannot preserve social union though founded on the general point of view. The other is that the sense of “artificial virtue” is an effect of social union, while it become to be a strong motive to just action in a large society.