Nature of Human Action & Moral Action

Both David Hume and Immanuel Kant offer arguments concerning the nature of human action in general and moral action in particular and the conditions necessary to hold a person morally responsible for his or her actions. They approach the issue of morality from different perspectives and suggest somewhat different rationales for why human beings can be held accountable for their actions.

Hume considers the nature and origin of morality and asks whether it is derived from reason or sentiment, by which he means feelings rather than rational thought. This relates to Hume's conception of knowledge and thus his idea of the meaning and value of reason. Hume follows Locke by determining that all the contents of the mind, all ideas, derive from human experience and thus represent impressions. Hume uses different terminology than Locke, however. He says that perceptions is a term covering all of the contents of the mind in general. He divides perceptions into ideas and impressions. Impressions are described by Hume as the immediate data of experience, such as sensations. Ideas are the copies or faint images of impressions in thinking and reasoning. Impressions come by sensory observation, and ideas come from what is left as we recall those impressions. Idea in this regard signifies image. Hume derives all human knowledge ultimately from impressions, or from the immediate data of experience. Hume differentiates between impressions and ideas in terms of their vividness. T

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ble, what is generous, take possession of the heart, and animates us to embrace and maintain it. . . Extinguish all the warm feelings and prepossessions in favor of virtue, and all disgust or aversion to vice: Render men totally indifferent towards these distinctions; and morality is no longer a practical study, nor has any tendency to regulate our lives and actions (Hume 5-6). Hume decides finally that it is likely there is some internal sense or feeling which nature has made universal and which determines morality as an active principle so that virtue is our happiness and vice is our misery. Kant's approach to morality goes directly to motivation and to the need for the individual to choose to be moral rather than merely to act in a moral fashion. That is, it is not enough that the individual's behavior conform to moral and ethical principles. That could happen if the individual acted out of inclination, and Kant offers several examples of actions which one would be inclined to take but which must be taken out of duty if they are to be assessed as moral. Kant's morality is based on volition--the individual has to choose to act in a moral fashion, specifically by fulfilling his or her duty and by living with a reverence for

Category: Philosophy - N