Moral Distinctions Not Derived From Reason

Reason Is Not The Basis Of Morality

Morality is a subject that interests us above all others.

Nothing is ever present to the mind but its perceptions.

• All the actions of seeing, hearing, judging, loving, hating, and thinking are perceptions.
• The mind can never exert itself in any action that cannot be called a perception.

Consequently, ‘perception’ applies to our moral judgments.

• Approving one character and condemning another are just different perceptions.

Perceptions resolve themselves into impressions and ideas.

Do we distinguish between good and bad, vice and virtue through our ideas or impressions?

Some think that:

• virtue is just a conformity to reason,
• there are eternal fitness and unfitness of things, which are the same to every rational being, and
• the immutable measures of right and wrong impose an obligation on humans and on the Deity himself.

All these systems believe that morality, like truth, is discerned merely by:

• ideas, and
• their juxtaposition and comparison.

But is it possible, from reason alone, to distinguish between moral good and evil?

Or do we distinguish between moral good and evil from other principles?

If morality naturally had no influence on human passions and actions, it would be useless to inculcate it.

• It would be fruitless to have that many rules and precepts from all moralists.

Philosophy is commonly divided into:

1. Speculative
2. Practical

Morality is always comprehended under practical philosophy.

Morality is supposed to:

• influence our passions and actions, and
• go beyond the calm and indolent judgments of the understanding.

We experience that men are:

• often governed by their duties,
• deterred from unjust actions by the thought of injustice, and
• impelled to just action by the thought of obligation.

Morals influence our actions and affections.

• But reason alone can never have any such influence
• Thus, morals cannot be derived from reason.

Morals excite passions and produce or prevent actions.

• Reason is utterly impotent in this.

Therefore, the rules of morality are not conclusions of our reason.

• We cannot say that morality is discovered only by a deduction of reason, as long as reason has no influence on our passions and actions.

An active principle can never be founded on an inactive one.

If reason were inactive in itself, it must remain inactive in all its shapes and appearances, whether it:

• exerts itself in natural or moral subjects, or
• considers the:
  • powers of external bodies, or
  • actions of rational beings.