Hume's Moral Epistemology

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Hume's Moral Epistemology

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HUME'S MORAL EPISTEMOLOGY Jonathan Harrison

CLARENDON PRESS · OXFORD 1976

Oxford University Press, Ely House, London W .1 GLASGOW

NEW YORK

TORONTO

MELBOURNE

WELLINGTON

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CASEBOUND ISBN O 19 PAPERBACK ISBN O 19

©

824566 I 875037 4

Oxford University Press 1976

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press

Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd, Frame and London

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PREFACE MosTofwhat Hume wrote about Moral Philosophy is to be found in Book III of A Treatise of Human Nature (published in 1740, a year later than the rest of the Treatise) and in An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (published in 1751). In the following pages, I shall be concerned with only a small part of what he says in these two works. I shall be concerned only with those pages in which he tries to answer the question 'How do we know the difference between right and wrong, good and bad, virtue and vice?' These pages are to be found almost, though not quite, entirely in Book III, Part I, Sections 1 and 2 of the Treatise, and Section I and Appendix I of the Enquiry. There are, of course, a great number of other questions (sometimes more exciting ones) which Hume discusses in these two books, and on these I hope