An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
David Hume 1751
This book examines how people judge moral character through a series of arguments and examples. A clever cheat, called the sensible knave, tests whether honesty always serves our own interests.
152 pages 2h 57m reading time
- A central work of moral philosophy, which Hume himself called the best of all his writings.
- Argues that our moral judgments come mainly from feeling, not reason: we call a trait good when it is useful or pleasing to the person who has it or to others.
- Argues that people naturally feel concern for others (Hume calls this "benevolence"), so kindness is not just selfishness in disguise.
- Its test of whether a trait is "useful" helped shape utilitarianism, the idea that right actions are those that bring the most happiness, later developed by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill.
- Its view that morality rests on human feeling still guides philosophers today, and it shapes modern research on how people actually make moral judgments.
Rebuilt from a flop
Hume reworked it from part of his Treatise of Human Nature, an earlier book that almost nobody had noticed.
Quiet first arrival
Hume later wrote that it "came unnoticed and unobserved into the world" when it was first published.
Written at home
Hume wrote much of it at Ninewells, his family's country home in Scotland, after returning from travels abroad.
Ends with a dialogue
It closes with a short imagined conversation comparing the very different customs of ancient Athens and modern France.