Hume's second book
Benevolence and Justice
The first four chapters of Hume’s Enquiry of Concerning the Principles of Moral reviews over his last book theories about how it is human nature to seek happiness and value virtues, characteristics that make us feel good, and ignore the vices, characteristics that make us feel bad and the notion of reason. In this book, he stated that he want to explore and analysis more about our human characteristics of virtues and vices. He starts off with writing about benevolence and how natural it is to help people to help us become more eminent. Thus, I can understand why people do nice deeds for others for the only reason to benefit themselves, for friends and family, or for our society.
However, it his three chapter, he explains how society needs justice, to create order, fairness, and peace among individuals. Yet, we wouldn’t need justice, if everyone was benevolent. The notion of being selfishness slowly arises within us as we create a passion for luxury which is driven by our quest for happiness. Thus, the virtues that we value are slowly replaced with selfishness to own things for our own happiness. And eventually, the saying goes that the person, who owns the more things, wins. And chapter four, quickly belief how this notion of selfishness affect our political society, that creates law to govern the people, base upon our values. However the problem with that is that laws don’t completely control us as individuals. It is our virtues and vices that control our actions. The individuals have a choice to obey or disobey laws for the main purpose to seek happiness within ourselves.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment