The role of human nature in Hume's ethics

Download
index.pdf
2008
Arslanoğlu Çelik, Şengül
Show full item record
282
views
178
downloads
This dissertation aims to determine the role of human nature in Hume's philosophy. It will examine how moral motivation arises when one takes human nature as the basis of moral philosophyWhat is maintained here is that Hume approaches his rival rationalist philosophers whom he criticised for drawing on metaphysics and rational methods in building the foundation of their ethics. Hume’s “science of man” attempts to isolate the basis of ethics from metaphysical and rational elements. However, this paper demonstrates that in doing so, Hume actually resorts to reason. Further, certain inconsistencies in Hume’s argument can only be resolved by recourse to metaphysics. To make this clear I examine how the passions that Hume puts forward as the basis of human nature cause sympathy and build a sense of morality. Since the most basic feature of human nature exists within the concept of “being-human”, the necessity of metaphysical and ontological explanations will be shown. Hume’s position on the goodness or wickedness of human nature is examined. As a result, the purpose of this research is to show that it is not possible to isolate ethics from metaphysical elements by constructing a science based on Newtonian methods.
Metaphysics., Philosophy.
http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/3/12609476/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/17982
Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

Suggestions

The relation of freedom and evil in Kant’s moral philosophy
Aydın Bayram, Selma; Turan, Şeref Halil; Department of Philosophy (2006)
The purpose of this study is to examine concepts of freedom and evil, and to clarify their relation in terms of Kant’s moral philosophy. In this study, I firstly examine Kant’s understanding of freedom and the problems that this understanding leads to. I also discuss how the concept of freedom can be reconciled with the concept of evil expressed in the form of “propensity to evil”. Additionally, I attempt to show the significance of the notion of evil for Kant’s moral theory. Evil is one of the most critici...
The visual formation of cartesian subject in modern metaphysics : a critique of Cogito philosophy
Ganioğlu, Zafer; Akçay, Ali Adnan; Department of Sociology (2006)
This thesis scrutinizes modern metaphysics through a specific reading and critique of Cartesian Philosophy. In the study, the concepts of metaphysics, ideology, modernity, subject and modern science are re-examined in their relations among them and in that the peculiarity of modern metaphysics is attempted to be revealed. At the core of the thesis, Descartes’ understanding of subject is inquired to be modern subject, and its role in the transformations happened in Western world with the advent of modern age...
The concepts of health and sickness in Nietzsche's philosophy
Akbalık, Bilge; Parkan, Barış; Department of Philosophy (2009)
The purpose of the present study is to assess the role of the concepts of health and sickness in Nietzsche’s philosophy. While doing this, our basic presupposition will be that these concepts owe their special place to their being the new criteria for Nietzsche’s project of revaluation of all existing values. Nietzsche was philosophizing in the face of the crisis of 19th century Europe, that is, nihilism. According to him, Western traditional thought is based on an otherworldly oriented conception of life t...
The growing desert: nihilism and metaphysics in Martin Heidegger's thought
Duman, Musa; İnam, Ahmet; Department of Philosophy (2009)
In this study, we explore Heidegger’s understanding of nihilism as the essential dimension of metaphysics, of metaphysical experience of Being, and in the following, we address his responses to it. Heidegger takes nihilism as rooted in the metaphysical way of thinking, hence metaphysics and nihilism standing in a primordial identity. Such metaphysical way of thinking as a framework in which Being is experinced and articulated, explicitly or implicitly in all areas of Western culture, from art to science, gi...
The Uses of the World Soul in Plato's Timaeus
Evren, Şahan; Bağçe, Samet; Department of Philosophy (2009)
The purpose of the present study is to assess the explanatory value of the concept of the World Soul in the cosmological account of Plato’s Timaeus. The World Soul plays a crucial role in the account of the world of Becoming in the Timaeus and in Plato’s philosophy of science. The World Soul explains why there is motion at all in the universe and sustains the regularity and uniformity of the motion of the celestial objects. Its constitution and the way it is generated by the Demiurge endow it an intermediar...
Citation Formats
Ş. Arslanoğlu Çelik, “The role of human nature in Hume’s ethics,” Ph.D. - Doctoral Program, Middle East Technical University, 2008.
METU IIS - Integrated Information Service open@metu.edu.tr