• Journal of Korean Philosophical Society
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• v.141
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• pp.133-166
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• 2017

The main aim of this paper is to show why justice is based on convention, not nature, in David Hume. Most philosopher, since Aristotle, have considered justice in relation to distribution. This understanding of justice continues up to modern times, and is handled especially in relation to ownership or private property in modern times. In modern times, private property is regarded as an absolute right that should not be violated in any case. Hume identifies this private property with justice. The absolute inviolability of private property is equivalent to never violate to justice. Hume is concerned with the question of where this justice originate. In other words, Hume is not concerned with the Kantian justification of justice, but rather with the psychological discussion of the genesis process of the idea of justice. Hume's answer is that "social utility" is its origin. Public societies are necessary conditions for human being. In other words, if public societies do not exist, humans can not exist. How then can a public society, which is a prerequisite for human being, exist or can be maintained? According to Hume, it is maintained by means of justice. So where is the ground for justice? Hume argues that the basis of justice is not nature, but human conventions. Man accepts justice tacitly and by doing so man can maintains his being. This is a rough insight of Hume. Hume uses a wide variety of concepts to carry out his argument. In this paper, we focus on how the idea of justice in human mind, based on these various concepts presented by Hume, is formed.

• Journal of Korean Philosophical Society
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• no.114
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• pp.305-335
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• 2016

In the eighteenth century, the scottish philosophers Francis Hutcheson, David Hume and Adam Smith share the idea that morality comes from moral sense, which is a feeling of approval or disapproval of agent's motive and action. However, they have the different views in explaining the mechanism that generates the moral sentiments. Hutcheson takes a moral sense to be a unique mental faculty that is innate to all humans, and regards it as being guaranteed by supernatural apparatus like divine Providence. Hume and Smith reject Hutcheson's concept of internal moral sense and take a stage further Hutcheson's projects of internalisation by naturalizing morality in terms of the principle of sympathy. It is widely held that Hume's moral sentimentalism is essentially similar to Adam Smith's. Though there are important points of contact between Smith's account of sympathy and Hume's, the differences are considerable. The chief of them lies in the fact that Hume grounds our approval of virtue on our recognition of its utility and convention, and Smith does not. Smith grounds our approval of virtue on the impartial spectator's judgment, i.e., conscience. Hence for Smith, the impartial spectator is the one that bridges the gap between particularity and universality and works the vehicle of practical reason. Given this, in this paper, first, I will clarify the difference between Hume's and Adam Smith's understandings of sympathy. Second, I will elucidate how they explain the process to produce the moral sentiments based on their understandings of sympathy. I shall finally explicate in what way Hume's and Smith's theories on sympathy work as moral normativity.

• Korean Journal of Logic
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.59-88
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• 2009

According to David Hume, a deductive demonstration for inductive inference is not possible, because inductive inference is not deductive; and an inductive demonstration for inductive inference is not possible either, because such a demonstration is circular. Thus, on his view, there is no way of justifying inductive inference. Ever since Hume raised this problem of induction, a fair number of philosophers have tried to solve it. Nevertheless there is still no solution which is plausible enough to receive wide endorsement. According to Wilfrid Sellars, we cannot justify inductive inference by any theoretical reasoning; we can vindicate it only by a certain sort of practical reasoning. In this paper, I defend this Sellarsian proposal by developing and explaining it.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.58 no.2
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• pp.189-215
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• 2012

This paper reads Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) in light of the 18th-century understanding of 'sympathy' including those of Hume and Smith and also in light of what Michael Hardt in our century has called "affective labor." I argue that the imaginative capacity and "seeing" are crucial in understanding Smith's idea of 'sympathy.' By showing how the monster's ugliness precludes any human character from sympathizing with him, Mary Shelley exposes that Smith's idea of sympathy fails to maintain social harmony. Mary Shelley revises Smith's 'sympathy' and makes it more radical by suggesting that the active affective labor could bridge the epistemological distance lying between the agent concerned and the impartial spectator. I first read Smith's idea of sympathy as an imaginative capacity which is inevitably influenced by 'seeing' and visual perception. Then I analyze the scenes in which the creature in Frankenstein fails to acquire any human sympathy due to his ugliness, and show how the specular nature of 'sympathy' is disrupted when one party is visually ugly and deformed. I conclude that affective labor and active moral reflection on the part of the spectator need to be provided when the agent concerned is 'ugly' and thus challenges our habitual epistemological boundary. Shelley's re-evaluation of Smith's sympathy, thus, suggests that affective labor may not be something that women alone have to perform, but an ethical practice that concerns all human beings and that can transform the otherwise flawed human capacity for sympathy.

• Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.211-220
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• 2019

It helps to wisely abstain from errors of the a priori subjective emotions related to human emotions, and orders emotions to make rational choices. These emotional happiness of human and moral sensitivities work directly or indirectly in rational choice of rational thought and reason. Abraham would have been troubled by the divine mandate to sacrifice a son who was only one, and a son who had been healed. Was his reason reasonable at this time? In rational reason, it can be said that the act of dedicating his son is an appropriate act, but is it possible in the human mind? Aristoteles also called human virtue virtue in good for human beings. Because happiness is also a mental activity, we have to know a certain degree about the mind. This ψυχή(psyche, spirit) spirit is an irrational element that is invisible but an intervention in rational principles. Also C. G. Jung states that all human beings have four dynamic psychological functions that are not visible, and that the mind is driven by these four functional dimensions. This means that the elements of S, Sensing, N, Intuition, T, Thinking, and Feeling are combined. David Hume also emphasized the principle of empathy, asserting that morality can not be derived from reason, and Max Ferdinand Scheler, before grasping the visual characteristics of a person, has already captured the whole feeling of the person, And that the value given to this feeling is the value, and that the function of emotion that is elevated to the perceived object by grasping the value through this process and the value is always preceded by the reason. Emmanuel Levinas states that emotional emotions of love are ahead of reason and that emotions precede human reasoning and rationality is the inability of emotional control that we need rational thought and rational and wise action as reason of control and temperance. As part of human emotional education, in the 7th curriculum, Bloom's cognitive, perceptive, and behavioral domain, which is a person with integrated thinking, is trying to be a moral practitioner. It focuses on how to act according to the direction of emotions for virtuous acts and how to develop emotions for emotions on behalf of vicious acts. We can design the possibility and direction of cultivating human emotions and emotional happiness and happy sensitivities by the principle of strengthening virtue and the principle of elimination of ill feeling.