An Enquiry Concerning The Principles Of Morals Essay example -- essays

     What is a moral? This is a question that has plagued philosophers for many years. Is it possible to have a set of everyday morals? There ar many questions that surround the mystery of morals. They reckon to flummox our every challenge. We base our decisions on what is right and what is wrong. But what is it that in reality determines what is right and what is wrong? Is it our sense of antecedent? Is it our sense of judgment? This is a question that David Hume spent much of his life pondering. What exactly is it that drives our actions? Yes, morals drive them, but what determines what our morals ar? What is it that ultimately drives our actions our feelings or our minds?      Hume would say that it is our concept that ultimately drives our actions. According to Hume, agent is incap up to(p) of motivating an action. According to Hume, fence advisenot fuel an action and in that locationfore cannot motivate it. Hume feel that al l actions are motivated by our sentiment. For example, on page 84 Appendix I, he gives the example of a twist. "It resides in the mind of the person, who is ungrateful. He must, therefore, feel it, and be conscious of it." Here, it is evident that Hume is saying that unless the person, or criminal in this case, sincerely yours believes in what he wants to do, he will not be able to motivate the action. In other words, unless the sentiment is there, the action cannot be willed into being. Hence, the sentiment is the driving force do-nothing the action.      Hume does not however say that savvy is incapable of determining wether an action is virtuous or vicious (moral or immoral), but quite he tries to say that the reason for the morality of an action does not dictate the execution or perversion of an act so far as determination of wether the action is executed or not. In simpler terms, reason has its place in determining morality, but it is not in the motivation of an action. Motivation must come from the heart, or better yet, from at bottom the person from their beliefs. Reason merely allows the person to make moral distinctions. Without reason, there would be no morality. Without reason, one moral clause would not be differentiable from another. That is to say that below all morals, there must be some underlying truth because "Truth is disputable n... ...reasons are non necessarily the persons sentiments, they do not motivate actions. One other reason why reason does not impel action is because reason is ground on truths. Truths are never changing whereas sentiments are dynamic and are in a constant change of flux. At one moment, the criminal could feel sympathy for his victims and decide to spare a life, and the very next, the aforesaid(prenominal) criminal could become enraged at the pimple on a hostages forehead and shoot him.      Of course these are extreme cases, but the signalize is clear. Reason would dictate that only the first action would be moral. If reason drove actions, then moral behavior would prevail and there would be no immoral actions and hence there would be no crimes. This shows how sentiments can change as the individuals perception of the universe changes. Obviously, the driving force behind the criminal shooting the victim because of a skin blemish is not one based on reason, but instead it is based on feeling, emotion, sentiment. Although it is an abstract idea and a foregathermingly tiny technicality, it is easy to see that indeed reason is not the ultimate motivator but instead sentiment is.