Within the demesnes of philosophical inquiry, it is common practice to draw bold lines between various schools of thought--Plato versus Aristotle, Augustine versus Aquinas, Hume versus Kant. Certainly, there are historical reasons for such divisions; after all, when one philosopher deliberately attempts to refute another, we forge between them a certain causal link. But this heuristic tendency gives us an almost evolutionary perspective on philosophy, which in turn gives us a sense of "survival of the fittest." Kant becomes Hume's predator, indeed, becomes the predator of British Empiricism as a whole. In our classrooms and in our research papers, we paint a picture wherein an entire movement of philosophy is reduced to little more than "Kant kibble." But what choice do we have? Hume was not alive to respond to Kant, let alone Kant's modern-day disciples. I believe the answer is an appeal to those who took up the cause of human experience after Kant had his say. For although adherents of empiricism and existentialism have their own disagreements to work out, a careful consideration of Hume's ethics will reveal that no one defends his position better than the fathers of the existential project.

Before we undertake this approach, it is important to note that a thorough reinterpretation of Hume from an existential perspective is a project more suited to longer work, while our current venue can merely introduce the possibility. Consequently, we will focus as narrowly as possible upon Hume's ethics, their parallel expressions in Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, and how such a reinterpretation can deliver Humean thought from the jaws of neo-Kantian criticism.

Hume Versus Kant's Disciple

At its most basic, Hume's ethics is a discussion of the relationship between reason and passion--namely, that reason alone has no motivating influence. "Reason is," Hume writes, "and ought only to be the slave of the passions" (266). Some explanation is offered--Hume describes a passion as an original existence that cannot be opposed by reason because "reason is the discovery of truth or falsehood" and whatever "is incapable of being true or false" (such as a passion) can "never be an object of our reason" (295). Although reason might conceivably inform some passion into opposing another passion, reason generally has no motivating force. Consequently, "reason can teach us how to satisfy our desires or passions, but it cannot tell us whether those desires or passions are themselves 'rational'; that is, there is no sense in which desires or passions are rational or irrational" (Korsgaard 6).

Since "vice and virtue are not discoverable merely by reason, or the comparison of ideas, it must be by means of some impression or sentiment they occasion" (Hume 302). So in addition to reason and the passions, Hume derives his ethics from a specialized passion or "moral sense." We will not consider this principle in depth, but it is important to keep in mind lest we mistake Hume for some sort of psychological egoist. Stating that we are motivated solely by our passions or desires is not, for Hume, the same as being motivated only by that which we self-interestedly wish to pursue.

On the other hand, there is certainly something a bit startling about the Humean formulation when we read:

'Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. 'Tis not contrary to reason for me to choose my total ruin, to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian or person wholly unknown to me. 'Tis as little contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledg'd lesser good to my greater, and have a more ardent affection for the former than the latter. (Hume 267)

Of course Hume's detractors get a lot of mileage out of this statement. Under Hume's definition of reason, they ask, is any other conclusion possible? It seems unlikely. Christine Korsgaard, a Kant scholar of some renown and an outspoken critic of Humean ethics, suggests that Hume's problem rests in his narrow consideration of reason:

Hume's arguments against a more extensive practical employment of reason depend upon Hume's own views about what reason is--that is, about what sorts of operation and judgment are "rational." His motivational skepticism (skepticism about the scope of reason as a motive) is entirely dependent upon his content skepticism (skepticism about what reason has to say about choice and action). (Korsgaard 7)

What Korsgaard seems to be saying is that Hume has not drawn incorrect conclusions from his understanding of reason and passion; rather, Hume is wrong about reason and thus is building his ethics on a flawed foundation. Korsgaard wishes to re-categorize as "reason" something Hume does not include in that category.

It is clear that Korsgaard's ultimate goal is to demonstrate that reason can, in fact, have a motivating influence. But let us return to her arguments momentarily; the time has come to consider the existential position.

The Existential Fit

In his discussion of Humean thought, Donald C. Hubin states that Humeanism is an influential--if controversial--ethical position precisely because "reasons for action should turn out to be the sort of things that typically do motivate people" (31). Whether reason "can" motivate a person, clearly, is a moot point if it never actually does so--because the empiricist position, at heart, is one which places emphasis on experience. Although that experience is typically considered to encompass the kind of experience one has through the five senses, it should also be noted that the experience of emotions, passions, thoughts, and even the faculty of reason were important to British Empiricism and to Hume.

Of course, the empirical approach to philosophy demands an ability to describe life--to conduct a sort of phenomenology of experience. Hume's own struggles reflect this approach. When his rational inquiries left him feeling confused, frustrated, or out-of-sorts, Hume wrote:

Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium [...] I dine, I play a game of back-gammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when [...] I wou'd return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strain'd, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther. (Hume 175)

Here we have our first clue that existentialism might help to inform and expand upon Hume's position: the notion of experience over reasoning is similarly important to existential thought. Hume's observation that life--and one's participation in it--transcends the bounds of mere reason is extremely informative. For although Hume clearly frames his discussion of ethics rationally rather than (for the most part) phenomenologically, might this be due to the tradition from which Hume is drawing his methods? What if, instead of reading Hume's ethics as a rational inquiry into the empirical nature of ethics, we were to read Hume's ethics as a phenomenological exploration of how humans experience the decision-making process? What if Hume is not defining reason, passion, and morality, but describing them as he experiences them? Would this not in fact be a more empirical reading?

It should be clear by now that the answer is yes. Furthermore, it would require us to read Hume, not merely as the "last great empiricist," but as a sort of proto-existentialist. Consider, for instance, Fyodor Dostoevsky's assertion that "man, always and everywhere, whoever he is, has preferred to act as he wished, and not at all as reason and advantage have dictated" (19). Here we have a remarkable echo of Hume's assertion that reason is in no way motivating. This is not an argument, not a meticulous construction of definitions or a careful logical progression; this is a statement of human experience. People tend to decide first what it is they wish to do--they are seized upon by a preference, a passion, an original existence which is neither true nor false. Then, having decided what it is they wish to do (or having decided they did the right thing), they set about looking for reasons. Modern psychology further supports this observation with studies of cognitive dissonance, the phenomenon wherein "people will subjectively reinforce decisions or commitments they have already made. [...] According to the theory, the possibility of being wrong is dissonance-arousing, so people will change their perceptions to make their decisions seem better" (Cognitive Dissonance ¶7).

Similar sentiment is expressed by Friedrich Nietzsche when he states that "the change in general taste is more powerful than that of opinions" (Gay Science 106). True to form, Nietzsche is quick to attribute tastes to quirks of diet or physiology and with the rhetoric of paradox suggest that opinions are tyrannically enforced upon us; but the point is that "all proofs, refutations, and the whole intellectual masquerade, are merely symptoms of the change in taste and most certainly not [...] its causes" (Gay Science 106). As with Hume and Dostoevsky, little in the way of formal argument is presented. Rather, a phenomenon of experience, an observable trend in human nature is described, not because it seems to fit with this philosophical model or that one, but because it fits with the facts of human experience.

How This Helps Us Understand Hume

Now we can return to Korsgaard's objection--that reason can in fact be motivating. We did not trouble ourselves earlier with a thorough inquiry into the nature of her objection, nor shall we do so now--because from an existential standpoint, her objection is irrelevant before she has even begun to explore its implications. It does not matter what Hume's semantic shortcomings might prove to be, it fails to matter if Korsgaard's proposed replacement is more cohesive, it cannot matter what anyone wishes to categorize under the heading of "reason"--Hume's argument is ultimately concerned with none of these things. Regardless of how absurd, how illogical, or how undesirable the implications, insofar as Hume manages to accurately describe the way humans experience motivation, he has succeeded; any and all rational objections leveled against him or his ethical system are rendered irrelevant. Describing the process by which we actually experience motivation will always trump a rational explication concerning what "should" motivate us.

But we needn't leave the matter there. Another suggestion from Hume's newfound friends is that we must suspect "that the decisive value of an action lies precisely in what is unintentional in it"--in other words, we can learn less from what Korsgaard has to say than from how she goes about saying it (Beyond Good and Evil 44). As it turns out, we've already seen her approach in one critique--to state that Hume is wrong about reason and proceed to show how his model fails under the revised definition. In another of her critiques of Hume, Korsgaard writes:

[N]either the joint causal efficacy of the belief and the desire, nor the existence of an appropriate conceptual connection between them, nor the bare conjunction of these two facts, enables us to judge that a person acts rationally. [...] A person acts rationally [...] only when her action is the expression of her own mental activity, and not merely the result of the operation of beliefs and desires in her. (221)

Again Korsgaard's critique is careful, logical, and impeccably worded; and again, Korsgaard redefines "reason" in an attempt to refute Humean ethics. But her activity in doing so precisely follows the Humean model! She has, as anyone familiar with the greater body of her philosophical work can attest, a passion for Kant. She chooses, if not arbitrarily then at least with heavy bias, the point she wishes to make and then she makes her reason instrumental in achieving her desired end. There is no practical reason, no categorical imperative by which she chooses her position. There is only a passion, albeit perhaps a gentle one, a preference for one thesis over another; there is only a desire to prove a point, and Korsgaard's reason is the slave of that desire. No matter how flawlessly she composes her article, its contents cannot override the fact that their very existence in the act of setting pen to paper is an act motivated by passion alone.

Conclusion

If we may take a slightly less "proof-texting" approach to interpreting Hume's new existential patrons, it may profit us to consider the character of Smerdyakov in Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov. Smerdyakov is utterly impassible; he possesses rational faculties such that he knows he must act to achieve certain ends, but, lacking passion, he lacks the motivation to actually act. He is offered up by Dostoevsky as an example of what a pure rationalist--a true Kantian--would have to be like. But he is offered up with a caveat, as another character states to Smerdyakov, "You think you are a human being? [...] You are not a human being" (Karamazov 124). For Dostoevsky, the idea of someone so lacking in passion that they could be completely devoid of motivation was not unthinkable--it was just pure fiction. Korsgaard makes many compelling cases for normative principles of motivation with regard to reason, but she fails to recognize the existential fact that in order to act, one must want to act. Reason can inform that desire, but it cannot ever be that desire, and thus it cannot be motivating.

In closing we should note that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to say for certain how Hume would have responded to existentialism as a movement. But all conjecture and speculation aside, at the very least there are remarkable similarities between the Humean and existentialist models of motivation. There are, of course, many other existentialist writers to consider and significantly more Humean thought to reconcile, particularly in the realm of metaphysics. But considering how efficiently the existential fathers can defend Humean claims against neo-Kantian criticisms, I suspect that further inquiry into our characterization of Hume as a sort of proto-existentialist will, whether it is found completely tenable or otherwise, prove highly informative.

--Kenneth R. Pike

Works Cited

"Cognitive Dissonance." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia 16 Nov. 2004. 20 Nov 2004 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance).

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Notes from Underground. Translated by Michael R. Katz. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1990.

Hubin, Donald C. "What's Special About Humeanism." Nous 33(1):30-45, 1999.

Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. Ed. By David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Korsgaard, Christine M. "Skepticism About Practical Reason." Journal of Philosophy 83:5-25, 1986.

Korsgaard, Christine M. "The Normativity of Instrumental Reason." Ethics and Practical Reason. Ed. by Garrett Cullity and Berys Gaut. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1966.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1974.