| |
David Hume -- Moral Theory [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy] |
 | | This agent-receiver-spectator distinction is the product of earlier moral sense theories championed by Anthony Ashley Cooper, better known as the Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713), Joseph Butler (1692-1752), and Francis Hutcheson (1694-1747). |
| | To make his case he criticises Samuel Clarke's rationalistic account of morality, which is that we rationally judge the fitness or unfitness of our actions in reference to eternal moral relations. |
| | Hume presents several arguments against Clarke's view, the most famous of which is an argument from arboreal parricide: a young tree that overgrows and kills its parent exhibits the same alleged relations as a human child killing his parent; if morality is a question of relations, then the young tree is immoral, which is absurd. |
| www.iep.utm.edu /h/humemora.htm (4446 words) |
