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When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", University of Southampton, name of the University School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination http://eprints.soton.ac.uk UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON FACULTY OF LAW, ARTS & SOCIAL SCIENCES School of Humanities Hume’s Conception of Character by Robert Heath Mahoney Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy September 2009 UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON ABSTRACT FACULTY OF LAW, ARTS & SOCIAL SCIENCES SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES Doctor of Philosophy HUME’S CONCEPTION OF CHARACTER by Robert Heath Mahoney The thesis reconstructs Hume’s conception of character. Character is not just an ethical concern in Hume’s philosophy: Hume emphasises the importance of character in his ethics, aesthetics and history. The reconstruction therefore pays attention to Hume’s usage of the concept of character in his clearly philosophical works, the Treatise of Human Nature and the two Enquiries , as well as his less obviously philosophical works, the Essays, Moral, Political and Literary and the History of England . The first main thesis is that Hume’s conception of character includes multiple heterogeneous elements. These include passions, habits, natural abilities and possibly general rules. These elements are combined to form a coherent character through social organisation and conventions. The elements underpin character attributions, but it is argued that Hume is not concerned with identifying elements with character traits, as he is interested in characters as a whole rather than individual traits. The second main thesis is that the character of judges is central to Hume’s philosophy. Hume’s most sustained character of a judge is to be found in the essay ‘Of the Standard of Taste’. Close examination of this essay with particular attention to the character of the true judge reveals that such judges should not be conceived of as ideal, as some commentators on the essay have supposed. It is further argued that the true judge can be used, with some modifications, as a template for the moral judge, which Hume requires for his moral philosophy but never fully articulates. The two theses are mutually supporting in that the judges examined in accord with the second thesis are conceived of in terms of the first thesis, i.e. they are conceived of by Hume as characters constituted by heterogeneous elements. The first thesis receives support from the second thesis, as the reality of the elements supposed in the first thesis is undermined by a failure to appreciate the importance of judges as characters in Hume’s philosophy. Contents Declaration of Authorship .................................................................. iii Acknowledgements ...............................................................................iv Abbreviations .........................................................................................v Introduction............................................................................................1 Chapter One - Three Conditions........................................................11 Hume’s Manifold Uses of Character: Key Themes..............................................11 Of Liberty and Necessity......................................................................................17 Three Conditions ..................................................................................................27 The Metaphysical Condition........................................................................................27 The Epistemological Condition ...................................................................................30 The Practical Condition ..............................................................................................32 The Three Conditions in Practice: Bricke’s Dispositional Analysis of Character ......................................................36 Chapter Two - Elements of Character ..............................................42 The Passions .........................................................................................................43 The Apparent Conflict Between Personal Identity and Character..............................44 Causation and Knowledge...........................................................................................47 ‘Presently Unperceived Perceptions’..........................................................................49 The Strength of McIntyre’s Claim ...............................................................................53 Hume’s Exclusion of a ‘Hasty Temper’.......................................................................55 Natural Abilities ...................................................................................................57 Education and Habits............................................................................................63 Belief and General Rules......................................................................................68 The Double Influence of General Rules.......................................................................70 Mixtures and Compounds............................................................................................75 Character as a ‘Bundle’ ........................................................................................78 Chapter Three - Character and Social Context................................82 Costelloe and ‘Surface Grammar’ ........................................................................82 The ‘Practical View’.............................................................................................87 Character and Judgement ...........................................................................................93 Knowledge of Character.......................................................................................95 Hume’s Character Sketches.........................................................................................97 Character and Social Conventions............................................................................102 Reputation, Character, Name....................................................................................108 Knowledge of Elements .............................................................................................110 i Chapter Four - The True Judge.......................................................115 ‘So Rare a Character ’? .....................................................................................116 The Character of the True Judge ........................................................................122 An Embarrassment of Delicacies ..............................................................................123 Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion........................................................................126 Delicacy of Sentiment as Natural Capacity...............................................................129 Practice and Comparison..........................................................................................134 Freedom from Prejudice............................................................................................137 Good/Strong Sense ....................................................................................................141 Character and the Standard of Taste...................................................................143 Chapter Five - The Moral Judge......................................................151 From True Judge to Moral Judge .......................................................................152 The Ubiquity of Practice............................................................................................157 Complexities of Comparison .....................................................................................159 The General Point of View.................................................................................169 Virtue in Rags............................................................................................................174 Language and Conversation......................................................................................178 One or Many?............................................................................................................182 Moral Judge as a Character ................................................................................185 Conclusion ..........................................................................................188 Bibliography.......................................................................................193 ii Declaration of Authorship I, Robert Heath Mahoney , declare that the thesis entitled Hume’s Conception of Character and the work presented in the thesis are both my own, and have been generated by me as the result of my own original