S1: pleasure uh to welcome Jerry Schneewind here to Michigan again, um, i've been, learning history of ethics from Jerry for, more years than i, wanna count, since first year in graduate school, i think probably the first course you ever, taught Kant at least that that's what you said at the time, [S2: coulda been ] at least Kant Hume and, let's see who was the third Hobbes, <SS LAUGH> Hobbes of course. 
S2: probably did it in the other order.
S1: yeah well s- yeah that was, not meant to be a, temporal
S2: aw Steve you'll never get the history straight
<SS LAUGH> 
S1: you mean Kant wasn't first? <SS LAUGH> that's right so, s- so Jerry's written on a wide variety of topics uh, very, well-known well-appreciated book on Sidgwick, and, certainly the best book, in English if not in any language on the history of ethics The Invention of Autonomy, which came out, last year. and today he's gonna be talking to us, on Hume, and th- the significance the religious significance of moral rationalism. Jerry.
S2: thanks. uh this paper was written just before The Invention of Autonomy was published, and um wh- what i try to do in it is to expand on a, paragraph or so that's in the book. um but it also, uh so if you've read the Hume chapter the, main point of the paper will already be familiar to you though i flesh it out quite considerably, uh but uh it also gives me an opportunity, to respond to one or two criticisms that have been made of the book and i'll, indicate along the way where i want to do that, but i would like this also for those of you who may have looked at the book, uh to be an opportunity, uh to raise any questions you want about the book. because this really is an expansion of it. <READING> Hume notoriously criticized religion and its defenses and in particular Christianity. </READING> uh Edward Craig has a a little book Three Essays_ Three Lectures on Hume on Religion in which he points out that Hume wrote, more about religion if you take the history into account than about just just about any other subject. and it's essentially all critical and it's all critical of in particular Christianity we know about the Dialogues the Natural History the chapter on miracles uh there are others of the Essays and the work in the History, but there are also, several obvious attacks on religious beliefs in the Treatise but it's not noticed in the literature. that a number of Hume's arguments in the Treatise tell against propositions, that are important for religion even when Hume, uh doesn't say that or when they don't seem at first to do so, i'll note just one and if you want more examples i can, mention one or two in the discussion. <READING> in the course of arguing that causes must precede their effects Hume remarks that everyone accepts the principle quote, that an object which exists for any time in its full perfection without producing another, is not its sole cause. end quote. the point reappears later as one of the rules for judging cause and effect. at neither place does Hume make explicit one of the implications. that either God is not the sole cause of his creation or else the creation is co-eternal with God, both of which would be unacceptable to Christians. in this paper i argue that Hume's critique of rationalism and morality, </READING> uh Clarke's kind of view, <READING> is yet another unlabeled attack on religion. </READING> and Craig has some interesting comments about why Hume is cautious. about uh his attacks on religion. why he doesn't label them all why he didn't put them all in one place and so on Craig's thesis, is it's a guess of course, that Hume wanted to be read, particularly by religious rea- readers. and so he didn't want it all to seem too devastating all at once. <SS LAUGH> uh so he separated the Natural History from the Dialogues, and this stuff in the Treatise is not labelled it would_ it was hard enough to get anybody to read the Treatise as it turned out, <SS LAUGH> well except graduate students. <SS LAUGH> [SU-M: yeah ] but um it's an interesting hypothesis and uh nobody else has_ that i know of has quite addressed it, uh that interestingly. i'm not gonna add to the literature assessing the arguments against rationalism i wanna do something else. <READING> John Balguy voiced a commonplace eighteenth century view of the relations between religion and reality when he remarked that whatever promotes the cause of revealed religion befriends morality and whatever strengthens morality adds force, to religion. Hume everyone agrees was trying strenuously, to separate the two, and he knew he was bound to be understood as threatening both in so doing. a look at the religious bearings of his critique of rationalist moral thought, should bring out some of the philosophically pertinent motivations that he had, for arguing as he did about morality. it may also add something, some clarity to the vexed issue of what Hume himself as they say, really thought about God. on this matter we all know the variety of opinion is considerable. was he as his early critics charge an atheist? was he a hesitant believer, perhaps a deist? commentators have taken both views and others. Gunther (Godmach) thinks that what chiefly separated Hume from deism was, quote, not his rejection of rationalism quote, but his own what (Godmach) calls final despair, about attaining the defining goal of the deists, which he takes to have been ridding the world of superstition, intolerance and clerical authority. agreeing about Hume's pessimism on this practical matter, Gaskin argues nonetheless that Hume is an attenuated deist. </READING> Stephen Paul Foster who's written a long book on the attacks by Hume and Gibbon on Christianity thinks that this is right he was some sort of attenuated deist. and that what s- uh Gaskin thinks that what separates Hume from the deists, is his attack on, two arguments the argument from design and that from first cause. still others like i think Livingston see Hume as a theist. well, i don't think it matters much what label we attach because, whatever we attach Hume didn't think the way everybody else did so we'd have to explain what we meant. uh <READING> but like Hume's sympathetic moral spectator we do need to be able to put ourselves imaginatively into the positions of those the position of those most affected by the debates, Hume was entering. um we need to understand the map of religious options, on which Hume's readers would have located him. whether he accepted the common options or not he would have known them and taken them into account in his presentation of his views, and in his understanding, uh of what their shock value would be. i think that previous discussions of his ethics have not given enough weight in this connection, to the religious significance of moral rationalism. commentators from Sir Lesley Steven on have located many of the points that need to be considered here. but there's one element of Hume's thought, whose significance for his contemporaries has to the best of my scanty knowledge, been universally neglected, although a feature of Hume's thought that makes it pertinent has been widely noticed. </READING> even Craig, uh where i really thought uh this point i'm gonna make would have come up, because he's worried about, uh the view, uh, he he says Hume was deeply worried about the view that we are made in God's image, and that's what i'll be talking about. but Craig doesn't notice this point. uh neither does this guy who wrote the book on, Gibbon and uh Stephen Foster on Gibbon and Hume although it's a very long book. <SS LAUGH> uh the the crucial point is this, <READING> numerous commentators have pointed out that while Hume seems grudgingly to allow some causal power, to whatever deity, reason leads us to accept, he uniformly deny denies any moral attributes, to God. i shall suggest that when we put this Humean negation in the context of the alternative views of religion available at the time, we'll have a better understanding of Hume's rejection, of Balguy's commonplace claim about the inseparability of morality and religion. we'll also see why moral rationalism was so important, to its adherents. </READING> we have our own reasons for being interested in moral rationalism. but the historian in me says well you know that wasn't, those weren't their reasons for being interested in it in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and i think, they weren't. so here we go. <READING> the religious view that i think the commentators have neglected is sometimes called voluntarism, uh more frequently divine command ethics. the names are not nearly as old as the doctrine which originates in the work of Scotus and Ockham and was revitalized by Luther and Calvin. both of the great reformers hold, that God's untrammeled will, is the source of the principles of morals. </READING> and forgive me if i illustrate this, uh i'll illustrate it here with a passage from Calvin who is the pertinent thinker for Hume because of his upbringing. <READING> Calvin thinks that God's ways are beyond human understanding. that it was predestined from eternity that Adam would sin, that in his sin all mankind would be ruined, that out of the mass of totally undeserving beings, some would mercifully be chosen for salvation, that those not chosen would be left to suffer the anguish of eternal separation from God, all this is God's justice. and is incomprehensible to us. </READING> how then can we be sure that it's just? here's how Calvin answers. <READING> God's will is so much the highest rule of righteousness that whatever he wills, by the very fact that he wills it, must be considered righteous. when therefore one asks why God has so done we must reply, because he has willed it. but if you proceed further to ask why he has so willed you are seeking something greater and higher than God's will which cannot be found. </READING> Institutes three twenty-three two. i haven't checked my reference so it's probably wrong. <SS LAUGH> <READING> in the seventeenth century the most widely influential philosophical exposition of moral voluntarism was Pufendorf's. he holds that God imposed what he calls in Latin moral entities, after creating the natural world. and that his purpose in imposing them was to give human beings guidance about how to live. he explicitly rejects Cartesian rationalism and allies himself with empiricism. empirical evidence allows us to infer that God exists, and gives us commands. and although God could have made a different world, and imposed quite different moral directives upon us, empirical evidence allows us to infer what he actually commands, and therefore, how we ought to live. but, since moral entities were imposed solely for the purpose of guiding human action, they do not allow us to infer anything, about God's moral attributes. theories of this kind seemed to many Christians to have two major defects </READING> and here i'm summarizing what i run on an inordinate length about in the book. <READING> first, they turn God into a tyrant and a despot, and thus make him a dangerous political model for earthly sovereigns, who are all too likely, to want to satisfy Hobbes's description of the ruler as a mortal deity. second, by making God tyrannical they make him unlovable. but since Christ commands us to love God above all else, a theory making such love impossible must be mistaken. to show that it's mistaken the rationalists tried in various ways, to explain the principles of morality as not only truths that reason could discover, </READING> Pufendorf agrees with that, right? so does Locke. uh, <READING> but as a priori necessary truths. truths that would have to be recognized by any rational agent. no matter how situated. and so by God as well. Leibniz's Theodicy which Hume plainly knew, and Leibniz's attack on Pufendorf, both try to confute voluntarist views. and Malebranche whose work was important in Hume's own development, uh was also opposed to uh, voluntarist theories. </READING> now in the Invention of Autonomy i tried to show that anxiety about voluntarism and attacks on it, were central to the development, of European moral philosophy. uh one of my critics says that i don't pay enough distinction, to nuances between different sorts of voluntarism. especially later, and earlier. and what i'll try to show is that i was quite right not to. there weren't any. <SS LAUGH> that is, uh this fear of voluntarism, was like the fear of communism back in the McCarthy era. it didn't matter whose version of communism you espoused, if you said well i'm a communist but not in the really bad_ they'd just say hey you're a communist, <SS LAUGH> that's a bad thing well if you were anywhere near voluntarism the panic reaction, went up. so i think that that criticism is, misplaced. and there's a second one but it's more technical and we can talk about it if you want. so here i wanna supplement what i was able to say in the book, by giving more detail about the history of these debates in Hume's Britain. i had to be very scanty about British moralists cuz, i i don't believe they're a separate category, sorry Steve, <SS LAUGH> and uh, you don't either. <SS LAUGH> and uh, uh was dealing with a lot of other people. <READING> philosophical defense of voluntarism, became rare by the end of the seventeenth century but the feeling of the threat didn't go away. we can see its persistence by noting the efforts to show that God's will is not arbitrary or tyrannical, but is governed by eternal measures of justice and goodness, </READING> and i i've picked some quotations that'll, show you, seventeenth and eighteenth century authors using those words. because it's important that they felt the way those words, uh allowed them to express. <READING> philosophers were not the only ones with this concern. here for instance, st- s- for instance is William Sherlock the Dean of Saint Paul's, a prolific seventeenth century controversialist. considering God's power in his Discourse Concerning the Divine Providence of sixteen ninety-four. he characterizes God's powers as absolute power which is the technical phrase, used by voluntarist thinkers, to refer to the total absence of limits on what God might originally ordain. </READING> after he's ordained something, he's got his ordinate power and he will stick by what he has ordained by his absolute power. but, before he's ordained anything, he can do it anyway. <READING> Sherlock then notes the fears that go with the claim that God's power has no bounds and i quote. mankind, judge of God's absolute power by the arbitrary and tyrannical government, of some absolute monarch but, he hastens to add, true absolute power can do no wrong. the unity of God, Sherlock says, shows that his goodness and his will are the same thing, but it makes us_ it makes things clearer for us to reject the thought that God's will makes things just and good and quote, to make good and evil antecedent to the will of God and the rule of his will and choice. otherwise we imply Sherlock says that justice and goodness, has no stable nature of its own. </READING> now, Cudworth the great Cambridge philosopher who's one of the major seventeenth century opponents, on voluntarism, i'm not gonna go over Cudworth that's quite a chore, uh i note however the fact that his Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, which is devoted wholly to attacking it, was first published in seventeen thirty-one, from a manuscript suggesting, uh this is four decades after his death suggesting that voluntarism was still a live issue. Hume's Treatise ca- started coming in seventeen thirty-nine. uh Clarke's famous sermons, uh the sermons attacking, uh Calvinist predestinarianism make his anti-voluntarism plain as do his frequently reprinted Boyle Lectures, of seventeen-oh-five, demonstrating what their title calls the unchangeable obligations of natural religion. and Clarke's follower and defender John Balguy makes his opposition to voluntarism equally plain. his tracts were written over a period of years but published in a collected volume a bound volume, in seventeen thirty-four. uh <READING> Balguy takes on one central voluntarist claim, that because God can have no superior no law can bind him. in terms reminiscent of both Cumberland and Clarke. </READING> and i quote Balguy. <READING> God has no superior to prescribe laws to him and yet, is eternally bound by the rectitude of his own nature. that is, the rules of right reason. </READING> okay? these are so many laws to him they strictly and formally oblige him. and Balguy attacks Locke by name for holding views that would make God, quote <READING> arbitrary in all his proceedings. </READING> so you see the worry is, coming up again. Clarke and Balguy were serious Christians not simply deists, although as i will point out many deists shared their moral rationalism. now, the picture about the deists is complicated. some deists, British deists were empiricists. Toland and Collins proclaim themselves Lockeans. Bolingbroke, attacked at length for his deism in Leland's View of the Principle Deistical Writers which came out in seventeen fifty-four, sounds as if he holds a Lockean view, as well i have not read Bolingbroke. Bolingbroke according to Leland describes as absurd enthusiasts, those who hold that there is quote, <READING> a moral sense, or instinct, by which men distinguish what is morally good from what is morally evil. </READING> this may be acquired in some sort by long habit but it's whimsical, to assume it to be natural. he's separating himself from Hume, and i think Hume could not easily have been taken to be an empiricist deist. so one variety of deism seems to me to be out the window for Hume. well there are enough important deists who do hold to a full-blown moral rationalism, to allow us to treat such adherents as a major deistic strategy. they owned it after all, by inheritance. Hume claimed in an often cited footnote, that Malebranche was the originator of the abstract or rationalist theory of morals afterwards followed by Cudworth and Clarke, but that honor should go to Lord Herbert of Cherbury, whom Leland takes rightly i think to be the originator of deism. Herbert published in sixteen twenty-five. he holds Herbert holds that we're all equally equipped, i discuss him at the book and this is a very brief, uh conspectus. <READING> that we're all equally equipped with a basic unique moral concept, and that we can all equally know intuitively what the fundamental principles of morality are. we can moreover, use this knowledge, to test any alleged revelation. God can't have a morality other than ours, Herbert thinks, and so any putative divine directive, that contravenes our moral insights, must be spurious. </READING> it's gotta come from some other source. <READING> he is aware of the implications of his view for the authority of the clergy. uh and, which he aims to subvert. he thus has the reformist, political concerns that (Godmach) places at the center of deism. and his view of revelation is one that later deists made central. he also shows himself deeply opposed, to voluntarist predestinarian doctrines. moral rationalism, was important to many of the later deists for the same reasons. Herbert's arguments can work only if justice in God and in humans is the same thing. and a rationalism, that places a priori necessary truths at the foundation of morality as Herbert did, supports that claim. after Pufendorf and Locke, it became clear to opponents of Calvinism, that empiricism was to put it mildly, not a reliable ally... the deists were as troubled by enthusiasm, or Protestant sectarianism, as Locke was, and as opposed to superstition, </READING> there a flattering term for Roman Catholicism, uh, <SS LAUGH> a- <READING> as he was. and they found Herbert's views useful for fighting both of these opponents. they acknowledged the existence of God, the deists did, and agreed that he ought to be worshipped, but they held as one of them put it in the Oracle of Reason sixteen ninety-three, the the quotation lacks a certain perspicuity, that our obedience consists in the rules of right reason the practice whereof is moral virtue. </READING> i mean you get the point. though the s- the the sentence isn't exactly perspicuous. <READING> right reason shows all humans the same thing the writer continues, </READING> this was a kind of manifesto, uh of deism. uh <READING> shows all humans the same thing the writer continues our eternal happiness, depends on our living as reason requires and on nothing further. since no revelation less universal than that of reason can be admitted, the Bible can have no special standing. nor can the special cla- claims of any clergy or any confession. Matthew Tindal's Christianity as Old as The Creation from seventy-thirty is i think the major exposition of eighteenth century British deism. his opposition to v- voluntarism is plain. it disrupts, he says the moral relation between God and us and i quote. if the relations between things and the fitnesses resulting from thence be not the sole rule of God's actions, must not God be an arbitrary being? and then what a miserable condition will mankind be in. 'tis not in our power though ever so often commanded, to love the deity, while we conceive him, an arbitrary being acting out of humor and caprice. his commitment to a rationalist account of morality is equally plain. he, we discover God's will he says by discovering, what he calls laws of nature or reason, the law of nature or reason which is he says perfect eternal and unchangeable. and his final chapter is a lengthy discussion of Samuel Clarke, whose moral philosophy he finds acceptable though he doesn't draw from it some of the conclusions that Clarke draws and to which i will return. less sophisticated than Tindal, </READING> by a rather long shot, <READING> Thomas Chubb writing in seventeen-thirty, is no less Clarkean, in his deistic defense, of the precedents of moral obligations of religion over its positive obligations </READING> concerning, when it's proper to worship and how. <READING> he expressly appeals to Clarke on his opening page and argues, that even the positive obligations stemming from the will and pleasure of God, must be founded on reasons or else they would be and i quote, tyrannical impositions unworthy of God. quote </READING> there's that word again... <READING> John Clarke of Hull, held that God's will is the sole source of the obligation of the moral law, though he allows that its content is not due, purely to will. </READING> footnote. i've been, criticized for sli- slighting this distinction within, voluntarism. the voluntarists do distinguish between, advice and obligation and they hold, some of them that, uh, making it's, uh to be obligatory something must be commanded by a proper superior. uh they th- uh some of them think that God has reasons that we can understand, for the commands he gives and that what the command adds is just the obligatory force. but in fact, uh if you allow God the liberty to command when he will, you run afoul of an argument that Leibniz gives. God would have to decide, whether to command that you, act in accordance with some goodness or not. is he free to decide this? i mean suppose he thinks that it'd be good for you to worship on S- on Tuesday. is he free to make, Tuesday the day of worship? uh, so that not worshipping then is a sin? i mean you get the arbitrariness back in, if God doesn't have to command that you pursue all goodness, is Leibniz's argument. so that the distinction between his, a- ability to obligate us, and his arbitrarily creating morality, is one that doesn't seem important to these people on the whole because if you leave him free, to command or not to command, the whole, house collapses anyway. so Leibniz says. anyway. <READING> John Clarke of, Hull holds that God's will is the sole source of the obligation of the moral law though he allows that its content is not due purely to will. Chubb will have none of this insisting with Clarke, that the obligation quote the obligation of moral law does arise from the positive will of God but from the reasons and fitnesses of things. like Tindal and Chubb, the deist Thoman Mo- Thomas Morgan, uh appeals again and again in the Moral Philosopher of seventeen thirty-seven. to quote the moral eternal and fitness of the things themselves. end quote, as central to arguments in support of religion. so, moral rationalism is central to the thought of some of the major representatives of deism, because it provides grounds, for rejecting the voluntarist view of God. this was recognized, as one of the deists' central aims by no less a figure than William Law. </READING> now, William Law was a major early eighteenth century English, Protestant cleric. he had a very influential, uh church in London, he was very widely read, uh copious writer, wrote one of the great English devotional works and a whole lotta polemical stuff and it's from one of those that i'll be quoting. <READING> he published a long pamphlet attacking Tindal. in it he goes beyond criticism, to provide a positive sketch of voluntarism as the proper alternative understanding of morality. his critical point can be put briefly. suppose as Tindal and Clarke do quote that there is a fitness and unfitness of, actions founded in the nature of things and resulting from the relations, that persons and things bear to one another. quote. and suppose also as Tindal says that these fitnesses are quote, the sole rule of God's action. well says Law it still doesn't follow that the relevant fitnesses will be comprehensible to us. because one of the terms of the fitness relation must be God's nature, which is infinite and incomprehensible. so some acts could be fitting for such a being, without our being able to have a rational grasp, of their fitness. in fact Law says, if God is to act on what is fit for a being with his quote, divinely perfect and incomprehensible nature quote, then he must necessarily act by a rule above all human comprehension. he must do so precisely because he is not arbitrary, but acts according to what fits the particular case of his own actions. quote. we have from this argument, the utmost certainty that the rule or reasons of God's actions, must in many cases be entirely inconceivable, by us and in no cases, perfectly and fu- fully apprehended, end quote. so far Law draws a voluntarist conclusion from the fitness theory itself, on the assumption that its proponents think that God's own nature must be the rule of his action. but he goes on, these theorists in fact appeal instead to quote, i know not what eternal immutable reasons and relations of things, which are a common rule and law of God and man. end quote. in opposition to them he argues, that the nature and relations of things are created by God. God creates the natures of things, so that his willing can't be based on the natures of things... God's omnipotent action, certainly suits the causes and effects he has created but it can't be as he says founded upon their nature, quote. because neither causes nor effects have any nature, but what they owe to omnipotence. quote. and the same is true of moral relations, between rational beings. to Tindal's assertion that we couldn't love God were we to think him an arbitrary being acting out of caprice Law replies, God's will is as opposed to caprice as his omnipotence is to weakness. it's the highest perfection and therefore quote. we have the highest reason to love and adore God because he is arbitrary. and acts according to his own all perfect will. because his will is, as all perfect as God himself is it needs nothing outside itself for guidance and particularly nothing, moral. Law emphatically declares that quote. nothing has a sufficient moral reason or fitness to be done, but because it is the will of God that it should be done... end quote. even when God wills that certain acts are fit to be done, this does not make them fit in themselves. their continuing fitness depends as thoroughly on God's continual willing of it, as the existence of things depends on God's sustaining them. </READING> occasionalism about morality. <READING> Law suggests as Sir Francis Bacon had, that reliance on our own reason rather than on God for our guidance is the worst sort of pride. the deists, Law points out claim that our own reason shows us, each, all that we need to know about how to live and what salvation requires. but this he says, is as absurd as if we claim that our own re- reason teaches our language. we learn to speak from others, acquiring in the process whatever knowledge or insight past experience, has given our culture. the same is true of morality. the powers of reason in people generally can be learned only by experience and that shows those powers to be weak. there's no evidence of an inner light that guides us all as the deists claim. and if we need the help of other humans, in order to know anything at all, why might we not need the help of God if we are to know the most important things, of all? here Law comes to the central point, of his polemic against Tindal. it was a point that united all Christian opponents of deism, the need for revelation. Tindal's very clear that reason shows us morality, and that morality suffices for salvation. deists from Herbert on argued, that to think otherwise, is to think that God, could be unjust. </READING> revelation has not been given equally to all people. <READING> it was however generally agreed that the Christian doctrines of the fall and inherited sin, the incarnation, and salvation through Christ, were available to us only through revelation not through natural religion. it's no surprise therefore that the devout Leland says, that Herbert's central failing is, to make no room for revelation. but the need for revelation, to support the special teachings of Christianity, gives rise to a problem. moral rationalism, seems to make revelation unnecessary and in fact, to make salvation in accordance with it immoral. </READING> so it seemed to rule out revelation. <READING> but if morality is not centered on a priori necessary truths, or if performance of positive duties beyond those of morality, is required for salvation, the door is open to the voluntarist version of Christianity, and to the fear that God is after all, only an arbitrary tyrant. the problem for Christian apologists was, how to use moral rationalism to ward off voluntarism, while still keeping room, for revelation. the threat to revelation is also a threat to Christian institutions and shall we say to the ministers. </READING> in special position. the difficulty confronted Catholics as well as Protestants and the first effort i know of to get around it comes from Malebranche, i will not discuss his, here his effort to defend the need for divine revelation, and for a unique church, uh the Catholic Church, to bring that revelation to all mankind, i'll turn instead to Samuel Clarke who hardly wished to defin- defend the Roman church but shows in clear form, the general line of thought used to defend revelation and some priesthood or others. in his case the Episcopal. <READING> the reasonableness of Christianity concerns Clarke at least as much as it did Locke. Christianity says, Clarke in his correspondence with Leibniz, presupposes the truth of natural religion. and he holds that even the effos- the efficacy of divine grace is to be understood, as the gift of the ability to understand the arguments that should move one to believe. with irrational morality at the core of religion what room is left for anything more than the deists, would have admitted? Clarke devotes far more of his second set of Boyle Lectures, to arguing for the truth and necessity of the Christian revelation, than he gives to demonstrating the existence of unchangeable moral obligations. having proved to his own satisfaction, that the morality of Christianity is embodied in eternal moral truths, he then goes on to argue that most people can't understand, and appreciate, the gifts of reason. the widespread weakness of reason, a sure sign of human corruption, is clear evidence, that there was need for a revelation. the Christian revelation best fills that need, and if this doesn't convince the reader of the truth and certainty, of its message, nothing will. Clarke offers some arguments, to support the belief that there must be a future life in which the virtuous will be rewarded, and sinners punished. without that hope he thinks, virtue would not be widely, practiced. yet most people, are so enslaved by lusts and desires, uh so swayed by prejudice so governed by superstition, that they can't follow the arguments. so although quote the great obligations, and the principle motives of morality, are indeed certainly discoverable and demonstrable by right reason, quote, most people need to be instructed about them, and about the future rewards and punishments they lead us to expect. moreover such instruction must come from someone who can speak with authority. reason alone, and the philosophers, have never been able to do so. neither the knowledge of the morality of natural reason nor its motivating power then, can reach those, whom that morality should govern. and quote, for these reasons, there was plainly wanting a divine revelation. </READING> now, many people think that, uh defenders of revelation appeal to miracles, to support revelation. um, uh you you'll find this statement again and again. and they take Hume's attack on miracles as undercutting revelation. but what Clarke is doing is not appealing to miracles. he's arguing that there's a moral reason. why we had to have a revelation and this is an argument that's not i think usually noticed. um, <READING> moreover Clarke goes to great lengths to demonstrate that the Christian revelation supplies more perfectly than any other, exactly what's needed. not the least of the reasons for accepting it is, that it centers on an authoritative teacher. on whose word even the simplest, will accept the truths that enable them to act morally. happily that authority has been passed on to others, who have carried it down the ages. so long as reason remains weak in the many, the clergy will be there to see, uh to it that virtue has its champions. Thomas Morgan, deist, tells us that the religion of nature consists only of quote the eternal immutable rules and principles of moral truth righteousness and reason quote. he rejects the other kind of religion, the revealed kind. John Balguy thinks the deists wrong on exactly this point. he supports his opposition to voluntarism in part by showing some of its unpalatable implications. the voluntarist must think that we could learn about morality only through revelation. this would subvert natural re- religion as well as morality. and since it opens the possibility that God's will changes, it would require a new revelation every instant. we could not predict future duty, from present. </READING> a lovely puzzle. <READING> but since morality does not depend on God's will, we can see that quote the obligations of religion depend, and are entirely founded on the obligations of reason quote. religion is simply obedience to God's commands and obedience is owed, out of gratitude, only to justify the commands. but, the eternal moral truth grounds revealed religion as well as natural there are two problems about the purely natural kind, of religion. first quote, the fierceness and headiness of mankind will not ordinarily be restrained by the mild laws and pure dictates, of reason end quote. revealed religion teaches us meanings of bringing, quote distempered minds, to act, not only f- for reward, but from an internal concern for rightness and truth. reason could not have discovered these means, revelation is needed to show us how to perfect ourselves, in complying with the rational dictates of natural religions. second, revelation is needed, because most people are unable to see for themselves, the rational truths at the core of both morality and natural, religion. if moral obligation is a kind of force, he says, it is not like corporeal attraction, effected at a distance. moral reasons can't operate where they're not known, revelation brings them to everyone as reason cannot. so, the moral rationalists extend moral community to God, and voluntarists confine it to humans. the Christian moral rationalists get God in, but they're forced to restrict the number of people, who can be equal members of the moral community. sin or stupidity, force most people to take their morality at second hand, even though it is in principle available to reason. if reason were less feeble in the masses, the special gifts of Christianity it seems, would be unnecessary. </READING> now i needn't spend much time in pointing out the implication that religious readers would have drawn from Hume's sentimentalist view of morality. Hume goes out of his way to show, that he leaves them with only a voluntarist understanding of God. the very way in which he poses the issue between sentimentalism, and rationalism, in the third paragraph of the Second Enquiry right at the opening. of the Second Enquiry suggests this. he's there, r- he raises the question. does morality rest on reason or is it a matter of feeling and he's, makes three points about what this is all about and here's the third one. <READING> the question is whether morals </READING> as he calls 'em, <READING> have foundations that quote. should be the same to every rational intelligent being, or whether they be founded entirely on the particular fabric of the human species. </READING> notice when we think of morality as, just a matter of feeling we tend to think, that's gonna give rise to, lots of variation in human, views about morality because we do not think that, moral feelings are gonna be the same, throughout the world. that's not Hume's concern at all. the question is whether it's the same for, all rational intelligent beings or, just for the entire species. the pertinent other rational intelligent being is of course, God. <READING> to hold that morality rests on eternal fitnesses, is to imply as Hume points out, that immutable moral standards </READING> and I quote Hume, <READING> impose an obligation on the deity himself. </READING> but of course, he rejects, such theories that's in the Treatise. <READING> God moreover is not our equal, </READING> and this is one of those points where Hume doesn't stress the religious bearing, <READING> God doesn't share in, with us in the circumstances of justice. </READING> in relation to him we're like those rational but feeble creatures, whom Hume imagines, who are too weak, to make resentment of us, effective. we could be gentle to such beings, but we couldn't enter into relations of justice with them. Pufendorf had made exactly this point. but about God. <READING> a right says Pufendorf which is to have power among persons equal in nature, cannot be patterned, after the relations between persons as drastically unequal, as God and humans. </READING> it's interesting that Reid is very ferocious on this particular illustration that Hume gives. uh about how we could not have relations to the beings, drastically weaker than we. <READING> in a footnote to one of his additions to the Treatise Hume says the kind of thing that infuriated, religious readers of Locke. the order of the universe Hume says, proves an omnipotent mind that is a mind, whose will is constantly attended, with the obedience of every creature. nothing more is requisite, to give a foundation to all the articles of religion. </READING> no moral attributes are required. just power. <READING> Hume's treatment of the problem of evil in the Dialogues, also belongs in the voluntarist camp. Leibniz and Malebranche try to show that evil poses no moral difficulties for God's character. the voluntarists have no need to try, they don't think God has to be morally intelligible. Hume's speakers, argue that we can't admit, that evil exists, and also have any justifiable views, about God's moral attributes. rather than proposing a solution to this problem, Hume's discussion exacerbates it. if in the end he allows us any rationally grounded religious belief, it is belief in a deity so attenuated, and so incomprehensible, as to have no resemblance to the God of either Leibniz or Clarke. we can hardly speak about Hume's deity, in literally meaningful terms, and we certainly can't be assured, that we live in moral community with him. and to make, matters still worse, Hume's insistence that everybody feels the moral sentiments, undercuts the elitist, rationalist defense of revelation, that all those Christian moral rationalists, invoked. Hume is plainly aware, of the voluntarist implications his view would have for believers. he's in effect telling his readers that if there's going to be any religion, it must be of a kind most of them would reject. his antireligious aims were not hard to see. i've argued that he couldn't've been mistaken for an empiricist deist, and i hope it's evident that he wasn't a rationalist deist, either. one of his acuter critics described him as one who, quote destroys all the foundations of religion, revealed and natural, and with a pen truly Epicurean, dissolves at once all the fears of the guilty the comforts of the afflicted, and the hopes of the virtuous. </READING> <SS LAUGH> <READING> Hume would've been delighted to hear it. </READING> <SS LAUGH> <READING> he did not need to be an atheist to be so described. in the eighteenth century for most religious believers it would suffice for him to be a voluntarist. i don' t know whether or not he was one, since i don't know how seriously to take his various assertions about belief in the existence of God. but if he meant to be taken as a believer, it's clear how his readers, would understand the God he accepted. and i'm confident that his devastating attack on moral rationalism, was intended as a major part of his campaign, to destroy all the foundations of religion, revealed and natural. </READING> thank you. 
S1: let's take our divinely decreed canonical break <BREAK IN RECORDING> let's reconstitute ourselves, um, if you wanna just recognize, [S2: sure sure ] questions? 
S2: forgive me if i don't know names. <SS LAUGH> i don't know your names. <SS LAUGH> [S1: well ] yeah.
S1: i'll just ask it. um... so, uh, we were saying in the break um, you discussed this letter, uh from, from Hume to Hutcheson uh that's, talking about similar aspects of Hutcheson's views and whether, [S2: right ] Hutcheson is at all troubled, by, some of these consequences and, i was just wondering, um, about the following, so on the voluntarist, conception, uh the worry is that... God won't be lovable. right? but now on on this conception, that, that problem won't arise right because, uh, i mean if there is a God and if we conceive of him as benevolent even if the seat of, even if moral sentiment, uh is in us but not in him, that has no effect, on our moral judgment of him [S2: mhm ] because what we're morally, responding to is say his benevolence or something like that. uh in fact i- i- i mean this brings out sort of an interesting feature of, Hume and Hutcheson's views which is, that i say is opposed to Butler or somebody like Shaftesbury, uh, the agents, moral n- the agent need have, no moral understanding of, of his or her own, motives or character, um that that's just irrelevant to the mo- the moral goodness, of of the agent since that's all figured in terms of benevolence. so w- we could still love God, uh we'd still judge God morally good we do so in terms of our, own moral sentiment, the fact that he lacks moral sentiment would just be beside the point in a way. [S2: right ] so it'd be, have a very different kind of consequence. 
S2: that's true and i- um, the the whole battle between the voluntarists and the anti-voluntarists, uh is curious because, uh, uh take this, this point. Pufendorf suggests, that, we owe obedience to God out of gratitude. because God's been so nice to us. now one might dispute that and the problem of evil, um, which of course plagued people um, gives rise to ruin [S1: plagued people ] but but hm? 
<SS LAUGH> 
S1: pla- ple- it did plague people 
<SS LAUGH> 
S2: shook the ground under their feet. <LAUGH> [S1: right right (xx) ] uh Leibniz in his attack on on Pufendorf, uh doesn't take this into account. that is he does not construct, uh a Hutchesonian or even mildly Pufendorfian way of saying yes we could love God because in fact he's been nice to us. um, and, h- he simply won't engage in that argument. his argument is, uh to say that it's just because that God commands it, uh is either to utter a tautology or to say, something that's truly horrendous that's morally, plus it's a variant of the Euthyphro kind of argument which was repeatedly used. um, now, uh i- i- nobody seems to have taken, notice in the debate about Hutcheson's kind of move. look the evidence is that God is awfully nice to us so, you know um, let's let's be grateful. of course there is a problem with saying, that we obey the laws out of gratitude. because for Pufendorf gratitude is an is an imperfect duty, it's therefore one that has to show a motive, it can't be enforced, and it's up to you how much and to whom to show it. and obedience to God's laws can't be put in those terms. so it won't do as an answer, but it's interesting that nobody bates this issue. they don't they don't want to see voluntarism, as in any way a coherent position. uh, here's another point. what Pufendorf and Locke and the rest, are denying, is that there are a priori rational necessary truths about morality. uh th- the critics, don't show that there have to be, they say well we can see that there are. now Pufendorf says you know, we were raised on these so early, that they look to us like innate necessary truths but it's just our upbringing. and they don't respond to that. the anti-voluntarists. so, i- these are arguments that go by each other in the night. the the voluntarist position, does indeed appear to most people now, to be hopeless. because of Euthyphro type or if you like G-E Moore type objections to it. but in important ways that overlooks what the voluntarists are trying to say namely, as i've said elsewhere, morality doesn't have the kind of foundation you think it has uh, it's not our business, to look for that kind of, justification in God. we should be just be obeying. uh it is, pride it's sinful pride that makes us ask the questions that all these rationalists are asking it's the wrong attitude to be in. now i don't know that you can argue somebody out of that position, you certainly can't argue him out of it by saying well you know it's perfectly obvious that there're a priori moral, <SS LAUGH> rational truths because to them it isn't perfectly obvious <LAUGH> right, so the arguments don't, meet head on, and the one you point out i think is one that just gets ignored. 
S1: well i- m- m- it's e- it's a little different than voluntarism right, i mean [S2: yes ] i- i- if, with voluntarism if it's the ca- so if we let's say accept voluntarism, um, and then we know that God has decreed certain things then we don't look behind, in God's, [S2: right ] character and [S2: right ] motives to assess, what he's decreed or, with respect to our attitudes you know, [S2: right ] um, o- on the sort of Hume Hutcheson view, [S2: mhm ] it's, um though it's to use a um Price term, uh factitious i guess. [S2: mhm ] right i- its implanted factitious sense, [S2: mhm ] uh it's in virtue of that sense or sentiment that we make moral judgments nonetheless, that's what we use to make moral judgments, [S2: right ] right, [S2: right ] and so it's not gonna stop us making moral judgments [S2: right ] uh, [S2: yeah ] to know that, [S2: yeah ] about ourselves, [S2: right ] on this view. that's all moral judgment is after all, and now i come and i'm, i'm contemplating God and God is benevolent, and, my fa- m- my knowledge that, he's implanted this sense in me, doesn't in any way stop me from, seeing him as morally good though i have to admit that had he implanted a different sense in me, and Hutcheson you know actually, runs through [S2: right right ] this point, [S2: right, right yeah ] uh so it's, it's it's in a slightly different position, than [S2: well ] voluntarism but yeah 
S2: i i i think that's right though Hume does say we can't know anything about God's moral, sentiments, [S1: right ] because he doesn't necessarily have sentiments [S1: right ] for all we know. so God might not be, uh benevolent to us out of any moral motive.
S1: no but that's the point for for [S2: right ] for Hu- for Hutcheson and Hume that doesn't matter for his goodness. [S2: right. ] in fact, for Hutcheson, were he to_ the only way he could do out ou- s- so- uh or, he could try to out of some, moral consciousness would corrupt, his goodness because, Hutcheson's got this view that, it's only for some natural good, [S2: right ] right that you_ so Hutcheson suspects that what Shaftesbury for example who holds such a view is committed to, [S2: mhm ] is that i'm really just trying to get the pleasure, of viewing my, of viewing, you know my own moral goodness. [S2: mhm mhm ] and that uh
S2: well what [S1: yeah ] what Hutcheson if i recall correctly likes is that God's nice to us though he doesn't have to be. [S1: mhm ] whereas if, i- i- if it were like uh Cumberland, uh God has to be nice to us. uh God's under a moral, obligation even though he has no superior. to be nice to us. so he's moral alright for Cumberland, but it's not the kind of spontaneous love that Hutcheson wants to see. so i think there's, that that's another wrinkle on, [S1: mhm ] on the matter. but again, um nobody picked that up, [S1: mhm ] and argued against it... yeah. 
S3: the uh voluntarist position you attributed i think to Law, [S2: mhm ] and said that uh God can will, to make say murder wrong but then, he has to keep willing that it's wrong or else it would, it would go back to being right or something the sustaining, nature of God's will so s- 
S2: no uh uh the_ William Law, thinks that uh... on certain views you might have to have occasionalism with respect to morality just as Malebranche has it with respect to the physical world and our (image) of it. now in fact the, voluntarists do not believe that. the distinction between God's absolute and his ordained power, enables them to take care of it. before he has, willed anything, in particular for instance that it's not right to kill. it's up to him. i mean he could have it go any way. once he has decided, that he's gonna make a world such that it's wrong to kill, God doesn't change his mind. [S3: okay ] God is constant so we don't have to worry about volun- about occasionalism from the voluntarist point of view. uh what Law's trying to do, is to stick that onto the rationalists, [S3: uhuh ] uh it's not_ it's something that the voluntarists are very eager to avoid. [S3: mhm ] uh they believe that, God does nothing in vain, i mean they combine, a certain ignorance of God with an awful lot of knowledge about God. <SS LAUGH> he does he does nothing in vain, so once he has made us beings of a certain kind, he has to will that we do whatever sustains beings of that kind otherwise his own willing would be internally incoherent. we'd be in a kind of Kantian self-contradiction. um, so having made us, for instance susceptible to, uh death by violence, uh and having made us, with a desire to sustain our lives he has to will, that we do what sustains our lives. so killing is wrong, and a whole bunch of other things are right. and he won't change his mind you don't have to worry about that. 
S3: and is that because they assume that God not only has power but has, rationality? leave morality out 
S2: they they are willing to say that he's a rational agent but they wanna say as Law does that we don't understand his rational, his rationality. and, recall the most extreme of them all Descartes. <SS LAUGH> who said yeah. you know you you think it's incomprehensible that maybe two plus two doesn't equal four and equals seven instead, and that's right you do think it's incomprehensible, but that just shows you how weak your reason is God doesn't necessarily think that it's incomprehensible. uh and it's Descartes, whom Cudworth is, uh in large part exercised about, in the Treatise that was published in seventeen thirty-one. so that's not a common, position that's more extreme than, than most of them turn out to be... yeah.
S4: i thought it was interesting, how you placed the um, the, Hume section on, um sentiments uh moral sentiments not being derived from reason, um in the context of deism. or, what are these arguments about voluntarism and i was wondering if you could extend that into that, um small passage at the end where Hume's law, figures in, i was wondering specifically whether you, you would say that the, his is ought distinction there might have been a thinly veiled argument against, uh similar to Euthrypo uh -phro argument, uh against the idea that since God wills it it is good. 
S2: it would it would affect that kind of argument, uh it also affects, all the empiricist arguments, um as to what we ought to do, from the constitution of our nature. uh, Pufendorf says, we need one another's help, and we even enjoy it, and these are pointers to the fact that God uh, willed us to be beings of that kind so it follows that we ought to increase our sociability. and Hume's wondering how you get from these descriptions of nature, to the ought conclusion. the is ought passage doesn't affect Clarke. he doesn't, make any of these is ought, uh conclusions. it it might affect the voluntarist, uh it might not depending how the voluntarist put his position, uh but it certainly a- affects empiricist arguments, um of a kind that voluntarists used, once they had the premise, um that our nature shows us how we ought to act. right? so in in discussing, that part of the Treatise the the passage i was citing comes from the Second Enquiry not the Treatise but, i think the same considerations are, working in Hume's thinking, um, in discussing the arguments in, uh three-one of the Treatise, you have to sort out the different targets. he has different arguments against the rationalists than he does against the empiricists like Locke. um, okay yeah. 
S1: actually on on this point i mean i, i wonder if, uh the point you're making about, in particular about sort of constitutes- constitutional arguments [S2: mhm ] that is, say Butler for example so there's [S2: mhm ] or really what he has in mind here because, there's a there is, i guess another, letter to Hutcheson where, isn't this right? where he says that um, i see you accept, uh Mr. Butler's use of natural, [S2: mhm ] um does, this smacks of final causes uh, [S2: right ] and then he's talking about um... th- what moral sen- about moral sense approving of itself that's right and he [S2: yeah ] says, i- uh, look he says that that, all that means is on reflection it does and that's, d- and he says that's true of every, [S2: yeah ] every [S2: right right ] uh reaction or something like that. but the point i wanted to focus on was, this idea that, i mean there he's quite aware that uh, that both Butler certainly Butler, uh and he's claiming Hutcheson, [S2: mhm ] wanna get normative force, out of the term natural. [S2: right ] and that would be just, right along the lines, [S2: right ] there
S2: there's, there's that but he, he... was exposed to Pufendorf, as a youngster, and i don't know how much of him he actually read, [S1: yeah ] uh but if he even read some of Carmichael's edition, of The Duty of Man and Citizen, he would have gotten this picture, of the divine command ethic, uh where, uh we are to take the facts of our nature as indicating God's will, and then, uh to infer commands from them. and this would've gone against that. so certainly Butler but, i think also the kind of thing that he could have known, uh of Pufendorf if he knew and as i say i don't know whether he read that or not. he didn't like studying Law. yeah Alan? 
S5: uh, i have a, picture of Hume which may not be the right picture but [S2: mhm ] uh which uh see- would seem to have him coming out not as a, uh voluntarist of morality, uh so i, wonder uh, uh let me lay out the picture and uh, you can, uh correct me on, this uh, he's um Philo at the, in the Dialogues says [S2: mhm ] that the that, um we don't know much about the, uh cause of the universe but at any rate it looks as if it has more of a, uh our an- analogy to our intellectual qualities than to our, moral qualities, and that seems to fit the, the view of God as, not having, uh, moral sentiments and uh, uh let's suppo- let's suppose that uh Hume's, uh, thinks that we, he doesn't have any explanation for the, sort of teleology of uh, of the way, plants and animals are constructed [S2: mhm ] without an intelligent creator because he doesn't have Darwin, uh then uh, this intelligent being for some reason uh, uh makes us the way we are and makes us have the, the moral sense we, did and uh presumably the intelligent being could have, created us to, uh uh f- feel a glow of approval at murder uh but didn't, but then it uh, it shouldn't f- follow i would think that uh, uh that uh murder is wrong because, God said so, a- and it wouldn't follow that murder is wrong because, God made us to disapprove of it, now maybe this is, uh turning him into too much of a, modern quasi realist <SS LAUGH> uh but it um, once i'm uh, exercising my moral sense, uh it, will apply to uh a world in which uh, God creates us to feel a glow of approval at murder uh, with disapproval of, disapprovals of murders in, [S2: mhm right ] in that world so uh so at least he should be saying that although God could've made us to uh approve of different things uh that wouldn't have made them right. 
S2: i i don't think that i'm attributing, to Hume a voluntarist theory of morality, [S5: i see ] um what i was suggesting is that Hume is, uh, s- engaged in uh sort of complex, uh move shuffling the pieces, that the Deists and the Christians were playing with. [S5: mhm ] he's saying you can't have this rational defense, of morality and therefore you can't have a moral defense of moral revelation. [S5: mhm ] and you can't suppose, that you can attribute morality in our sense to God. so if you're gonna have a God, big if. uh it's gonna be just like, Pufendorf's God. now it doesn't follow from that, that he's saying oh and and so if we're gonna have God we have to accept Pufendorf's version of morality. [S5: i see ] uh, i think he doesn't think you hafta have a God myself. i opt for the atheist Hume, in all of this. um, but uh my point is simply to situate him, in this complicated game of defending revelation while warding off voluntarism, and to say you can't do it. [S5: mhm ] you can't play that game, right? not if you understand morality correctly. uh so, that leaves it up in the air as to, i mean, i still don't know what Hume's personal beliefs were i suspect he didn't believe anything but, uh i don't want to attribute to him a voluntarist theory of morality. uh am i stuck with attributing it to him?
S5: oh no i was saying you weren't [S2: yeah right right i didn't think i was ] so i i i w- <SS LAUGH> i guess i was uh, ma- mi- misunderstanding what you were saying and 
S2: and and the voluntarist theory of morality uh, is, i mean in the in the versions i know it's not a sentimentalist theory of morality, unless Hutcheson is voluntarist which he may very well be. uh but Pufendorf's, uh says there's a fact of the matter the fact of the matter is that your nature is such that you need society. that, another fact of the matter God willed you to preserve your nature. [S5: mhm ] so it follows that in fact you oughta be preserving society [S5: uh ] increasing your own desire to do so. 
S5: uhuh i guess if you were a subjectivist about uh moral sense and thought that uh, things we disapproved of were, wrong because we disapproved of them and you thought that we disapproved of them because, God decided to get us to disapprove of them, then then you would, have God uh, [S2: making us in- making us into Humeans. yeah. ] deciding and directing what's, what's wrong <SS LAUGH> but uh uh and of course Hume uh, uh keeps saying things that uh, we'd like different, what look like different positions to us so uh [S2: yeah ] so it's hard to know whether
S2: well i i was not [S5: s- s- suggesting ] here offering a reading of Hume's theory of morality as such [S5: uhuh uhuh well ] but simply, pointing out what the attack on rationalism is doing, [S5: uhuh ] to the religious sensibilities [S5: uhuh ] of his own time and the reason i was citing those people from the seventeen thirties is to show that this was a very live issue, [S5: mhm ] while Hume was working it out [S5: mhm ] so, yeah.
S6: um, i w- i was just gonna say okay so you're reading him in in denying rationalism. he's uh, he's primarily trying to deny that there's any sort of like like truth that would be binding on both us, and on God [S2: yes ] or simply by virtue of our rationality. um but you're, by saying that that's primarily what he's, attacking i take it you're saying that he's not necessarily attacking the idea that there's, something by virtue of which, uh all humans are bound independently of our particular desires. [S2: well ] um or at least you're leaving that open, [S2: let's let's ] so maybe my question, well ou- my ques- i- i've just [S2: yeah ] i've heard some people talk about, you know kinda trying to, you know defuse the alleged debate between, you know Kant and Hume as to, as to whether there's a notion of categoricity that could still, be at play in Hume i'm wondering if, you think that that might be true.
S2: well that, [S6: or you ] gets well beyond anything i was talking about today but i will, [S6: okay ] i will not hesitate, to, [S6: okay ] <SS LAUGH> but let let me pick up on Edward Craig's very useful way of looking at it. Craig argues with some persuasiveness, that the notion that man was made in God's image, uh which was still widespread in the eighteenth century is something Hume is trying to attack to undercut. and he argues it, via the epistemology. Craig does. by Hume's epistemology. uh because as he sees, rational a priori truth, is a very good way, uh if we're made in God's image, we're not gonna know as much as God but if we have the same kinds of knowledge that God has, that shows us that, our intellect is like God's and rational a priori truth, does that and Craig argues that, by giving his interpretation his own interpretation of rational a priori truth as limited to the trivial ones, and by making uh causal beliefs and all the rest, uh into uh what we know Hume made them into, Hume is cutting us off from being made in the image of what God might be like. now what i'm adding, that i think Craig doesn't, is that Hume, does this very thoroughly with respect to morality. uh we just don't know anything about, God's moral attributes we can't say anything about them, and certainly not anything rational a priori. uh as as putting us in moral community with God and being like God in our morality we simply can't do that our morality is for human beings. now the passage i cited from the Second Enquiry, says, if morality is, i mean it implies if morality's a matter of sentiment it is so for the whole human species. mkay? it's just that it doesn't extend to all possible rational agents, and who is he worrying about? well, Kant may have worried about angels but Hume didn't. uh, it's only, God that he's worrying about. so God's kicked out of that once we find that it's sentiment and Hume, labels that about as clearly, as he can. if we're supposing that God is a rational agent, then morality doesn't extend there. now you were asking about some kind of categorical obligation that, covers all human beings? 
S6: yeah i mean i guess what i'm thinking is i mean like, you know Kant's gonna say, you know is gonna, parse categorical as, binding on all beings insofar as they're rational. [S2: right ] but they're, i mean they're, you might not, you might just say it's, binding independent of our particular desires, and you might not take the Kantian idea that, that in order to have a kind of independent desire you need rationality. you might, [S2: yeah ] have some kind of middle, i don't know what the middle, term would be but it almost sounded like you, you were saying, the way you were putting it um, that if it's a, morality for all human beings, even if it's not by virtue of something we share with God, [S2: yeah ] s- sounded, like um, like for example it might be binding o- on so- someone who who doesn't have [S2: right ] human sympathy. or doesn't have any particular 
S2: okay. uh let let me let me just, say a little bit about, a difference between Hume and Kant. which is very important for Hume's anti-Calvinism. which is what this antireligious stuff is all about... for Luther and for, Calvin though Calvin isn't quite as fierce. the moral law has several functions. one is to direct us to a certain civic righteousness, external behavior but another is to show us what we ought to do but can't. cannot do... it shows us that we ought to act lovingly and out of, respect for God and so on and that shows us that we can't, without grace. and we can't do anything to deserve grace. okay? so here are binding commands to which there is no responding motive in our nature now. okay? Hume rejects that. Hume says, if there's gonna be anything that's morally approved of, it has to rest on some motive in human nature that's already there. now that's what gives him the problem about justice and we'll set that to side, to, one side for the moment. so, Kant would say that unless there were, in our nature, motives that led us to be nice to our children and our spouses, uh to be willing to help to cooperate with other people and so on, there wouldn't be anything, that we'd approve of. mkay? obligation comes in, for Hume, when i discover in myself that i lack a motive, that i think most people have, and i dislike this in myself so much, so i make myself act as if i had it, that is i tell myself you have to anyway. the have to, you know that gets us obligation. okay? this is not Kant. by any manner of means. okay? Kant says, s- so put it this way i- here's a slogan. to know what you oughta do for Hume you first have to know what you're already inclined to do. for Kant, to know what you can have a motive to do you first hafta know what you oughta do. okay? they're about as different as chalk and cheese night and day, on this. so when Hume says there's a moral sentiment that's common to all human beings what he means is, all of us are gonna approve and disapprove the same sorts of character traits. it isn't a story about obligation, except way down in this corner where i'm lacking, the motives that, i think to be normal. okay? uh i i'd be very suspicious of attempts to marry Kant and Hume. alright? George? 
S7: yeah uh i guess i'm not uh very clear, i don't know much about this history anyway but, i'm not very clear about, w- how to construe the rationalists. okay now, suppose somebody, reads uh Calvin or uh Luther and so forth but uh, that he thinks this uh voluntarism is uh, is uh terrible in some way. and it makes God into a tyrant and uh arbitrary and all this kind of stuff okay so that can't be the right story. about uh God and morality. uh so what's an alternative? well he happens to think one alternative is, uh there are some rational necessary truths about morality, you could say, [S2: mhm ] which are, some, in some way or another independent of God's, willing they're not generated by God's willingness [S2: right ] to show necessary truth. um, now, uh it it looks like that, person is a kind of rationalist. [S2: mhm ] might be a rationalist. uh is this person bound to think that uh, uh we can know independently of God's revelation or something like that we can know what the, what these necessary truths are? [S2: i suppose ] cuz he doesn't think that these that the that the that uh, unlike other, uh necessary truth all of these must be within our, [S2: mhm ] intellectual power i suppose? 
S2: yeah it's i suppose, a person who held that view is not necessarily committed, to the view that, people can know the truths that govern God and Law suggested that, there are such truth_ even if there were such truths we couldn't know them because, if it's a fitness Clarke's term, one term of the relation is the infinite incomprehensible deity. okay so. um, but, the, rationalists are in one way or another, persuaded by the argument which, uh, may or may not be, for the first time in Herbert, though i thought it was anyway i hadn't found it earlier, to the effect that it would be unjust of God, to do the following. to say, you get to heaven just in case, you obey the moral rules, uh the moral law, but i'm not gonna let you know what they are. and God couldn't be unjust. so if the moral rules only come to revelation and revelation is only for Jews and Christians and in fact really now only for Christians, God's unjust and that can't be, so it must be the case that morality is equally accessible to everyone. that's the high rationalist line. and then they say oops. what do we need revelation for? <SU-M LAUGH> and then they say well, it's in principle accessible to everybody but there're an awful lot of sinful and stupid people around <SU-M LAUGH> who won't get it. so i think you're right i mean in principle, you could be a rationalist and say and as a matter of fact, nobody ever knows, what those truths are. but it would be in a very weird position, especially if you coupled it with the view that God's gonna judge us partly in moral terms. [S7: yeah ] which Luther and Calvin of course don't. 
S7: yeah. well you say there could there could be the rationalists who do- who doesn't say, uh, who doesn't think that the rationality you might say of these, a priori truths [S2: mhm ] uh necessary truths, is, uh within our power, but nevertheless doesn't hold that we can never know what they are. okay? it might hold that, uh, uh uh uh since God is not a voluntarist <LAUGH> you might say, [S2: mhm ] uh G- God's commands will correspond to these, [S2: yeah ] uh, true principles [S2: but but ] of morality whatever they are so
S2: you'd have to have an a priori proof of that without knowing what the commands were, right? i mean without knowing [S7: that ] what the principles were.
S7: yeah that that that's right. now if you thought that the only alternative to, to voluntarism was r- some kind of rationalism, [S2: mhm ] and uh y- you're uh completely uh convinced that voluntarism can't be right you think voluntarism is so terrible that it's a, [S2: yeah ] it ca- it can't be the truth, so you think you're s- you're, well we're left with rationalism so [S2: mhm ] rationalism must be the truth. [S2: yeah ] but uh i sit around here trying to think about morality on my own and i can't uh figure out uh, what the, necessary truth about murder is. <LAUGH> or [S2: right ] rape or whatever. uh so i can't do that so, but there must be a necessary truth, and here's a command from God. [S2: mhm ] well, i- it seems like, this command from God then represents this necessary truth God God can understand that necessary truth even though i can't. [S2: yeah a- ] he can't be [S2: a- right right ] a voluntarist until he's commanded something to us, so this would be evidence 
S2: so then you have to as it were take it on faith that God's passing along the right commands to you. a- [S7: well w- it it ] why not? 
S7: it it's gonna be your faith that God cannot be a voluntarist, supporter <SS LAUGH> [S2: right ] but that's too bad. [S2: yeah that that's ] that wouldn't be that bad. <LAUGH>
S2: certainly a possible position [S7: yeah ] but it's not one that i've run across in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 
S7: i see that, you certainly that you don't find anybody arguing [S2: no ] that way.
S2: the the people_ i mean if you get the Leibnizians on, on one hand, Leibniz and Wolff and i assume lots of others, uh, y- who hold that, um, the goodness of a possible state of affairs is, by so much a reason for bringing it about and more goodness gives you a better reason, and God is moved by reasons. so in every case God seeks, the greatest amount of good he can bring about. Leibniz is, uh very straightforward maximizing, consequentialist. and so um, and then you get, uh a number of people who, wanted to hold, to rationalism in order to reject voluntarism but did not like what we would think of as utilitarianism. and had to find a way to, talk about, rational first principles without making it all into the Leibnizian maximize perfection principle. and there you get Clarke, um and uh Butler and, eventually Thomas Reid with his seventeen self-evident axioms <SU-M LAUGH> including some axioms of precedence, and William Hewell, and Sidgwick finally trying to make some sense of all this, um, but i- they're driven not only_ i mean Sidgwick isn't worried about voluntarism and Hewell isn't anymore, but Reid, with Reid it's almost not a worry anymore, the voluntarism bit, by the end of the eighteenth century. pluralism remains, in order to oppose, the the straight consequentialism. but the position you're suggesting is not one that i've run across. yeah you had a, comment.
S8: um i was just curious about the uh rationalist, explanation of revelation [S2: yeah ] and in any case, felt they needed to respond to a, bigger target i can imagine um if they, explain revelation as unnecessary to salvation it just, you know a handout from God in a, response to, i can't remember Hume's completely in the impediments of of reason, uh did they face the challenge well, why did God make its revelation not only in a particular corner of the earth, and was that, [S2: sure ] still maybe unfair i mean you could get out of that by saying well this particular corner of the earth was, populated by especially stupid people, <SS LAUGH> but they don't, they didn't shoot that one down 
<SS LAUGH> 
S2: they, they they did face that challenge the deists, said that again and again and again. you guys can't go around saying, that revealed truth is necessary for salvation because God didn't make it equally available to everybody. um, and they, wriggled and struggled and, so on with it, and uh what they eventually decided was, i mean it it's very difficult because they need to have, belief in Christ and belief in uh, special redemption and so on his redeeming powers, in there, uh at the same time as they wanna say well morality can get you to heaven. uh the worst sort of pelagianism, [S8: mhm ] um and they were very worried about it but they didn't have a very good answer. um, at least i don't think they had a very good answer but then
S8: w- now they weren't saying the the rationalists we're talking about weren't saying s- revelation is, necessary to salvation would you say? i mean [S2: well ] they just thought it was like, i i've got a h- a handout from God i'm hoping 
S2: look if it isn't, if it isn't they've collapsed into deism. [S8: mhm ] if it is, they're, elitist because they think it's only stupid people who need it, and they're worse than that because, the it wasn't given to all of the human race. so, there were various kinds, of answers. for instance, that, prior to the Christian revelation, the Jewish one would do, it would get you there if you believed that, that God is slowly educating the world. and that the word is spreading and maybe people who didn't get a crack at the revelation would, they'd get in alright. but now that we've got it we have to spread it and the people who have it sure as heck better believe, all that stuff i mean, there're all kinds of, of ways of trying to get around it, but the deists kept pressing them, and then of course deism seemed like an unstable position. i mean, God doesn't interfere in the world there're no miracles, he is James Joyce's author out there behind his universe paring his fingernails. and why bother? and and s- and everybody thought that deism would lead straight to atheism. right? so i mean unless you're hung up on immortality, but they thought the arguments for immortality were no good. <SU-M LAUGH> right? so a- this this was a period i mean, it's this kind of thing, that leads people to say you see there was this Enlightenment project of getting rid of religion and having a secular morality. now i think that's, a a horrendously mistaken oversimplification of what was going on in this period, but you can see why, people might take that line. you had a, comment. 
S9: yeah. i was wondering if you could uh draw out the line of reasoning, uh to make it to voluntarism saying that, God couldn't be the type of being that we could love, um and also, you mentioned earlier um, something about that one really and also you mentioned the questioned about, obedience um such as, i don't know if it was why should obey God or why should we, be moral and, it kinda seems as though those were two related, i couldn't tell if they were, two [S2: yeah ] related or two different arguments? 
S2: no wh- what i was suggesting, is this that, um, it's easy to dismiss voluntarism. uh you you throw, Moore's open question argument at it, right, [S9: mhm ] or you, do the Euthyphro bit or whatever. uh and, uh you see th- the voluntarists knew about that... they said, don't you understand? you are a sinful fallen creature and in arguing like that you are being prideful. that's a sin. you have to accept... uh you want reasons to accept? read the Bible. do you want a proof that the Bible is true? look at the miracles, or, what kind of pride is that? it's an attitude that we don't, r- i don't readily feel my way into. <SS LAUGH> it's an attitude of humble submission. to a deity who wants that. it seems to me not an incoherent, position. it is saying, morality doesn't have the kind of rational foundations you prideful reasoners are looking for. morality comes from God's arbitrary decision, to create a world like this one. it's gonna stay that way because God doesn't change his mind, and all we can say about it is, that's the way God made things, and he intends us to preserve ourselves as the creatures we are, in the world he gave us, that's morality there's nothing more to be said about it, obey. now, uh, as i sai- that seems to me to be an intelligible position, not one that i'd go for, um but interesting in its refusal to say that there are no rational foundations of the kind, that Leibniz and Clarke in their different manners, were going toward. yeah Ed?
S10: uh uh i wonder if you think that uh the voluntarists would be vulnerable to the following kind of argument. uh i mean it it does seem to me that, uh, there is a very strong strand of voluntarism in the scriptural tradition, that they're coming out of. [S2: yeah? ] um, on the other hand, there are also things in that scriptural tradition which seem to be pointing in a somewhat different direction. uh, notably the idea that there's a covenantal relationship between God and his people. [S2: right. ] which seems to suppose that, they have what he, referred to as a moral community [S2: right ] in that there is_ i mean if God doesn't do [S2: right ] what he promised to do in the covenant, he will, be behaving <LAUGH> unjustly [S2: right ] and and, [S2: right ] won't won't be living up [S2: mhm ] to the standards of God. did, was that argument tried against them to yo- t- your that you know of? 
S2: i don't know i don't know enough of the purely theological arguments, to say. um i know i know that Pufendorf got into lots and lots of trouble with the orthodox, Lutherans, though he was very devout and he, proclaimed himself a Lutheran, and um, i have not read the, (xx) 
S10: uh d- does that mean that the Lutherans by his day were, had given Luther's voluntarism? 
S2: well they were hedging. [S10: uhuh ] uh and, i mean i, uh i- it goes on i went to a memorial service for a, a relative up in a tiny village in the Catskills a year or two ago and it was a Dutch Calvinist church, [S10: mhm ] and uh the minister was, thrilled to meet somebody who'd actually met Nick (Wolfersdorf) and talked with him, <SS LAUGH> and he thought very well of Nick, and i thought this is my opportunity i said do you teach, uh absolute predestination and God's arbitrary will? he said you know 
S1: every other semester.
<SS LAUGH> 
S2: should be every Sunday i mean, <SS LAUGH> Hutchinson got in trouble for not tea- preaching [S10: i know ] it every Sunday, he said you know, my parishioners mostly want, pastoral counseling about their marriages, <SS LAUGH> we don't [S1: give me a break ] we don't talk theology. <SS LAUGH> so, and i, i've taught, uh, this sort of thing, to an awful lot of undergraduate, classes in beginning ethics and so on because i've found that, most of the students who think they are Christian haven't the faintest idea of the sort of thing they, oughta believe, and they are simply appalled, by this kind of predestinarianism they've never heard it and they can call themselves Presbyterian all they want. <SS LAUGH> they have never heard it. and whether they get it, we get it out of Saint Augustine which you can get it out of, or Calvin or Luther, uh they just don't want 
S10: or Thomas Aquinas 
S2: or Aquinas. they don't want any, part of it. so, it's it's a fascinating, con- sort of secular change i mean, very widespread change, that at one time, a large number of Europeans thought this was just the appropriate attitude and it made perfectly good sense to them. they just said yeah that's right i should be obedient i shouldn't be questioning and so on. uh and in the period that my book covers, that, consensus that even the willingness to take that seriously, seems to have, dried up. uh, and i don't know the, the uh the whole story of why that happened. but it's part of, what i've called the invention of autonomy that, [SU-M: mhm ] people came to think that that could not be the proper attitude that couldn't, we couldn't live in a universe with a God like that. yeah.
S11: um, so this view, uh that you mentioned that um, in fact, if you haven't heard about the Christian revelation um then you're okay but once you hear it if you reject it then now you're in trouble. [S2: yeah you're in real trouble now. ] it's it's alive and well today i understand for example that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints holds a version of this view. [S2: right. ] now i wonder whether, uh the seventeenth and eighteenth century thinkers had noticed, um and had any response to the obvious objection which is, if that's true, then there's a serious moral objection to missionary activity. <SS LAUGH> if you tell somebody about the Christian revelation, right? you're putting him in this terrible danger that he wasn't in before. <SS LAUGH> 
S2: well but you see, but you see there's that text. go out into the hedges and the byways and compel them to come in. which was taken 
S12: well that's that's even worse than the missionary. <SS LAUGH> 
S2: yeah except that, that they all reads it compel them by the force of argument. 
S12: ah well. 
S2: but that's not how the missionaries read it. <LAUGH> i, look i'm not trying to defend, <SS LAUGH> perhaps i hadn't made that sufficiently clear. <SS LAUGH> i'm i'm reporting from a distant country, <SS LAUGH> how the natives how the natives thought down there. and, the the uh, the pickle, that the rationalizing Christian defenders of rela- revelation got themselves into, just was on the table, in Hume's England. and he would certainly have known about it. and he would have read Law. he would have read Law, Law was a a really important, theological think- thinker. he_ Law has a, a a scathing attack on Mandeville for instance. um, and the, the Devout Lif- i don't know if Hume read the, Treatise on the Devout Life but um, he would have known Law he certainly would've known the deists. so that, he was he was intervening as we used to say, in that discussion. and i think we get a better sense of his concern about rationalism, if we see it in this context. uh, yeah we can assess the arguments without knowing about the context. and there they are we hafta, work them through were they good or weren't they? but if you e- wanna know what he was doing, in putting them forward, why this interested him why this was such an important issue for him, what he's doing, in uh making morality a matter of sentiment, then you're not gonna get it except by looking at s- at contexts like this. anyway that's, my own view yeah.
S12: um this is um, um right s- so, so, the way it works if i have it right Hume says look if you want, morality with your, religion you get, sort of uh a voluntarism. only option. right? now... um, can can other aspects of Hume's attack on religion be read as um, sort of two pronged attack here so you got this voluntarism and now you've got ah uh now you've got to rely on things like miracles. and and then on miracles it's, so. [S2: right ] he's limited your options there and he limits them again on miracles [S2: right ] and then you're, but i 
S2: and then you have to rely on, rational arguments to prove that God exists, and he chops those away. [S12: right. ] and then he gives you a psychology, that explains why you believe this stuff, and it's a psychology that shows, that the causes of your belief are not such as to be likely to lead you to a true belief. [S12: mhm ] quite the contrary. right? and then what he says is, look i can't prove that God doesn't exist, that's beyond me. but you see the causes of belief, are such that if Newtonian science spreads, and everybody knows, how to give naturalized explanations of everything, well, all this religious stuff's gonna dry up and blow away. [S12: mhm ] and that's the sense in which he's, an archetypal Enlightenment figure, getting rid of religion alright, right? [S12: mhm ] but it's because, almost everybody else takes religion as so important, [S12: yeah ] that Hume has to develop this huge barrage of weapons [S12: mhm ] against it. it's not because you know, they got rid of it in France and aren't we happy. <SS LAUGH> it was only a few people like Holbach and Helvetius who tried to get rid of it in France and look what happened to them. well i mean they didn't get executed but... so
S10: Neither of them have got a statue put up to him, nicely in Paris.
S2: oh yes. not not during his lifetime. <SS LAUGH> right. yeah.
S13: um, in regards to the genesis, of this voluntarism, was there, any sort of, scepticism, on the side of the voluntarists, against the very idea of there being something like a moral fact?
{END OF TRANSCRIPT}

