Aesthetics and Morals in the Philosophy of David Hume (review)

In the opening chapter of this book, Timothy Costelloe develops an interpretation of Hume's doctrines in "Of the Standard of Taste" and then proceeds, in the second chapter, by extending (or "applying," in Costelloe's words) that interpretation to Hume's moral philosophy. According to Costelloe, the "real value" of his attempt to clarify Hume's essay is to be found in the broader application (22). But since that value will not be real unless the interpretation of the essay has merit, the first chapter is clearly vital to the enterprise, and so deserves particular attention.

Costelloe sides with those who emphasize, on Hume's behalf, the rules of art rather than the joint verdict of true judges, and he wants to understand these rules in the light of a contrast that Hume draws, in the Treatise section "Of unphilosophical probability," between two "influences" of general rules. In their first influence, general rules reflect an imaginative disposition to associate two objects where the association is a false inference. In a possible second influence, a general rule can correct the mistaken first association. Costelloe explicates rules in their second influence, in turn, by an intriguing appeal to Michael Oakeshott's notion of practical knowledge as an abridgment of a concrete activity, a post hoc summary that is pedagogically useful but which cannot assure mastery of the activity. The conjunction of Hume's idea of a general rule, as understood on Costelloe's lines, and Oakeshott's idea of abridgment supplies the most original aspect of this book's exegesis of Hume's essay. General rules in their second influence, in aesthetic settings, involve taking an unprejudiced view of an object and recognizing both part-whole relations and the end for which the object is intended. A person of good taste—in the limit, the true judge—is someone who manifests or expresses these rules (which Costelloe also calls "standards"), and he or she thus occupies a derivative position in the explanatory scheme. The true judge is an ideal embodiment of the rules-or-standards; and if there is disagreement over whether actual persons possess the characteristics of a true judge, "this only shows . . . that aesthetic judgments do not depend upon such people or the judgments they make" (21).

The second chapter charts parallels between aesthetic and moral judgments, but also proposes—and here the shadow of the first chapter is more apparent—that the rules of morality, as abridgements of practice, do not guarantee perfect practice, and that the figure of the "moral expert" corresponds to the true judge. The third chapter, on the antinomies of reason, is devoted as much to Kant as it is to Hume. (Because of its Kantian focus, this chapter seems somewhat tangential to the book's main argument.) The fourth chapter, returning to the main theme, explores Hume's notion of character, though the rationale for the exploration is not always evident. (To say that "character constitutes the normative dimension of Hume's moral thought, derived from producing philosophical rules in their second influence" [53] is not helpful.) In the fifth and sixth chapters, Costelloe addresses three questions that are prompted by his account of Humean morality. First, if morality is an immediate reaction to beauty and deformity, why is perfect virtue not the condition of everyone? Second, if morality depends on sentiment, how can moral judgments be objective and claim universal validity? And third, if there are general standards, how is it that morality changes and even improves over time?

These last two chapters are the ones furthest removed from aesthetics, and readers who are not aestheticians may find them to be the most convenient point of entry in the book. I confess, however, that Costelloe's first question seems very oddly framed to me. Why would there be any reason to suppose, on the basis of sentimentalism, that perfect virtue might be the universal condition? We would not...