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Objectivity and Perfection in Hume’s Hedonism
- Journal of the History of Philosophy
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 53, Number 2, April 2015
- pp. 245-270
- 10.1353/hph.2015.0028
- Article
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In this paper, I investigate David Hume’s theory of well-being or prudential value. That Hume was some sort of hedonist is typically taken for granted in discussions of his value theory, but I argue that Hume was a hedonist of pathbreaking sophistication. His hedonism intriguingly blends traditional hedonism with a form of perfectionism yielding a version of qualitative hedonism that not only solves puzzles surrounding Hume’s moral theory, but is interesting and important in its own right.