Hume on the Characters of Virtue

Hume on the Characters of Virtue RICHARD H. DEES IN THE WORLD ACCORDING TO HUME, people are complicated creatures, with convoluted, often contradictory characters. Consider, for example, Hume's controversial assessment of Charles I: The character of this prince, as that of most men, if not of all men, was mixed .... To consider him in the most favourable light, it may be affirmed, that his dignity was free from pride, his humanity from weakness, his bravery from rashness, his temperance from austerity, his frugality from avarice.... To speak the most harshly of him, we may affirm, that many of his good qualities were attended with some latent frailty, which, though seemingly inconsiderable, was able, when seconded by the extreme malevolence of his fortune, to disappoint them of all their influence: His beneficent disposition was clouded by a manner not very gracious; his virtue was tinctured with superstition; his good sense was disfigured by a deference to persons of a capacity inferior to his own; and his moderate temper exempted him not from hasty and precipitate resolutions? This sketch shows Charles in all his complexities, with his virtues, near virtues, and contradicting virtues. I have quoted it at length because it is hard to summarize without losing the subtleties that lie within it. Hume's moral theory is based fundamentally on judgments of character, 2 so those subtleties are important to his view. The character sketches that pervade the History of England are, then, a key to Hume's theory. They show us how, in practice, ' David Hume, Historyof England,from theInvasion ofJulius Caesarto the Revolutionin i688, 6 vols. (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1983), 5:542 (in chapter LIX). Future references to the History will be in the text, designated by H, followed by chapter, then volume and page. So, e.g., this reference would be H 59; 5:549. ~David Hume, A Treatiseof Human Nature, 2nd ed., ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge and rev. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 575. Future references to the Treatisewill be in the text, designated T, followed by the page number. However, when I quote any of Hume's work except the History, I have used the improved version of the text in the electronic version of Humetext, ed. M. A. Stewart, D. F. Norton, and Tom Beauchamp. 46 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 35:~ JANUARY ~997 Hume intends for us to apply his moral philosophy. Indeed, they reveal the unique sensitivity of a Humean moral theory to the nuances and contradictions that characterize our moral judgments in "common life." The sketch of Charles is rich, precisely because Hume displays the many intricacies of his view in it. The details show the enormous effort Hume makes to present a balanced view of his subject. Ironically, this particular sketch caused Hume considerable grief in his lifetime, because his critics thought he judged Charles too kindly.3 But Hume's assessment of Charles is more subtle than most of his contemporaries understood.4 Charles, Hume concludes, "deserves the epithet of a good, rather that of a great man" (H 59; 5: 542): he was a good man because he had many private virtues, but he was not a great one because many of those same virtues worked to his disadvantage in public life. He was not, then, a very good king, especially given the delicate situations he faced during his reign. In Hume's judgment, then, Charles was less evil than stupid, less a tyrant than a bungler.5 Hume's characterization of Charles I thus summarizes both his explanations of Charles's behavior by suggesting how his actions in both public and private were a product of his lasting qualities and Hume's judgments of Charles's merit by showing the exact degree to which Charles was culpable for the turbulent events of his reign. In addition, the sketch of Charles demonstrates the complexity of Hume's character assessments by displaying the many different qualities that count as virtues in Hume's system and by pointing to some of the ways in which they can conflict. Because characters are complicated, our moral judgments are complicated as well. Virtue, for Hume, is not a single...