Abstract: This book interprets the moral philosophy of David Hume, focusing on two areas: his metaethics and the artificial virtues. The book first reinterprets Hume's claim that moral distinctions are not derived from reason and explains why he makes it. It finds that Hume did not actually hold three ‘Humean’ claims: firstly that beliefs alone cannot move us to act, secondly that evaluative propositions cannot be validly inferred from purely factual propositions, or thirdly that moral judgments lack truth value. According to Hume, human beings discern moral virtues and vices by means of feeling or emotion in a way rather like sensing; but this also gives the moral judge a truth-apt idea of a virtue or vice as a felt property. The book then turns to looking at the artificial virtues. Hume says that although many virtues are refinements of natural human tendencies, others (such as honesty) are constructed by social convention to make cooperation possible; and some of these generate paradoxes. The book argues that Hume sees these traits as prosthetic virtues that compensate for deficiencies in human nature. However, their true status clashes with our common-sense conception of a virtue, and so has been concealed, giving rise to the paradoxes.

Keywords: metaethics, artificial virtues, moral distinctions, reason, evaluative propositions, factual propositions, moral judgments, truth value, vices, felt property