Criticisms
Moral sense theorists (or sentimentalists), such as David Hume, are the key opponents of moral rationalism. In Book 3 of A Treatise of Human Nature and in An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (EPM), Hume argues (among other things) that reason and emotions (or the "passions" as he often calls them) are quite distinct faculties and that the foundations of morality lie in sentiment, not reason. Hume takes it as a fact about human psychology and morality that moral judgments have an essentially emotional, sentimental, or otherwise non-rational or cognitive character to them. According to Hume, "...morality is determined by sentiment. It defines virtue to be whatever mental action or quality gives to a spectator the pleasing sentiment of approbation; and vice the contrary" (EPM, Appendix 1, ΒΆ10).
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“I have no concern with any economic criticisms of the communist system; I cannot enquire into whether the abolition of private property is expedient or advantageous. But I am able to recognize that the psychological premises on which the system is based are an untenable illusion. In abolishing private property we deprive the human love of aggression of one of its instruments ... but we have in no way altered the differences in power and influence which are misused by aggressiveness.”
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