The End of Anatomy: Abstruseness, Paradoxicalness and Morals

The Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, according to its author, is ‘incomparably the best’ of all his writings. It is certainly a turning point in Hume’s strategy and in his reflections on philosophical paradoxicalness and abstruseness, as well as on the dangerous consequences of any doctrine, which are for the first time declared a presumption of falsehood. Hume does not only changes his views concerning paradoxes, abstruse arguments, the search for more general and universal principles, and the distinction of primary and secondary qualities; he also distinguishes morals from metaphysics and science: abstruse arguments, he claims, are ‘totally unfit for moral Discourses’. The ‘anatomy’ of the Treatise, which passing through the first Enquiry has become a mental ‘geography’, is relegated to appendices and footnotes, and Hume celebrates the second Enquiry as a ‘Delineation’ of virtue. Yet, some tensions remain. And the author of the Treatise, who used to promote his views as extraordinary and paradoxical, seems to recover his voice in some of the sceptical characters of Hume’s mature dialogues.