the same relations in animals have not the smallest moral turpitude and deformity?” Incest is accepted in animals because they do not have the reason to discover the immortality of the actions. If man guided his judgments by reason, the action of incest would be moral or immoral regardless of the species. “Animals are susceptible of the same relations, with respect to each other, as the human species, and therefore would also be susceptible of the same morality if the essence of morality consisted in these relations. Their want of a sufficient degree of reason may hinder these duties from existing; since they must antecedently exist, in order to their perceived. Reason must find them, and can never produce them.” (Johnson 184). Hume feels his argument is sound. For the problem must first exist for it to be subject to man’s reason and is therefore independent of reason. Another critic of Hume’s philosophy is Immanuel Kant. Kant says that reason cannot guide man, but can influence one’s will to act. This statement opposes Hume’s position that reason does not control one’s desires. Kant does not associate will with desire or the passions that Hume discusses. Kant’s idea of a priori ideas opposes Hume’s experimental approach. Kant’s idea that man should act prior to the experience and with no regard to the situation contradicts Hume’s experimental/situational approach to passions governing moral decisions. Hume’s idea of passions depends a lot on man’s prior life experiences. Kant believes that happiness and being moral are not the same. Hume would argue that man may have a duty to be happy, but the degree to which we are happy cannot be judged morally. It is not true that the happier one is the more moral one is. Hume argued in his Treatise that reason doesn’t influence the will, but Kant says that reason influence the will...
