Hume: “Reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions.”
Why??
P1) Reason cannot tell us what we value
P2) Reason can help us pursue what we value
P3) What we value is based on our sentiments & passions
We find virtue beautiful and vice odious. Matters of taste cannot be defended on reason.
Morality is based on what we value.
“It appears evident that the ultimate ends of human actions can never, in any case, be accounted for by reason, but recommend themselves entirely to the sentiments and affections of mankind without any dependence on the intellectual faculties.”
- Reason alone might override those “common fellow feelings” and permit inhuman acts
- Role of compassion is directly linked to one’s conscience & to the ability to feel disgust at vice and approbation towards virtue; with reason alone, “men become totally indifferent toward these distinctions.”
Rousseau: The conscience as “Divine Reason.”
“…the first impulses of nature are always right....Do we take more pleasure in the sight of the sufferings of others or in their joys?”
“Take from our hearts this love of what is noble and you rob us of the joy of life.”
Philopasta 
In terms of Kant’s definition of human stated in class, how does one figure out if they, or another, is truly a person, in terms of being in control of their wants and needs? In terms of wondering if I am a person I wonder what percentage of the time I have to be in full control of my wants. for example, I am reading a text book and i really want to take a nap. Now, I believe that it is my duty to finish reading before resting because I am obliged to understand what is being taught to grow and mature as a human, yet I find myself asleep in my book. In that moment my want to sleep, purely for the want of it, overrode my will, am I still a person? At what point do i stop being a person? In terms of finding out if another human is a person is there any good way to understand whether or not another besides myself is in control of their wants and will? A child of 3 or 6 is relatively unable to control their will, wants, and needs. However as humans grow they learn to control these things and theoretically become full ‘persons’ but at what point does this transition happen? A child of 13 may know most of right or wrong but would not be in full control of their wants, are they a person yet? Likewise a man of 71 could possess a great amount of power that he has the duty to use for good, but by all accounts he only uses this power to fulfill his selfish wants, can one say whether or not he is a person?
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Is our president human?
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Personhood is a reference to rational capability and autonomy. It is not a definition of species, i.e. human.
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