Hume: Desire

Although ambivalence in a strict sense, according to which a person holds opposed attitudes, and holds them as opposed, is an ordinary and widespread phenomenon, it appears impossible on the common presupposition that persons are either unitary or plural. These two conceptions of personhood call for dispensing with ambivalence by employing tactics of harmonizing, splitting, or annulling the unitary subject. However, such tactics are useless if ambivalence is sometimes strictly conscious. This paper sharpens the notion of conscious ambivalence, such that (...) the above tactics cannot be applied to ordinary moments of explicit and clear ambivalent consciousness. It is shown that such moments reveal ambivalence as an attitude that is part of human life. The argument employs three features of consciousness that together capture its outgoing character. In the last section some of the implications of conscious ambivalence for consciousness and the mind are clarified as the analysis of conscious ambivalence in this paper is compared with Hume’s and John Barth’s phenomenalist conceptions. -/- An additional note: See Razinsky, Ambivalence: A Philosohical Exploration (Rowman & Littlefield Int., 2016), Ch. 5 for a version of this paper that also includes a long section on the unity of consciousness (but does not include the section named 'Phenomenalist Ambivalence?'). (shrink)

Hume concludes Book II of his Treatise of Human Nature with a section on the passion of curiosity, ‘that love of truth, which was the first source of all our enquiries’. At first sight, this characterisation of curiosity – as the motivating factor in that specifically human activity that is the pursuit of knowledge – may seem unoriginal. However, when Hume speaks of the ‘source of all our enquiries’, he is referring both to the universal human pursuit of knowledge and (...) to his own philosophical project. Seen in this light, his discussion of curiosity takes on a new significance, as it weaves together elements of his systematic account of human nature – notably, his theory of cognition and motivation – with observations about the pursuit of philosophy as well as the progress of the arts and sciences. In the present paper, I offer a reconstruction of Hume’s view on curiosity and its role in cognition and inquiry. (shrink)

This paper aims to clarify the program of Deleuze’s work on Hume’s philosophy. Also, I plan to make clear the operational meaning of Deleuze’s own hallmark regarding his approaches to philosophy. I start to follow Deleuze’s plot by engendering three functions of his interpretation of Hume’s Treatise that will be the area of three thematic chapters. The first tries to sort the polemical function of empiricism that is launched through Deleuze’s Hume; the second attempts to figure the domain of subjectivity (...) as the inventive function of the book; the third searches the creative function by describing the role of the institutional theory. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Direct Passions Pleasure and Desire Reason and Passion References Further Reading.

The association of passion with desire has a long history, from Aristotle to contemporary philosophers. The Aristotelian conception of passion as involving desire has exerted a considerable influence on modern philosophers. I shall take this idea to be the thesis that emotion implies desire. In order to elaborate this thesis, in this paper, I shall focus on Hume’s theory of passion in Book 2 of Treatise. To this end, I first of all present an interpretation of Hume that relies on (...) an account of desire as such that I have developed. Secondly, I demonstrate what kinds of authority, if any, desires have in Hume’s view of the explanation of action. (shrink)