Historically, the view, prevalent in contemporary economics and decision theory as well as philosophy, that rational action consists simply in satisfying one’s desires, whatever they may be, as efficiently as possible, is to be found first in Book II of Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature. This view has counterintuitive and self-refuting implications, in that it recognizes as rational behavior that may reveal a clear degree of irresponsibility or psychological instability. Accordingly, many Hume scholars have tried to show recently that this (...) view was not Hume’s; and that, on the contrary, Hume did supply an account of rational final ends--in his discussion of the calm passions, the “steady and general view” that corrects the biases and contingencies of an individual’s desires and perceptions, and elsewhere. But a detailed reconstruction of Hume’s views on these matters that assembles all the relevant texts does not support this thesis. Instead, it undermines it. Hence the counterintuitive and self-refuting implications of Hume’s view of rational action must be allowed to stand. (shrink)

Hume’s Dissertation on the Passions stands to Book 2 of his Treatise as the first and second Enquiries stand to Books 1 and 3 respectively. However, while the two Enquiries are evidently substantial reworkings of their Treatise ancestors, containing much that is different and new, the Dissertation appears to consist merely of superficially adapted excerpts from Treatise Book 2. I argue that this first impression is mistaken, by showing how Hume’s view of the indirect passions is modified in the later (...) work. In the Treatise, he views them as simple impressions; in the Dissertation, they are complex perceptions, part impression and part idea. I argue, furthermore, that Hume’s account of the origin of the indirect passions only works on this later view, and suggest that this is why he changed his mind. The Dissertation, I conclude, is an improvement on its Treatise forerunner, and not merely a précis of it. (shrink)

Commentary on Michael S. Brady’s book, Emotion: The Basics, indicating that it offers an overview of the field of philosophy of emotions while raising awareness about the intrinsic complexity of the issues in emotion research. This makes it possible to show how emotion research is inevitably tied to specific philosophical assumptions. Three illustrations are discussed that hopefully also testify that, as Brady states, the philosophy of emotion is inevitably tied to the question of what it means to do philosophy.

Whether the sensible knave can take pride in herself is a question not merely curious but potentially devastating for Hume's moral theory. Hume assuredly classifies knavery a vice, but given his doctrine that it belongs to virtue to produce pride, then if she can take pride in herself qua knave, the knave is positioned to claim that knavery is, and ought to be recognized as, a virtue. And if this is true, then either Hume is mistaken to have classified knavery (...) as a vice or, if he is not mistaken, his moral theory yields incoherencies— the same quality being both a virtue and a vice. (shrink)

Pride is a fundamental element in Hume's description of human nature. An important part of the secondary literature on Hume is devoted to this passion. However, no one, as far as I am aware, takes seriously the fact that pride often appears in pairs with vanity. In Book 2 of the Treatise, pride is defined as the passion one feels when society recognizes his connection to a ‘cause’, composed by a ‘subject’ and a (positive) ‘quality’. Conversely, no definition of vanity (...) is provided. Despite Hume's fluctuating vocabulary, I hold that a conceptual difference between pride and vanity exists. To support this claim, I analyse the common features of these two passions, showing that both pride and vanity (a) are indirect passions, (b) are self-regarding passions, and (c) have the same structure. Supported by textual evidence, I then claim that vanity is a desire of reputation, a desire to feel pride, when pride is not (yet) in place, because its cause is only imaginary and not real. Nonetheless, I underscore that, at times, ‘vanity’ means simply pride and call for greater attention on this ongoing oscillation. In conclusion, I explore the implications of this account of vanity for social interactions in Hume's philosophy, which illustrates its intrinsic ambivalence. (shrink)

I contend that Adam Smith and David Hume offer re-interpretations of Aristotle’s notion of greatness of soul, focusing on the kind of magnanimity Aristotle attributes to Socrates. Someone with Socratic magnanimity is worthy of honor, responds moderately to fortune, and is virtuous—just and benevolent. Recent theorists err in claiming that magnanimity is less important to Hume’s account of human excellence than benevolence. In fact, benevolence is a necessary ingredient for the best sort of greatness. Smith’s “Letter to Strahan” attributes this (...) greatness to Hume. It encourages us to admire Hume as an exemplar of human excellence, to seek Hume’s virtues for ourselves, and to approve of the “love of literary fame” which Hume calls his “ruling passion.”. (shrink)

Hume’s account of how the self enters the moral domain and comes to a consciousness of itself as a moral being is one which he superimposes upon his Treatise account of the constitution of the non-metaphysical self. This primordial self is for Hume constructed out of the passions of pride and humility which are themselves in tum constructed out of certain feelings of pain and pleasure, these feelings being worked on by memory and imagination, and converted back and forth into (...) series of ideas and impressions. In presenting this account of the way in which we achieve a coherent self-awareness and self-knowledge such that we ‘know our own force’, Hurne in fact employs a radical psychology which he must discard once the moral self comes into view. The use Hume makes of this psychology has gone unnoticed in the literature, but once we understand its implications we will be able to dispel the confusion that some have found in his story. (shrink)

Neste ensaio, enquadro a narrativa de Rorty com relação ao ego na história das filosofias moderna e contemporânea. Minha tese é que sua rejeição tanto do introspectivismo cartesiano quanto das explicações reducionistas psico-biológicas nasce originalmente de uma epistemologia do ego que está alinhada aos insights de Hume sobre a contingência da individualidade, mas também, introduz uma abordagem complexa à questão filosófica sobre a relação entre os reinos estético e racional. Além disso, avanço em uma leitura anticética, dinâmica e normativa do (...) modelo narrativo de Rorty do ego, a qual associa seu entendimento de ironia – nós podemos sempre duvidar que nosso vocabulário final é o melhor disponível – e de solidariedade – concebido não apenas como um movimento afetivo em direção ao outro, mas também, como uma condição lógica para o funcionamento da comunicação humana. (shrink)

Pour contrer le scepticisme au sujet de la connaissance des valeurs, la plupart soutiennent avec John Rawls qu’une croyance comme celle qu’une action est bonne est justifiée dans la mesure où elle appartient à un ensemble de croyances cohérent, ayant atteint un équilibre réfléchi. Christine Tappolet s’inspire des travaux de Max Scheler et d’Alexius von Meinong pour défendre une conception opposée au cohérentisme. La connaissance des valeurs est affirmée dépendre de nos émotions, ces dernières étant conçues comme des perceptions des (...) valeurs. (shrink)

Adrian Piper argues that the Humean conception can be made to work only if it is placed in the context of a wider and genuinely universal conception of the self, whose origins are to be found in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. This conception comprises the basic canons of classical logic, which provide both a model of motivation and a model of rationality. These supply necessary conditions both for the coherence and integrity of the self and also for unified agency. (...) The Kantian conception solves certain intractable problems in decision theory by integrating it into classical predicate logic, and provides answers to longstanding controversies in metaethics concerning moral motivation, rational final ends, and moral justification that the Humean conception engenders. In addition, it sheds light on certain kinds of moral behavior – for example, the whistleblower – that the Humean conception is at a loss to explain. (shrink)

The Humean conception of the self consists in the belief-desire model of motivation and the utility-maximizing model of rationality. This conception has dominated Western thought in philosophy and the social sciences ever since Hobbes’ initial formulation in Leviathan and Hume’s elaboration in the Treatise of Human Nature. Bentham, Freud, Ramsey, Skinner, Allais, von Neumann and Morgenstern and others have added further refinements that have brought it to a high degree of formal sophistication. Late twentieth century moral philosophers such as Rawls, (...) Brandt, Frankfurt, Nagel and Williams have taken it for granted, and have made use of it to supply metaethical foundations for a wide variety of normative moral theories. But the Humean conception of the self also leads to seemingly insoluble problems about moral motivation, rational final ends, and moral justification. Can it be made to work? (shrink)

Hume’s “impressions of reflection” is a category made up of all our non-sensory feelings, including “the passions and other emotions.” These two terms for affective mental states, ‘passion’ and ‘emotion’, are both used frequently in Hume’s work, and often treated by scholars as synonymous. I argue that Hume’s use of both ‘passion’ and ‘emotion’ in his discussions of affectivity reflects a conceptual distinction implicit in his work between what I label ‘attending emotions’ and ‘fully established passions.’ The former are the (...) transient, changeable, valenced feelings that flow between perceptions and constitute their felt nature and impulse. The latter are the particular passions fully realized, with characteristic valence, and analyzed by Hume in terms of their particular belief structures and relations between ideas and impressions understood to be constituent of particular passions. The term ‘emotion’ for Hume generally denotes either the attending feeling, sometimes distinct from the passion (particularly as ‘passion’ is being used to include the associated beliefs, causes and objects), or as a synonym for a particular passion, typically when Hume is primarily referring to the felt nature of the passion. Generally speaking, ‘passion’ is a more cognitive category of affective mental state, while ‘emotion’ is more sensationalist. I will further argue that when we grant Hume the emotion/passion distinction, he can accommodate both highly sensationalist and highly cognitivist understandings of affective mental states. I finish with the application of my distinction to two key topics in Hume studies: his sympathy mechanism, and his theory of belief and motivation. (shrink)

This dissertation claims that the problem of self-knowledge involves a kind of splitting of the mind or self into a knower and a known, a subject and an object of knowledge. As modern philosophy becomes concerned with the project of certainty, its turn toward the self renders this splitting into a kind of aporia: how can the self know itself when it is at once a subject and an object of its own knowing? The goal of this dissertation is not (...) to develop a paradigm of self-awareness that avoids or escapes the limits of self-certainty, per se; rather it considers how we might address what is constitutively unknowable about the self without recapitulating the limits of the modern epistemic subject. Chapter I introduces the problem of self-knowledge and the split self. Chapter 2 analyzes Descartes' Second Meditation in terms of its presentation of self-knowledge as self-certainty. Descartes' res cogitans argument, I claim, reveals not only how Descartes conceives of the self as a substance, but also how such a conception relies upon a notion of transparent self-awareness which attempts to resolve the aporia of the split self. Chapter 3 presents Hume's critique of the philosophical notion of personal identity, particularly in terms of its assumption of the self as a substance. Without an alternative notion of self-awareness, however, Hume's method of critique—his empirical epistemology—leaves in place the position of the knowing self capable of transparent introspection. Chapter 4 focuses on Michel Foucault's critique of self-knowledge as knowledge of a substance by an unimpeded knower. Using Foucault's notion of “caring” for the self, I consider how claims of self-knowledge have a productive effect on the self. I critique Foucault's implicit assumption of and failure to provide an alternative notion of self-awareness, however. Citing Descartes' self-reflective meditations, Chapter 5 explores my own relation to self-knowledge, highlighting by example how one can address what is constitutively unknowable about the self. Through explorations of identity through the figure of ‘being adopted’ I argue that we can begin to unpack both the ontological and the epistemological assumptions of identity. (shrink)

De acuerdo con Hume, las evaluaciones morales se basan en los sentimientos de aprobación o de desaprobación que experimentamos al contemplar el carácter de una persona desde un punto de vista general. También sostiene que la adopción de esta perspectiva no se debe a una exigencia de la razón, sino que obedece a operaciones naturales de la imaginación. En este trabajo discuto la pregunta sobre el mecanismo psicológico por el que adoptamos este punto de vista general. Para ello explico primero (...) otras operaciones de la imaginación que son centrales en las evaluaciones morales: la asociación de percepciones en la producción de las pasiones del amor, el orgullo, el odio y la humildad; la transmisión de fuerza y vivacidad entre las percepciones; y la simpatía. A continuación señalo que el supuesto mecanismo natural de la imaginación por el cual adoptaríamos el punto de vista general parece no poder existir. Sugiero que, en lugar de ello, esta perspectiva puede concebirse como una construcción social o, como Hume diría, un "artificio" de los seres humanos. Si esto último es plausible, sin embargo, se desdibuja la distinción entre virtudes naturales y artificiales. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss Hume’s theory of pride and the ‘remarkable mechanism’ of sympathy. In the first part of the paper I outline the ways in which Hume’s theory can accommodate the sense in which the passions are directed on things or possess intentionality while still holding to his view that passions are simple feelings. In the second part of the paper I consider a problem internal to Hume’s account of pride which arises in his discussion of the love (...) of fame and the functioning of sympathy; I explain how the tensions can be reconciled by recognising that Hume’s theory of sympathy is more nuanced than has commonly been recognized. In the third part I turn back to the evaluation of Hume’s theory of pride and argue that while it is unfair to complain that Hume does not make self-evaluation a central component of pride, Hume’s treatment of the idea of self in his theory of the passions is inadequate because he can make no proper room for the phenomenon of vicarious pride. (shrink)