The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays 1108476279, 9781108653244, 9781108476270

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THE PHILOSOPHICAL PROGRESS OF HUME’S ESSAYS

For those open to the possibility that philosophical thought can improve life, David Hume’s Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary have something to say. In the first comprehensive study of the Essays, Margaret Watkins engages closely with these neglected texts and shows how they provide important insights into Hume’s perspective on the breadth and depth of human life, arguing that the Essays reveal his continued commitment to philosophy as a discipline that can promote both social and individual progress. Addressing topics such as politics, war, slavery, the priesthood, the development of industry, aesthetics, emotional disorders, egoism, friendship, sexuality, gender relations, and the nature of philosophy itself, the volume examines Hume’s purposes and aims against the backdrop of the eighteenthcentury society in which he lived. It will be of interest to scholars of modern thought in philosophy, politics, history, and economics.   is Professor of Philosophy at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. She has published articles on Hume’s ethics and aesthetics in journals including Hume Studies, Inquiry, and History of Philosophy Quarterly.

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THE PHILOSOPHICAL PROGRESS OF HUME’S ESSAYS MARGARET WATKINS Saint Vincent College, Pennsylvania

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University Printing House, Cambridge  , United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, th Floor, New York,  , USA  Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne,  , Australia –, rd Floor, Plot , Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – , India  Anson Road, #–/, Singapore  Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/ : ./ © Margaret Watkins  This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A. A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.  ---- Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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Contents

Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations

page vii ix

Introduction . . . .





The Essays as Philosophy Reading the Essays as a Whole Progress, Social, and Individual Summary of Chapters

   

Governing



. The Antiquarian Principle . A Great Change for the Better . Progress and Government Intervention



Domineering . . . .



  



The Qualified Uniformity of Human Nature War Slavery Priests

   

Working



. The Progress and Purpose of Industry . Industry as a Principle of Human Nature: The Essays on Happiness . Total Work?



  

Composing



. Much Inferior to the Ancients . Aggressive and Melancholy Passional Problems . Therapeutic Beauty



  

Self-Loving



. Egoisms, Benign, and Malignant . Self-Love, Pride, and Vanity

 

v

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vi

Contents . Close Allies to Virtue . Beyond Egoisms



Loving . . . .



 



Friendship and the State Delicate Taste versus Love of the Public The Amorous Affection Gallant Men and Rare Women

   

Thinking



. On the Use and Abuse of “Philosophy” in the Essays . Philosophy as Distance . Ancients and Moderns: A Pas de Deux

  

Conclusion



Bibliography Index

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Acknowledgments

Without the encouragement, support, and patience of my husband, Robert Miner, this book never would have been completed. He not only refused to believe my insistence that the task was impossible, but provided me with an aspirational model of the fearless thinking and generosity of spirit that characterize the true philosopher. I am most grateful for his generosity in sharing with me the blessing of his children: Anne, Sebastian, Sophia, Emma, Maria, Louisa, and Lily. I am happy to acknowledge the support of Saint Vincent College, which provided course releases and research grants to allow me to dedicate time to this project. I am especially grateful to my dean, Rene Kollar, OSB, and Saint Vincent’s Vice President for Academic Affairs, John Smetanka, who encourage my scholarly efforts and do all they can to promote them. My departmental colleagues – Michael Krom, George Leiner, Eric Mohr, Mary Veronica Sabelli, RSM, and Eugene Torisky – have been an enormous help through their intellectual conversation and their collegiality. I owe a particular debt to Christopher McMahon for directing the Honors Program in the spring of , and Brian Boosel, OSB, for his friendship and hospitality. The administrative support of Marsha Kush and Shirley Skander has also been invaluable. Thanks to the assistance of the David Hume Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh, I was able to complete this book in the city that Hume called home for much of his life. The administrative staff at IASH, including Steven Yearley, Ben Fletcher-Watson, Pauline Clark, and Donald Ferguson, was extremely helpful during my stay in Edinburgh. Bruce Minto, Walter Nimmo, and David Purdie provided me with a wonderful forum for presenting some of my ideas about Hume and progress at the  Enlightenment Lecture. I would also like to thank Laura Nicolì and Jeanette Lynes for brightening my time in Edinburgh with their company and conversation. vii

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viii

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the staff at the University of Edinburgh Library and the National Library of Scotland, for their gracious assistance during my visits. At its annual conferences and in other venues, the Hume Society has provided forums for me to discuss many of the ideas in this book with its many amiable members. I am particularly indebted to Willem Lemmens, Wade Robison, Elizabeth Radcliffe, Corliss Swain, Jacqueline Taylor, and Rico Vitz for their kind support of my work over several years. Alison McIntyre, Jeffry Ramsey, Mikko Tolonen, and Saul Traiger gave helpful criticisms of portions of the manuscript. Parts of the section on slavery appeared in the April  issue of Hume Studies. I am grateful to the journal for permission to reprint this material here. Briana Pocratsky, Amanda Slowey, and Taylor Wilkerson provided research assistance in this project’s early stages. The members of my seminar on Hume’s Practical Philosophy in the fall of  – Jacob Boros, Nicole Dunst, Adam Golian, and Jonathan Noble – were wonderful interlocutors about Hume’s Essays. Although I cannot name them all here, I owe thanks to many more students at Saint Vincent, who provide a continual source of inspiration and armor against cynicism. I must acknowledge my profound debt to Sarah Malone, whose research assistance and excellent work with the Saint Vincent Honors Program facilitates so much of my own work. I also wish to thank Hilary Gaskin for her exceptionally helpful editorial guidance, as well as two anonymous readers for Cambridge University Press for constructive suggestions. I am unable to express my gratitude for my dear philosophical friend, Alicia Finch, who has shown me so many times what it means for a friend to be another self. I am likewise inarticulate about my parents, Billie and Stanley Watkins, whose unflagging love has made everything I have ever accomplished possible.

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Abbreviations

References to Hume’s Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary indicate volume, essay, and page numbers. I refer to withdrawn or unpublished essays as EWU. DP EHU EPM H Letters  Letters  Letters  NHR T

A Dissertation on the Passions (section and paragraph numbers) An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (section and paragraph numbers) An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (section and paragraph numbers) The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in  (volume and page numbers) The Letters of David Hume, Vol. I (recipient, date, and page numbers) The Letters of David Hume, Vol. II (recipient, date, and page numbers) New Letters of David Hume (recipient, date, and page numbers) The Natural History of Religion (section and paragraph numbers) A Treatise of Human Nature (book, part, section, and paragraph numbers)

ix

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Introduction

In , David Hume published the first volume of Essays, Moral and Political. He chose not to include his name on the title page, but the author does not disappear from view. He indicates his nonpartisan stance with an epigraph from Virgil: “Tros Rutulusve fuat, nullo discrimine habebo.” He addresses the reader with an advertisement that begins with self-deprecation (he has dropped a more ambitious project partly from laziness), moves through solicitude (he anxiously submits himself to the judgment of the public), and finishes with spirit (he intends to overcome “party-rage” but displease bigots of any stamp). A corrected edition and second volume appeared the following year; Hume tells us near his death in  that these works were “favourably received.” The third edition () had some subtractions and three notable additions – “Of National Character,” “Of the Original Contract,” and “Of Passive Obedience” – which were also printed together as a separate volume. The author is now in full view: these editions of the Essays were the first of Hume’s works with his name printed on the title page. As the Essays evolve, Hume demands more of his readers. Gone from the third edition are several essays in a lighter style, and the new Political Discourses of  engage difficult questions of political economy, international politics, and foundational political theory. Beginning in , both the Essays: Moral and Political and the Political Discourses form parts of Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects, a collection that Hume prepares for numerous new editions, 



In Dryden’s translation, “Rutulians, Trojans are the same to me.” More literally: “Be you Trojan or Rutulian, I will make no distinction between you.” The speaker is Jupiter. Joseph Addison uses the same line as an epigraph to the July , , edition of the Spectator (Addison, ); the April , , number of the Craftsman uses it also (D’Anvers, ). Hume’s advertisement mentions both papers as models. But the Virgil line appears often in early modern writing, perhaps especially among French authors. Pierre Bayle uses it in the preface to Nouvelles de la République des Lettres (th of the unnumbered pages) and in the Dictionnaire in the entry on Friedrich Spanheim (:). “My Own Life,” in Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, xxxiv.



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

The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

including a posthumous edition of . In the  edition, the former Essays, Moral and Political and Political Discourses become Parts I and II, respectively, of Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary. Like the inventor of the essay, Michel de Montaigne, Hume revised his essays until the end of his life. Unlike Montaigne, Hume made no attempt to limit his revisions to additions and variations. Montaigne says that he does “not correct [his] first imaginations by [his] second” because he wants to “represent the course of [his] humors,” seeking to provide a faithful picture of his undulating self. Hume excises, rearranges, and rewords his previous writing. Yet Hume’s corrections are, in their own way, as revealing of his self – a self willing to modify his own statements as he aged and deeply concerned to present the best version of his thoughts to his readers.

. The Essays as Philosophy Hume’s relentless concern with improvement shows in the matter of the Essays as well as in their composition. For those open to the possibility that philosophical thought can improve life, these Essays have some things to say. In June of , Hume wrote to Henry Home that the successful Essays “may prove like dung with marl, and bring forward the rest of my Philosophy, which is of a more durable, though of a harder and more stubborn nature” (Letters :). Generations of scholars have, in effect, accepted the simile and ignored the implication that the Essays constitute part of Hume’s philosophy. Instead of being taken seriously by philosophers, the Essays are often contemptuously dismissed or politely ignored. The practice of ignoring the Essays is consonant with the old view, propounded by T. H. Grose, that Hume abandoned philosophy as a young man. The Enquiries, Grose asserts, are “for the most part popular reproductions” of material from the Treatise, and the Natural History of Religion and Dialogues concerning Natural Religion are the only later additions to his philosophical oeuvre. Grose’s view that Hume probably wrote many of the Essays before  complicates this assessment. But for the most part, Grose sees the Essays as popular works meant to serve Hume’s thirst for literary fame. Grose treats the essays on political topics with some respect – both those published in – as part of Essays, Moral and Political and those published in  as Political Discourses. This elevation of Hume’s political essays continues. James A. Harris occupies a careful version of this stance. 

Montaigne, Essays, .

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

“History of the Editions,” .

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Introduction



Though insisting that Hume’s work remained philosophical throughout his life, Harris claims that Hume gave up on a specific practical mode of philosophy in favor of philosophy as “a habit of mind, a style of thinking, and of writing, such as could in principle be applied to any subject whatsoever.” Hume allegedly abandoned hope that philosophy can aid the search for individual happiness or improve moral character and turned toward politics. Philosophy could not be “medicine for the mind,” but it could be “medicine for the state.” Though I agree that Hume’s thought remained philosophical, I do not agree that he abandons the idea that philosophical thinking can promote individual happiness or improve character. In Chapter , I examine Hume’s use of the term “philosophy” in the Essays. But this book as a whole constitutes my main defense of this claim. Each chapter considers a different area of human life: governing, domineering, working, composing, self-loving, loving, and thinking. I discuss what the Essays teach about each area, including practical implications that follow from their philosophical thinking. This thinking is not rightly understood as a move from either philosophy to popular dross or from ethics to politics. It can be understood as a move beyond metaphysical speculations. But such a move is the natural sequel to the dismantling of metaphysical speculation in Treatise I and the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. I am not claiming that the Essays are the outworking of a plan that Hume envisioned prior to or during the composition of the Treatise. It is too much to construe them, as John Immerwahr does, as “the end, for which the Treatise was the means.” Harris rightly argues that such a construal forestalls understanding Hume as a developing thinker, whose thought and aims evolved throughout his life. It is not true, however, that positing any “fundamental unity and continuity to his thought” has this consequence. Continuity need not imply stagnation. The Essays’ philosophical lessons are rooted in Hume’s time but perennially valuable. Although we need a sense of their contexts to understand these works, their relevance transcends their contexts. The Essays can still teach us about politics, our tendency to domineer one another, our individual and collective industry, our aesthetic experience, our passions for ourselves and others, and our passion for philosophy itself. But they also   

 Hume, . Harris, “Hume’s Four Essays on Happiness,” . “Anatomist and the Painter,” . For criticism of Immerwahr’s position, see Abramson’s “Philosophical Anatomy and Painting.” Harris, Hume, .

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

The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

teach us something about Hume: he did not take his scepticism to imply fatalism about philosophy, about reflective conversation, or about human relations. Like certain forms of religion, some forms of scepticism see all human efforts at progress as in vain. Hume is not that kind of sceptic.

. Reading the Essays as a Whole I must first address an objection that arises from Hume’s own words. In the initial advertisement to Essays, Moral and Political, he warns that the “READER must not look for any Connexion among these Essays, but must consider each of them as a Work apart.” If it was mistaken to look for connections between the essays in the first volume, is it not a worse mistake to look for lessons across all of the essays? They were published in stages, under various titles. The questions driving Hume in  must have varied greatly from those of the more mature Hume behind the Political Discourses. This concern places certain constraints on this project but does not compromise its fundamental aim. That aim is to uncover important aspects of Hume’s thinking that the Essays illuminate. For this project, the published texts are the primary resources. In writing them, Hume did not live in what Duncan Forbes calls “a cocoon of his own spinning.” We should avoid using one work to interpret another without considering their distance in time or setting. And we must keep in mind the different genres in which Hume wrote. In the advertisement to the Essays, Moral and Political, Hume writes that his original aim was to “comprehend the Designs both of the SPECTATORS and CRAFTSMEN.” Since Montaigne’s introduction of the essay, the genre had proved extraordinarily flexible. Hume expands that flexibility. Few of Hume’s Essays fit Samuel Johnson’s definition of “essay” in his  Dictionary as a “loose sally of the mind; an irregular indigested piece; not a regular and orderly composition.” It is not even clear that the Essays all belong to a single genre. The Lilliputian “Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion” bears only a family resemblance to the elephantine “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations.” Yet the Essays share a broad common aim. Their form served to promote public benefit by reaching a variety of literate women and men. This   

 Essays, Moral and Political, , v. Hume’s Philosophical Politics, x. M. A. Box notes that this was a paradoxical goal, as the designs of the avowedly neutral Spectator and the expressly polemical Craftsman were incompatible (Suasive Art of David Hume, –). Dictionary of the English Language (), s.v. “essay.” This is the only noun definition of “essay” that refers specifically to written compositions.

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Introduction



practical aim does not vitiate their philosophical significance. They repay and contribute to philosophical reflection on numerous issues. I do not claim that these issues are unifying themes of the Essays. The Essays are not unified. But they can be read as parts of a complex conversation between numerous parties, including their readers. The living Hume can no longer be part of that conversation. But we can interpret his published words charitably. Because the conversation I have in mind is broadly philosophical, this conversation can include works of Hume that are familiar to contemporary philosophers. I do not shy away from drawing on the Treatise and Enquiries. Hume continued to publish the Enquiries as part of Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects throughout his life and did not reject the positions that he argued for in them. His views develop between the Treatise and Enquiries, and I endeavor to acknowledge or explain these developments when it is germane to do so. Nonetheless, some of the discussions in the Treatise provide details of Hume’s views that are nowhere else to be found but we have no reason to believe that he rejected, especially with respect to his views on the passions. Hume’s own views, as presented in other works, are part of the context of the Essays’ composition. But does Hume’s presentation of those works itself vitiate any attempt to read the Essays philosophically? For the last edition of Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects, he prepared a new advertisement, which concludes with the request “that the following Pieces may alone be regarded as containing his philosophical sentiments and principles” (EHU Advertisement). He asked his publisher, William Strahan, to place this statement at the beginning of the second volume of the Essays and Treatises; “the following Pieces” would therefore include An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, A Dissertation on the Passions, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, and The Natural History of Religion. Since the Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary constituted the first volume, one might infer that Hume excludes these essays from his philosophy proper. Such an inference, however, would be premature. Hume repeatedly refers in his letters to his “philosophical pieces,” seeming to mean all of the Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects. (The nonphilosophical writing  

But for an interesting attempt to read the first volume of the Essays as a whole, which takes seriously the essay genre, see Scott Black, “Thinking in Time in Hume’s Essays.” See Hume’s letters to Strahan on October  and November ,  (Letters :– and –). Hume’s claim in the advertisement that “most of the principles, and reasonings, contained in this volume, were published in” the Treatise may suggest that he does not mean to refer to the Natural History here.

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

The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

would be the History.) But this debate cannot be settled by accumulating citations to Hume’s labels for his own work. Whether or not the Essays are philosophical depends on whether or not they contain philosophical ideas and arguments. It is the work of the following chapters to show that they do. The degree to which one finds all of this convincing depends in part on one’s conception of what philosophy is. Among the reasons that philosophers must listen to historians, literary theorists, political theorists, and economists is that these scholars make it more difficult for us to read Hume as easily translatable into the idiom of contemporary philosophy. Happily, this interdisciplinary dialogue has become more common in recent years. I will not attempt to define “philosophy” here, but the conception of philosophy that emerges in Chapter ’s exploration of Hume’s own use of “philosophy” and its cognates is a broad one. I take this breadth to be a virtue.

. Progress, Social, and Individual Progress is a recurring theme in this book, as it is in many of Hume’s Essays. I have said that Hume is not the kind of sceptic who believes all efforts toward progress to be vain and that the Essays share a practical purpose of benefiting the public. The two claims go together: in composing the Essays, Hume strove to bring about progress. That is, he wanted his efforts to benefit the public. (Here I am using “progress” in the contemporary sense; as Roger Emerson notes, for eighteenth-century Scots, “progress did not usually imply a necessarily better state but only a change.”) In this respect, Hume is a quintessential Enlightenment thinker. Does he therefore reject “the ancients” in favor of “the moderns”? Some recent commentators have emphasized Hume’s repudiation of elements of Shaftesbury’s thought in favor of ideas that share more with Hobbes and Mandeville. Because of Shaftesbury’s affinity with certain ancient ideas, this emphasis can suggest that Hume is wholly on the side of his fellow moderns. But his continuing hope that philosophy can effect personal and individual progress shares something important with ancient thinkers. Throughout the Essays, Hume compares modern cultures with their predecessors. These predecessors are often ancient, but the relevant questions transcend specific quarrels between specific time periods. One such  

“Conjectural History and the Scottish Philosophers,” n. See, e.g., Tolonen, Mandeville and Hume; and Harris, Hume, especially – and –.

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Introduction



question asks for an assessment of present states of affairs relative to past ones: have human lives improved in significant ways, in comparison with lives in previous ages? We can call this the “assessment” question. Another asks what our political approach to progress should be: should we conserve the goods of the past by modest and restrained policies, or should we attempt to encourage progress through governmental intervention? I call this the “political intervention” question. Finally, we can ask whether and how we ought to hope for future progress. Let us call this the “predictive” question. Hume gives complex answers to all three questions. He usually argues that our lives have improved, but not always. He has little hope that political intervention will further progress, but does not share the elevating admiration of the past characteristic of others who resist political innovation. Finally, his scepticism precludes predictions of inevitable decline or improvement. In addressing these questions, Hume seeks to benefit the public in two ways. First, he tries to allay irrational attitudes that produce imprudent personal and political behavior. Second, he censures a form of factionalism that can exacerbate these ill effects. Nostalgia about the past is often illinformed, and it allows the dead to bury the living, as Nietzsche says. The shadow of an alleged Golden Age smothers attempts at something new. Politically, rhetoric about lost greatness has served the aim of many a tyrant. Yet we are, Hume notes, prone to such nostalgia. At the end of “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations,” he writes that the “humour of blaming the present, and admiring the past, is strongly rooted in human nature, and has an influence even on persons endued with the profoundest judgment and most extensive learning” (..). Likewise, faith in progress brings its own set of dangers. Progressivism can lead to contempt for the past – a failure to appreciate the resources handed down from past human experience. (Hume’s composition of the History demonstrates how much he values that experience.) A complacently positive answer to the predictive question trusts the Hegelian principle of inevitable progress without attending to the crucible of human suffering that Hegel sees as the precondition for such progress. The consequences again include imprudent personal and political choices. In the Essays, Hume often defends modern progress against those with “the humour



“Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,” .

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

of blaming the present,” but he also reminds modern readers of how precarious that progress is and ways in which they have failed to overcome ancient problems, or even to live up to ancient examples. These two tendencies – irrational reverence for the past or unreflective progressivism – can breed factions. Our answers to questions about progress affect our understanding of our potential, individually and as a species. But they also shape our identities. Narratives of progress and decline become bound up with our sense of ourselves, so that challenges to them can seem to be personal attacks. Feeling attacked in this way can lead people to band together in factions, more concerned with the good of like-minded fellows than with that of society as a whole. Hume laments the “spirit of faction” that he claims “is a natural attendant on civil liberty” and strives to rise above it, representing what is most compelling in both sides to any dispute. Factions are inevitable and can promote civic debate, but they can also promote irrationality and engender violence. In the Essays’ initial advertisement, he writes, “Public Spirit, methinks, shou’d engage us to love the Public, and to bear an equal Affection to all our Country-Men; not to hate one Half of them, under Pretext of loving the Whole. This Party-Rage I have endeavour’d to repress, as far as possible.” Hume works against factionalism with both his tone and his approach to controversial topics, whether they are general questions about progress and decline or specific disputes between Whigs and Tories. Hume’s Essays are not, however, solely concerned with progress on the social or political level. They offer rich and relatively neglected resources for thinking about personal or individual progress. These resources come into focus in Chapters –, and they show why it is a mistake to see Hume as having abandoned this aspect of the ancient ideal of philosophy. In calling this an ancient ideal, I mean neither that the ancients were uniquely committed to it nor that Hume’s version of it is identical to that of “the ancients.” (Of course, there is no single ancient version of such an ideal.) I mean that it is a perennial ideal, which has survived despite numerous attempts to make philosophy purely at the service of utilitarian ends, scientific aims, or political agendas. Hume’s version is modest: philosophy comes with no guarantee of eudaimonia and can only improve those with certain temperaments. Such a philosophy does not found movements that seek to improve or appeal to the bulk of humankind. Yet it is of crucial importance for the well-being of unusual people, as well as humankind in general, that we not dismiss or neglect any practice that fails to market itself to a general audience.

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Introduction



We cannot capture the complexity of the mature Hume’s thought by calling it philosophy, politics, or history, any more than we can by labeling it progressive or conservative. When we try to stuff Hume into a taxonomy, he refuses to fit. At this point, Hume might joke about his corpulence, as he does in a letter to David Mallet in . He resolves “to resist, as a Temptation of the Devil, any Impulse towards writing”: “I am really so much ashamd of myself when I see my Bulk on a Shelf, as well as when I see it in a Glass, that I would fain prevent my growing more corpulent either way. To keep my Mind at rest & my Body in motion seems to be the best Recipe for both Maladies” (Letters :). But for a philosopher, keeping the mind at rest is no small achievement. The easier options – diversion, ignorance, lack of curiosity – never satisfy such a character for long. To this list we can add the handing over of one’s thinking to a political party or philosophical system. Instead, Hume chose to remain a philosopher – one whose acts of public spirit included writing the Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary. To call this an act of public spirit is not to confuse it with a sacrificial offering. We know that he enjoyed the rewards of money and pride. But it is to suggest that the Essays still have the potential to benefit the philosophically minded reading public, as I believe they do.

. Summary of Chapters The following chapters address the Essays’ treatment of seven different aspects of human life: governing, domineering, working, composing, selfloving, loving, and thinking. In Chapter , I consider Hume’s judgments about methods of governing. Although Hume recognizes the wisdom of appealing to ancient political precedent, he undermines justifications for doing so that appeal to reverence for the past. And he qualifies his assessment of modern political progress by noting local errors in modern government and an overconfidence that threatens progress itself. Turning then to the political intervention question, I argue that Hume believes that government has a limited role to play in improving human well-being, consisting mainly in restraint rather than intervention. Chapter , “Domineering,” considers ways in which humans exercise power over one another as individual members of society or when civil authorities fail to preserve peace. “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations,” plays a vital role here. I argue that the logic of this essay relies 

See “My Own Life,” especially xxxviii–xl.

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

The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

on a conception of human nature that includes both universal, static principles and significant malleability in response to circumstance. I then apply this analysis to Hume’s comparisons of war and slavery in the ancient and modern worlds. Last, I discuss Hume’s view of the priesthood. Here, Hume does not think moderns have made progress. He argues that the priestly office encourages the growth of domineering tendencies. Chapter , “Working,” discusses Hume’s commitment to the value of work and industry. Hume not only links progress in industry with political freedom, virtue, and happiness; he believes industry to be a valuable end in itself. An analysis of the four “essays on happiness” shows that valuing industry is among those traits that he considers constants of human nature. His view is radical in its thorough rejection of the claim that celebration of work leads to neglecting humane pursuits in favor of utilitarian ends. Chapter , “Composing,” turns to aesthetics, addressing the Essays’ treatment of how humans produce, experience, and study beautiful things. Here, in some respects, Hume finds the ancients superior to the moderns. But art can serve different needs at different moments in human development. I consider his claim that modern eloquence is “much inferior” to that of the ancients. I then argue that the Essays provide resources for the idea that aesthetic pursuits can prove therapeutic for various emotional disorders. Chapter , “Self-Loving,” distinguishes between benign and malignant forms of the “selfish system of morals.” The rhetorical force of writers like La Rochefoucauld and Mandeville generates the power of the malignant forms. A close reading of “Of the Dignity or Meanness of Human Nature” enables further understanding of the threat, through distinguishing between the related concepts of self-love, pride, and vanity. Self-directed passions, on Hume’s view, actually support our ability to help and love others. I move to a discussion of love of others in Chapter , beginning by comparing Hume’s views on possible conflicts between friendship and the state with those of Aristotle and Cicero. Because Hume portrays such conflicts as arising from natural principles of humanity, and because of the difficulty of combining public spirit with private virtue, his views imply that such conflicts will be perennial. I then turn to questions about 

I offer no chapter solely dedicated to Hume’s treatment of religion, because he generally treats religious practice as reducible to one of the other practices studied here (such as politics, domineering, or thinking) or as a kind of emotional disorder. It is telling, I think, that the natural one-word gerund to title such a chapter is “worshipping.” Yet worship is something about which Hume has little to say, except, again, as it might be understood as serving some other need.

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Introduction



intimate relationships, showing that Hume’s views on sexuality are quite progressive, with the exception of his treatment of homosexual desires. The chapter concludes by considering Hume’s ambiguous position in the history of gender progress. Chapter , “Thinking,” asks what the Essays have to say about philosophy’s value and function. I argue that it is mistaken to see the Essays as an abandonment of philosophy and that the positive forms of philosophy mentioned in the Essays share a family resemblance. They all suggest that philosophy requires taking a distant perspective on people or the world. This distance is not a view from nowhere but requires a dance of judgment, where the philosopher must take up varying perspectives in a nonpartisan spirit. Hume ultimately recommends mitigated hope as well as mitigated scepticism.

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 

Governing

There is no denying the prevalence of political themes in the Essays. The entire second volume was originally titled Political Discourses. The essays in the first volume also address a variety of political issues, from liberty of the press to the nature of the British constitution. I do not attempt here a comprehensive study of Hume’s political theory – work that has been done admirably by others and would require extended attention to the History and Hume’s other philosophical writings. Instead, I focus on how the Essays address narratives of political progress and decline. These narratives are important not only for the philosopher assessing political systems but also for the politician making policy decisions.

. The Antiquarian Principle .. Antiquarian Constitutionalism Progress narratives are relevant to policy decisions in part because of a feature of human nature that Hume believes to underlie much resistance to change. This “antiquarian principle,” if you will, is our disposition to value things simply because they are old. It is the “humour of blaming the present, and admiring the past” mentioned at the end of “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations.” The Treatise provides an extended explanation of this phenomenon, which seems to contradict Hume’s claim that proximity in time and space 

I will mention only some of the numerous helpful studies of Hume’s politics. For a classic and influential study that emphasizes the importance of historical context, see Duncan Forbes’s Hume’s Philosophical Politics. For a study of Hume’s political theory in relation to his moral philosophy, see Russell Hardin’s David Hume: Moral and Political Theorist. Neil McArthur’s David Hume’s Political Theory emphasizes the role of the Essays’ contribution to Hume’s view of civilization and concern with progress. Andrew Sabl’s Hume’s Politics argues for the indispensability of the History to a thorough understanding of Hume’s political views.



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intensifies our passions toward objects. A great distance, he says, has the contrary effect of a small one. Contemplating greatness “enlarges the soul, and gives it a sensible delight and pleasure” (T ...). Any object or event at a great distance – or that suggests the idea of such distance – can therefore generate and become associated with these elevating, delightful impressions. This effect derives additional force from another principle of human nature: opposition that is not overwhelming “inspires us with a more than ordinary grandeur and magnanimity. In collecting our force to overcome the opposition, we invigorate the soul, and give it an elevation with which otherwise it wou’d never have been acquainted” (T ...). But the imagination finds it more difficult to traverse time than space, and more difficult to access the past, which is behind us, than the future, which we seem always about to meet. Again, the magnified and spirited impression transfers its quality to the distant object, so “all the relicts of antiquity are . . . precious in our eyes, and appear more valuable than what is brought even from the remotest parts of the world” (T ...). Hume uses the word “veneration” repeatedly in this section of the Treatise. Our tendency is to revere or even worship that which has endured, in a way that can become superstitious. A look at one of his discussions of debates over the British constitution will show how dangerous Hume believes the antiquarian principle can be. A peculiar characteristic of these debates is the appeal to an “ancient constitution” – a myth with deep roots in early modern law, as J. G. A. Pocock has shown in The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law. Pocock demonstrates the complexity of factors motivating appeals to an ancient constitution, especially those related to traditions of customary law versus Roman law. He notes a peculiar irony: that even those committed to law’s customary nature did not tend to adopt a truly “historical conception” of law, as continually evolving and adapting over time. Instead, they “came to believe that the common law, and with it the constitution, had always been exactly what they were now,” that they were formed at a time before the earliest historical records. The developments of these views at the end of the sixteenth and throughout the seventeenth centuries, along with their resulting ironies, form the background of Hume’s analyses of constitutional debates.  



See T ... See T .... Hume’s explanation is not entirely clear; the thought seems to be that a distance in space always appears traversable, since any far-off point is accessible through a series of contiguous close points. We cannot traverse temporal distances in the same way. Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law, .

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

The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

The first edition of Essays, Moral and Political appears just over half a century after the “Glorious Revolution” of –, which removed Catholic James II from the throne, replacing him with Protestant Mary II and William III. The revolution also led to the passage of England’s Bill of Rights. The bill details James II’s abuses, stipulates that parliaments should be held “frequently,” and asserts that the monarch cannot suspend or dispense with laws, levy money for his own use, or keep a standing army in peacetime without parliament’s consent. Here is explicit grounding for a mixed system of government. Unsurprisingly, the revolution and Bill of Rights did not usher in permanent agreement over the nature of Britain’s constitution. Rather than celebrating and appealing to recent developments, all parties appeal to the alleged antiquity of the constitution. Hume finds an amusing illustration in the controversy over Sir Robert Walpole. Walpole received the title of Britain’s first prime minister, as a slur, at the height of his power in the mid-eighteenth century. In a  speech defending himself against removal from office, he blames his enemies for imparting the title: “But having first conferred upon me a kind of mock dignity, and stiled me the prime minister, they carry on the fiction which has once heated their imaginations, and impute to me an unpardonable abuse of that chimerical authority, which only they have thought it necessary to bestow.” The controversy over Walpole’s power was incendiary. Many members of parliament, with fears flowing from the legacy of both Cromwell and James II, distrusted a fellow minister who skillfully manipulated the system of royal patronage, even if this skill seemed sometimes to benefit the nation by controlling public debt and promoting peace. In this debate, both sides claimed the ancient and sacred authority of the constitution. Hume discusses this issue in “That Politics may be reduced to a Science,” as an application of the lesson that good government depends on structure rather than personality. M. A. Box holds that Hume “was primarily concerned [in this essay] to show that political science is possible, but as he wrote he must also have had in mind the practical effects of such a thesis on the conduct of political disputes.” In fact, the essay exhibits an overriding concern about the practical effects of this thesis and its implications for legislators and policy. Irrational veneration of the constitution   

See Bill of Rights, , Regnal  Will and Mar Sess , c. , www.legislation.gov.uk/aep/Willand MarSess///introduction. William Cobbett, Cobbett’s parliamentary history of England, from the Norman Conquest, in  to the year , . Suasive Art of David Hume, .

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Governing



and the antiquarian principle are factors that must be considered in any attempt to shape “wise regulations” in a state, which Hume says are “the most valuable legacy that can be left to future ages” (..). The antiquarian principle, as a common feature of human psychology, cannot be eliminated. But Hume endeavors to mitigate irrational veneration of the constitution. At EHU ., he asks, “How could politics be a science, if laws and forms of government had not a uniform influence upon society?” A possible response would agree that there must be regularities in how people relate to government, yet claim that personality matters more than structure. The science of politics would then study the virtues of good leaders. Arguably, this is the project of Machiavelli’s Prince. But Machiavelli’s own emphasis on fortune’s power suggests Hume’s concern: “the casual humours and characters of particular men” cannot form the basis of a stable politics (..). Although one might “cite many particular instances in history, where the very same government, in different hands, has varied suddenly into the two opposite extremes of good and bad,” these only show the dependence of absolute governments on their rulers’ virtue (..). A “republican and free government,” on the other hand, “would be an obvious absurdity, if the particular checks and controuls, provided by the constitution, had really no influence, and made it not the interest, even of bad men, to act for the public good. Such is the intention of these forms of government, and such is their real effect, where they are wisely constituted” (..–). This claim elevates the constitution’s status in any purported republic. It should therefore be no surprise when both parties to a political dispute in such a nation claim to be the true upholders of the constitution. Given Hume’s own concern with political stability, we might expect him to reinforce this reverence for the constitution. He instead parodies the affectation of such reverence on both sides in the Walpole dispute. Walpole’s enemies insist on the boundless ill effects of his malfeasance: To aggravate the charge, his pernicious conduct, it is said, will extend its baleful influence even to posterity, by undermining the best constitution in the world, and disordering that wise system of laws, institutions, and 

Hume mentions, as an example of such a revolution, the French kings Henry III and Henry IV. In the  edition, Hume removes another (perhaps more inflammatory) example that had appeared in earlier editions – the reigns of Elizabeth and James I (with Elizabeth representing the superior sovereign). He also removes a sentence suggesting that England was an absolute monarchy until the mid-seventeenth century, “notwithstanding the numerous panegyrics on ancient English liberty” (..).

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

The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays customs, by which our ancestors, during so many centuries, have been so happily governed. (..)

Walpole’s friends, however, credit him with the single-handed protection of the constitution: At the same time, he crowns all his other merits by a religious care of the best constitution in the world, which he has preserved in all its parts, and has transmitted entire, to be the happiness and security of the latest posterity. (Ibid.)

Both characterizations presume that the constitution is excellent, sacred, and in need of protection. And both sides demand the protection appropriate for an ancient artifact: the constitution has governed “our ancestors” for “so many centuries,” and care must be taken to preserve it as a legacy for the next generation. But if the partisans apply this set of praises appropriately, then their concern must be unwarranted. If our constitution does in any degree deserve these eulogies, it would never have suffered a wicked and weak minister to govern triumphantly for a course of twenty years, when opposed by the greatest geniuses in the nation, who exercised the utmost liberty of tongue and pen, in parliament, and in their frequent appeals to the people. (..–)

In other words, no Walpole deserving the vituperation of his enemies could threaten a constitution deserving their praise, because a “constitution is only so far good, as it provides a remedy against mal-administration” (..). Before the “court” party supporting Walpole can feel smug, however, Hume turns his pen against them. If the constitution deserved their effusive praise, then they could have no reason to fear Walpole’s political demise. A “change of ministry can be no such dreadful event; since it is essential to such a constitution, in every ministry, both to preserve itself from violation, and to prevent all enormities in the administration” (..). Hume’s stated aim here is “to draw a lesson of moderation” about this dispute, without dampening public spirit (..). Some scholars have construed this anti-factionalist aim as primarily one of calming violent passions. Immerwahr notes that Hume often attempts to calm one passion by raising an opposing one: in the Essays, by showing the merit of both 

Cf. Edmund Burke’s “Speech on the Reform of the Representation of the Commons in Parliament”: “Why, what have you to answer in favour of the prior rights of the Crown and Peerage but this – our Constitution is a prescriptive Constitution; it is a Constitution, whose sole authority is, that it has existed time out of mind” (Select Works, ).

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sides of a dispute. Immerwahr characterizes the result as “a cancelling out” of violent political passions. Yet in these passages, Hume instead discredits both sides to the dispute, and, as we will see, he uses language that would inflame rather than dampen certain passions. He could have left untouched the common ground between the sides: their veneration of the constitution. Instead, his parodies of both sides imply either that the dispute is a waste of time or that the constitution’s veneration is unfounded. Hume has some sympathy with the latter possibility. This is not to say that he denigrates the British constitution; he consistently praises its mixed form of government and recommends against foundational political innovation. In the later “Of the Protestant Succession,” he writes that never before have “so many millions of people . . ., during such a space of time, been held together, in a manner so free, so rational, and so suitable to the dignity of human nature” as the British since the revolution (..). But such respect does not require venerating the constitution as ancient: it is, he argues, an evolving and somewhat accidental establishment. Mark G. Spencer has detailed the History’s sustained criticism of the notion of an unchanging British constitution, noting that this was among “the overriding themes uniting Hume’s political essays with his History of England.” Spencer observes that belief in the ancient constitution was a quintessentially Whig position, but that Hume attacks Tory assertions about the ancient power of monarchs as well. Hume even introduces the possibility that the British constitution might be not be worth defending at all. His language here is not at all likely to tranquilize passions: if “our constitution is so very bad,” then “so extraordinary a jealousy and apprehension, on account of changes, is ill placed; and a man should no more be anxious in this case, than a husband, who had married a woman from the stews, should be watchful to prevent her infidelity” (..).

 

  

 “Hume on Tranquillizing the Passions,” . “Anatomist and the Painter,” . Hume acknowledges in “Of the Parties of Great Britain” that Britain’s mixed constitution requires an “extremely delicate and uncertain balance” and is a necessary “source of division and party” (..). David Hume and Eighteenth-Century America, . See ibid.,  and . For Hume’s discussion of the complex relation between the court/country and Whig/Tory divisions, see “Of the Parties of Great Britain,” especially ..–. Hume suggests that the constitution might be bad when directing his comments to the “court” but not the “country” party. For a helpful discussion of the complex interplay of interests behind the court/country division, see Knud Haakonssen’s introduction to Hume: Political Essays, xiii–xiv. For Hume’s discussion of the complex relation between the court/country and Whig/Tory divisions, see “Of the Parties of Great Britain,” especially ..–.

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

Why would Hume use this lewd analogy, when his aim is moderation of a violent dispute? The irony deepens with the next sentence, in which he claims that cases of bad government require “the patience and submission of philosophers” rather than “the zeal of patriots.” Comparing the British constitution to a prostitute, even hypothetically, is neither patient nor submissive – a point of which Hume, who left the simile in every edition of the Essays, must have been aware. The language is in stark contrast to his usual style, which Adam Potkay memorably characterizes as “sparkling blandness.” This example shows that, in attempting to moderate factionalism, Hume’s method is not always to tranquilize the passions. At times, he seeks to inflame them. He writes earlier in the essay that “perhaps the surest way of producing moderation in every party is to increase our zeal for the public” (..). The “stews” passage could inflame zeal for the constitution: the British constitution is an honest consort, and how dare anyone suggest otherwise! Yet it also shows how extreme the options become when people treat the constitution as a sacred relic rather than the flawed construction of numerous generations. His irreverent language thus satirizes partisan passions while encouraging public spirit. At the same time, Hume’s violent language suggests how serious he considers the threat of irrational attitudes about the constitution. A reasonable attitude sees it as “excellent” but admitting “of mal-administration to a certain degree” (..). It does not warrant “fighting pro aris & focis” – as if it were a sacred relic. But the antiquarian principle makes such reasonableness difficult. Although Hume recognizes the constitution as an evolving structure, its evolution is convoluted and difficult to trace. It is so old we cannot see its beginning, and this mysterious origin contributes to a peculiar form of idolatry. The constitution becomes infused with mystical power, transferable to whichever party can address it with the most fidelity. This is a kind of superstition. We have seen him ask us to laugh at an analogy between the constitution and a prostitute. In the next section, I discuss his attempts to draw back the veil covering the ugly history of the constitution’s development. These are forceful techniques, but Hume believes dangerous superstition to be in need of unmasking. .. Critical History I now turn to a remarkable group of essays from the end of volume II, “Of the Original Contract,” “Of Passive Obedience,” “Of the Coalition of 

Fate of Eloquence, .

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

See Section . below.

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Parties,” and “Of the Protestant Succession.” Hume did not compose them as a set. “Of the Original Contract” and “Of Passive Obedience” appeared with “Of National Characters” in , as Three Essays, Moral and Political. “Of National Characters” was a late replacement for “Of the Protestant Succession” in this early collection. “Of the Coalition of Parties” does not appear until the  edition of Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects, added to the end of some late printings. It assumes its final place in the  edition of Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects. Nonetheless, Hume’s eventual grouping of these essays reflects their unity of theme and purpose. This purpose is, as he writes at the beginning of “Of the Coalition of Parties,” to promote cooperation between Britain’s factions, whose history reflects dangerous party divisions – those marked by “opposite views with regard to the essentials of government, the succession of the crown, or the more considerable privileges belonging to the several members of the constitution; where there is no room for any compromise or accommodation, and where the controversy may appear so momentous as to justify even an opposition by arms to the pretensions of antagonists” (..). Again, Hume endeavors to moderate these disputes by respecting each side’s point of view and cajoling both parties to see what is reasonable or even laudable in the other. He does so from multiple perspectives, which he characterizes as philosophical, practical, and historical (..). Here too, however, Hume’s moderating aims do not preclude an undermining, suspicious analysis of justificatory appeals to the past. In fact, his analysis of contract theory, while making verbal concessions to its proponents, eviscerates its moral force. “Of the Original Contract” and “Of Passive Obedience” take up the philosophical and practical perspectives, respectively. They address competing views about the relationship between a nation’s people and its sovereign, where one side maintains the view that the people have specifiable rights of rebellion, while the other prohibits rebellion under any circumstances. Contract theory supports the former, and divine right the latter. The essays’ titles, however, may mislead: it appears that “Of the Original Contract” concerns only the contract view, and “Of Passive Obedience” deals with divine right. Instead, each essay considers both views: “Of the Original Contract” addresses “the speculative systems of politics,” while “Of Passive Obedience” addresses “the practical consequences, deduced by each party, with regard to the measures of submission due to sovereigns” 

Although the latter essay was ready to go to press, Hume decided to follow advice not to publish it in the tense climate resulting from the Jacobite uprising of . He includes it in the Political Discourses in .

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

(..). He titles the essays by the name of the view that requires more serious consideration in each case. “Of the Original Contract” spends much more time analyzing contract theory than divine right, which he dismisses in one paragraph. Does Hume then consider the Whigs – whom he associates with belief in an original contract – the philosophers’ party, appropriate for those with an open, speculative temperament? Hardly. The beginning of “Of the Original Contract” satirizes all attempts to justify political parties on philosophical principles. Modern party men invent theories “to protect and cover” their actions, “as no party, in the present age, can well support itself, without a philosophical or speculative system of principles, annexed to its political or practical one” (..). Given their zeal and lack of skill, “it is natural to imagine, that their workmanship must be a little unshapely, and discover evident marks of that violence and hurry, in which it was raised” (..–). Later, Hume intimates that no real philosopher would subscribe to any political party, referring to “philosophers, who have embraced a party (if that be not a contradiction in terms)” (..). He ascribes no superior Socratic bent to the Whigs. Nonetheless, they had taken the work of formidable philosophers as their blueprint and thus created a structure of more interest to philosophical critics of this architecture. Having dismissed divine right by arguing that the theory would also establish divine right of pirates, usurpers, and constables, Hume begins his treatment of the original contract. A state of nature vignette with a Hobbesian bent follows, emphasizing the roughly equal chance that people in such a state have of subduing one another. In these circumstances, no one person could physically overcome the others: “A man’s natural force consists only in the vigour of his limbs, and the firmness of his courage; which could never subject multitudes to the command of one” (..). Therefore, people must have consented to submit to the first leaders. But this consent required no discrete, explicit decision; it developed gradually through the influence of habit. The idea of a “compact or agreement,” Hume writes, was “far beyond the comprehension of savages” (..). 



Divine right theory had already suffered devastating philosophical criticism, particularly in Locke’s first Treatise of Government, although it continued to have a place in public rhetoric in the eighteenth century. See, however, Nicholas Phillipson, “Propriety, Property, and Prudence,” for an account of how divine right rhetoric was resurrected in the periodical press of the early eighteenth century, particularly by Charles Leslie’s Rehearsals (–). For Hume’s association of Whigs with the original contract, see ... Harris notes that Walpolean era Whigs may have had little attraction to contract theory (Hume, n).

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They first simply followed the chief’s lead when inspired to do so. “The sensible utility, resulting from his interposition, made these exertions become daily more frequent; and their frequency gradually produced an habitual, and, if you please to call it so, a voluntary, and therefore precarious, acquiescence in the people” (..). Forbes finds Hume’s conceding original consent to be a violation of the principle of economy, marring the realism of Hume’s account of government’s evolution. Forbes writes that in both the Treatise and “Of the Original Contract,” “Hume is at pains to demonstrate that all men being nearly equal in bodily force and mental powers, there must, on the first establishment of government, have been a contract: men must have given promises and been obliged by them.” It is therefore an improvement when the contract “disappears altogether” in “Of the Origin of Government” – the last essay, added only in the  edition. But this analysis overlooks the deflationary quality of Hume’s characterization of the original contract in the essay by that name. In the Treatise, he does assert that “government, upon its first establishment, wou’d naturally be suppos’d to derive its obligation” from the moral obligation attending promises (T ...). To say that something would naturally be supposed is not the same as supposing it oneself. But in the essay, he drops all reference to promises and moral obligation in his description of the original contract that he countenances. He now only uses the language of promises when referring to the contract theorists’ own view. He instead describes the natural fact of Hobbesian equality and infers that emerging peoples had to follow someone’s lead willingly. The conditions of submission need not have been expressed, and the agreement “preceded the use of writing and all the other civilized arts of life” (..). Some elements that Hume believes eventually produce a duty to allegiance, including benefit to the people, are present here. But there is no reason to construe these people as having a concept of moral obligation to allegiance, let alone the notion that 

 

Cf. “Of the Origin of Government”: “It is probable, that the first ascendant of one man over multitudes began during a state of war; where the superiority of courage and of genius discovers itself most visibly, where unanimity and concert are most requisite, and where the pernicious effects of disorder are most sensibly felt. The long continuance of that state, an incident common among savage tribes, enured the people to submission; and if the chieftain possessed as much equity as prudence and valour, he became, even during peace, the arbiter of all differences, and could gradually, by a mixture of force and consent, establish his authority” (..–). Hume’s Philosophical Politics, . Forbes overstates his case in saying that the idea of an original contract “disappears altogether” in “Of the Origin of Government.” Hume refers to “the consent, tacit or express,” that generates the power of the first leaders (..).

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

their consent could produce it. They would only need the mutual recognition that the chief could not make the people do anything without their going along to some degree. Forbes notes that the paragraph referring to the imperfection of the contract and the claim that the idea of a compact or agreement is “far beyond the comprehension of savages” was added in the  edition as well. It does seem that Hume wanted to clarify his position and its consistency with “Of the Origin of Government.” His views on this point may well have evolved, but the evolution could have happened between the composition of the Treatise and the essay. The  edition of “Of the Original Contract” does not portray the original contract as having the moral force that Forbes attributes to it. It makes a merely verbal concession to the contract theorists – one whose insignificance becomes clearer both in the late revision to and in the progression of the original essay. Its final version presents a story of political evolution that subverts any attempt to ground the obligation of allegiance in historical narratives. Consider again Hume’s portrayal of original consent. In refusing to imagine prehistorical peoples, with no experience of political structures and only the beginnings of theoretical reflection, conferring on a hillside to form a constitutional agreement, Hume concurs with Rousseau’s insistence that state of nature accounts must not transfer “to the state of nature ideas they had taken from society.” The principles of human nature that gave rise to the first governments were not our abilities to formulate abstract rules to overcome practical problems, but our capacity to develop cooperative enterprises through subtle means of communication and our tendency to form second natures through habituation. Humanity’s first moves toward governing structures need not have even used verbal language, although the development of those structures certainly would have. One person, talented at locating and tracking prey, might have waved her fellows over a hill with prosperous results, thus encouraging others to follow her lead in future expeditions. In “Of the Origin of Government,” however, Hume says that the probable context for the first elevation of a leader was tribal war. Regardless, his claim that  



Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, . “Of the Original Contract” predates the composition of Rousseau’s second discourse by six years. Simon Evnine argues that “Of the Original Contract” provides evidence for Hume’s commitment to the view that even reason (in a broad sense) might develop historically (“Hume, Conjectural History, and the Uniformity of Human Nature,” –). For a discussion of the relation between language development and the development of artificial justice conventions in the Treatise, see Annette Baier, Progress of Sentiments, –.

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the notion of a contract was “far beyond the comprehension of savages” implies that the founders of the first civil societies could not engage in exercises as advanced as Lockean contracting, as Simon Evnine has argued. The reasonableness of their submission could only appear retrospectively, as a happy result of the interaction between nature and circumstances. It could not be seen in advance by early reasoners, and therefore could not legitimate that submission. Indeed, the notion of legitimacy seems out of place here altogether. Hume’s description of early agreements to submit to authority transcend animal hierarchies: early humans recognize submission’s utility, resulting in voluntary acquiescence. But such voluntariness cannot bear much moral weight. Recall his precise words: “their frequency gradually produced an habitual, and, if you please to call it so, a voluntary, and therefore precarious, acquiescence” (emphasis added). Habit exerts the real power here. Hume makes little distinction between custom and habit, sometimes using the words interchangeably. He shares with Montaigne a recognition of custom’s power. It is, Montaigne says, “Circe’s drink, which carries our nature as it sees fit.” Hume’s commitment to habit’s importance is consistent across his authorship. In the Treatise, it is “one of the principles of nature” that can reconcile “us to any phaenomenon” (T ...). Its role in his account of causation is well known; in the first Enquiry, he writes that the principle that impels inferences between cause and effect is “custom or habit” (EHU .). And varying manners across ages and countries show “the great force of custom and education, which mould the human mind from its infancy, and form it into a fixed and established character” (EHU .). We learn to follow leaders because it first seems like a good idea, and because we have natural tendencies to go along with our fellows and to form habitual practices through repeating behaviors. “Voluntary” acquiescence to the first forms of government, then, was not mature reason’s autonomous consent. It was gradual submission resulting from our natural tendencies. Hume has already moved far from a substantial contract theory, whose power depends on the idea that agreement legitimates authority. As a lender can hold us responsible for 

 

Evnine, “Hume, Conjectural History, and the Uniformity of Human Nature,” –. Evnine draws out the contrast with Locke, arguing that Locke “in general is prepared to extend to ‘savages’ the same intellectual powers that he attributes to civilized people” (). “Of Experience,” Essays, . Hume is more likely to use “habit” than “custom” in the Treatise to refer to the principle that gives rise to such reasoning as causal inferences.

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

repaying a loan that we freely contracted for, a sovereign can legitimately demand our allegiance in return for benefits that we freely sought. The arrangement’s legitimacy depends on the contracting act. But for Hume, the agreement is a gradual development, freely chosen in only a loose sense. Of course, we should not saddle contract theorists like Locke and Hobbes with absurd historical accounts of the original submission to government. Neither believes that government’s legitimacy requires a signing ceremony. Locke in fact aims to undermine the notion that we are bound by the moral force of events that happened in some mythical golden age, such as God’s originally conferring authority on Adam. As Evnine notes, Locke’s emphasis on the power of everyone’s present consent is an “ahistorical theory of the social contract.” Hume, on the other hand, seems to locate the time of consent in a historical past. He does not believe there to have been a single moment at which government was formed, or even that all polities have formed in the same way. But for Hume, “civil society has a history,” as John B. Stewart puts it. In discussing the Treatise’s more complex story, Stewart distinguishes stages of civil society’s development but notes that Hume is not committed to the view that each society must progress through each stage in a specific order. Nonetheless, although humans have always lived in family relationships, governmental institutions evolved in actual time. Hume’s detailed descriptions of government’s slow progression include reasonable suggestions for how leadership may have arisen and evolved. His historical writings are full of references to societies progressing from barbarous to more civilized states. He does insist on the fictional status of the state of nature in both the Treatise and second Enquiry (T ...– and EPM .–). But what he calls fictional and impossible for real human beings is sustaining an asocial or radically individualistic state for any length of time. The distinction between the 





 

This conception of right holds even if we conceive of the agreement as necessarily repeated each time a member of society reaches adulthood and chooses to remain in a polity. The notion that each member of society needs to individually make the assent reinforces the general idea. Evnine, “Hume, Conjectural History, and the Uniformity of Human Nature,” . For a discussion of the eighteenth-century rejection of contract theories because of an increased emphasis on historical evidence, see Christopher J. Berry, “From Hume to Hegel,” –. Mark Goldie claims that, in his “critique of social contract theory,” Hume had in mind not simply Locke but a composite Whig doctrine, which treated the idea of contract as a historical as well as an ahistorical phenomenon” (“English System of Liberty,” ). Opinion and Reform in Hume’s Political Philosophy, . Hume’s history of civil society is conjectural history, as Stewart recognizes. I discuss conjectural history in Section .. On this point, see Forbes, Hume’s Philosophical Politics, .

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original tendency to form social relationships, as opposed to the evolutionary nature of government, is clear at the beginning of “Of the Origin of Government”: “Man, born in a family, is compelled to maintain society, from necessity, from natural inclination, and from habit. The same creature, in his farther progress, in engaged to establish political society” (.., emphasis added). Does Hume’s interest in civil society’s historical progress imply that his respect for the past’s ability to justify governmental authority outstrips that of contract theorists like Locke? Humean consent, even if it took place once upon a real time, lacks the ethical force required to sustain this interpretation. According to contract theory, legitimate governments do not require a discrete moment of consent, but they do require the moral apparatus, if you will, that accompanies contractual agreement. Free rational agents authorize the sovereign’s right to rule over them. This consent carries much of the moral weight that justifies the ruler’s power and the subjects’ submission. Hume’s portrayal of consent as a long, gradual process depending on the subtle force of habit – a process of which people may be largely unaware – cripples consent’s ability to carry that weight. The moral impotence of the process coheres with Hume’s view about the obligation to allegiance after civil society’s original establishment. People do not ordinarily decide to join a polity or acquiesce to a sovereign. Instead, they find themselves under the power of a sovereign whose authority they did not choose. “Can we seriously say,” Hume asks, “that a poor peasant or artisan has a free choice to leave his country, when he knows no foreign language or manners, and lives from day to day, by the small wages which he acquires? We may as well assert, that a man, by remaining in a vessel, freely consents to the dominion of the master; though he was carried on board while asleep, and must leap into the ocean, and perish, the moment he leaves her” (..). The violent analogy reflects the type of forces that, according to Hume, usually establish government authority. He describes a bloody field of history, advancing a narrative that rivals Hegel’s description of “an altar on which the happiness of nations, the wisdom of states, and the virtues of individuals are slaughtered.” The most common mode of establishment 



It need not carry all of the moral weight. Locke’s theory depends heavily on obligations generated by a theistic conception of the natural law. On Hume’s emphasis on consent in contract theories, see Stephen Buckle and Dario Castiglione, “Hume’s Critique of the Contract Theory,” –. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction, . Of course, for Hegel, this is a perspective that ultimately should be overcome.

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has been “usurpation or conquest, or both, without any pretence of a fair consent, or voluntary subjection of the people” (..). There has been much transfer of power: “The face of the earth is continually changing” by the formation and dissolution of empires, colonization, and migration. But the transfers are not contractual exchanges: “Is there any thing discoverable in all these events, but force and violence?” (ibid.). More peaceable transitions, “by marriage or a will” treat the general populace like property “to be disposed of, like a dowry or a legacy, according to the pleasure or interest of their rulers” (..–). And nothing could be dimmer than Hume’s assessment of the “highly vaunted” practice of instituting government by election: It is either the combination of a few great men, who decide for the whole, and will allow of no opposition: Or it is the fury of a multitude, that follow a seditious ringleader, who is not known, perhaps to a dozen among them, and who owes his advancement merely to his own impudence, or to the momentary caprice of his fellows. (..)

This judgment precedes a litany of examples ranging from ancient Athens to the so-called Glorious Revolution itself. Thus, he concludes, it is time to admit that force has been the origin of “almost all” new governments and that “in the few cases, where consent may seem to have taken place, it was commonly so irregular, so confined, or so much intermixed either with fraud or violence, that it cannot have any great authority” (..–). Force, violence, fury, impudence, caprice, and fraud: this narrative has nothing to do with moral veneration of the past. ..

The Priority of the Present

There has been much debate over whether or not Hume is one of the fathers of modern political conservatism. Criticism of Hume as a closet Tory, especially because of the History’s treatment of the English Civil War, goes back to the eighteenth century. Donald Livingston calls





In the – edition, Hume adds that he does not intend “to exclude the consent of the people from being one just foundation of government where it has place. It is surely the best and most sacred of any. I only pretend, that it has very seldom had place in any degree, and never almost in its full extent” (..). This concession does little to change the bent of the rest of the essay. Spencer has shown that this view of the History has not been nearly as ubiquitous as many scholars have claimed, particularly by Americans during the Revolutionary period. See David Hume and Eighteenth-Century America, especially chapter .

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Hume “the first conservative philosopher,” in response to Stewart’s influential argument in Opinion and Reform in Hume’s Political Philosophy that Hume is a political liberal. Any attempt to capture Hume’s political views in this contemporary terminology will necessarily be misleading, but I will not try to adjudicate this debate. Instead, let us consider how Hume’s understanding of humanity’s relation to the past affects many of those statements that suggest political conservatism. The Essays are rife with appeals to the authority of precedent. At the beginning of “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth,” where we might expect to find Hume in an innovating mood, he instead warns against tinkering with the settled order. “An established government has an infinite advantage, by that very circumstance of its being established” (..). The “wise magistrate” will thus “bear a reverence to what carries the marks of age.” A dramatic expression of Hume’s suspicion of innovation comes in an approving reference to the ancients at the end of “Of the Original Contract”: “The crime of rebellion among the ancients was commonly expressed by the terms νεωτερίζειν, novas res moliri” (..). Both terms mean to bring about something new, to innovate. How can Hume approve of such sentiments, yet ridicule those who invoke the age of political institutions to bolster their authority? The answer is that such statements are not about the past, but the present. Hume gives two reasons why “wise magistrates,” all else being equal, should respect established precedents over improving schemes. One reflects his respect for sound instrumental reason, the other his respect for the truth that most people do not act from reason most of the time. The improving spirit that Hume argues against sees politics as not only a science, but as a techne. From this perspective, we can improve a people’s condition much as we improve a manufacturing process: locating flaws in the process, drawing on general knowledge of how manufacturing works, and applying that knowledge to correct the flaws. But things are not so simple even in manufacturing and are even less so in human affairs. General rules of politics, though valuable, fail in particular cases, and it is impossible to predict with certainty when and how they will fail. The 

 

“On Hume’s Conservatism,” . Livingston has a nuanced understanding of the meaning of “conservatism”; much of this article discusses its historical and philosophical ambiguity. See also his Hume’s Philosophy of Common Life, chapter . McArthur provides a helpful summary of the history of this debate in the introduction to David Hume’s Political Theory. For a comparison between Hume’s recognition of the importance of chance (unknown causes) for politics and Machiavelli’s emphasis on fortune and accidenti, see Frederick G. Whelan, Hume and Machiavelli, –.

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

technological perspective cannot accommodate such variables. Customs, however, often evolve in response to particularities of a polity’s situation, and the populace adapts to prevailing customs. Such customs may address human needs better than general rules. Instrumental reason therefore demands that we respect peculiar precedent as a means to general political ends. Hume hints at this point in a number of places and illustrates it with striking examples in “Of Some Remarkable Customs.” The three customs he considers show that “all general maxims in politics ought to be established with great caution” (..). Each, in the abstract, appears absurd. But on closer examination, each makes sense within its context. First, the Athenian “indictment of illegality,” according to which one could be prosecuted for proposing a law even after it had been passed, was a necessary check on the instability of the “tumultuous” system of direct democracy (..–). In this system, the lack of mediation between the people’s whims and the actions of the polis threatened chaos. Second, the Roman republic’s dual legislatures – one aristocratic, one plebeian – could “preserve the greatest harmony and concord” despite their opposing interests and lack of any subordinating principle to decide between them (..). The unusual power of a people “having numbers and force on their side, and being elated with frequent conquests and victories in their foreign wars” limited the aristocracy’s ability to impose on the lower classes (..). Finally, the English custom of pressing men into the navy, with neither their consent nor express legal authority, preserved liberty. The practice fulfilled the need to support the English navy without granting wide-ranging monarchical power that could lead to tyrannical abuse. In each case, what appears irrational from a distance works in a unique situation. That all these customs were eventually abandoned does not prove that they were unreasonable when practiced. As situations change, the policies responding to them must also change. In some cases, however, respecting precedent can be more reasonable than innovation. In another sense, respecting precedent can be based on an unreasonable principle of human nature – the antiquarian principle – but still be sound policy. Although the attraction to age often misleads our judgment and confounds those who see weaknesses in precedents, it is so widespread and powerful that politicians and political philosophers ignore it at their peril. Returning to “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth,” we must now consider the end of a sentence I quoted only partially before. “An established government has an infinite advantage, by that very circumstance of its

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being established,” Hume says, “the bulk of mankind being governed by authority, not reason, and never attributing authority to any thing that has not the recommendation of antiquity” (..). The advantage of established government is that people accept it as their rightful government, and this is no small matter. It is required for the beneficial effects that, Hume argues, generate a legitimate relation between sovereign and subject. To see why, recall Hume’s arguments against contract theory. The obligating force of contracts requires free and acknowledged consent, and few people believe that they have given such consent. But Hume does not think that the duty to allegiance requires consent. It arises, rather, from “experience and observation” of the benefit of a system of authority – “society cannot possibly be maintained without the authority of magistrates, and . . . this authority must soon fall into contempt, where exact obedience is not payed to it.” Recognition of this benefit “is the source of all allegiance, and of that moral obligation, which we attribute to it” (..). These benefits require a critical mass of people accepting a particular sovereign’s authority. Without this acceptance, the society will be vulnerable to rampant crime at best and civil war at worst. In the most extreme circumstances, the duty to allegiance dissolves, as Hume claims at the beginning of “Of Passive Obedience”: “as government binds us to obedience only on account of its tendency to public utility, that duty must always, in extraordinary cases, when public ruin would evidently attend obedience, yield to the primary and original obligation” (..). (The “original obligation” is the motive of promoting the people’s interest.) Because most people, however, accept authority when it bears the patina of antiquity, antiquity becomes indispensable to the duty of allegiance. The general benefit of government only generates a reason to submit to some government. In “Of the First Principles of Government,” Hume writes that public opinion, including the opinion that the present sovereign has a right to power, is essential to the support of any particular government. Moreover, a sure way to garner that support is to appeal 



Hume explains this process in more detail in the Treatise. The approval of the virtue of allegiance requires sympathizing with its usual effects, which produces the approbation and disapprobation required for moral distinctions. See T ... See also “Of the Origin of Government,” especially –. Ryu Susato notes the similarity between this paragraph at .. and a passage from William Temple’s “Essay upon the Original and Nature of Government” () (Hume’s Sceptical Enlightenment, ).

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

to the “attachment which all nations have to their ancient government, and even to those names, which have had the sanction of antiquity,” as antiquity “always begets the opinion of right” (..). Although several factors are relevant, all else being equal, people will defend the claims to power of those whom they believe to have long possessed it. Neil McArthur provides distinctions that help clarify Hume’s position. McArthur distinguishes views about which standards can justify political changes from views about when it is appropriate to implement justified changes. He then identifies two views of the first kind: “particularism” and “universalism,” where particularists subscribe to a standard of custom and tradition. They hold that “the best society is one that conforms to the established customs and traditions of that particular society.” Universalists believe in “truths about, for instance, human nature or the relation of individual and society” that can ground “prescriptive principles that apply to all, or a wide variety of, societies.” Their standards therefore can transcend the particularities of a society, although they need not believe those standards to be rooted in universal reason. McArthur then identifies two views about when to implement changes: “traditionalism” and “precautionary conservatism.” Traditionalists are particularists, but they add to the justificatory view an insistence that action be taken if change to the current political situation would enable a return to “long-established custom and tradition.” Precautionary conservatives, by contrast, can be either universalists or particularists, but they advise change based on an assessment of risks. This assessment tends to recommend against change because of the high likelihood of disorder. Hume, McArthur holds, is a both a universalist and a precautionary conservative. Thus far, McArthur’s analysis is helpful and persuasive. One aspect of that analysis requires qualification, however. He claims that it “is a central feature of precautionary conservatism that it makes it possible to distinguish between the validity of political ideals and the wisdom of actually implementing them.” He also provides textual evidence that Hume makes this distinction “between justification and prudence,” while consistently prioritizing prudence. But the complex relationship between a critical mass of public approval and the duty to allegiance means that prudential considerations cannot for Hume be neatly separated from justification. Without sufficient acceptance of a present establishment, it  

On the complexity of factors determining public opinion about sovereign authority, see Susato, Hume’s Sceptical Enlightenment, –.    David Hume’s Political Theory, . Ibid. Ibid., . Ibid., .

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does not produce the benefit that generates the approbation necessary for a moral obligation to allegiance. The people’s opinion, therefore, must be taken into consideration when determining whether or not resistance is justified. That opinion, Hume believes, generally will be swayed by the perception of antiquity. But concern for the antiquarian principle cannot eclipse all other concerns. When antiquity confronts present violence, antiquity must yield. “Of Passive Obedience” justifies withdrawing allegiance to an established government on the grounds of what is presently necessary. Moreover, although Hume voices scruples about the right of resistance he has just defended, saying that he “shall always incline to their side, who draw the bond of allegiance very close,” his scruples arise from concern about the habits of the current populace and their leaders (..). Philosophers who detail when it is permissible to rebel may provide excuses for those disposed to stir up discontent. Even in less precarious situations, the sense that rebellion is an option can cause trouble, as rulers who sense “a disposition to rebellion” in the people act tyrannically to keep the people in check. It is therefore best for everyone if philosophers avoid dwelling on the situations in which the duty to allegiance fails, let alone describing them “with all the vehemence of argument and eloquence” (..). Such efforts can corrupt the present populace and the rulers, to everyone’s detriment. Hume evinces the same concern for the people’s current sensibility at the beginning of “Of the Protestant Succession.” He remarks that restoring the Stuart line to the throne would have preserved “the succession clear and undisputed . . . with such a specious title as that of blood, which, with the multitude, is always the claim, the strongest and most easily comprehended” (..). (“Specious” did not necessarily connote sophistry or insincerity; its basic meaning is “plausible” or “attractive.”) He reflects on the general reverence for princes associated with respect for the hereditary line. Public devotion derives force from our attachment “to those names, 





This claim does not undermine McArthur’s main argument in this section of his book. I agree that Hume provides standards for judging societies and polities that transcend customs, and that Hume can therefore distinguish between justification of political ideals and the prudence of implementing those ideals. But the distinction cannot be made cleanly with respect to particular acts of resistance. Hume’s view may be more extreme – that responsible thinkers should sometimes actively conceal the right to resistance. For a discussion of this possibility, drawing on Hume’s account of Charles I’s execution in The History of England, see Buckle and Castiglione, “Hume’s Critique of the Contract Theory,” –. It was this kind of attempt to represent charitably the Jacobite position that made this essay controversial enough to be initially suppressed. See note .

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

which have had the sanction of antiquity.” These are powerful sentiments, and Hume warns against attempts to purge them. If a wise person were able to overcome these sentiments himself, his wisdom would still make him appreciate them in others: “Far from endeavouring to undeceive the people in this particular, he would cherish such sentiments of reverence to their princes; as requisite to preserve a due subordination in society” (..) That what matters here is present sentiment, as opposed to past establishment, becomes clear at the end of the essay, where Hume insists that Jacobite arguments become incoherent in light of the present stability of the Hanoverian reign. The Hanovers had been in possession of the crown long enough to create loyalty in British subjects, so “that now we should not, even by a revolution, obtain the end of avoiding a disputed title” (..). The past attachment to the Stuart family thus loses all its power as an argument in favor of their entitlement to the throne. Finally, in “Of the Coalition of Parties,” Hume takes on the midseventeenth-century controversy between royalists and the “popular party.” Each party appealed to past precedent to support its claims, and Hume again speaks in the voice of both sides. Though the popular party begins with references to the sacredness of liberty, acknowledging that recent precedent is not on their side, they insist that they are recovering a more ancient tradition: “more remote reigns afford instances of stricter limitations imposed on the crown; and those pretensions of the parliament, now branded with the title of innovations, are only a recovery of the just rights of the people” (..). In this dispute, Hume’s heart does not appear to be with the populists (which would be no surprise to readers of the History). The royalist holds the stage for a much longer time, and his voice sounds very like Hume’s own. He proposes to speak for the royalists’ position “at the assembling of that parliament, which, by its violent encroachments on the crown, began the civil wars” (..). This accusation against the populists is in Hume’s own voice, not that of the imagined royalist. Although he ultimately expresses admiration for the constitutional settlement effected by the popular party, he demurs by saying that “perhaps, according to the established maxims of lawyers and politicians, the views of the



Cf. Hume’s remark on the scrutiny of the king by the commons: “the commons, though themselves the greatest innovators, employed the usual artifice of complaining against innovations, and pretending to recover the ancient and established government” (H :).

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royalists ought, before-hand, to have appeared more solid, more safe, and more legal” (..). What were these solid, safe, and legal views? That the power of the crown had been long and well established, that the alleged earlier period of liberty was really one of baron tyranny, and that, in sum, the “true rule of government is the present established practice of the age” (.., emphasis added). Hume never denies this last claim; he instead points out that its force is now transferred to those in favor of broader liberty. Those who would now attempt “to recall the past government or abdicated family, would, besides other more criminal imputations, be exposed, in their turn, to the reproach of faction and innovation” (..). Hume does respect precedent and warn against tinkering with what history, tradition, and custom has established. But this respect has nothing to do with nostalgic attachment to the past, or a sense that what bears the marks of age demands the tribute of reverence. It rests instead on beliefs about what the people will respect and a concern for stability in government. Arguments attempting to establish the antiquity of one system over another are often historically suspect – revisionist histories driven by present desires, needs, and agendas. Such arguments never settle a dispute in the absence of careful consideration of what the present populace needs and will accept. Though the past has its influence, the ultimate arbiter of disputes about these matters will be the present state of the populace and its relation to the sovereign who happens to be in power. As he says in “Of Commerce,” “Sovereigns must take mankind as they find them, and cannot pretend to introduce any violent change in their principles and ways of thinking” (..). Those who cleave to the past because they believe that such an anchor is the only refuge from political tempests deceive themselves about the possibility of unchanging seas. And those who cleave to the past because they believe that it possesses sacred authority exhibit a kind of superstition, with all its associated dangers. Since the tendency to this superstition crosses party lines, Hume cannot mitigate it by the reasoned appeal to each party’s better arguments. He instead seeks to undermine it, through incisive satire and a critical history of the foundation of government.



In a passage removed for the  edition from “Of the First Principles of Government,” Hume suggests that the association between antiquity and opinion of right may be called enthusiasm (..). He does not always preserve the clear distinction between superstition and enthusiasm that he makes in the essay by that title.

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

. A Great Change for the Better When it comes to governing, Hume’s answer to the assessment question is clear. He has little patience with those who fail to appreciate the advances from “barbarism” to civilization that he sees in the history of Great Britain and the larger trajectory of Western history. Nonetheless, two qualifications to this progressive view are in order. First, in some areas there has been either unsustainable progress, no progress at all, or even decline. Second, moderns tend to deceive themselves about the degree to which their own ideas and virtues are responsible for that progress. Hume’s conception of progress is not always palatable. For example, his commitment to the value of a distinct aristocratic class leads him to criticize ancient protests against property requirements for legislative and executive offices. In these ancient societies, the “very quality of freemen gave such a rank, being opposed to that of slave, that it seemed to entitle the possessor to every power and privilege of the commonwealth” (..). Hume disapproves of extending this power and privilege to those without property. Ancient governments careened between unstable and violent democracies, at one extreme, and aristocracies who had to rule recalcitrant subjects with a heavy hand, at the other. In contrast, most of Europe’s republics are “well-tempered Aristocracies” (..). Modern polities, he holds, have done well not to emulate this aspect of the ancient spirit of liberty. Hume also resists praise of the ancient “simplicity” of manners, which would prefer Socrates’ city for swine to the modern luxury state. I discuss this more in Chapter , on “Working,” but suffice it to say that Hume does not take moral decline to accompany economic progress. He likewise resists the notion that the story of Rome’s decline provides a moral against modern decadence. Rome fell, he insists, because of “an ill modelled government, and the unlimited extent of conquests,” not because of their luxurious indulgences (..). Nor does Hume fear the rise of larger nations as necessarily threatening progress in liberty. He argues against this fear at the end of “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth.” Though conceding the difficulty of uniting a large country under a republican government, he contends that once such a government is established, it can be more stable



Cf. the justification of Athens’s “indictment of illegality,” mentioned earlier. In “Of Some Remarkable Customs,” Hume makes the same criticism of ancients’ anti-aristocratic sentiments. See ..–.

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than a republican city or small commonwealth. Such a nation combines democratic liberty with aristocratic order. Its large size is an advantage, as “the parts are so distant and remote, that it is very difficult, either by intrigue, prejudice, or passion, to hurry them into any measures against the public interest” (..). Hume tempers some of his strongest praise of ancient governments, moreover, with qualifications that transform it into censure. In “Of Commerce,” he discusses the ancient practice of employing superfluous labor to support military force rather than indulging citizens’ desire for luxury. This practice produced states more powerful than modern states of equal size. Yet such power fed off individual unhappiness, and he recommends against resurrecting the practice. It worked only because of the ancient republics’ peculiarities and required “violent” policy, “contrary to the more natural and usual course of things” (..). To the general assessment question, “Of Civil Liberty” provides a direct answer. Hume writes that “all kinds of government, free and absolute, seem to have undergone, in modern times, a great change for the better, with regard both to foreign and domestic management” (..). This is from an early essay, published in , but Hume never withdraws this sentiment. On Britain’s own government, he can sound like a Pollyanna. We have seen his claim in “Of the Protestant Succession” that the “Glorious Revolution” ushered in a period of unprecedented harmony within the government, liberty for the people, and economic and intellectual flourishing (see ..). In later years, Hume is less sanguine about Britain. Yet as late as January , he still asserts that things are much better than they used to be. In a letter to Thomas Percy, though Hume laments the present “miserabl[e] Degeneracy” and fears “a sudden Inroad of Ignorance, Superstition and Barbarism,” he asks: “Why still exalt Old England for a Model of Government and Laws; Praises which it by no means deserves? And why still  





In contrast, Hume thinks that extensive monarchies are “probably, destructive to human nature” (..–). Harris conjectures that Jean-François Melon influences Hume here. Melon defends “commerce as a means of national aggrandisement superior to the brute force of military power” and argues that “luxury, under attack in France since the rise of Fénelon and the fall of Cobert, should be recognised as ‘always . . . attendant upon every well-governed society’” (Hume, ). He seems later to retract the example he gives after this statement, however. “Of Civil Liberty” says, “The balance of power is a secret in politics, fully known only to the present age.” But “Of the Balance of Power” argues that the ancient Greeks did recognize this principle and act accordingly. See later discussion. The circumstances of this essay’s publication make these remarks somewhat ironic. See Section ...

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complain of the present times, which, in every respect, so far surpass all the past?” (Letters :). Hume’s optimism about political progress is nonetheless cautious. He recognizes local failures within the general progress and considers his age in civil society’s childhood. In “Of Civil Liberty,” he warns against excessive confidence in any political science: “We have not as yet had experience of three thousand years; so that not only the art of reasoning is still imperfect in this science, as in all others, but we even want sufficient materials upon which we can reason” (..). In some cases, modern errors resemble ancient ones, showing a failure to learn from history. Jealous, protectionist trade policies are a strong example. Ancient Athens, Hume reports, so prized their fig that they outlawed its exportation, believing “it too delicious for the palate of any foreigner” (..). Though this policy seems silly to modern readers, moderns act with as little wisdom by erecting trade barriers from fear of losing domestic commodities, concern about decreasing the supply of currency, or blind hatred of another nation. England has made this last error with respect to France. In doing so, England lost the French market for its wool and – the result Hume seems to lament more – easy access to French wine. The English must instead buy wine from Spain and Portugal – “worse liquor,” he writes, “at a higher price” (..). In other cases, modern errors outstrip their ancient predecessors’: Hume’s direst warnings concern public debt. The virulence of “Of Public Credit” has struck many commentators, who describe it as “apocalyptic” and a “jeremiad.” Pocock portrays Hume’s views on public debt as revealing a dark strain in his thinking, with “an image of a society destroying itself by heaping up the public indebtedness to the point where trade and agriculture were both brought to ruin.” These self-destructive tendencies, Pocock claims, arise from fundamental tensions between Hume’s ideals of liberty, commerce, and virtue. Istvan Hont, in response, argues that Hume’s dire warnings proceed not from concern about forces internal to the world of commerce but from his recognition of the 

 

In the History, Hume suggests that a dark human propensity might make the struggle to maintain liberty perennial. The Dutch people, he writes, revolted against De Witt and, “agreeably to the proceedings of the populace in all ages, provided they might wreak their vengeance on their superiors, they expressed great indifference for the protection of their civil liberties” (H :). See, e.g., Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, ; Caffentzis, “Fiction or Counterfeit?,” ; and Hont, “Rhapsody of Public Debt,” . “Hume and the American Revolution: The Dying Thoughts of a North Briton,” in Virtue, Commerce, and History, .

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“scourge” that comes from debt financing of foreign wars. Regardless, Hume considers the issue so dangerous that he proclaims that “either the nation must destroy public credit, or public credit will destroy the nation” (..–). He even proposes voluntary bankruptcy as the lesser evil. In later revisions to the essay, he loses hope for this option, as he observes the increasing dependence of both branches of government on stockholders. The vast increase in the national debt during the Seven Years’ War had stifled the power of the landholding class, which Hume held to be an important check on tyranny as a “middle power between king and people” (..). Hume’s framing supports Hont’s interpretation of the essay as primarily concerned with the relation between public debt and war. It also shows Hume’s willingness to qualify severely his earlier judgment about the modern “great change for the better.” “Of Public Credit” opens with a direct comparison between the ancient policy of saving money for wars and the modern one of using public debt to carry the nation through calamities. In this instance, “the ancient maxims are . . . more prudent than the modern”: whatever hazards arise from amassing a war chest, “the abuses of mortgaging are more certain and inevitable; poverty, impotence, and subjection to foreign powers” (..–). Although Hume does not favor channeling all superfluous labor into military force, he would prefer that the nation save some of its resources in preparation for conflict, rather than finance wars through debts with no natural limit. These abuses make modern war more economically destructive; ancient war could temporarily stimulate the economy, whereas modern war “is attended with every destructive circumstance; loss of men, encrease of taxes, decay of commerce, dissipation of money, devastation by sea and land” (..). These remarks must be qualified by comparison with Hume’s observations about the destructiveness and frequency of ancient war, which I discuss in Chapter . Nonetheless, Hume considers increasing national debts a most dangerous policy, threatening all other advancements that modern polities have achieved. Another threat to progress in government is ungrounded confidence – both in the relation between principle and practice and in the stability of





Hont, “Rhapsody of Public Debt,” . Pocock does acknowledge Hume’s concern about the relation between debt and war in his discussion of Hume’s opposition to empire building. See “Hume and the American Revolution,” . See Hont, “Rhapsody of Public Debt,” –, for an illuminating discussion of Hume’s changes to the essay for the  edition.

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progress itself. “Of the Balance of Power” is an interesting study of these issues. Its ostensible question is whether ancient polities recognized the importance of maintaining a balance of power among neighboring states. By appealing to explicit articulations in ancient records and to ancient endeavors that aimed to maintain the balance, Hume argues that the ancient Greeks were aware of this maxim. He speculates that the notion that the principle is uniquely modern stems from reflection on Roman history. Foreign powers acquiesced to Rome’s increasing ambitions without forming any plausible design to unite with each other to preserve their independence. But “the maxim of preserving the balance of power is founded so much on common sense and obvious reasoning, that it is impossible it could altogether have escaped antiquity, where we find, in other particulars, so many marks of deep penetration and discernment” (..). Perhaps the balance was often preserved in ancient Greece out of “jealous emulation” more than “cautious politics,” but ancient historians “expressly pointed out to us” the working of the principle, and Demosthenes provides “the utmost refinements” on it (.. and ). John Robertson therefore overstates Hume’s position in saying that Hume sees the principle as “derived from the circumstances of the Greek cities rather than from reflection.” Moreover, predominance of jealous emulation does not much distinguish the ancients from the moderns. Hume does consider widespread, acknowledged consensus about the maxim’s importance to be a modern achievement. He even refers to maintaining the balance as “the aim of modern politics” (..). Still, modern European nations have also served this end from rancor and mutual jealousy. Britain had done well to concern itself with the encroaching power of France, the Austrian empire’s dangerous successor. But, as Robertson argues, Hume’s revisions to the essay from  forward show that he abandons his anxiety about French dominion. And the way that Britain opposes French power reveals more intemperate spite than wise policy. Once war between the two powers has begun, much blood and money are spent on carrying matters to unnecessary extremes, “too far pushed from obstinacy and passion” (..). Furthermore, Britain gets embroiled in too many 

 

Hont writes that “‘Of the Balance of Power’ serves as a perfect introduction to ‘Of Public Credit,’” as the former was “a scathing indictment of all non-defensive warfare” (“Rhapsody of Public Debt,” ). “Universal Monarchy and the Liberties of Europe,” . Ibid., –. Robertson also provides a helpful discussion of seventeenth-century debates about universal monarchy and Britain’s place within the power structure of Europe.

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conflicts with France, because Britain’s European allies count on its willingness to engage its inveterate enemy and therefore refuse concessions to France. Finally, Hume returns to his favorite warning: animosities with France increase the national debt, as “once engaged, we lose all concern for ourselves and our posterity, and consider only how we may best annoy the enemy” (..). This situation illustrates a point that Hume makes in more suspicious moments: a reasonable justification for behavior can be little more than a screen for real motives, especially in politics. Balance of power always provided a ready justification for patriotic Britons urging conflict with France. The irrational extremes that followed, however, showed the real motive to be jealousy and hatred, rather than “the prudent views of modern politics” (..). Modern nations thus not only act in the same unreasonable ways as their predecessors; they are in danger of suffering the same fate. People eventually tire of violent altercations, and the British people at some point may have enough and imitate the ancient Greeks, who “abandoned all attention to foreign affairs” (..). There is an ominous possibility here, which other essays suggest that Hume recognizes. An acknowledged theoretical principle justifying rancorous acts may carry modern conflicts to more prolonged and deadly destructions. When hatred is powerful, it can support itself with the borrowed reason of needing to check the enemy’s ambition. When hatred weakens, the principle’s inflexible demands can inflame conflicts that might have been avoided or ended quickly. In politics, as in ethics, having a rule grounded in reason is not the same as acting from the calm passions that we call reasonable. This point relates to a final worry that Hume expresses in relation to political progress. He hopes that the “progress of reason” will dampen the spirit of religious factionalism, so bound up with political conflicts. But expressing hope for such progress in “Of the Protestant Succession,” he adds that “the spirit of moderation has, as yet, made too slow advances to be entirely trusted” (..). And Hume believes modern interactions between religion and politics to be more dangerous than ancient ones. In “Of Parties in General,” he claims that “parties from principle, especially abstract speculative principle, are known only to modern times” (..). These speculative differences do not imply any necessary practical difference. Political principles often imply such differences: a monarchist and a democrat must conflict over the nation’s proper course of affairs. But 

See T ....

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according to Hume, “in all religious controversies,” “every one may follow his own way, without interfering with his neighbour” (..). Party divisions based on such differences, then, result from discomfort with the cognitive dissonance that arises when we confront people with opinions that differ from our own. On the face of things, Hume’s claim that religious controversies do not imply behavioral conflicts is simply false. If one sect’s beliefs imply that its members should be allowed to do things prohibited by the larger community, such a conflict will ensue. Examples of such conflicts include the occasional clashes between governmental authorities and fundamentalist Mormon sects that practice polygamy. A sect’s belief that it has a right or obligation to control the behavior of the community among which they reside will also generate conflict. We see examples of these conflicts in communities where religious sects prohibit education for all women within the boundaries of their city or state. Perhaps Hume would claim that these differences are moral rather than religious. He may be defining religious controversies as those concerning only claims about the divine that do not imply differences in moral behavior. For instance, it is not clear that any conflicting behavior need arise from the dispute between Roman and Orthodox Catholics over the Filioque clause in the Nicene Creed, which says that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son, rather than simply proceeding from the Father. Examples of such controversies abound; nonetheless, religious believers could with some justice accuse Hume of handling their perspectives uncharitably. Many believe their religious tenets to have practical implications, some of which conflict with those of different creeds. A definition of religious controversy that ignores such experience seems ad hoc at best. Nonetheless, Hume’s remarks here point to an important insight. Conflicts over principles with clear practical implications, such as who possesses a right to the throne, can be violent and enduring. Yet there is a clear indication of when the dispute has been settled, or at least who is presently winning. No such indication exists in speculative disputes without practical implications. One might say the same of many academic disagreements, but there is an important difference between these and religious conflicts. In an academic conflict, standards within the discipline adjudicate the conflict (or can do so, at least when the discipline is in 

Jennifer Herdt discusses the limits of Hume’s sympathetic understanding of theism in Religion and Faction in Hume’s Moral Philosophy, –.

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good order and not undergoing a paradigm shift). Those well trained in these standards judge for themselves who has the upper hand in ongoing disputes. They may judge that the evidence on both sides is at present insufficient, but there is often hope for long-term consensus. Those engaged in religious conflicts, however, seek the allegiance of their followers (or perhaps the public in general) regardless of the followers’ education. How then is it possible to tell when the dispute has been resolved, or who is winning? Suppose it is not possible to tell: no standards are available to decide between alternatives or compel rational assent. If so, then the conflict might endure for a long time, carrying with it whatever energy, resources, and blood people are willing to dedicate to it. Perhaps, on the other hand, it is possible to tell, because the people being asked to accept the beliefs submit to the authority of a religious leader who tells them which side to take. Such submission can result from the powerful inspiration of a spiritual leader, but it has often resulted from compulsion. In these cases, the religious controversy has become political. One might object that these possibilities ignore another, less objectionable procedure: to treat the controversy as an academic dispute, analogous to one in, for example, theoretical physics. The experts – theologians or reflective teachers – examine the question, present arguments, and she who has the best argument wins. Because, however, the religion demands adherence from a broader public, this solution tends to collapse into one of two other possibilities. For the general public, the religious arguments are likely just as opaque as those of the physicists. These arguments offer no standards of judgment at all to average believers. They may then cease to care about the dispute, or align themselves with one or another theologian – putting that thinker in the position of either spiritual or political leader. If the latter, then again, the religious controversy has become political. What does all this have to do with the progress of reason and its relation to government? If these suggestions are cogent, disputes over speculative religious questions will have three likely outcomes: people stop caring about the issue being disputed, the dispute continues interminably, or the dispute fuels the rise of a new political leader. From Hume’s point of view, the first outcome would count as progress, but the latter two are also 

These suggestions go beyond Hume’s analysis in “Of Parties in General.” There, he ascribes the modern rise of religious factions and their ill effects on government to certain peculiarities of Christianity and its history, which I discuss in Chapter .

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real possibilities, and the disputants might see themselves as advancing the cause of reason. In this way, speculative argumentation can foment the party factionalism that leads Hume to make the following comparison between the ancients and the moderns: “Sects of philosophy, in the ancient world, were more zealous than parties of religion; but in modern times, parties of religion are more furious and enraged than the most cruel factions that ever arose from interest and ambition” (..). The principle of the balance of power and the question of the progress of reason against immoderate religion thus have something interesting in common. In both cases, Hume credits the moderns with significant intellectual progress compared with many ancient predecessors. Yet intellectual progress not only does not guarantee political progress; it can actually make that progress more precarious, given the creative ways in which human passions can twist truth and insight to serve other passions. It is not clear that Hume would agree with Robertson’s claim that it “was always a strength of English Whiggism . . . that its practice was closely supported by principles, whether theoretical or historical.” Robertson says this while explaining that Hume’s retraction of worries about Bourbon France did not lead him to abandon his interest in the balance of power or concerns about universal monarchy. The virtue of this continued interest in a political principle is evident. But Hume also recognizes that principles can always be misused, particularly by factions with passions they would rather not admit to, or perhaps do not even recognize. We can press vengeance to the most irrational extremes, marching under the banner of rational foreign policy when what we really seek is to “infuse our very souls into the wounds we give an enemy” (EPM App .). And we can prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching-out of a clause in a treasured creed.

. Progress and Government Intervention In this final governing section, I consider a version of the political intervention question, which asks whether or not government should intervene to achieve progress. My concern is again not to assess Hume’s alleged progressivism or conservatism. Instead, I focus on the extent to which he believes that governments can shape their citizens’ virtues. This question



“Universal Monarch and the Liberties of Europe,” .

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relates to the ongoing debate about Hume’s relation to the civic tradition, which emphasizes the interdependence of flourishing polities and individual virtue. But that debate focuses on civic virtues that are required to sustain a robust polity. These virtues overlap with those Hume calls “artificial” in the Treatise, but the Essays show that his belief in government’s influence on virtue extends to the “natural” virtues as well, including some whose importance reaches beyond their contributions to civic ideals. Unlike the Aristotelian view that sees virtue’s formation as an essential function of the polis, however, Hume’s hopes for government improvement of character are largely negative. Achieving good is precarious; avoiding harm is a more reasonable goal. Because of peculiar features of the artificial virtues, their cultivation needs some government help. In the Treatise, Hume writes that these virtues, which include justice and allegiance to government, “produce pleasure and approbation by means of an artifice or contrivance, which arises from the circumstances and necessities of mankind” (T ...). The second Enquiry abandons the language of “artificiality” and relegates focused discussion of justice’s conventional nature to an appendix. But the distinction between virtues whose benefit depends on convention and those whose natural motives do not require convention remains important. It is also present in the Essays, in, for example, “Of the Original Contract” and in the passage (cited above in Section ..) describing the progress from natural family relations to political society in “Of the Origin of Government” (..). 

 

I follow Robertson in using civic “tradition” rather than “humanism” or “republicanism”; his argument that the latter terms suggest “too specific an historical definition of the form in which [the tradition] reached eighteenth-century Scotland” is compelling (“Scottish Enlightenment at the Limits of the Civic Tradition,” ). Pocock is largely responsible for bringing the importance of the civic tradition to scholars’ attention, first in The Machiavellian Moment and in later works. Scholars disagree about Hume’s relation to this tradition. Livingston claims that Hume’s remarks about the importance of public spirit and regard to the community at ..– place him “in the civic humanist tradition” (Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium, ). Dennis Rasmussen agrees that Hume was no radical individualist. But he places Hume in a group of thinkers who, because of their commitment to a generally negative conception of liberty, ambivalence about popular government, and elevation of commercial pursuits, are at odds with the civic tradition (Pragmatic Enlightenment, especially chapter ). Other important treatments of Hume’s distance from the civic tradition include James Moore, “Hume’s Political Science and the Classical Republican Tradition,” and Stewart, Opinion and Reform in Hume’s Political Philosophy. Stewart argues that “the content of [Hume’s] political theory is far closer to natural-law theory than to civic humanism” (). See also ff. For a brief but subtle treatment of Hume that argues that his ethics distances him from both the natural law and the classical republican tradition, see J. B. Schneewind, “Classical Republicanism and the History of Ethics.” EPM App .n acknowledges that justice is artificial in one sense. See especially the distinction between two types of moral duties at ..–.

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From these various discussions of convention-dependent virtues, a profile emerges with a set of distinctive characteristics. These virtues originate in human artifice but need not arise from deliberate instrumental reasoning. They can develop gradually, through the influence of circumstances and habit. Though their evolution may be messy, they depend on determinate rules. The problems that these virtues address demand precision and inflexibility that is uncharacteristic of natural virtues. We need some way of allocating property and determining which sovereign we owe allegiance to. The accommodation to particularities that serves well in other realms would lead to chaos here. This necessity for inflexible rules leads to another characteristic: although artificial virtues are useful in general, their exercise may not be useful in particular cases. In the Enquiry, Hume even says that justice and fidelity, though “highly useful, or indeed absolutely necessary to the well-being of mankind,” may “in many instances” be “extremely hurtful” (EPM App .). It is therefore unsurprising that people find it hard to be just. The benefits are remote, and seeing them requires reasoning about distant consequences. Hume notes that we often “prefer any trivial advantage, that is present, to the maintenance of order in society, which so much depends on the observance of justice” (T ...). But this remark does not fully capture the psychological challenge. It is difficult for people even to see the remote benefit of upholding a system of justice. In some cases, there is no plausible reason to believe that a violation will damage that system. And the individual harms or foregone benefits may be significant. As a partial remedy, we make justice’s observance the close and particular interest of a few – the rulers – who can then increase the populace’s own interest in following the rules. So far, this account suggests nothing more than a system that promotes negative liberty by working on the self-interest of individuals. Further details of Hume’s view, however, complicate the picture. He does not attribute the rulers’ persuasion solely to a system of rewards and punishments. They also encourage the development of civil morality: education “and the artifice of politicians, concur in bestowing a farther morality on loyalty” as well as justice and promise-keeping (T ...). The language of artifice, especially as it suggests a Mandevillean view, proved misleading. Readers saw it as a denigration of these virtues, despite Hume’s insistence on their importance and benefit. But this political artifice is not to be lamented. Within bounds, a loyal populace benefits everyone, and the 

See T ....

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artificial virtues are genuine virtues that contribute to a meritorious character. Government thus plays an essential role in the inculcation, development, and preservation of the artificial virtues. Still, this account suggests minimal influence of the state on citizens’ moral character. Government intervention proves requisite to promoting artificial virtues because of their peculiar features, but do the natural virtues require such training? Perhaps any state attempting to inculcate them would be at best ineffective and at worst tyrannical. Some passages in the Essays support a dim view of more substantial political cultivation of virtue. In “That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science,” Hume remarks, “The ages of greatest public spirit are not always most eminent for private virtue. Good laws may beget order and moderation in government, where the manners and customs have instilled little humanity or justice into the tempers of men” (..). But at the beginning of “Of Parties in General,” he extols the efforts of good legislators, claiming that “general virtue and good morals in a state . . . must proceed entirely from the virtuous education of youth, the effect of wise laws and institutions” (..). It would be a stretch to interpret “general virtue and good morals” as referring only to artificial virtues. Although not strictly contradictory, these two claims seem to express quite different hopes for the effect of wise laws on character. To begin to make sense of this tension, let us consider what Hume has to say about some particular virtues: courage and genius. Courage is peculiar in two ways: first, Hume seems to characterize it as both natural and artificial, and second, he sometimes seems suspicious of its status as a virtue at all. In the Treatise, he notes that courage, “which is the point of honour among men, derives its merit, in a great measure, from artifice . . . tho’ it has also some foundation in nature, as we shall see afterwards” (T ...). He does not explain this remark. The context suggests that he may have in mind courage as part of the system of gallantry that likewise increased the importance of women’s chastity. But he might also be thinking of parallels between courage and justice: one courageous soldier, for example, does no good amid a rank of cowards, as one just individual helps no one without a critical mass of other just people. 

There is voluminous literature about whether or not Hume’s account of justice and its motivation is consistent with his moral psychology, which I cannot detail here. I defend the consistency of Hume’s account in Margaret Watkins Tate, “Obligation, Justice, and the Will in Hume’s Moral Philosophy.”

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In the Enquiry, Hume cautions against the tendency of martial societies to elevate courage to the form of all the virtues. But he also concedes that it is useful (to both its possessor and others) and immediately agreeable in its sublimity. At least some of its utility is independent of convention: bravery serves in any situation that requires conquering fear for the sake of action. And “that peculiar lustre, which it derives wholly from itself, and from that noble elevation inseparable from it,” is common to virtues related to magnanimity (EPM .). Given these natural aspects of courage’s appeal, we would expect it to be useful and approved of in diverse cultures, both ancient and modern. Among the things that it is useful for, however, is protection of the state, at least when combined with patriotism. Wise politicians, then, always have a motive for promoting courage within their state, but they also have a motive to control its exercise. They want courage that promotes loyal citizenry and soldiering, not crime and rebellion. Is there any reason to believe that efforts to promote courage might be successful? “Of National Characters” suggests that Hume would have given a positive answer. He there contests the notion, most famously defended by Montesquieu, that “physical” causes, such as air and climate, determine differences in national characters. Instead, the differences largely result from “moral causes,” defined as “all circumstances, which are fitted to work on the mind as motives or reasons, and which render a peculiar set of manners habitual to us.” The “nature of the government” is Hume’s first example of a moral cause, coming before “the revolutions of public affairs, the plenty or penury in which the people live,” and “the situation of the nation with regard to its neighbours” (..). Hume repeatedly claims in this essay that government has an enormous, often overwhelming, influence on the character of the governed. A long-established, “extensive” government, he says, “spreads a national character over the whole empire.” Contiguous nations with different governments have different characters. National character “commonly follows 

It is surprisingly difficult, however, to find nonambiguous cases in which Hume uses “bravery” or “courage” to refer to nonmartial contexts. The clearest evidence for his more extensive use of the terms comes from his correspondence. But there is this remark from the dominant character of “A Dialogue”: “‘How usual is it,’ says T, ‘to find C, C, and other Barbarians, who bear, with inflexible constancy, all the fatigues and dangers of the field; But are immediately dispirited under the pain and hazard of a languishing distemper: While, on the other hand, the G patiently endure the slow approaches of death, when armed with sickness and disease; but timorously fly his presence, when he attacks them violently with swords and falchions!’ So different is even the same virtue of courage among warlike or peaceful nations!” (EPM Dialogue.). For a discussion of Hume’s preference for “peaceable” courage, see Baier, Progress of Sentiments, –.

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the authority of government to a precise boundary” (..). The first factor explaining a change in national character over time is “great alterations” in the government (..). And he appeals to England’s mixed form of government to explain the absence of an English national character; in nations whose government is entirely republican, monarchical, aristocratic, or mercantile, the “uniform way of life will fix [the people’s] character” (..). Hume’s general response to the hypothesis that national characters arise from physical causes depends on his principle of sympathy. Our propensity to catch one another’s sentiments promotes the communication of “vices as well as virtues,” and “where a number of men are united into one political body, the occasions of their intercourse must be so frequent, for defence, commerce, and government, that, together with the same speech or language, they must acquire a resemblance in their manners” (..–). Sympathy alone, however, is an insufficient explanation. Diffusion of traits ought, absent other causes, produce roughly the same mix of characters across different nations. While allowing for the possibility of random overrepresentation of particular traits among a people, Hume supplements this jejune explanation by appealing to the rulers’ influence. Those “in credit and authority” have considerable effects: “If on the first establishment of a republic, a Brutus should be placed in authority, and be transported with such an enthusiasm for liberty and public good, as to overlook all the ties of nature, as well as private interest, such an illustrious example will naturally have an effect on the whole society, and kindle the same passion in every bosom” (..). Sympathy’s force varies. We are more apt to catch the sentiments of those more closely related to us, those whom we admire, and those whose power vivifies our impressions of them. The last, in particular, applies to political rulers. But the influence of the sovereign’s character is neither absolute nor equally powerful for all traits. Some traits propagate because of their social utility. Industry, knowledge, and civility, he says, “may be of constant and universal use, and for several ages, may become habitual to the whole people” (..). Courage proves more variable. Hume says that “of all national qualities, [it] is the most precarious; because it is exerted only at intervals, and by a few in every nation.” (Here he must mean courage as a martial virtue.) Its preservation requires “discipline,  

Hume explicitly uses the language of sympathy at , and what he says about the “contagion of manners” in the essay is consistent with his portrayal of sympathy in the Treatise. See also ... See T ...–, ...–, ..., and ....

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

example, and opinion.” “Opinion” means the belief, regardless of warrant, that the people are courageous: “The tenth legion of Caesar, and the regiment of Picardy in France were formed promiscuously from among the citizens; but having once entertained a notion, that they were the best troops in the service, this very opinion really made them such” (..). Martial courage is useful intermittently but may be needed suddenly. Moreover, a reputation for it might prevent its being necessary, since other nations hesitate to engage in hostilities with a nation that possesses such a reputation. Wise sovereigns therefore want patriotic courage to endure longer than it is likely to in peacetime. What can such leaders do? If the sovereign is a single individual or a small group, exhibition of valor in the rulers themselves might inspire imitation. But Hume’s emphasis on opinion suggests that examples without rhetoric do little. A public, linguistic emphasis on martial honor’s value will be more effective. This suggestion is implicit in the Enquiry, where Hume notes that in “uncultivated nations,” courage is “celebrated by poets” and “recommended by parents and instructors” (EPM .). He sees the modern devaluation of martial courage as progress, but ancient methods of encouraging it may still prove valuable on occasion. Sovereigns who wish to encourage courage’s development do well to praise their people for already possessing it and to commission the necessary supporting hymns. Again, there is no reason to interpret this encouragement as promoting a sham virtue. As I discuss in Chapter , Hume sees no necessary tension between vanity and the cultivation of virtue. The tenth legion of Caesar and the regiment of Picardy became truly excellent soldiers, and virtues are not fake if people develop them in the service of pride. Nor should we overstate the difference between ancient and modern courage so that the latter appears an entirely distinct trait with distinct motivations. Mikko Tolonen errs in this direction while emphasizing the continuity between Hume and Mandeville on the relation between honor and modern courage. Tolonen reports Mandeville’s view that modern soldiers develop “artificial courage” because of the system of modern honor and its rewards of pride and glory. The ancients and other barbarous people possessed “natural courage,” whose source was anger and hatred. But Mandeville claims that “in the eighteenth century, natural courage was substituted altogether with artificial policy.” Tolonen holds that Hume shares these 

“Gothic Origin of Modern Civility,” . Tolonen’s analysis depends heavily on Hume’s early unpublished essay, “An Historical Essay on Chivalry and Modern Honour.” In disagreeing with Tolonen’s ascribing these Mandevillian categories to the mature Hume, I do not mean to deny the

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views, providing evidence of Hume’s disagreement with Shaftesbury’s admiration for ancient courage. But Hume uses the term “natural courage” only once, in a History reference to Robert Bruce’s traits (H :). Hume makes no systematic distinction between natural and artificial courage, though he clearly believes that courage can take more or less civilized forms. Modern improvement, in this case, consists in a gradual devaluing of martial courage relative to the other virtues, especially humanity. Courage nonetheless remains a real and significant virtue. The sovereign’s influence on courage cuts both ways: bad rulers can make their people cowardly, perhaps more easily than good rulers can make them courageous. Contra Machiavelli, Hume argues that a “tyrannical government” with no source of authority besides the sovereign – i.e., no independent nobility – does not produce a populace that is difficult to conquer. Such a government, he says, “enervates the courage of men, and renders them indifferent towards the fortunes of their sovereign” (..). Moreover, the tyrant’s policies inculcate blind submissiveness, which allows temporary delegates and underlings to abuse their authority to “produce the most dangerous and fatal revolutions” (..). Ultimately, there is no greater bulwark against threats from within and without than a strong, brave populace who believe their good to be yoked to that of the state as a whole. Tyrannical rule tends not to foster these civic virtues. In “Of Refinement in the Arts,” Hume again argues that governmental policy can destroy as well as cultivate martial spirit. He rejects the notion that refinement weakens the people’s spirit, arguing that refinement’s natural accompaniments – industry and discipline – make courage more useful and enduring. When there are exceptions to this rule, government

 



probable influence of Mandeville on this essay or the importance of Mandeville for Hume, which Tolonen has ably demonstrated in his Mandeville and Hume. See also John P. Wright, “Hume on the Origin of ‘Modern Honour.’” For a nuanced and helpful treatment of this point, see Jacqueline Taylor, “Hume on the Importance of Humanity.” Machiavelli and Hume agree on the value of a loyal populace. Machiavelli argues in chapters  and – of The Prince that it is important for the prince to be both loved as well as feared: “the best fortress a ruler can have is not to be hated by the people” (The Prince, ). Tolonen ascribes the endurance of martial spirit entirely to the principle of honour (“Gothic Origin of Modern Civility,” ). Hume does say that a sense of honor “acquires fresh vigour by that elevation of genius which arises from knowledge and a good education,” making up for anger having lost “somewhat of its asperity” (..). Hume’s appeal to industry as the preserver of spirit, which Tolonen does not mention here, comes before this reference to honor. The desire to make a good show in mixed company may be temporally prior to other developments in modern civility, but it is not the only motive for the virtues that it helps engender.

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

is the likely cause. “It is observable, that, as the old Romans, by applying themselves solely to war, were almost the only uncivilized people that ever possessed military discipline; so the modern Italians are the only civilized people, among Europeans, that ever wanted courage and a martial spirit” (..–). What explains the latter failing? “The sword was dropped at once by all the Italian sovereigns; while the Venetian aristocracy was jealous of its subjects, the Florentine democracy applied itself entirely to commerce; Rome was governed by priests, and Naples by women” (..). The Italian city-states were then at the mercy of lazy and indifferent mercenaries. Good public policy produces brave, disciplined soldiers and a population that admires them. Bad public policy produces an ineffective military that endangers the stability that Hume includes among the first purposes of government. Good policy, however, requires restraint: in their enthusiasm for providing examples of bravery, leaders may neglect the equally important need not to stifle the people’s spirit with tyrannical rule. Or rulers may find themselves in the difficult position of having inherited a constitution whose structure promotes tyranny and thus its negative effects. In such a situation, it is not clear what wise policy prescribes, given the dangers of constitutional innovation. Nonetheless, courage is a virtue – not wholly artificial – that Hume believes government action can encourage through deliberate policy. Let us now consider some virtues for which the potential effects of government are not as straightforward: intellectual powers, or what Hume sometimes calls “genius.” “Genius” is ambiguous in eighteenth-century usage. Its wide range of meanings included brilliance or unusual talent, distinctive characteristics of nations, people, or ages, and “natural ability or capacity.” I am using it to refer to virtues of the mind, broadly conceived. Some might scruple to call these traits virtues at all. But Hume dismisses attempts to distinguish between moral virtues and natural abilities as verbal disputes, without roots in the moral discourse that is natural, effective, and indispensable to common life. Wisdom, ingenuity, understanding, wit, and discretion benefit their possessors, sometimes benefit others, and often prove immediately agreeable. Hume lists them as part of personal merit at 

  

Hume’s denial of the corrupting forces of commerce is one of his main disagreements with the civic tradition. McArthur’s discussion of Hume’s criticism of “civic moralism” illuminates the complexity of Hume’s evaluation of the ancients (Hume’s Political Theory, chapter ). See, e.g., ..– and ... Oxford English Dictionary, rd ed., s.v. “genius,” June , http://oed.com. See T .. and EPM App .

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EWU .. They contribute to good reputation or “character” in the eighteenth-century sense. Such traits, then, are Humean virtues. Hume most directly addresses the relationship between government and the progress of genius in “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences.” His initial comments suggest little hope for governmental influence. After reflecting on the difficulty of distinguishing chance (“secret and unknown causes”) from causes that are “determinate and known,” he argues that we should posit causes only for events in human affairs resulting from the behavior of large numbers of people. We are likely to err in reasoning from peculiar effects on a small sample of individuals, particularly since causes that work on the few tend to be “delicate and refined,” as opposed to the “grosser and more stubborn nature” of those “fitted to operate on a multitude” (..). But this same principle means that governments attempting to promote learning will likely fail. Encouraging financial enterprise works on common motives (like avarice), but “curiosity, or the love of knowledge, has a very limited influence, and requires youth, leisure, education, genius, and example, to make it govern any person” (..). States can therefore better promote commerce than learning. Hume does make some general observations about the conditions that promote advancement of the arts and sciences. Translating these observations into advice for rulers, however, produces largely negative recommendations of the form: do not oppress your people. Genius requires the nurturing soil of free government and the rule of law for its initial development. Arbitrary power removes opportunities for and incentives to intellectual advancement. Concentrating power in inferior magistrates left to their own judgment but aware of the limits and uncertainty of their own positions exacerbates the effect. “A people,” he says, “governed after such a manner, are slaves in the full and proper sense of the word; and it is impossible they can ever aspire to any refinements of taste or reason” (..). Once republicanism has appeared, however, Hume does not think that it need attain perfection to allow the birth and even flourishing of learning. Hume’s suggestion that the love of knowledge requires example and education may lead us to hope that if a brave leader can inspire a martial populace, an erudite leader might inspire a learned one. “A noble emulation,” after all, “is the source of every excellence.” Individual striving feeds on stimulating examples, confirmation that greatness is achievable, and inspiration from advanced minds. The humanists’ admiration of the ancients shows inspiration’s power: “The models left us by the ancients,”

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

he says, “gave birth to all the arts about  years ago, and have mightily advanced their progress in every country of Europe.” But widespread intellectual achievement enervates that power. With too many examples of greatness, nascent geniuses get discouraged. They sense that they will not attain their predecessors’ heights, and are unlikely to receive encouragement from the praise of a public fed on a steady diet of masterpieces. The more promising the genius, the greater the effect: “no one is so liable to an excess of admiration and modesty, as a truly great genius” (..). No government should expect continual success in promoting genius. Still, it remains true that genius flourishes best under the rule of law. Hume does not infer that intellectual refinements require democracy; civilized monarchy might be the most fertile ground for certain arts and sciences. But severe oppression, tyranny, and slavery always depress the progress of learning. In “Of National Characters,” he says, “where any government becomes very oppressive to all its subjects, it must have a proportional effect on their temper and genius, and must banish all the liberal arts from among them” (..). A government can avoid discouraging genius by pursuing republican policies and abiding by checks to its own authority and power. Good government cannot guarantee progress in learning, but bad government can guarantee its demise. Hume also holds that government’s effect on genius indirectly affects a trait with undisputed moral status: humanity. In the second Enquiry, he includes humanity among those virtues that superlatively entitle one to “the general good-will and approbation of mankind” (EPM .). In the Essays, he repeatedly pairs humanity with moderation and gentleness, and contrasts it with brutality, cruelty, and barbarity. He also insists on its close relation to learning and progress in the liberal arts. Hume sounds this note early in the Essays, in the opening discussion of “Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion,” where he quotes with approval Ovid’s claim that a “faithful study of the liberal arts humanizes character and permits it not to be cruel” (..). It attains full volume in “Of Refinement in the Arts,” where he argues that “industry, knowledge, and humanity, are linked together by an indissoluble chain, and are found, from experience as well as reason, to be peculiar to the more polished, and, what are commonly denominated, the more luxurious ages” (..).  

See also ... For a more fabulous statement of this view, see the withdrawn essay, “Of Impudence and Modesty.” Hume also claims that development in the arts itself preserves liberty. See, e.g., ...

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The origin of this improvement is not noble: it is the desire to display one’s knowledge, wit, and taste. But, like Nietzsche, Hume believes that base characteristics can generate noble traits. Self-display requires conversation, and conversation in close quarters naturally takes place in mixed company. “Curiosity allures the wise; vanity the foolish; and pleasure both. Particular clubs and societies are every where formed: Both sexes meet in an easy and sociable manner; and the tempers of men, as well as their behaviour, refine apace” (..). In “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences” Hume likewise argues that conversation with women promotes civilization and that the ancients’ sexual segregation might explain their failures of civility. “What better school for manners,” Hume asks, “than the company of virtuous women?” (..). He argues in “Of Essay-Writing” that learning will be at its best when it makes itself conversible, and women are the sovereigns of the conversible world. As increased learning brings the sexes together, both humanity and genius benefit from the collaboration. So, for multiple reasons, Hume believes that the cultivation of genius encourages that of humanity. If government can support the former, it thereby supports the latter. But sexual segregation is not Hume’s only hypothesis for the cause of ancient barbarity. In “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations,” he suggests that the most plausible explanation for the “barbarous manners of ancient times” is the widespread practice of domestic slavery (..). Slavery, he argues, both stems from and produces inhumanity. I examine these arguments in detail in Chapter . But slavery provides a clear example of an institutionalized, state-supported practice that, Hume insists, does great damage to a most significant natural virtue. Furthermore, Hume believes that the inhumanity generated by slavery infuses its ill effects widely. Improvement in humanity, he claims, “is the chief characteristic which distinguishes a civilized age from times of barbarity and ignorance” (..). Finally, the dangers of public debt include harming citizens’ virtue. The problem arises from the separation of wealth from work and land. As taxes rise to maintain the debt, Hume predicts, only stockholders will possess significant excess income. These men, without ties to the state, can live anywhere, “will naturally bury themselves in the capital or in great cities, and . . . will sink into the lethargy of a stupid and pampered luxury, without spirit, ambition, or enjoyment” (..–). As we will see, he has no objection to luxury earned through industry. But separating the two 

See EWU ..

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

produces slothful, irresponsible people. The ill effects extend beyond the stockholders; this new wealthy class blights the independent nobility’s power, promoting tyranny, as mentioned above. Again, tyranny crushes the spirit that drives industry, enervates the activity of genius, and provides an inhumane model of power relations. It appears that Hume believes that rulers can do little to improve the populace’s virtue but may do much to destroy it. This appearance, however, requires two correctives. First, the government’s role in inculcating artificial virtues is significant. The goods of a stable system of justice and sovereignty are primary: without them, life (and therefore additional goods) cannot subsist. Second, awareness of the relation between policy and character is no small achievement, even if that awareness mainly serves as a warning against ambitious citizen-improvement programs and tyranny. There is a political dispute here between the ancients and the moderns. But it is not the straightforward disagreement between those who think that the state can form virtue and those who think that the state can only check the rapacious pursuit of narrow self-interest. We will not fully comprehend Hume’s assessment of this disagreement by placing him within or without the civic tradition, which he both draws on and criticizes. Overall, he is sceptical about the power of governments to design effective policies or education systems that improve character. But he takes for granted that the state’s constitution will influence the people’s character, and he suggests ways that rulers can avoid doing harm and, more cautiously, do a little good. If modern governments are less ambitious about inculcating morality, this lack of ambition may itself be an advantage in producing courageous, learned, and humane citizens. Appreciation of this delicate advantage, on the other hand, should arrest overweening confidence that such progress will endure.

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Domineering

Moving beyond the political aspects of the Essays, which have received the most treatment in recent scholarship, means moving toward questions about progress that increasingly will relate to individual progress as well as group or social progress. For Hume, this distinction is somewhat misleading. Because people are inherently social, there can be no fixed separation between improving self and society. But there can be space between those two modes of improvement, as we will see. In the following chapters, the issue of whether or not the fundamentals of human nature have changed over time becomes more pressing. Determining Hume’s position on this issue proves difficult. It has generated much debate and is a prime example of how Hume has been misunderstood by philosophers because of their focus on the Treatise and Enquiries. I therefore devote the first section of this chapter to discussing what the Essays can contribute to our understanding of Hume’s position about change in human nature. I then move to the main focus of the chapter: domineering. Among the circumstances of life that are never congenial to human nature is living under tyranny. We have seen Hume’s claim that political tyranny can oppress a people’s vigor, stifling their genius and industry. But he recognizes that tyranny and oppression come in many forms, all of which decrease happiness and waste potential. Life in general will be worse in proportion to the degree that some people domineer over others in private as well as public life. Although Hume recognizes that all people can enjoy exercising power over others, he also believes that our dispositions to seek such power can change with the circumstances in which we live. I consider two ways in which Hume believes that modern life has successfully curbed our domineering tendencies. These advancements are the curtailing of domestic slavery and a reduction in war’s violence and cruelty. Then I turn to one segment of the population whose domineering tendencies, he claims, have not been checked by modern progress: priests. 

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. The Qualified Uniformity of Human Nature “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations” is by far the longest essay, about eighty-seven pages in the Liberty Fund edition. Its question, Hume writes, is “the most curious and important of all questions of erudition” (..a). What gives the relative population densities of ancient and modern polities such importance? Assuming that people reproduce whenever they can, it follows that good living conditions ensure high population density. Climate and natural resources have some effect, but “if every thing else be equal, it seems natural to expect, that wherever there are most happiness and virtue, and the wisest institutions, there will also be most people.” At stake, then, is our judgment of other ages’ “whole police, their manners, and the constitution of their government” (..). If ancient nations were more populous, they must have been superior in the most essential aspects of life. Writing almost half a century before Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population, Hume need not defend the assumption that high population signifies general well-being. He does explain its logic: “all men, both male and female,” share “a desire and power of generation, more active than is ever universally exerted” (..). Failure to reproduce “must proceed from some difficulties in their situation, which it belongs to a wise legislature carefully to observe and remove.” The desire for “generation” is one of Hume’s euphemisms for sexual desire. Healthy people will be sexually active. This activity results in children, and he believes that most people who are able will support rearing those children. In worse circumstances, they may take active measures to avoid having children or to get rid of those they have. (Hume is aware of the history of destroying unwanted children: later in the same essay, he discusses the practice of exposing infants [..].) He allows that the correlation between wellbeing and populousness might have exceptions, since the powerful may have reasons to encourage or even force population increase regardless of the wishes of unhappy subjects.  

  

The next longest, “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences,” is about twenty-six pages. The remark is in a note, removed after the  edition. The note was outdated, since it referred to Robert Wallace’s unpublished manuscript of A Dissertation on the Numbers of Mankind in Ancient and Modern Times. Wallace published the Dissertation in . See editor’s note at ..n. See T ... He calls this practice “almost as innocent” as the modern method of sending unwanted daughters to convents. See ..n. Hume’s point here concerns slaves and their masters, and his suggestion is hypothetical, since he does not believe that masters usually encouraged reproduction among their slaves.

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The view that ancient nations were more populous was common, defended by Montesquieu and others. In challenging it, Hume faces significant obstacles. Evidence was scanty: the historical record for ancient polities afforded only “scattered lights,” and even modern Europe did not keep reliable census records (..). There may have been evidence for population decline in parts of Europe. David B. Young claims that “for a Frenchman looking back over the reign of Louis XIV, dwindling population and decreasing prosperity were facts rather than theories.” But advanced census methods were not developed until the mid-nineteenth century. Knowing that his methods cannot be ideal, Hume acknowledges that he must “intermingle the enquiry concerning causes with that concerning facts; which ought never to be admitted, where the facts can be ascertained with any tolerable assurance” (..). He later distinguishes between domestic and political circumstances, saying that he will discuss both “in order to judge of the facts by their moral causes” (..). Recall that in “Of National Characters,” his examples of moral causes include “the nature of the government, the revolutions of public affairs, the plenty or penury in which the people live, the situation of the nation with regard to its neighbours, and such like circumstances” (..). These causes are moral in the sense in which the Treatise of Human Nature is a study of “moral subjects”: they concern the distinctively human and work on us through features of our minds. Hume does “intermingle” various modes of inquiry. He asks whether ancient morals would be more likely to promote human flourishing. He reflects on ancient war practices and their probable psychological effects. He argues that economic systems that discourage property ownership lead to political instability, and that weak manufacturing and industry encourages oppressive tyrants, or at least deprives people of means to escape oppression. Finally, he examines the manuscript record, establishing nuanced hermeneutic principles that anticipate later schools of interpretation.



 

Hume mentions Isaak Vossius, whose arguments for the high population of ancient Rome in Variarum Observationum Liber Hume dismisses as well-known “extravagancies” (..) and his fellow Scot, Robert Wallace, though not by name. (See variant a, –.) M. A. Box and Michael Silverthorne emphasize the influence of Wallace on Hume’s essay and argue that Hume’s argument is therefore “best examined in relation to Wallace rather than to Monstesquieu, Vossius, or other famous luminaries” (“Most Curious & Important of All Questions,” ). “Libertarian Demography,” . Young cites harsh winters, the burdens of war, and the coerced exodus of Calvinists as factors contributing to this decline. For a summary and analysis of Hume’s use of sources in this essay, see Box and Silverthorne’s “Most Curious & Important of All Questions.” For a meticulous analysis of his use of classical sources, see Moritz Baumstark’s “Hume’s Reading of the Classics.”

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“Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations” thus includes an element of conjectural history. Roger Emerson uses “conjectural history” to “denote any rational or naturalistic account of the origins and development of institutions, beliefs or practices not based on documents or copies of documents or other artifacts contemporary (or thought to be contemporary) with the subjects studied.” When Hume posits, for instance, that primitive battle practices would have produced ferocity that disrupted normal social life, he is conjecturing from theses about human behavior, not historical documents or artifacts. He also speculates about how various circumstances would have affected ancient characters and rates of reproduction. These techniques are consistent with Dugald Stewart’s original description of conjectural history in : absent certain facts, it is necessary to consider “in what manner [men] are likely to have proceeded, from the principles of their nature, and the circumstances of their external situation.” Yet Hume’s investigations go beyond conjectural history. He refers to ancient texts for clues to the population density of ancient cities, as well as references to historical battles and other events. Furthermore, scholars often take the aim of conjectural history to be explaining some general institution or widespread practice, like justice or monotheistic religion, but this is not Hume’s aim here. Instead, he wants to answer a factual question about whether or not population density was higher in the ancient world, and to draw lessons about the superiority of some features of modern culture. Understanding the logic of this essay will therefore require going beyond standard analyses of conjectural history. “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations” presents one problem common to any form of conjectural history: such histories presume continuities in human nature that can seem ahistorical or implausible. Hume queries whether the situations of ancient peoples would interact with human nature in ways that would increase or decrease population. But how can we know that these situations would affect ancient humans in the same way that they affect modern humans? How, in other words, can we assume that human nature is static over time? If it is not, then how can we infer anything about human behavior from information about ancient situations?   

“Conjectural History and Scottish Philosophers,” . “Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith,” xxxv. See, e.g., Juan Samuel Santos Castro’s “Hume and Conjectural History,” . Castro’s article is a helpful attempt to explain and justify Hume’s use of conjectural history in light of his claims about historical explanation.

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Hume has often been accused of assuming that human nature is static. R. G. Collingwood, in The Idea of History, writes that Hume “always assumes that our reasoning faculty, our tastes and sentiments, and so forth, are something perfectly uniform and invariable, underlying and conditioning all historical changes.” Collingwood acknowledges that Hume believes that a new “science of human nature” could lead to progress, “but not by altering human nature itself – that, he never suggests to be possible – only by improving our understanding of it.” Such criticism is at best exaggerated. The beginning of “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations” implies that alteration in human nature is possible. Hume concedes that humans might share in the variations of the world, which is not “eternal or incorruptible,” and therefore may be in decline (..). He does not limit this possible variation to bodily attributes; at the world’s prime, people might “possess greater vigour both of mind and body” (..–). Given Hume’s suspicion of belief in an underlying substance that constitutes our nature, change in human attributes is sufficient to constitute a change in a Humean “human nature.” His resistance to concluding that there have been such changes comes from a sceptic’s cautiousness about the available evidence, not an a priori commitment to a static human nature. If there are “any such gradual revolutions, they are too slow to be discernible in that short period which is comprehended by history and tradition. Stature and force of body, length of life, even courage and extent of genius, seem hitherto to have been naturally, in all ages, pretty much the same” (..). Hume is attacking both Athens and Jerusalem. Against Aristotle’s belief in the eternality of the world and its species, Hume asserts that earth and humanity might have finite existences. Against a literal interpretation of Hebrew scriptures, he denies that earlier humans had significantly longer natural lifespans. The only mental attributes that Hume acknowledges here to be static are “courage and extent of genius.” But is even this limited claim plausible,



 

Idea of History, . Cf. Alasdair MacIntyre’s claim that Hume and Hutcheson share a view of human nature as “uniform and invariant” (Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, ). David Fate Norton writes that Hume believes human nature to be “not merely stable, but also unalterable” (“Hume, Human Nature, and the Foundations of Morality,” in Norton, Cambridge Companion to Hume, ). Berry claims that for Hume, “Human nature is not historically defined” (Hume, Hegel and Human Nature, ). Idea of History, . For a survey of Collingwood’s engagement with Hume, see S. K. Wertz, “Collingwood’s Understanding of Hume.” See also EWU ..

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especially given the effects of government on these traits that I discussed in the previous chapter? It is if we read Hume’s “naturally, in all ages” as referring to natural ability or capacity rather than cultivated and mature traits. Consistency of the extent of genius or courage in this sense does not eliminate the possibility of significant differences in societal or individual cultivation of these attributes. Charity requires this reading, as Hume repeatedly acknowledges changes and developments in both. Courage is certainly an ancient virtue, particularly when understood primarily as a martial excellence. Homeric epics celebrate it, Plato’s Republic associates it with the military class, and Aristotle argues that its quintessential setting is the battlefield. Again, Hume recognizes courage’s ancient pedigree but argues that its status alters significantly over time. In “all uncultivated nations, who have not . . . had full experience of the advantages attending beneficence, justice, and the social virtues, courage is the predominant excellence; what is most celebrated by poets, recommended by parents and instructors, and admired by the public in general” (EPM .). The ranking of virtues – not only their recognition – partially constitutes a form of life. Hume’s reference to what is recommended by parents and instructors is helpful: consider the differences in child-rearing between a society in which bravery is the most admired virtue and one in which compassion takes that place. We would expect both the extent and form of courage to be quite different in the two societies. Later in “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations,” Hume quotes with approval Strabo’s claim that in pre-Roman Gaul, “the genius of the inhabitants” led them “less to arts than arms, till their slavery under Rome produced peace among themselves” (..). He thus links variation in genius to the martial skill often associated with courage. Hume therefore recognizes significant variation in the cultivation of both genius and courage. He holds no strong view of the immutability of human nature in these two respects. Though one society may admire and inculcate courage more than others or in a fiercer vein, it does not follow that their people are born with a greater capacity for courage. The context of Hume’s denial of significant change in these respects is an objection to the view that human nature and therefore fecundity must decline along with the earth in general, as if we were the graying hair on the head of the globe.

 

See Nicomachean Ethics, .. See also H :, where Hume claims that “valour and love of liberty” are “the only virtues which can have place among an uncivilized people, where justice and humanity are commonly neglected.”

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If this view were correct, then human decline should be present from birth, in the form of diminished natural capacities. Hume’s reference to unchanging courage and genius therefore provides no direct evidence for his strong belief in uniform and invariant human nature. At most, we can infer that he rejects the notion that modern humans are born with significantly different capacities than ancient humans. But am I saving Hume from a substantive mistake – supposing human nature to be more constant than it is – only to convict him of a serious logical error? Again, it seems that asking how moral causes might change population requires believing in invariant human nature; otherwise, we cannot know how such causes would affect human behavior. Furthermore, there is another way that the logic of “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations” presupposes significant continuity in human nature. Were the ancients so far removed from the moderns that we could make no inferences about how particular situations would influence their behavior or well-being, then the populousness of ancient states could imply nothing about the superiority for modern people of ancient “police, manners, or constitution of government.” Perhaps their systems worked well for people like them, but if modern people are so different, ancient systems might not work well at all for moderns. Hume recognizes cases in which differences between the ancients and the moderns are substantial enough to require different policies. We saw one example in his warning against ancient austerity practices for modern polities. But the seriousness with which he treats the thesis of ancient populousness shows that he accepts continuity enough for some comparison. Charity again requires that our interpretation accommodate this acceptance of continuity as well as change. This objection requires two levels of response. First, Hume does believe that some aspects of human nature are static across time and cultures. Compare the following two passages, the first from the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, and the second from “Of Commerce”: It is universally acknowledged, that there is a great uniformity among the actions of men, in all nations and ages, and that human nature remains still the same, in its principles and operations. The same motives always produce the same actions . . . Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular. (EHU .)



See Hume’s conclusion that “general physical causes ought entirely to be excluded from the question” (..).

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays Man is a very variable being, and susceptible of many different opinions, principles, and rules of conduct. What may be true, while he adheres to one way of thinking, will be found false, when he has embraced an opposite set of manners and opinions. (..–)

Does Hume sloppily contradict himself, failing to remember his philosophical views when he turns toward politics? Or it is a noble contradiction, revealing a change of mind and no need for the hobgoblin of foolish consistency? We can do more justice to the complexity of Hume’s thought than either of these possibilities would. Something like Forbes’s thesis that Hume’s science of human nature proceeds in two phases is more plausible. The first phase, “Hume’s general psychology,” identifies the causal principles of the human mind, such as sympathy and association. This deep structure is universal to all humans. The second phase applies these general principles to humans as they inhabit varying societies, where circumstances mold the “very variable being.” In this phase, Hume is well aware that people in different times and settings take pride in different things, become offended in different ways, and even honor different virtues. The second level of response to the objection requires recognizing that the argument of “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations” does not rest on a simple dyadic relation between human nature and the relevant situations. It instead depends on a complex network of relations between what we know of past human behavior, the principles of human nature, and what we know of past situations. Some of Hume’s inferences depend on assumptions about human nature, and some do not. If those that do not cohere with those that do, as Hume often thinks is the case, this result





See Hume’s Philosophical Politics, –. Alix Cohen distinguishes between “human nature considered as a ‘body of principles’ that is common to all human beings, and human nature as malleable and influenced by society and political structures” – the “social nature” of human beings (“Notion of Moral Progress in Hume’s Philosophy,” ). Forbes also challenges the usual interpretation of the passage at EHU .. While admitting that its wording is not felicitous, he argues that in its context (the defense of necessity in human action), Hume only means that we all acknowledge that people act on predictable principles. Concrete predictions for behavior must take into account local customs and manners, but the “local uniformities prove the general principle of uniformity” (Hume’s Philosophical Politics, ). Other scholars who argue against a strong “uniformitarian” interpretation of Hume include Evnine, “Hume, Conjectural History, and the Uniformity of Human Nature,” and Richard Dees, “Hume and the Contexts of Politics.” For a subtle treatment of this issue as it relates to the passions, see Jacqueline Taylor, Reflecting Subjects, –. Berry defends his position in “Hume’s Universalism,” which provides further references to recent literature in the debate.

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provides evidence for the stability of human nature in the relevant respects. To make this clearer, let us see how this web of factors structures Hume’s comparisons of ancients and moderns in their most domineering characters: soldier and slave-master.

. War War is among the “political customs and institutions” that might influence population rates (..). Hume observes that “the ancient republics were almost in perpetual war” – a claim based on his reading of histories and other sources. But he does not leave the remark as a bare statement of fact. He adds that this bellicose state was “a natural effect of their martial spirit, their love of liberty, their mutual emulation, and that hatred which generally prevails among nations that live in close neighbourhood” (..). Martial spirit and love of liberty are characteristics that Hume believes ancient peoples to have possessed in greater abundance than moderns. But mutual emulation and the hatred of close neighbors are in no way limited to ancient polities. He explicitly generalizes the latter, and we saw him appeal to it to explain Britain’s imprudent extremes toward France, under the guise of maintaining a balance of power. And many of the essays show that he finds emulation to be a powerful, pervasive force for all humans. It is one of the constant principles of human nature. Frequent wars of any kind reduce population, but Hume thinks the manner of ancient warfare augmented its mortal cost. He argues that firearms actually made war less destructive, because the “long thin lines, required by fire-arms, and the quick decision of the fray, render our modern engagements but partial rencounters” (..). Ancient battles, in contrast, comprised a mass of single combats with great destruction on both sides, and often the loss of entire armies. Again, Hume supports these observations with historical battle reports. But he then appeals to general principles of human nature to infer further effects of such fighting:





He writes that the ancients “were extremely fond of liberty; but seem not to have understood it well” (..). (Hume’s example refers to the abuses of Athens’s thirty tyrants, but the referent of this remark does not seem to be limited to the Athenians.) In his discussion of ancient trade practices, he refers to the “extreme love of liberty, which animated those ages” (..). See, for example, his claim in “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences” that a “noble emulation is the source of every excellence” () or the discussion of the role of emulation in advancing the arts through our imitation of foreigners (..–).

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays The battles of antiquity, both by their duration, and their resemblance to single combats, were wrought up to a degree of fury quite unknown to later ages. Nothing could then engage the combatants to give quarter, but the hopes of profit, by making slaves of their prisoners . . . What a stout resistance must be made, where the vanquished expected so hard a fate! How inveterate the rage, where the maxims of war were, in every respect, so bloody and severe! (..–)

Thus, ancient battle practices would produce high levels of both courage and rage. This conjecture is based on the principles of human nature. But it derives support from and helps explain other historical facts, such as records of cities destroying themselves rather than falling victim to a superior invading army, thus avoiding a cruel fate in a way “sweetened perhaps by a little prospect of revenge upon the enemy.” Finally, he draws one more inference about the influence of these practices on population: “And the same determined spirit and cruelty must, in other instances less remarkable, have been destructive to human society, in those petty commonwealths, which lived in close neighborhood, and were engaged in perpetual wars and contentions” (..). Evnine has pointed out that conjectural history can be thought of as a triangulation. The triangle’s three points are “the progress of some human institution of activity,” the relevant external circumstances, and the principles of the human mind. Drawing conclusions about the first requires fixing the other two. But Hume is not only engaging in simple modus ponens reasoning of this form: If circumstances were X, then humans must have responded by Y. Circumstances were X. So, humans must have responded by Y. He does use such reasoning, which relies on his understanding of the principles of human nature to establish the plausibility of the first premise. The conclusion of these arguments can be about specific behaviors, but they can also be about variations in human nature, such as the suggestion that ancient warfare would have produced “determined spirit and cruelty.” Hume also relies, often implicitly, on inference to the best explanation of the following kind:



“Hume, Conjectural History, and the Uniformity of Human Nature,” –. Evnine makes this point in discussing conjectural history in general and Dugald Stewart’s presentation of it in particular. He recognizes that Hume’s own practice is more complex. See .

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Human variation X would explain a response, Y. Y has occurred. So, there is reason to believe in the existence of human variation X. That whole cities destroyed themselves rather than surrender to their enemies is the second premise in an argument of this form. It thus provides additional support for Hume’s postulate that ancient peoples had a heightened sense of vengeance. Once the plausibility of such variations has been established by either type of argument, they are then available for use in modified inferences of the first form: If circumstances were X, then these humans must have responded by Y. Circumstances were X. So, these humans must have responded by Y. This complexity enables Hume to move beyond triangular reasoning to something more flexible, with more moving parts. Which fixed points are necessary depends on the specific argument that he is making at the time. He must be committed to some fundamental principles in the human mind, but not to a completely static human nature. I do not claim that Hume’s real aim in this essay is to provide evidence for human variation. Often, he takes such variations for granted based in part on his reading of ancient texts. Nonetheless, the complex reasoning shows that Hume’s understanding of human variation is not simplistic. The web of relations that he describes between circumstances, human nature, and behavior aims to challenge the claim that ancient nations were more populous and therefore superior in their modes of life to modern ones. But in drawing out these relations in this nuanced way, Hume also provides more immediate – though not explicit – persuasion concerning the relative superiority of different ways of life. Evidence of pervasive martial spirit, determined cruelty, and political instability so extreme that it leads to mass suicide and murder speaks for itself. Hume need not point out that such things would be difficult to endure regardless of their effects on population. He usually refrains from doing so, thus making this aspect of his case more subtle and, for those who might be put on guard by more direct reasoning, more compelling. Hume’s discussion of war in “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations” suggests a greater prominence of aggressive, violent traits among the ancients than among the moderns. This suggestion coheres with many of his remarks about the value of martial courage in ancient societies and the

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increased importance of humanity in modern ones. But it provides no ground for complacency about modern progress. Readers of Hume’s History know that he adduces plenty of evidence for extreme cruelty in recent wars. The circumstances of ancient battles may have produced people who manifested their domineering tendencies in especially bloody ways. But since domineering tendencies can spring from more fundamental Humean principles of human nature, they therefore could be reactivated, or even surpassed, under different circumstances. Colonial slavery provides a haunting example for us. But Hume’s own treatment of slavery is another challenge to nostalgia about the ancient world.

. Slavery Hume believes domestic slavery to be the most important difference between ancient and modern domestic economy. His discussion of it includes the subtle, intricate forms of reasoning that he uses in his treatment of war. The case for slavery’s beneficial effects on population relies on the notion that slave owners, like good shepherds, would breed the enslaved persons under their control, thus increasing the general stock of human beings. Hume meets this reasoning on its own terms. Though the “comparison is shocking between the management of human creatures and that of cattle,” he notes wryly that it is in this case “extremely just” (..). But when approaching questions of humanity from an economic perspective, we should be better economists. Just as, in urban centers, it is cheaper to import livestock from outlying areas than to rear them with expensive city resources, it would be cheaper to import human resources from the provinces than to rear them within a city household. This speculation belongs to the category of inferences based on relations between circumstances and human nature. The desire to maximize wealth, all else being equal, is a constant. But Hume again draws on a wide variety of confirmatory sources to support the speculation. He notes that Aristotle’s Politics implies that slaves are foreigners. He refers to the listing of 

Hume ascribes much modern cruelty to religious disputes. His discussion of the  Irish rebellion shows fundamental principles of the mind working together with religious zeal. He writes, “Amidst all these enormities, the sacred name of Religion resounded on every side; not to stop the hands of these murderers, but to enforce their blows, and to steel their hearts against every movement of human or social sympathy” (H :). But he also remarks of the extreme cruelties involved: “Depraved nature, even perverted religion, encouraged by the utmost licence, reach not to such a pitch of ferocity; unless the pity, inherent in human breasts, be destroyed by that contagion of example, which transports men beyond all the usual motives of conduct and behaviour” (H :).

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Demosthenes’ inheritance and notes that only male slaves were mentioned, without reference to women, children, or family. And in a striking instance of linguistic analysis, he argues that the presence in Latin of a term for a slave who had been reared within a family (verna), with no correlative designating the opposite, suggests that such slaves were in the minority (..n). Disputing the notion of fertile slave households provides indirect criticism of the practice, if one begins by assuming a correlation between population and well-being. But Hume gives another kind of indirect evidence, akin to that in his discussion of war. He refers repeatedly to particular examples of inhumanity, usually without moral comment. He relies throughout on the metaphor between cattle and enslaved people, thus reminding readers that the practice treats fellow humans as livestock. He paints in vivid colors instances of violence against the enslaved, such as the story of the four hundred who were summarily executed in response to the assassination by one of them of their Roman master (..). And he shows enslaved people either living in forced celibacy or paying dearly for the privilege of sexual relations that the rest of the population would have enjoyed as rights. Such observations would not trouble a hardened slave owner, but they might check the self-deception of those who would like to believe slavery to be compatible with general humanity. Before all this, Hume treats slavery quite differently than he treats war, forcefully condemning its cruelty and directly deleterious effects. Abandoning slavery has produced more liberty under “the most arbitrary government of Europe” than under any ancient polity (..). While consistently admiring the ancient spirit of liberty, Hume emphasizes its irony. For the citizen, liberty is to be preserved and valorized, but the associated social structures oppress huge portions of the population: Some passionate admirers of the ancients, and zealous partisans of civil liberty, (for these sentiments, as they are, both of them, in the main, extremely just, are found to be almost inseparable) cannot forbear regretting 



The idea is that when two categories form proportional parts of a whole, language usually designates each part with its own term, as in “man” and “woman.” But if one category forms a disproportionate majority, only the minority category has a special term, as with “seaman,” “carpenter,” etc. We have no words for non-seamen or non-carpenters. Hume feels so strongly about slavery, however, that he denies that its promoting population would be evidence of a superior form of life: “We may here observe, that if domestic slavery really encreased populousness, it would be an exception to the general rule, that the happiness of any society and its populousness are necessary attendants. A master, from humour or interest, may make his slaves very unhappy, yet be careful, from interest, to increase their number. Their marriage is not a matter of choice with them, more than any other action of their life” (..n).

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays the loss of this institution; and whilst they brand all submission to the government of a single person with the harsh denomination of slavery, they would gladly reduce the greater part of mankind to real slavery and subjection. (..)

This judgment depends on more than the sheer number of people enslaved in ancient times. Petty tyrants, Hume claims, will likely be more oppressive than great ones. A monarch distant in space and consequence from her subjects cannot concern herself with each one’s everyday acts. So she is less likely to impose severe restrictions on such acts – or enforce them effectively if she attempts to. The distance also reduces the psychological burden on the subject, making “fainter that cruel comparison . . . between our own subjection, and the freedom, and even dominion of another” (..). But slavery creates especially inhumane petty tyrants, since they have complete control over other human beings and may have enjoyed this control since childhood. Here Hume blames slavery for the “barbarous manners of ancient times, . . . by which every man of rank was rendered a petty tyrant, and educated amidst the flattery, submission, and low debasement of his slaves” (..–). Hume details the cruelty exercised against enslaved people in the ancient world, including exposure and starvation of those made useless by age or infirmity, chaining during all varieties of work, extorting testimony through torture, and regular beatings as “due correction and discipline” (..). His ire culminates in a footnote at the end of this passage, in which he vents a desire to return barbarism for barbarism. After identifying the violence of “amphitheatrical entertainments” as another effect of slavery, he writes: “One’s humanity is apt to renew the barbarous wish of Caligula, that the people had but one neck: A man could almost be pleased, by a single blow, to put an end to such a race of monsters” (..n). Such virulent language is uncharacteristic of Hume in the Essays, and such directness is out of sync with this essay’s explicit intent and overall method. At the end of these passages, he mentions the incongruence: “But our present business is only to consider the influence of slavery on the populousness of a state” (..). Box and Silverthorne note that Hume’s use of the “correction” trope here emphasizes everything he has 

Hume echoes this claim throughout the Essays. See, e.g., ..–: “Arbitrary power, in all cases, is somewhat oppressive and debasing; but it is altogether ruinous and intolerable, when contracted into a small compass; and becomes still worse, when the person, who possesses it, knows that the time of his authority is limited and uncertain.”

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just been saying. Hume’s charge against slavery is of a different order than his treatment of ancient war. Why single out this institution? Did Hume fear a resurgence of domestic slavery as a genuine threat to the way of life he and his contemporaries enjoyed? The answer to this question determines whether we see Hume’s attack on slavery primarily as part of his criticism of the irrational elevation of the past or as a warning for the present. Hume does express some anxiety about slavery’s resurgence during his initial presentation of the issue, by remarking on the zeal of those “passionate admirers of the ancients” who regret slavery’s loss. He does not identify these admirers, but one plausible candidate is Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun – a fierce defender of liberty who advocates returning to the practice of ancient slavery (though he eschewed the term “slavery”). In the first of his Two Discourses Concerning the Affairs of Scotland (), he argues with force and eloquence for Scotland’s need to protect itself against the British sovereign’s encroaching power. Yet in the second discourse, he proposes a system of forced servitude as the only effective response to Scotland’s widespread hunger and famine. Fletcher explicitly models the proposal on ancient slave practices, saying that after finding no modern governments effectively dealing with poverty, he “began to consider what might be the conduct of the wise antients in that affair.” His admiration for the ancient system seems unbounded. He credits it with enabling magnificent works of infrastructure and art, all the more impressive given that these projects were completed among “so much virtue and simplicity of manners,” during a time in which women were not so “intolerably expensive.” The enslaved people themselves, moreover,  

 

“Most Curious & Important of All Questions,”  and n. Fletcher, Political Works, . The editor, John Robertson, suggests that Hume may have had Fletcher in mind in these passages (n), but I am indebted to Roger Emerson for suggesting this possibility to me. Fletcher’s Two Discourses were written in . Box and Silverthorne suggest Fénélon, Montesquieu, Adam Ferguson, and Smollett as others with “a dangerous attraction” to the ancients (“Most Curious & Important of All Questions,” ). Political Works, . Ibid., . Hume’s references to the ancient “simplicity of manners” include “Of Civil Liberty,” ; “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences,” ; “Of Money,” ; and “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations,”  and . His attitude toward this simplicity is ambivalent. In the “Rise and Progress” passage, he comments that “the ancient simplicity, which is naturally so amiable and affecting, often degenerates into rusticity and abuse, scurrility and obscenity.” “Of Simplicity and Refinement” is also helpful, although its discussion concerns these qualities specifically as they apply to composition, so that simplicity consists of natural writing without much rhetorical ornamentation. Although Hume argues for erring on the side of simplicity, his remarks about the portrayal of “sentiments, which are merely natural” show his distaste for unadorned “low life” (..–).

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were models of usefulness and faithfulness. In this idyllic time, “any master who had the least judgment or discretion, was served with emulation by all his slaves.” The contemporary lack of such virtues presents a problem for Fletcher, which he recognizes by insisting that his proposals “must be executed with great address, diligence, and severity.” Otherwise, the proud but wicked beneficiaries “will rather die with hunger in caves and dens, and murder their young children, than appear abroad to have them and themselves taken into such a kind of service.” In the History, Hume calls Fletcher “a man of signal probity and fine genius,” with strong “republican principles,” yet much subject to passions with occasionally violent effects (H :). His Political Works were probably in Hume’s library, and McArthur notes that Hume enjoyed the patronage of Fletcher’s influential nephew, Lord Milton, “who idolized his uncle.” Furthermore, there are parallels between Fletcher’s Discourses and Hume’s Essays. Fletcher’s opposition to using men for a standing army who might instead be employed in trade and manufacturing provides context for Hume’s discussion of the potential tension between public and private good in “Of Commerce.” And Fletcher’s first discourse contains a similar, though harsher, description of soldiers’ characters to that in “Of National Characters.” There were plenty of more recent slavery advocates as well. In , one year before “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations” was published, the jurist Andrew McDouall wrote in An Institute of the Laws of Scotland in Civil Rights: “Slavery was introduced by the law and customs of nations. It is indeed contrary to the state of nature, by which all men were equal and free; but is not repugnant to the law of nature, which does not command men to live in their native freedom, nor forbid the preserving persons, at the expense of their liberty, whom it was lawful to kill.” In light of such arguments, and especially in light of the growing institution of colonial slavery, it would be reasonable for Hume to have genuine concern about sympathy among his readership for returning to the ancient practice. Indeed, it may seem unreasonable for him not to. Box and Silverthorne, after quoting the passage about “passionate admirers of the antients,”

   

 Political Works, . Ibid., . See David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton, David Hume Library, .  David Hume’s Political Theory, n. Political Works, . Institute of the Laws of Scotland, –. It was common to argue that slavery was justified if the enslaved were prisoners of a just war and that enslaving such prisoners was a merciful way of treating them. See Watkins, “‘Slaves among Us,’” .

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write, “One senses that we are now in an argument less about population than conflicting visions for the future of Europe and its colonies.” One does have this sense, but I believe it is mistaken. Serious textual obstacles stand in the way. Though Hume acknowledges the inhumanity of American slavery, he doubts its viability: “The remains which are found of domestic slavery, in the  colonies, and among some  nations, would never surely create a desire of rendering it more universal” (..). American slavery proved to be much more than the “remains” of a dying institution, and its proponents were all too nimble at providing arguments for its continuation and expansion. But Hume’s tone in this section suggests no real concern that the practice of domestic slavery will encroach upon northwestern Europe’s established system of paid domestic servants. He seems assured that slavery has really been “abolished for some centuries throughout the greater part of ,” and he expresses nothing like the anxiety that he does over public debt. None of the Essays takes as its main topic the evils of slavery. Given the strength of Hume’s opposition to slavery, the omission is striking. He speaks of colonial slavery as outside the purview of his concerns in the Essays. An infamous footnote in “Of National Characters,” in which he asserts that he suspects “the negroes to be naturally inferior to the whites” and refuses to countenance evidence to the contrary, shows that he would have failed to appreciate the racial dimension of colonial slavery’s injustice (..n). Fletcher’s proposal was an old one by the time Hume writes this essay and had largely fallen on deaf ears. Robertson remarks that “Fletcher’s draconian solutions to the problems of poverty and vagrancy were not taken too seriously by contemporaries, and secured nothing like

 



“Most Curious & Important of All Questions,” . Hume provided a basis for some of these arguments himself, with his remarks in a footnote to “Of National Characters” (..; see later discussion) and, less shamefully, with the essay in question itself. See Thomas R. Dew’s use of Hume’s arguments in a post-Malthusian context to argue that proposed legislation would increase the cost of adult slaves, thus having what he assumes to be the undesirable result of increasing the birth rate among African-Americans (Debate in the Virginia Legislature, –). There has been lively debate about this footnote. Richard Popkin argues that Hume’s remarks provided a theoretical basis for some of the worst forms of racism and that there was plenty of counterevidence to Hume’s claims that he should have been aware of (“Hume’s Racism” and “Hume’s Racism Reconsidered”). See also Immerwahr, “Hume’s Revised Racism”; Emmanuel Eze, “Hume, Race, and Human Nature”; and Aaron Garrett, “Hume’s Revised Racism Revisited” and “Hume’s ‘Original Difference.’” For a mitigated defense of Hume, see Robert Palter, “Hume and Prejudice.” Regardless of how one judges the nature and degree of Hume’s racism, his attack on slavery cannot serve as a much of a defense. The ancient slavery that is the primary target of this attack was not a racially based system.

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the support he received for his proposals for constitutional change five years later . . . The tendency of subsequent discussion was against anything which smacked of a return to slavery.” Yet Britain and other European nations were vastly extending slavery in their own colonies. During the eighteenth century, the average number of Africans sent to the Americas for enslavement increased from , to , per year. One possible explanation for Hume’s nonchalance holds that the dominant view prior to the  invention of the cotton gin was that slavery was not economically viable over the long term and would die a natural death. There is reason, however, to question the alleged dominance of that view. Britain adopted a progressive stance against slavery in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The landmark Somerset case, decided in , undermined slave owners’ rights to legal domination over enslaved people in England and quickly extended its reach throughout the United Kingdom. And in , the British parliament became an international leader in the movement to abolish the African slave trade by passing the Slave Trade Abolition Act. Many historians, influenced by Eric Williams’s  Capitalism and Slavery, have argued for the primacy of economic motives for abolition. As David Richardson puts it, “Williams reduced the rise and outcome of antislavery in Britain to a political calculus of national economic self-interest,” thus “relegating those who fought against slavery, whether from inside or outside the system, to the role of bystanders in a drama primarily dictated by impersonal economic forces.” Recent work, however, has challenged Williams’s view, without reverting to complacent celebration of the moral nobility of everyone involved in the abolitionist movement. Christopher Leslie Brown and Iain Whyte, for example, insist on the importance of social movements and moral ideals for English and Scottish abolitionism. And perhaps most influentially, Seymour Drescher has argued that abolition was profoundly contrary to Great Britain’s economic interest, although economic forces were an explicit part of the abolition debates. This last point is particularly telling. If people were convinced that slavery was economically detrimental, then no one would have needed to press the point in public debate.

   

  Political Works, –n. Seymour Drescher, Abolition, . Ibid., –. David Richardson, “Agency, Ideology, and Violence,” –. See Brown, Moral Capital and Whyte, Scotland and the Abolition of Black Slavery. See Econocide.

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In fact, however, several philosophers and politicians made such arguments, including Hume’s friend Adam Smith. In his Lectures on Jurisprudence, Smith argues that slave labor is far less productive for masters than paid labor, because enslaved people have no motive to produce anything above what is required for their own survival. Moreover, the resulting concentration of wealth in a few hands, with limited natural mechanisms for that wealth to generate economic activity among a poorer class barred from holding property, “renders rich and wealthy men of large properties of great and real detriment, which otherwise are rather of service as they promote trade and commerce.” Smith insists that slavery harms economic prospects for masters and the community as a whole. The Lectures on Jurisprudence were given from  to ; it is implausible to suggest that the question of slavery’s economic viability was already settled ten years earlier. Moreover, Smith’s belief in slavery’s economic disadvantages did not make him optimistic about widespread abolition. He believes that in democratic societies where the people make the laws, they will be unlikely to act in their own “real interest,” because of the strong “love of domination and authority and the pleasure men take in having every [thing] done by their express orders.” Monarchs might be more willing to liberate enslaved people but will be held back by fear that their wealthiest and most powerful subjects will rebel. Smith concludes that “it is not likely that slavery should be ever abolished, and it was owing to some peculiar circumstances that it has been abolished in the small corner of the world in which it now is.” Hume could not have been ignorant of slavery’s growing economic importance in the colonies, especially given the criticism of the practice by those, like Montesquieu, with whom he was in close contact or correspondence. But in his Essays, Hume is addressing the “small corner of the world” that had chosen paid servant labor over slavery within their home borders and took pride in that choice. This pride was, for many northwestern Europeans, neither without hypocrisy nor well grounded in the facts. Many British citizens were earning income on the backs of slave    

Lectures on Jurisprudence, . Smith makes similar arguments in the Wealth of Nations. See especially Book III, chapter .  Seeds of this argument appear in Hume. See ..n. Lectures on Jurisprudence, . Ibid. See also Wealth of Nations, –. For a helpful overview of the contribution of Scottish thinkers to the abolitionist movement, see Alison Webster, “The Contribution of the Scottish Enlightenment to the Abandonment of the Institution of Slavery.”

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labor, either as owners of colonial plantations or as participants in the industries tied to slavery. Hume had numerous ties to those involved with the slave economy. But as Drescher documents in Abolition, the story of Renaissance and early modern European abolition is convoluted at best. The sense that slavery was a barbaric practice incompatible with Christianity and Europe’s advanced civilizations developed alongside ever more sophisticated methods of justifying or ignoring complicity in that same practice. When it had been established that Christians must not enslave fellow Christians, the Protestant Revolution opened the door to declaring a large population of ostensible Christians “beyond the pale of Christian liberty” on account of their heresy. France adopted a progressive principle of freedom, insisting that anyone who touched French soil was free. The Guyenne Parlement declared as early as  that “France, the mother of liberty, doesn’t permit any slaves.” Yet, needing a stock of labor to power galley ships, the French navy discovered that this principle did not apply to enslaved people purchased in Muslim countries with established slave commerce. Generations of European civil law jurists, like McDouall, reiterated the general permissibility of slavery. But, as Drescher notes: These same civil law jurists living in the zone of Europe without slave law might casually, and even proudly, refer to the development of mutual nonenslavement between European combatants. For these scholars, slavery was hardly a problem in their culture. In retrospect, nothing is as striking in their works as their general indifference to the implications of the emerging transatlantic institution on their writings.

In his complacency about the threat of expanding slavery, then, Hume inherits a sensibility shared by centuries of Europeans, particularly in northwestern Europe, and rests assured that most of his audience will do likewise. To note the history of such complacency is not to defend it. Hume, as a historian and a philosopher who prided himself on seeing behind the pretensions of institutions like the priesthood, would have been as capable as anyone of unmasking this particular hypocrisy.



 

In “Of Money,” Hume refers to the money earned by the English, French, and Dutch “by their A trade” (..). I am grateful to Margaret Schabas for bringing this passage to my attention. On the extent of Hume’s own contact with the colonial slave economy, see Emma Rothschild, “David Hume and the Seagods of the Atlantic,” –.  Drescher, Abolition, . Sue Peabody, “There Are No Slaves in France,” .  Drescher, Abolition, . Ibid., .

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Hume’s criticism of slavery, which barely acknowledges the colonial institution, does not have an abolitionist character and evinces no real concern about slavery’s resurgence. Is slavery simply of interest to him, then, as it relates to ancient versus modern populations? This hypothesis cannot explain the virulence of Hume’s critique nor his detailing disadvantages of slavery that have nothing to do with population growth or decline. These aspects of Hume’s discussion in “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations” make sense, however, if his target is not a political proslavery movement but instead a tendency to romanticize an earlier way of life. He weaves another line of argumentation alongside his arguments that contribute to the stated aim of the essay. This additional argumentation warns that social institutions have serious consequences for human character. It is obvious that slavery stems from inhumanity: to enslave humans is to treat them as subhuman. It is also obvious that slavery produces inhumanity: cruelty only begins with the initial enslavement. As Hume documents, the suffering inflicted on enslaved people goes far beyond being forced to work without any hope of remuneration or autonomy. But he takes the argument a step further: for the slaveholders themselves, slavery does not leave everything as it is. Again, human nature is not static: slavery teaches the privileged class the joys of domineering, hardens them against others’ suffering, and produces “barbarous” habits. Hume’s account of sympathy in the Treatise explains the process behind these changes. The mechanism of sympathy – one of the static principles of humanity – is the complex process whereby we “catch” the sentiments of other people. When something enlivens our ideas of someone else’s perceptions, our ideas of those perceptions become impressions in us – viz., feelings or sensations. Although we know others’ affects through outward signs – sorrowful lamentations, frightened confessions, cheerful smiles – these signs never point to wholly alien phenomena: “we never remark any passion or principle in others, of which, in some degree or other, we may not find a parallel in ourselves” (T ...). It is therefore easy for ideas of someone else’s emotions to become correlative impressions. This resemblance among shared emotions, moreover, increases the sense that other people are like ourselves. The vivacity that Hume claims 

Hume introduces his distinction between impressions and ideas at the beginning of the Treatise, appealing to the general distinction that everyone will recognize between feeling and thinking. “The difference betwixt these,” he says, “consists in the degrees of force and liveliness, with which they strike upon the mind, and make their way into our thought or consciousness” (T ...). More lively impressions include “sensations, passions, and emotions,” and the “faint images of these in thinking and reasoning” are the ideas.

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always accompanies thoughts of the self thus enlivens the idea of another’s sentiment even more. We sympathize more easily with those who have some special relation to us – family members, friends, and even those whose temper reminds us of our own. But the “great resemblance among all human creatures” forwards this process between all people. In general, one identifies more closely with those who share one’s origins, characteristics, and opinions. Because of our complex networks of relations and malleable nature, it is safe to assume that sympathies are always in some degree of flux. In one sense, masters have very close relations to those they enslave: they are part of the same household and are mutually dependent on one another. In discussing the correction of our moral sentiments, Hume gives this apropos example: “Our servant, if diligent and faithful, may excite stronger sentiments of love and kindness than Marcus Brutus, as represented in history; but we say not upon that account, that the former character is more laudable than the latter” (T ...). But Hume makes a strong distinction between slaves and domestic servants: he lauds the system of explicitly drawing people into a household’s economy, recognizing them as deserving of respect (albeit tinctured by class distinctions), and compensating them for their service. “In modern times,” he claims, “a bad servant finds not easily a good master, nor a bad master a good servant; and the checks are mutual, suitably to the inviolable and eternal laws of reason and equity” (..). In contrast, slavery renders “every man of rank . . . a petty tyrant.” Domestic slavery encourages masters to regard enslaved people as livestock, as Hume’s reminder of the fitness of the cattle analogy suggests. As a master loses the sense that enslaved people constitute other humans like himself, his sympathy with them weakens. Some dangers of weakened sympathy are familiar: it erodes one block against callousness by obscuring the effects of our behavior on others. But on Hume’s view, the effects are more dire: when sympathy works partially, the results can be worse than its not working at all. Although sympathy is in principle possible between all normal human beings, sympathy with suffering does not always generate benevolent passions. We might observe another’s pain, sympathetically feel pain ourselves, and consequently develop a repugnance to the suffering person. It can be difficult to accept that we have such reactions. But consider the widespread repulsion toward beggars in city streets, or how difficult it is to 

See T ....

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remain friends with someone undergoing a long period of depression or illness. I am not denying that we should try to overcome such difficulties, and neither is Hume, but they are nonetheless real. Yet sympathy can lead us to desire another’s good and to strive to ameliorate her situation. Whence these contrary effects? The explanation, according to Hume, lies in the relative strength of the sympathetic response. Repugnance proceeds from weak sympathetic responses, either because the suffering is mild or because something prevents strong sympathetic identification with the sufferer. Benevolent responses, on the other hand, proceed from strong sympathy. The variation is possible because passions generate other passions that resemble them, and passions can resemble one another in two distinct ways. They may be alike in affect: pride resembles love, for example, in that both are agreeable to the person experiencing them (T ...). Alternatively, they may be alike in their “tendency and direction” (T ...). Passions that include or generate desires can parallel one another by aiming at identical or similar ends. Pity thus resembles benevolence, as each aims to promote another’s happiness. Adopting these future-directed desires, however, requires a strong sympathetic response. For the association of impressions to produce active pity rather than inert disgust, I must do more than catch a vague sense of the sufferer’s current pain. Fleeting sympathy tends to produce passions related in affect (hatred or contempt) to the suffering, rather than related in direction (benevolence or pity). Only a strong sense of another’s misery ensures that “the vivacity of the conception is not confin’d merely to its immediate object, but diffuses its influence over all the related ideas,” thus giving “a lively notion of all the circumstances of that person, whether past, present, or future; possible, probable or certain” (T ...). Such diffusion requires an abundance of the sympathized passion to begin with, and the stronger our ties to the sufferer, the more abundant such passion will be. On the other hand, “when a sympathy with uneasiness is weak, it produces hatred or contempt” (T ...). We can now explain in Humean terms slavery’s vicious cycle of abuse. As slavery encourages masters to think of enslaved people as chattel or brutes rather than fellow humans, the force of natural sympathy is broken.  

See Hume’s remarks in the second Enquiry on the “aversion and disgust” we feel toward “a melancholy, dejected, sullen, anxious temper” (EPM .). Hume’s theory of sympathy has generated an enormous secondary literature. For a recent overview, see Elizabeth S. Radcliffe, “Hume’s Psychology of the Passions.” Radcliffe discusses the relevant aspects of the theory at –.

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The master may see the other’s suffering, but sympathy with that suffering is not as encouraged by the “great resemblance among all human creatures” as it otherwise would be. Thus, the causes of enslaved people’s suffering – poverty, lack of education, subjugation itself – are more likely to produce contempt and hatred than pity or love. The prolonged contact that masters have with the people they enslave, therefore, may not reinforce the masters’ sympathetic identification with their humanity; it may instead reinforce hatred, cruelty, and malice toward those who serve him. Even worse, the masters’ role in causing the suffering will likely intensify the negative passions. Any desires of the masters whose end includes or implies the suffering of the enslaved person resembles hatred and anger in direction. Thus, Hume observes, “the injuries we do, not only cause hatred in the person, who suffers them, but even in ourselves” (T ...). But there is more. Working alongside and sometimes contrary to sympathy is the principle of comparison, or our tendency to judge objects by comparing them with other nearby or related objects. Unlike sympathy, by which we adopt the sentiments of others, comparison can produce an opposing sentiment, as when seeing other people happy in shared company heightens loneliness. A dark form of comparison produces malice, or joy in others’ suffering. Someone else’s pain, compared with my own happiness, can augment the pleasure I take in my own state. Gerald Postema, who calls this operation of comparison “reversal-comparison,” argues that it makes sense on Humean principles that malice would result when the self remains primarily in view. In sympathy, on the other hand, the self is not “in focus,” although resemblance to self supports sympathy’s operation. Slavery promotes self-focus in masters’ interactions with enslaved people, as those people appear to masters primarily as instruments for the latter’s service. The enslaved’s sorrow therefore becomes a source of joy to the master – a malice that carries with it a desire to increase that sorrow. This effect of comparison does not require slaveholders’ conceiving of enslaved people as inhuman. In fact, it might be augmented by a continual recognition of their mutual humanity. Hume notes that people would not derive as much pleasure from domineering over automatons as they do over “sensible and rational creatures, whose condition, being compar’d to our own, makes [our authority] seem more agreeable and 

 

Hume does not think hatred itself includes desire. But it is reliably attended with anger or the desire for the hated person’s misery (T ...). Hume refers to hatred as one of the passions with “impulses or directions” that can resemble others’ (T ...).   See T .... “Cemented with Diseased Qualities,” –. Ibid., –. Unlike some other indirect passions, malice includes a desire within itself. See Radcliffe, “Hume’s Psychology of the Passions,” .

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honourable” (T ...). Whether or not slaveholders succeed in deluding themselves about the humanity of the people under their control, their abuse feeds on itself. Again, Hume can infer from particular circumstances – the widespread practice of domestic slavery – that ancient peoples must have responded in specific ways. Universal features of human nature, such as sympathy, explain this response. But the response is a modification of that nature, into a crueler version of itself. Outside of slave-holding societies, some imagine that most masters would treat enslaved people well. (It is sadly still common to hear claims about gentle slave owners in the American South.) But Hume believes that the “ancient” way of life, in this respect, hardened the character, permitting it to be cruel. The argument that slaveholding can change character for the worse undermines the view of the “passionate admirer of the ancients.” The admirer notes the ancients’ concern with nobility, scorn of danger in battle, elevation of heroism, and fierce dedication to civic liberty. This admiration carries two distinct threats. One might elevate these positive traits, ignoring or downplaying accompanying vices. Such self-deception can erode appreciation for modern progress. On the other hand, one might recognize the relation between ancient virtues and slavery but prioritize the virtues, so that they support an argument for actually bringing back slavery. I have argued that this is not Hume’s concern in “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations.” The first danger could easily become the second, however, and the second was a real danger. We can see this by looking forward to nineteenth-century proslavery arguments. These arguments couple slavery with republican spirit, along with appeals to the ancients’ example. Proslavery literature often cites Edmund Burke’s  speech to parliament on conciliation with the American colonies. Warning that Americans were as devoted to their freedom as Englishmen, Burke insists that the Southern colonies’ system of slavery was a strong source of this devotion. Wherever there are large numbers of enslaved people, including the ancient commonwealths, “those who are free, are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom . . . In such a people the haughtiness of domination combines with the spirit of freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible.” Burke does not claim that this love of freedom counterbalances the evils of slavery; it is a love rooted in haughty pride and misapprehension of freedom’s burdens. Yet Thomas Roderick Dew, in his influential Review of the Debate in the Virginia  

 See also T .... “Speech on Conciliation with America,” –. Burke was in favor of gradual abolition of slavery, as he explains in his Sketch of the Negro Code.

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Legislature of  and , selectively quotes Burke, obscuring Burke’s real point. Dew celebrates slavery’s generation of a spirit of liberty and even equality in the American South, by analogy to ancient republics. Aristotle, Sparta, and Burke all show that republican spirit and attachment to liberty feeds off slavery, and “from the time of Burke down to the present day, the southern states have always borne this same honorable distinction.” Dew was not the only, or even the most influential, Southern writer to connect republicanism, slavery, and the model of the ancients. It was a common trope as the South moved to an explicitly proslavery position. In his study of proslavery ideology, Larry Tise notes that William Harper, chancellor of South Carolina throughout the middle decades of the nineteenth century, claimed that there were “important lessons to be gained from Burke and the examples of the ancient republics: ‘They teach us that slavery is compatible with freedom, stability, and long duration of civil government, with denseness of population, great power, and the highest civilization.’” But Dew extends this sensibility to an absurd mythology of the Southern ethos. He extols the fraternal spirit among Southern whites of all stations, who allegedly feel themselves to be on a “common level,” at least “as nearly as can be expected or even desired in this world.” “Color alone,” he says, “is here the badge of distinction, the true mark of aristocracy,” and in such a setting, the nasty effects of class warfare melt away. This fantasy rests on a claim with a familiar form – that practices and circumstances shape human nature. With such a method, Hume cannot quibble: it is his own. But he would protest its application. Without denying that slavery generates a class of freemen fiercely dedicated to liberty, he insists that it also has darker, more significant effects on human nature. The notion that slavery’s primary effects are salutary requires blinding oneself to the suffering of a large part of the community. But if Hume is right, such blinding is precisely what we should expect from this institution. Even if we grant its promotion of certain local virtues, its cost is too high. For the enslaved, the pain is undeniable. But from Hume’s perspective, slavers harm themselves too: their practice encourages a set of passions that he believes likely to produce misery rather than happiness. (I will discuss this point in more detail in Chapter , on “Composing.”)

  

Debate in the Virginia Legislature, . Larry E. Tise, Proslavery, . Harper’s quotation is from his “Memoir on Slavery.”  Debate in the Virginia Legislature, . Ibid., .

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Hume did not appreciate the threat of modern slavery’s expansion, but he did warn against the kind of thinking that was later used to justify it. It is easy to overstate the importance of rational argumentation against practices so clearly based in greed, anger, and racism. But it also easy to understate their importance: the early moderns and even their predecessors recognized that there was a moral problem with slavery, and they had to develop justifications for it. Some of these justifications exploited the humor of blaming the present and exalting the past.

. Priests With respect to the related practices of war and slavery, Hume believes the moderns to have made progress relative to ancient cultures. Nothing in his work suggests that this progress is irreversible, nor does he portray it as steady and gradual evolution from ancient to modern times, or even from medieval to modern times. The History ascribes extreme, sometimes unprecedented, barbarism to later inhabitants of western Europe. But he expresses hope that humanity is moving away from violent domineering toward more peaceful, economic competition in public life and toward increasing sociability in private life. About the priesthood, however, Hume is less optimistic. In “Of National Characters,” he uses the examples of soldiers and priests to show that moral causes – in this case, professions – can change character. In a footnote, he elaborates the specific causes that he believes corrupt priests. The priesthood does not necessarily attract men of worse (or better) character; he writes that they are “drawn from the mass of mankind, as people are to other employments, by the views of profit” (..n). But once the collar is donned, the office’s demands tempt all but those of the strongest character into hypocrisy, conceit, and vengeance. The details of this attack are not all germane here. But Hume has strong words about the office’s encouraging domineering tendencies. It is a protoNietzschean analysis of tyranny’s emergence from weakness. Most of us are ambitious by nature, Hume says, but priests cannot satisfy their ambition as other men can through diligent work, useful for common life. Instead, the “ambition of the clergy can often be satisfied only by promoting ignorance and superstition and implicit faith and pious frauds” (..n). Natural antipathy to being contradicted becomes the “most 

For a brief summary of contemporary criticism of Hume’s character of the priest, see Susato, “Taming ‘The Tyranny of Priests,’” –.

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furious and implacable” anger, because priestly power depends on people accepting their beliefs. And their very character as men of peace feeds the worm of vengefulness. Again, revenge “is a natural passion to mankind; but seems to reign with the greatest force in priests and women: Because, being deprived of the immediate exertion of anger, in violence and combat, they are apt to fancy themselves despised on that account; and their pride supports their vindictive disposition” (..n). The unique constraints of the priesthood focus and intensify static features of human nature – ambition, pride, and the desire for revenge. This encouragement of domineering produces two kinds of dangers. One is political: Hume warns governments to proceed cautiously in restraining this class, “who will for ever combine into one faction, and while it acts as a society, will for ever be actuated by ambition, pride, revenge, and a persecuting spirit” (..n). His recognition of this danger has drawn the attention of scholars, especially as it relates to his recommendations for an established church under the control of civil authority. The other dangerous effect, which has not received as much attention, is moral damage to individual characters. The footnote in “Of National Characters” is flush with details of the “irreparable breach in [priests’] character” resulting from their profession (..n). Priesthood destroys candor and ingenuity, rationalizes abuses in the name of godliness, gives men a motive to promote superstition, exacerbates the disposition to conceit, and encourages anger and vindictiveness. Some of these vices are only displeasing or harmful to the self, but many also harm others, not least by infecting followers’ characters. Priests encourage gullibility and servility in their weaker followers, while providing a model of violence for the emulation of stronger ones.  





I will discuss Hume’s treatment of women, including their alleged lust for power, in Chapter . This is consistent with, though harsher than, Hume’s description of priests’ motives in “Of the Immortality of the Soul,” where he says that terror of the afterlife is encouraged by those who want “to gain a livelihood, and to acquire power and riches in this world” (EWU .). See also . Susato notes that Berkeley’s Alciphron similarly accuses all intelligent priests of pursuing only “ambition, avarice and revenge” (Alciphron, ). See “Taming ‘The Tyranny of Priests,’” . For some additional discussions of Hume’s views on established religion, see Stewart, Opinion and Reform in Hume’s Political Philosophy, –; Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, Vol. II, especially –; Will R. Jordan, “Religion and Public Square”; and McArthur, David Hume’s Political Philosophy, –. For a treatment of Hume’s views on established religion in his later years, see Baumstark, “End of Empire and the Death of Religion.” Baumstark discovered a previously unpublished letter that suggests that Hume was not committed to the necessity of established religion. This suggestion is consistent with Baier’s speculations; see later discussion. In , Hume wrote an advertisement to a pamphlet in defense of corn merchants, whose public service, he argues, is more benign than that of “Dealers in Spiritual Ware.” The latter “all aspire to be monopolists: They sell their Quack Powder, for which they pretend to have a Patent, at most

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Hume’s recommendations for dealing with the political problem may actually intensify the threat to individual character. He warns “wise governments” to be “on their guard” against the factionalist tendencies of priests. An established church is an important precaution governments can take against this threat. In “Of Parties in General,” he ascribes Christianity’s history of violent religious factionalism in part to “the authority of the priests, and the separation of the ecclesiastical and civil powers” (..). In “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth,” he writes that security and stability in free governments requires “the dependence of the clergy on the civil magistrates” (..). And in the History, he says that “there must be an ecclesiastical order, and a public establishment of religion in every civilized community” (H :–). Making the head of civil society also head of the church discourages the faithful from dividing their loyalties between two earthly masters (king and pope) or believing themselves free from all earthly authorities, with a direct link to the divine. But there is another aspect to establishment that Hume finds beneficial: having priests paid by civil authorities removes one motive to zeal. Priests who need not rely on parishioners for their livelihood have less reason to inflame the spiritual sensibilities of their flock. The best plan for wise magistrates’ treatment of the clergy “is to bribe their indolence, by assigning stated salaries to their profession” (H :). Annette Baier points out that this language, which Hume never excised, seems designed to offend; this provocation suggests no vision for a long-term happy compromise between sceptical philosopher and moderate priest. Nonetheless, Hume claims that these arrangements serve “the political interests of the society”; civilized society, at least in its contemporary state, benefits from institutionalized ecclesial apathy. But what will these precautions do for the moral interest of the individuals involved? The answer is not clear. On the one hand, apathetic priests might be less likely to encourage superstition, and Hume would see this as moral progress. But the specific motives to domineering tendencies that he details in “Of National Characters” could also be exacerbated by establishment. Priests of the established church may have less power as individuals than those who challenge civil authority. And clergy bribed into indolence have either fewer or more corrupt ways to feed their ambition. The adulation of their following would mean little in earthly terms, and rising



enormous Prices . . . They cram us with Nonsense, instead of feeding us with Truth.” For the full transcript, see David R. Raynor, “Who Invented the Invisible Hand?” “Hume and the Conformity of Bishop Tunstal,” .

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through the clerical ranks would require all the methods that generally lead to promotion in political office. They would avoid corruption at the expense of impotence. This seems to be a recipe, in Hume’s own terms, for promoting a vindictive disposition. Emasculated clergy with no hope for political revenge may well look to the pews to satisfy their need for domineering. I discuss Hume’s opinion of the rise of the priesthood later, in Chapter . But his concerns about priests’ special brand of domination over weak minds are concerns about his present and Europe’s future, not merely observations about what priests were like prior to the Reformation. He obviously believes that Britain has made progress (though only with much cruelty and violence) in dealing with the political threat, relative to the time when its civil leadership owed obeisance to the Pope. His confidence in the stability of this progress, however, is subject to all of the qualifications of his confidence in political progress in general. Moreover, Hume’s own solutions for mitigating the political dangers of priestcraft might exacerbate its moral dangers. I am not suggesting that he should have recognized this tension and proposed some alternative solution; I doubt that he ever believed his solutions to be ideal. I am more inclined to agree with Baier that Hume sees establishment as a temporary bandage, suitable until society can make more substantial progress in its religious thinking in general. In the meantime, he sees the priesthood as a form of life in which the tendency to domineering lies protected within a culture that has, in other areas, made progress against practices that encourage aggressive passions. Its aggression is not less dangerous for being more hidden. 

Ibid., –.

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Concern about the increasing social importance of commerce and trade infuses the discourse of the civic tradition and the narratives of eighteenthand nineteenth-century novels. These issues, too, transcend public and private dimensions. The concerns were never merely economic or political. They always included speculation about how commercial pressures affect individual character as well as the state and society. Even now, we might fear that the modern work ethic encourages the kind of warping of character reflected in Morris Zapp’s claim that sex is “a sublimation of the work instinct.” Hume is well aware of, but optimistic about, the relation between economic institutions and individual character. The relation’s complexity is reflected in his use of the ambiguous term “industry,” which can refer to an activity, habit, or virtue, as well as economic practices. Among the “many other circumstances, in which ancient nations seem inferior to the modern,” he cites trade, manufacturing, and industry (..). Because he juxtaposes it with trade and manufacturing, it may seem that “industry” refers to business enterprises, particularly the mass production of goods. It is in the eighteenth century that the dominant meaning of “industry” shifts from its Latin meaning of general diligence toward this later meaning. But in Hume’s English, it could still refer to either behavior or a virtue correlated with such behavior – diligence “or assiduity in the performance of any task, or in any effort.” Hume usually uses the term in this way, as in the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, where industry is a prime example of virtues that are useful to the self, or as in “Of National Characters,” where he tells us that “in every society the ingredients of

 

David Lodge, Small World, . Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “industry,” updated December , www.oed.com.



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industry and indolence, valour and cowardice, humanity and brutality, wisdom and folly, will be mixed after the same manner” (..). Even when Hume uses “industry” to mean something like manufacturing or production, it can sound like a term in transition. In “Of Interest,” he describes industry as being transported, traded, and controlled, in ways that would seem to apply only analogically to virtue or individual behavior. Merchants, he writes, “beget industry, by serving as canals to convey it through every corner of the state: And at the same time, by their frugality, they acquire great power over that industry, and collect a large property in the labour and commodities, which they are the chief instruments in producing” (..). “Industry” seems here to be a product, rather than a property of producers. Yet in the preceding paragraph, he uses the term in its older sense: “But if the employment you give [a man] be lucrative, especially if the profit be attached to every particular exertion of industry, he has gain so often in his eye, that he acquires, by degrees, a passion for it” (..–). Here industry inhabits the individual person, who exercises it at will. Hume slides easily between these different senses of “industry.” Even when he uses it to refer to an economic domain, we may therefore presume that he is not in danger of forgetting that people engaged in their own activities populate this domain. The close connection between industry as an economic term and industry as a trait of character is of more than merely verbal significance. For Hume, the habits of a people comprise part of a polity’s economic resources. In Section ., I consider Hume’s assessment of the progress of industry in both senses and discuss its status as a virtue. I then turn to the four “essays on happiness” to argue that Hume believes our need for industry is among the enduring principles of human nature. Finally, I consider a neoAristotelian objection to this Humean ideal of industry.

. The Progress and Purpose of Industry Hume’s various essays on economic matters can be read as a sustained argument that modern economic structures promote greater wealth than their predecessors, that neither the structures nor the wealth corrupt individuals or society, and that it is vitally important not to subvert this 

See also “My Own Life,” where he ascribes this virtue to his youthful self: “My studious disposition, my sobriety, and my industry, gave my family a notion that the law was a proper profession for me” (xxxiii).

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progress by stupid policy decisions. Despite the seriousness with which Hume treated these issues and his significant influence on later economic debates, philosophers have again neglected this part of his work. To some degree, this neglect is understandable. It can be difficult to see how interest rates relate to philosophical questions, or to know how to talk about them even if one does see some relation. But for Hume and his readers, such relations were clear: much as communism was seen as a social and moral threat in twentieth-century America, commercialism was seen as a social and moral threat in eighteenth-century Europe. Once again, historians of political thought have long been aware of this aspect of Hume’s work. But the relation between the ideals of the new economy and Hume’s moral philosophy and psychology have been comparatively overlooked. The virtue of industry proves especially interesting. There is no doubt that Hume thinks that moderns have improved with respect to industry in the commercial sense. This improvement, in turn, has political implications, as he associates it with domestic and international stability as well as increased liberty. But for Hume, the results include individual moral improvement, not just political progress. Though recognizing that industry is a trait uniquely suited to and beneficial for modern commercial economies, he provides evidence that its importance to humanity is original to the species. The drive to industry, along with that which makes us approve it as a virtue, is among the constant principles of human nature. He thus provides grounds for the claim that commercial societies that encourage this virtue promote improvement, not just change, in individual flourishing. Contemporary economists respect Hume’s proto-econometric methods for demonstrating economic progress in recent centuries. Margaret Schabas, after summarizing his argument for wealth expansion (based on the rise in prices relative to the rise in specie), calls it “a brilliant argument” and compares it with William Harvey’s demonstration of the circulation of the blood. Hume also uses other methods, some of which will now be familiar. To argue in “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations” that trade, manufacturing, and industry were less flourishing in ancient polities than in modern Europe, he combines evidence drawn from the historical record with new economic theorizing. Ancient clothing seems to have been 



In addition to the other secondary treatments mentioned in this section, Richard Boyd’s “Manners and Morals” and Till Gru¨ne-Yanoff and Edward F. McClennen’s “Hume’s Framework for a Natural History of the Passions” are exceptions. “Hume on Economic Well-Being,” .

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extraordinarily simple, not as one would expect in an economically prosperous culture exposed to a wide variety of different habits or with a productive artisan class. (He thus refuses to ascribe simplicity of dress to any romanticized simplicity of manners.) Even cities famous for trade were relatively small, seem to have had little expertise at long-distance navigation, and did not take advantage of the Asiatic coasts’ proximity. Moreover, he does “not remember a passage in any ancient author, where the growth of a city is ascribed to the establishment of a manufacture” (..). There was no counterpart to the developments in eighteenthcentury Glasgow, where glass, textile, and iron manufacturing, along with an explosion in tobacco trade and processing, were transforming the city and its surrounding country. Ancient trade seems to have been largely the exchange of natural resources readily available in various cities. Finally, the high interest rate and profits from trade indicate anemic commercial markets, where limited supplies of commodities and money support a high price for both. After this point, the argument shifts to a complex appeal to psychological principles and their relation to ancient circumstances, as Hume links economic growth to political freedom. Ancient tyranny would have depopulated all the cities, had the citizens sufficient commercial resources to subsist elsewhere: While the cruel and suspicious Dionysius was carrying on his butcheries, who, that was not detained by his landed property, and could have carried with him any art or skill to procure a subsistence in other countries, would have remained exposed to such implacable barbarity? The persecutions of Philip II and Lewis XIV filled all Europe with the manufacturers of Flanders and of France. (..)

Self-interest is the relevant constant of human nature here: those who can escape persecution will do so. The purported “extreme love of liberty” among the ancients makes their submission puzzling. Hume’s explanation is that love of political freedom does not always go with the power to exercise it. Here, as elsewhere, he recognizes the overwhelming power of







Ian Simpson Ross notes that Bristol merchants “were so incensed about Scottish success in the tobacco trade that they petitioned Parliament to strangle Glasgow’s enterprise in that sector” (“Emergence of Hume as a Political Economist,” ). For Hume’s argument for the relevant economic principles, see “Of Interest,” where he argues that extensive commerce produces a surplus of money and competition that decrease interest rates and profits from trade (..–). As I noted in Chapter , some thinkers argued that lack of freedom increased love of it.

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economic barriers to liberty. Industry, unlike land, can be transported. Such mobile economic resources can liberate people from oppression as well as poverty. And the absence of them can make it difficult or impossible to escape enslavement. Commercial progress therefore has moral and political implications: in more commercial societies, citizens can escape oppressive regimes. But though a triumph for individual freedom, this development contributes to instability. Refugees can only hope to find a healthier state in which to renew their lives, and those left behind may be in a worse situation than ever. In “Of Refinement in the Arts,” Hume argues for another link between industry and liberty, which promotes rather than compromises stability. We have seen before his claim that an independent nobility can act as a bulwark against ambitious monarchs. But here, he argues that a non-aristocratic “middling rank of men” might serve this function even better. People of this rank attain their status through industry rather than inheritance. A premanufacturing, agricultural society naturally divides itself into landholders and tenant laborers. The landowners either submit to the central government’s authority, providing stability at the cost of a too-powerful sovereign, or they maintain their independence, restraining the sovereign’s power at the cost of volatility arising from disputes among themselves. Commercial advancement, however, provides a valuable third option. With a market for their goods, “the peasants, by a proper cultivation of the land, become rich and independent” (..). The new significance of tradesmen and merchants then raises the significance of the middle class, “the best and firmest basis of public liberty.” They are proud enough to protect their independence, but “having no hopes of tyrannizing over others, like the barons,” they have no reason to subject themselves to a tyrant for his favors (..–). Instead, they desire equal laws to protect the property that is their strength. Again, these developments constitute political improvements. But they work through the effects of economic development on individual people’s habits. Those who enjoy the self-sufficiency of the “middling rank” eschew the submissiveness fostered in those who have been beaten down by rigid class systems. Consequently, they are less vulnerable to exploitation. While Hume is not so naïve as to suggest that such people are immune to becoming tyrants themselves, he does not think that the structure of such an economy offers the opportunity and thus the “hope” for this result. 

Cf. his scorn in “Of the Original Contract” for the idea that the poor peasant is free to leave his country (..).

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In Hume’s economically developed societies, people also develop a helpful pride and a greater sense of equity. They add to their stock of virtues in other ways, too. In Section ., I discussed the “indissoluble chain” that Hume posits between industry, knowledge, and humanity. The last two links were relevant there, but the first link is the linchpin. Without industry, the series of causal connections he details in “Of Refinement in the Arts” would never get moving. This is an essay, after all, whose main purpose is to defend “luxury” or the enjoyment of commercial goods. (Its original title was “Of Luxury.”) Industry then forwards progress in sociability, humanity, knowledge, and honor. Yet in emphasizing these positive moral effects of economic development, commentators sometimes overlook the virtue with the closest relation to that development: industry itself. Carl Wennerlind, for instance, argues for industry’s importance to Hume’s theory of justice and provides a helpful outline of Hume’s other “virtues of commerce,” but does not acknowledge industry as among those virtues, despite recognizing its sovereign importance for them. But it is clear that Hume thinks that industry-as-virtue is among those positive traits that industry-as-commerce promotes. His arguments for this relation again show the subtlety of his views on the malleability of human nature. Consider Hume’s claim about the inability to improve one’s circumstances in agrarian societies, even to the point of having to submit to tyranny. He makes a similar point near the beginning of “Of Commerce,” emphasizing the effects on character and production. This passage’s reference to a “habit of indolence” in premanufacturing societies has been read as expressing contempt for the poor. Schabas writes that Hume “showed none of the admiration that Smith expressed for the oppressed” and “believed that the poor have a deeply ingrained ‘habit of indolence’ and never thought to better their condition.” But the full passage does not support the notion that Hume ascribes any special vice to poor people. He believes that poor people can be industrious. In “Of Taxes,” he even says that they “encrease their industry . . . and live as well as before” in response to judicious taxes (..). But agrarian societies without commerce





See “The Role of Political Economy in Hume’s Moral Philosophy,” –. Though a welcome contribution to a neglected area of Hume scholarship, Wennerlind’s piece reveals some confusion about Hume’s moral theory. His implication that the Enquiry is concerned with “deriving moral codes” and the effects of acts rather than virtues, and his opposing artificial virtues to social rather than natural virtues, e.g., are misleading (, ). “Hume on Economic Well-Being,” .

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provide no motive to engage in anything beyond subsistence farming. Farmers who “thought to better their condition” would be stymied without any market for extra crops. They are not held down by essential habits of their class; in these economic conditions, a “habit of indolence naturally prevails” (..). As we will see in the following sections, Hume believes industry to be inherently pleasant. Meaningless labor, however, is not. It is not even clear that he is speaking in the relevant passage of “the poor” in general. These farmers are “the bulk of the people” in such a society – not wealthy, to be sure, but neither at any significant economic disadvantage relative to the norm (..). In calling these farmers indolent, Hume is accusing them of a vice. But the vice is the result, not the cause, of their poverty. At the risk of citing an example that some will think disproves my point, I am reminded of Jane Austen’s description of Emma Woodhouse’s compassionate charity toward the poor: she “had no romantic expectations of extraordinary virtue from those, for whom education has done so little.” Hume has no romantic expectation of virtue from those for whom the economy does so little. These farmers act just as anyone else would, provided with such motives by their circumstances. As economic circumstances can shape indolence, they can also shape its correlative virtue, industry. They are among the moral causes that form human dispositions. Recall Hume’s argument against imitating the policy of ancient republics that strengthened themselves through forced austerity and military service. Using superfluous labor to sustain an enterprising market requires none of the violence or asceticism of the Spartan mode of life. Nor, Hume argues, would it threaten security in the long run. In the





 

Hume recognizes that poverty wears many faces: it might look like a Swiss farmer in a mountainous region with no commerce (..n), a landholder left behind by a changing economy (..–), or even a wealthy man imprisoned by his own greed (EWU .). In “Of National Characters,” Hume says that “poverty and hard labour debase the minds of the common people, and render them unfit for any science and ingenious profession” (..). Again, this does not mean that poor people are essentially base, but that conditions of poverty prevent them from developing capacities that they might otherwise have. See also “Of the Middle Station of Life,” where Hume writes that the “poor are “too much occupy’d in providing for the Necessities of Life” to be “susceptible of philosophy” (EWU .). Emma, . In the History, Hume describes the effect of parliament’s prohibiting Irish cattle imports into England. The Duke of Ormond objects to the law in part because “the indolent inhabitants of Ireland, finding provisions fall almost to nothing, would never be induced to labour, but would perpetuate to all generations their native sloth and barbarism” (H :). The law passed anyway. Hume’s comment indicates his disagreement with Ormond: “This law brought great distress for some time upon the Irish; but it has occasioned their applying with greater industry to manufactures, and has proved in the issue beneficial to that kingdom” (H :).

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event of an external threat, labor could be transferred to the war effort. It will be easier to convert people used to working for their own and their families’ benefit into an effective military force than to impose continual conscription and obligation to supply the standing army. While one might think that former workers would resent all the more the state’s demanding their resources in exigent times, Hume claims the opposite. “Being accustomed to industry,” the worker will resent compulsory work less under an emergency “than if, at once, you obliged him to an augmentation of labour without any reward” (..). In other words, the workers in the commercial society have developed a disposition to industrious behavior, along with associated passions. They are used to working hard, and, not being generally alienated from the products of their labor, they like it. They have the virtue of industry. It is important to distinguish what is and is not variable about humankind’s relation to industry, according to Hume. It is in “Of Commerce” that Hume remarks on humanity’s “very variable” nature (..). “What may be true, while he adheres to one way of thinking, will be found false, when he has embraced an opposite set of opinions and manners” (..). The Spartan policy worked because of peculiarities of that republic, which included the people’s character. That character had adjusted to fit other circumstances. Hume refers to them as “a people addicted to arms, who fight for honour and revenge more than pay, and are unacquainted with gain and industry as well as pleasure” (..). Such people might not be demoralized by demands to leave home and fight, or to work for the city rather than amassing resources for themselves. Were they instantly transported into a commercial society, they could not empathize with the satisfaction of the self-supporting tradesperson or the energetic pursuits of the scientific researcher. But they have been formed by a mode of life that, all else being equal, does not promote human flourishing as well as the culture they would be dropped into. Human adaptability does not imply that each human adaptation produces people equally likely to thrive. 



But see H :: “By a continued and successful application to commerce, the [Dutch] people were become unwarlike,” and Hume’s “True Account of the Behaviour and Conduct of Archibald Stewart”: “When Men have fallen into a more civilized Life, and have been allowed to addict themselves entirely to the Cultivation of Arts and Manufactures, the Habit of their Mind, still more than that of their Body, soon renders them entirely unfit for the Use of Arms, and gives a different Direction to their Ambition” (). Hume has “the Sceptic” make this point about individual variations in temperament: “This . . . must be obvious to the most careless reasoner, that all dispositions of mind are not alike favourable to happiness, and that one passion or humour may be extremely desirable, while another is equally disagreeable” (..).

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As a matter of policy, commercial society is a better bet. Hume acknowledges the possibility of a community knit together so tightly that citizens see no space between their family’s and the polity’s needs. “Could we convert a city into a kind of fortified camp, and infuse into each breast so martial a genius, and such a passion for public good, as to make every one willing to undergo the greatest hardships for the sake of the public; these affections might now, as in ancient times, prove alone a sufficient spur to industry, and support the community” (..–). But these are not natural affections in his time, nor can they be promoted without doing violence to other aspects of human nature. Strong affections usually extend to only a small group of people. Wider allegiances come with all the dangers of factionalism. Still wider allegiances, to the state as a whole, for instance, come with all the dangers of tyranny. I return to the difficult questions about the relation between private friendship and public spirit in Chapter . But unlike some communitarians and utilitarians, Hume does not recommend attempting to promote affections that are natural in intimate relationships among all citizens. Though formed by a warrior society, the Spartans do share something significant with modern Europeans. In “Of Refinement in the Arts,” Hume claims that human happiness requires a mixture of three elements: action, pleasure, and indolence (..). Not everyone values each element to the same degree. Some people benefit from education and habituation that “promote a relish for action and pleasure,” and they should be grateful for training that is so likely to promote their well-being. Hume makes a clear distinction between indolence, which has value only as an instrument (it refreshes us so that we can keep acting and experiencing pleasure) and action and pleasure, which we value for their own sake. He does not present this recipe for happiness as fit only for the modern age. The Spartans shared the need for action, but their need was satisfied by violence. Both the Treatise and the second Enquiry categorize industry as a virtue that benefits its possessor. Hume acknowledges that virtues whose merit arises primarily from their utility can also be immediately agreeable. Courage and benevolence, but not industry, are among his examples. In fact, he asks rhetorically of industry and similar virtues: “can it be doubted . . . that the tendency of these qualities to promote the interest and happiness of their possessor, is the sole foundation of their merit?” (EPM .). But in the Essays, industry is immediately agreeable to the 

See T ... and EPM ..

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See EPM ., .

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self, meaning that its “immediate sensation” pleases those who have it, prescinding from “any utility or any tendency to farther good” (EPM .). “In times when industry and the arts flourish,” Hume writes, “men are kept in perpetual occupation, and enjoy, as their reward, the occupation itself, as well as those pleasures which are the fruit of their labour. The mind acquires new vigour; enlarges its powers and faculties; and by an assiduity in honest industry, both satisfies its natural appetites, and prevents the growth of unnatural ones” (.., emphasis added). We not only enjoy a range of pleasures; we remain unsatisfied unless those pleasures are, to some degree, the fruits of our own efforts. In recognizing the joys of work as part of universal human nature and a principle that might rescue the lower classes from poverty and oppression, Hume distances himself from Mandeville (otherwise a partner in the defense of luxury). John Shovlin notes that Mandeville defended “principally a luxury of the rich” and that he ascribes “an extraordinary proclivity to Idleness and Pleasure” to common laborers, who will work only if in immediate need of money. But Hume believes that common workers would improve their condition if they could. On the other hand, even the philosopher loves his work as work. Having said at the end of Book I of the Treatise that pursuing some “business or diversion” other than philosophy would make him “a loser in point of pleasure,” he insists in Book II that part of that pleasure comes from the difficulty of pursuing philosophical truths (T ...). “What is easy and obvious is never valued,” he says, “and even what is in itself difficult, if we come to the knowledge of it without difficulty, and without any stretch of thought or judgment, is but little regarded” (T ...). When assent to an idea comes too easily, we lose the opportunity “to fix our attention or exert our genius; which of all other exercises of the mind is the most pleasant and agreeable.” The seeds of the Essays’ view of industry are present in the Treatise. The virtue of industry, by Hume’s lights, has a robust claim to value. It benefits its possessors by enabling them to achieve their aims. It promotes   



See also ..: “There is no craving or demand of the human mind more constant and insatiable than that for exercise and employment.” Shovlin, “Hume’s Political Discourses and the French Luxury Debate,” . Mandeville, Fable of the Bees :. To be fair, it is not clear from this passage that Mandeville means to ascribe any essential extraordinary laziness to the poor; he may be referring to the habits they have grown accustomed to, which is more consistent with Hume’s position. And Mandeville seems to ascribe rampant laziness to the generality of humankind. See Fable of the Bees : and . Cf. the last sentence of “The Sceptic” (..).

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a commercial society that helps cultivate progress in knowledge and various social virtues. Its exercise is inherently pleasant – so much so that it can be the sine qua non of pleasure itself. According to Hume’s moral psychology, sympathy with all of these positive effects engenders the moral approbation of the trait that gives it its status as a virtue. That we find industry immediately agreeable suggests one way in which it possesses intrinsic value; we pursue it for its sake, not only because we believe it will promote our advancement in the world. Its status as a virtue implies another. On Hume’s moral theory, even traits that are virtues because of their usefulness are not merely means to external ends. We need not cultivate and honor these traits because of their usefulness to ourselves; instead, the language of virtue evolves as people recognize such usefulness, sympathize with its effects, and feel a positive sentiment that constitutes the sentiment of virtue. So, even if we approve of industry because it benefits people who have it, the social approval of industry justifies its inclusion in the set of inherently valuable traits that comprise the character of virtuous people. As Hume says in the second Enquiry, “virtue is an end, and is desirable on its own account, without fee or reward” (EPM App .). The interest of Hume’s views here becomes clearer in comparison to those of Pascal and Mandeville. Hume shares with Pascal the insight that people seek business and occupation. For Pascal, we hunt not for the prey but only to occupy ourselves. “Man finds nothing so intolerable as to be in a state of complete rest, without passions, without occupation, without diversion, without effort.” But our need for occupation is not a reliable source of pleasure, nor is our ability to satisfy it anything like a virtue. The need is a sign of our wretchedness; we seek business to avoid the awareness of our misery that would come were we to sit quietly in our rooms. Our ingenuity in serving the need also serves evil: as long as we have no time to reflect, we neglect our ultimate end and our dependence on God. Such warnings are miles from the irreverent lessons of the Fable of the Bees. Like Hume, Mandeville defends luxury against its detractors, arguing that the resulting commerce and industry aids the state and its citizens. Unlike Hume, he adopts the conventional usage of luxury as a vice,





For explications, sensitive to both Hume’s texts and the discourse of contemporary ethics, of Hume’s commitment to virtues as ends, see Michael Gill’s “Philosopher in His Closet” and “Humean Moral Pluralism,” especially chapter .   See Pensées, fragment , . Ibid., fragment , . See fragment , .

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though his satiric “vices” produce much public benefit. With an explicit swipe at Mandeville, Hume concedes that some luxurious indulgence is vicious, and resolves to “never pronounce vice in itself advantageous” (..). But the contrast with Mandeville goes deeper. For Hume, the industry that luxury both requires and produces is virtuous in itself, abstracting from any utilitarian benefit, and satisfies a need common to all humanity.

. Industry as a Principle of Human Nature: The Essays on Happiness I have argued that Hume believes industry to be an important contributor to human happiness, as both an individual trait and an attribute of societies. The four essays that Immerwahr aptly calls the “Essays on Happiness” provide further evidence for this claim. Each one takes a perspective associated with a Hellenistic sect, but Hume says that they are meant not to be historically accurate so much as to “deliver the sentiments of sects, that naturally form themselves in the world” (..n). The Epicurean, the Stoic, the Platonist, and the Sceptic all have something to say about the relationship between industry and happiness, although the word “industry” does not appear in “The Platonist.” Cumulatively, they make a case that any form of life that neglects industry precludes the possibility of happiness. The parallel first lines of “The Epicurean” and “The Stoic” indicate that a difference of opinion about the relationship between industry and nature lies at the heart of their disagreements. The Epicurean begins: “It is a great mortification to the vanity of man, that his utmost art and industry can never equal the meanest of nature’s productions, either for beauty or value” (..). The Stoic counters: “There is this obvious and material difference in the conduct of nature, with regard to man and other animals, that, having endowed the former with a sublime celestial spirit, and having given him an affinity with superior beings, she allows not such noble faculties to lie lethargic or idle; but urges him, by necessity, to employ, on every emergence, his utmost art and industry” (..). 



Defenders of luxury had an uphill battle to fight against the historical connotations of the term. For an explanation of luxuria’s transition from a Roman vice opposed to Republican virtue to a lethal sin associated with perversity of the flesh, see Mark D. Jordan, Invention of Sodomy, –, and Berry, Idea of Luxury, –. On Mandeville’s subversive use of conventional language in his defense of luxury, see Idea of Luxury, –. Immerwahr, “Hume’s Essays on Happiness.”

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The Epicurean uses “art” ambiguously, sometimes indicating the practical work of a techne – tailoring a suit, or even attempting to produce an “artificial happiness” by remaking human nature (..). But sometimes he uses it to mean aesthetic pursuits, like poetry. For the Stoic, in contrast, “art” is always skill, application, or craft; even his “artists” are workers “employed to form the several wheels and springs of a machine” (..). Although he at first appears to value industry only as a means to happiness, it becomes clear that he conceives of no happiness separable from industry itself. In “Of Refinement in the Arts,” industry is one among three elements of happiness; here, its importance is supreme: labour “is the chief ingredient of the felicity to which thou aspirest, and . . . every enjoyment soon becomes insipid and distasteful, when not acquired by fatigue and industry” (..). Even eros, unless animated by social affections, enervates by offering nothing but “lassitude and disgust” (..). Conversely, industry energizes the dumbest pastimes, giving “pleasure to the pursuit even of the most worthless prey,” driving otherwise rational people to hunt for game when the storehouse overflows with luscious and nourishing fare (..). But frivolous pursuits do not bring true happiness. The Stoic insists that our greatest satisfaction lies in molding our own desires: “thou thyself shouldest also be the object of thy industry” (..). Thus worked on, the human mind rejoices in protecting liberty and law, perhaps especially when such protection requires the ultimate sacrifice of one’s own life in battle. The Stoic has not forgotten beauty’s importance, but industry offers the most beautiful object of all: “If the contemplation, even of inanimate beauty, is so delightful; if it ravishes the senses, even when the fair form is foreign to us: What must be the effects of moral beauty? And what influence must it have, when it embellishes our own mind, and is the result of our own reflection and industry?” (..). For the Stoic, then, industry’s significance is primal and pervasive. At first glance, the Sceptic seems to hold the opposite view, sharing the Epicurean’s dim view of the prospects for improving our natural condition. Happiness requires satisfying the desires one happens to have, as well as having desires that are more pleasant than painful. To champion one sure path to happiness is to fail to appreciate that not everyone has the same desires and satisfaction. Although the Sceptic admits that virtuous dispositions are most fortunate, nature has not made our dispositions malleable: “The fabric and constitution of our mind no more depends on our choice, than that of our body” (..). And this determinism applies not only to the unreflective masses: even a “wise and thoughtful”

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

man can struggle “by the utmost art and industry, to correct his temper, and attain that virtuous character to which he aspires” (..). Thus, in contrast to the Stoic’s view that happiness consists in industrious relations to both external nature and the self, the Sceptic’s prognosis is resigned and pessimistic, at least for those not gifted with fortunate dispositions. His characterization of fortunate dispositions, however, complicates things. It will sound familiar. Despite interpersonal differences, “we may safely pronounce in general, that a life of pleasure cannot support itself so long as one of business, but is much more subject to satiety and disgust.” Even in our amusements, we enjoy those longer that have “a mixture of application and attention in them” (..). People who find their happiness in “internal objects” will more likely find satisfaction than those whose objects are external. “A passion for learning is preferable, with regard to happiness, to one for riches” (..). And the most blessed possess “great strength of mind; and even when they pursue external objects, are not much affected by a disappointment, but renew their application and industry with the greatest chearfulness.” Here the praise is superlative: “Nothing contributes more to happiness than such a turn of mind” (..). In other words, although the Sceptic does not share the Stoic’s optimism that we can transform ourselves through industry, he by no means divorces industry from happiness itself. Instead, the Sceptic admits the possibility of a tragic existence for many people, whose constitution and habits do not permit satisfying their passions. But for more fortunate people, happiness arises at least in part from the virtue that is central to the Stoic’s ethic. They occupy themselves with diligence and continue their industry when met with failure. The Sceptic also acknowledges industry’s value in his discussion of philosophy’s meager influence on temperament, though in a more subtle way. His initial argument that disposition and temper are immalleable rests on a false dichotomy, between the already virtuous, who can reap no benefit from reformation, and the irredeemably corrupt, for whom there is no hope of reformation. But then he acknowledges the potentially humanizing effects of studying the liberal arts, which, industriously pursued, might offer hope for developing a happier disposition. This hope is 

Immerwahr characterizes both the Epicurean and the Sceptic as pessimistic, apparently about our ability to modify our passions (“Hume’s Essays on Happiness,” ). But this characterization of the Epicurean is misleading. Although he does not have much hope for our ability to modify our passions, he claims that the proper indulgence of those passions can make us happy.

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for those in between the poles of the dichotomy. He describes a program of reform that includes bending the mind toward speculative pursuits, improving the ability to make moral distinctions, and developing a habit of “business or study” that makes indolence seem punishing (..). These efforts require “application,” “continual effort,” and the willingness to “impose a violence” on oneself (..–). Thus, although the Sceptic makes no explicit appeal to industry here, the prescribed course requires the virtue of industry at least in a nascent form. Returning to the Epicurean, the relation between industry and happiness becomes more obscure. Although he shares the Sceptic’s suspicion of efforts to reform human nature, he seems convinced from the outset that our nature is built for pleasure, not industry. But even in his lyrical ode to “elegance and pleasure,” we find intimations that the highest versions of both require something like industry (..n). The Epicurean’s attack on “art and industry” as such is relatively gentle: our most diligent efforts fail to attain nature’s sublimity. He only pillories industry whose object is internal, attempting to remake the self into something with inhuman passions and aims. Though he does claim that “happiness implies ease, contentment, repose and pleasure; not watchfulness, care, and fatigue,” his understanding of care and fatigue sounds more contemplative than industrious (..). He dismisses “severe philosophers” thus: “Away then with all those vain pretences of making ourselves happy within ourselves, of feasting on our own thoughts, of being satisfied with the consciousness of well-doing, and of despising all assistance and all supplies from external objects” (..). Contemplative retreat, which deprives the mind of “foreign occupations and enjoyments,” induces lethargy and melancholy (..). Just before the passage from “Of Refinement in the Arts” in which Hume argues for industry’s importance for happiness, he claims that activity “requires some intervals of repose, which, though agreeable for a moment, yet, if prolonged, beget a languor and lethargy, that destroys all enjoyment” (..). Though the Epicurean does not explicitly recommend industry, he recognizes the danger of immoderate repose. Moreover, when the Epicurean seeks a cure for lethargy from “the divine, the amiable Pleasure,” he is disappointed by how fleeting her satisfactions are. Quickly bored by wine, fruit, and a rose garden of nature’s delights, he lapses into “languor.” Pleasure’s “sister, Virtue,” 

Cf. Lucretius’ reference to “divine pleasure, the guide of life” at line  of On the Nature of Things ().

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

provides the cure (.., ). This is not the Stoic’s virtue: Epicurean sages seize the pleasures of the present in discourse with friends and eros undisturbed by superstitious fear of the gods. They avoid seduction by the promise of vain and fleeting glory. But Hume argues in his own voice (again, in “Of Refinement in the Arts”) that their innocent pursuits benefit greatly from the development of industry. Recall that he claims there that the development of industry promotes invigoration of the mind, refinement in the liberal arts, and social interaction (..). In other words, whether he is aware of it or not, the Epicurean’s happy conversation would best be enjoyed by those with the virtue of industry, or at least by those within a society that values this virtue. Finally, consider the Platonist, who, again, is the only one of these essayists who avoids the word “industry” altogether. He rejects his two predecessors’ framing, beginning with our relationship to the divine, not to nature. Since we were made for contemplating God, he argues, it should be no surprise that pleasures and pursuits vary widely among persons, or even within the same person over time. (The Sceptic, as we have seen, also begins with human nature’s variability.) From the Platonist’s point of view, only resting in God can relieve the resulting suffering. He rejects the promise of both repose and industry. The “voluptuous man” revolves in a circle of frustrating and frustrated desire: “all his happiness proceeds only from that hurry of thought, which takes him from himself, and turns his view from his guilt and misery” (..). But he devotes five times as much space to criticizing the Stoic as he does the Epicurean. The Stoic is an idolater, who worships art that appears to be a product of human industry. If he were wise, his industry would point him to something higher: human works all point toward the genius of their human creators, who yet can only imitate nature, the work of God. This attack, however, gives industry a profound status relative to the end of human life. If we submit to the ascent, the Platonist argues, then contemplating human industry’s cause and effects could lead us to our true end. There is an alloy to this good: our weakness prevents full enjoyment of it, so that many find it insufficient. This failure results from the “narrowness of our faculties” or the “shortness of our lives, which allows not time sufficient to instruct us” in comprehending such goods. Yet the concluding sentence promises that our work may not forever be in vain: “But it is our comfort, that, if we employ worthily the faculties here assigned us, they will be enlarged in another state of existence, so as to render us more suitable worshippers of our maker: And that the task, which can never be finished in time, will be the business of an eternity” (..).

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Two conclusions about industry could follow from the Platonist’s perspective. If one is sympathetic with the Platonist, it appears that industry, properly directed and assisted by grace, can help us ascend the ladder toward our true end. But even if one rejects this perspective, the essay implies that the conclusion of a view with disdain for most human industry is that full happiness in this life is not possible. Both conclusions affirm industry’s importance to happiness. Each of these four essays, in one way or another, therefore implies an important relationship between industry and happiness. It would be difficult to find claims on which all four essayists agree in every nuance. But certain themes emerge, such as industry’s palliative effects on depressive languor, its ability to shift our attention from petty suffering toward other objects, and its relationship to our appreciation of beauty. Overall, these essays promote the sense that a complete understanding of human life requires reflection on industry’s place within it. Industry is not the only theme that receives sustained attention across the four essays; one could trace similar treatments, for example, of beauty’s significance. What does Hume’s treatment of themes from various perspectives imply about how we might understand his conception of human nature? He introduces these essays as efforts to explain the sentiments of sects that naturally appear over time. If each one supports the view that happiness requires industry in some form, this suggests that a need for industry is among the more enduring features of human nature. If not even the Platonist can escape the implication that we need industry for happiness in this life, then this strongly suggests that this need is among the static principles of humanity. This interpretation can illuminate our understanding of Hume’s purpose in writing these perspectival essays. Commentators have noted that they constitute a kind of dialogue, modeled in part on Cicero’s De finibus. Immerwahr and Colin Heydt have both persuasively argued that these essays have a therapeutic rather than merely speculative purpose and that their dialogic character serves the former. Dialogue invites readers to experiences that transform rather than merely inform. Immerwahr and Heydt argue that the goals of this transformation include moderation of the passions through the conflict of four perspectives, which could soften dogmatic adherence to a single approach. But I would add that this moderation proceeds also from the recognition that, despite their 

See Immerwahr, “Hume’s Essays on Happiness,” and Heydt, “Literary Form and Philosophical Purpose.”

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

disagreements, each essayist suggests that the absence of certain features of human life imperils happiness. Recognizing commonalities with people of disparate temperaments should be at least as moderating as showing us that our temperaments have led us to dogmatic hubris about ways of living. These interpretations, however, require taking seriously the possibility that the first three essays provide some genuine insight and that the Sceptic’s role is not simply to reveal the preceding essayists’ failures. We should therefore take seriously the possibility that the Sceptic is not just Hume under the “thinnest possible disguise,” as Robert Fogelin calls him. Hume clearly has most sympathy with the Sceptic. His is by far the longest of the four essays, and there is no introductory notation characterizing the sceptic as we find in each of the other three. (The Platonist, for instance, becomes “the man of contemplation, and philosophical devotion” [..n].) These notations make their corresponding characters seem distant instances of a type. And Hume does in his own voice recommend a form of scepticism as the only reasonable philosophy. Finally, the positioning of the essay as last in the dialectic gives it the air of a victor over opponents who have failed to compel assent. It is too hasty, however, to conclude that we can identify the Sceptic’s position with Hume’s own. Hume introduces all four essays as representatives of perennial opinions, and he would be unlikely to present his own views as thoroughly representative of a type. There is also internal evidence against identification. The Sceptic recites arguments and ideas that Hume defends elsewhere, but he sometimes takes those ideas to an extreme beyond Hume’s own views. Though agreeing, for example, that critics can engage in reasoned debate, the Sceptic leans heavily on the remaining diversity in taste. He confronts his interlocutor with the futility of arguing with someone who prefers a “ tune” to intricate Italian music: “You have not even any single argument, beyond your own taste, which you can employ in your behalf” (..). Yet Hume, in “Of the Standard of Taste,” explains in detail the qualities of good critics that enable them to make such arguments. He does concede that some divergences of taste are ineliminable and beyond dispute, but these are preferences for Ovid versus Tacitus, not Vivaldi versus simple folk airs. (Hume may have enjoyed Scotch tunes himself and also may have underestimated their musical worth.) While Hume would probably agree that you cannot win over the lover of folk tunes, that is different from saying that you have not 



Hume’s Skepticism in the Treatise of Human Nature, .

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a single argument to use in favor of Vivaldi. The Sceptic lists numerous causes of divergent judgments, two of which – education and prejudice – Hume names as relevant to the training of good critics. Qualified judges must pursue a meticulous aesthetic education and overcome certain kinds of prejudice. The Sceptic acts as if these are utterly fixed obstacles to any standard of taste. Most tellingly, Hume adds an extended footnote challenging the Sceptic in his own voice. Although the challenge is a friendly amendment, it does begin, “The Sceptic, perhaps, carries the matter too far” in despairing of philosophy’s use for working on the passions (..n). He continues to list numerous philosophical reflections that may “fortify” and “nourish” people of a certain temperament. Identifying the Sceptic with Hume requires explaining what kind of mask he is wearing here. The presumed identity between Hume and the Sceptic is particularly problematic for my interpretation, if one emphasizes the Sceptic’s pessimism about philosophy’s ability to transform moral character, as Harris does. Harris argues that these essays show philosophy’s failure in this regard and explain Hume’s turn toward politics. They “demanded to be read as, in effect, Hume’s explanation of why he did not think of himself as able to continue with moral philosophy’s traditional project of emotional therapy and improvement of character.” But part of the point of writing dialogues is that they do not demand any particular reading, but invite the reader to enter into a debate that has no tidy moral forestalling future conversation. Philosophical engagement with these essays reveals insights that have the potential to improve the passions and therefore character. But in the footnote in his own voice, Hume’s task is precisely to correct the Sceptic’s too-pessimistic assessment of philosophy’s potential to influence character. As with his exaggeration of the obstacles to aesthetic argument, the Sceptic articulates a view with which Hume has sympathy and carries it a step too far for Hume himself. Harris reads these essays as Hume taking “as his target” the ancient idea that “philosophy might be of use in the search for happiness.” But the possibilities are not only that philosophy might hold a surefire key to happiness or be of no use in finding it at all. This is a false dichotomy akin to the Sceptic’s own initial notion that people are either perfectly virtuous or completely without hope of amendment.

 

“Hume’s Four Essays on Happiness,” –. Ibid., .

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Hume no doubt thinks his very modern-sounding Sceptic has more of the truth about these matters than adherents to sects of any kind. Yet if we take seriously these essays’ perspectival character, it becomes possible to see in their commonalities – as well as in their divergences – insights about Hume’s understanding of which circumstances are likely to be congenial to the nature that underlies all of the perspectives. Encouragement of industry is among those circumstances. That these essays take their names from ancient philosophical sects reinforces the point. Hume cautions his readers at the beginning of “The Epicurean” against assuming that the essays speak for their corresponding ancient sects. But Hume is too much aware of the resonance of these ancient names to be unaware of the significance of his altering the perspective associated with Lucretius, Sextus Empiricus, or Marcus Aurelius. By recalling ancient names as representatives of views that are perennially available, Hume draws the reader’s attention to what endures over time. Among those endurances, according to Hume, is the value for industry in our pursuits of happiness. What changes, he suggests, is not the satisfaction that productive occupation offers. It is instead the encouragement or discouragement of such occupations given by political, social, and economic institutions. If Hume is right, then again, these effects can have secondary effects on humanity. People who live within a system that encourages and rewards industry will become more industrious and to that extent more likely to be happy. The essays on happiness, then, in conjunction with others, do imply the value of some political action. But uncovering these essays’ implication of the value of industry for human happiness is itself a philosophical exercise, which Hume does not despair of having an effect on philosophically inclined individuals. The essays on happiness thus provide an illustration of the way in which Hume uses the Essays to reflect on and even encourage both individual and collective progress, and on the connections between the two.

. Total Work? In his sanguine assessment of trade, manufacturing, and industry, Hume expresses an optimism about market forces that provokes criticism from diverse perspectives. I cannot treat all of these criticisms, but examining one of them will help clarify Hume’s position. In the aftermath of World War II, Josef Pieper identified the status of work as the crucial issue in determining whether or not “the Western tradition” would survive. He warns of a world of “total work,” in which we value nothing that does not

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contribute to the chain of production. Aristotle’s claim that we work in order to have leisure becomes incomprehensible. Pieper argues that workers in such a world suffer from “complete absorption in the social organism, itself rationally planned to utilitarian ends.” Accordingly, workers’ value depends on their contribution to general socioeconomic welfare. Market values determine the understanding of this welfare itself. Liberal arts, defined as activities not pursued for the sake of external products, are therefore denigrated. Within the contemporary university, we might recognize the concerns in Pieper’s question: “Is there a sphere of human activity, one might even say of human existence, that does not need to be justified by inclusion in a five-year plan and its technical organization?” A negative answer threatens our ability to conceive of humanity’s value as anything other than instrumental. In elevating industry’s value, and tying its operation so closely to happiness, is Hume guilty of such instrumentalizing? Does he encourage us to see humans as mere tools for maximizing utilitarian ends? Hume does not consider precisely this worry anywhere in the Essays. But we have already seen that they provide some resources for a response. Far from making any person’s industry only a service to the general good, Hume believes that industry’s value arises in part from its inherent goodness for each person. This is not the logic of someone who sees individual work as a means to an independently defined public good, if that good refers to maximal happiness. On the contrary, Hume thinks that a full conception of happiness must refer to industry. It follows that the notion that human industry’s value derives solely from its instrumental relation to happiness becomes incoherent. It cannot be valuable merely as a means to happiness, as it also partly constitutes that happiness. We may still worry, however, that glorifying industry devalues pursuits that we do not associate with industriousness: will people convinced that their happiness lies in being busy honor anything other than business? Hume answers this question directly, though perhaps with undue optimism. Advances in “the mechanical arts . . . commonly produce some refinements in the liberal; nor can one be carried to perfection, without being accompanied, in some degree, with the other” (..). As “the minds of men [are] roused from their lethargy, and put into a fermentation,” they “turn themselves on all sides, and carry improvements into every art and science,” including ethics and politics (..). 

See Nicomachean Ethics, b–.

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Leisure, .

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Ibid., .

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

The reasoning of this passage – and even more the passage that follows, extending the optimism beyond industry and knowledge to the virtue of humanity – must sound naïve. How could Hume believe that a productive society must be liberating and humane? Could he not imagine a capitalist system whose driving avarice demands that we not waste resources on unproductive enterprises like music, poetry, and liberal education? Hume is careful to present this claim as a general rule, not a universal truth. But suppose we invert our perspective and think of necessary, not sufficient, conditions. Although we may be more aware than Hume of how badly productive economies can neglect knowledge, and how knowledge can serve inhumane ends, is it plausible to suggest that knowledge and humanity can thrive under impoverishing circumstances? Hume does address the objection that the wealth engendered by progress in trade and manufacturing might promote evils. He responds that “wherever luxury ceases to be innocent, it also ceases to be beneficial” (..–). Nonetheless, removing one occasion for vice may do more harm than good, given that we cannot perfect all humanity at once. “By banishing vicious luxury, without curing sloth and indifference to others, you only diminish industry in the state, and add nothing to men’s charity or their generosity” (..). We will not promote the honor of art and philosophy by discouraging pursuits that maintain the conditions of life that serve genius. Removing motives to industry encourages “a mean uncultivated way of life . . . amongst individuals, without society, without enjoyment” (..). Hume’s membership in a privileged class that can speak of the benignity of luxuries without compunction, while others go without, undoubtedly informs his optimism about the relationship between industry and the arts. Yet notice the commonality between his point and the complaint raised by members of oppressed classes, who know the difficulty of finding open space for ideas to breathe in poverty’s confinement. Hume’s claim that economic growth supports artistic development is not far from Virginia Woolf’s central argument in A Room of One’s Own. The women’s college is impoverished because female ancestors were too harried, tied down by childbirth and rearing, and oppressed to earn any excess money to leave their daughters. Even had they engaged in such pursuits, they might not have been allowed to keep what they earned or choose its inheritors. Such a history cannot generate as a legacy “the urbanity, the geniality, the dignity which are the offspring of luxury and privacy and space.” Hume connects industry and knowledge to humanity through the medium of 

Room of One’s Own, .

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conversation, as women and men assemble together. But such conversations, Woolf insists, require material support: “a good dinner is of great importance to good talk . . . The lamp in the spine does not light on beef and prunes.” If we think of the problem in this way, it becomes clearer how far Hume’s vision of refined society is from Pieper’s dystopian world of total work. Berry has coined the helpful term “superfluous value” to describe what Hume is defending against the attacks of the “severe moralists” who censure the consumption of a commercial age. Those moralists, Berry notes, draw on traditions that see poverty as a virtuous choice – a discipline against the relentless desire for more than is necessary. But as I noted above, Hume recognizes poverty’s constraint on freedom and construes poverty as lacking what one needs, rather than being content only with what one needs. Luxury is therefore no longer the vice to which virtuous poverty is opposed, and it becomes possible for us to consider superfluity valuable. Pieper, on the other hand, is concerned about an ethic that must reconceptualize the superfluous as the useful, and which actually scorns any enjoyment of superfluity that does not itself contribute to the utilitarian social machine. Hume sees such enjoyment as good in itself, and vicious only if it is associated with other vicious action. Untrammeled industrial and economic expansion have done great harm, and societies that make room only for the useful prove disagreeable – even intolerable – to anyone with more profound interests. But as Hume reminds us, such reflections do us no benefit if we compare our ills with an imaginary life in some mythical paradise populated with beings very unlike ourselves. Our conceptions of past cultures can be part of such mythology. Because of the antiquarian principle, and because “the sentiments and opinions of civilized ages alone are transmitted to posterity,” it is easy for many to criticize modern luxury and science (..). Yet if we admire ancient dedication to the “liberal” arts, we must acknowledge that institutions that condemned a majority of the population to servility supported that dedication. Berry notes that “the moral critique of luxury . . . in practice has often served to underwrite a hierarchical status quo.” The same could be said of the related critique of industry and our satisfaction in work. The traditional contrast to the “liberal” arts was “servile” work – that is, the occupation fit for slaves. Hume, while undoubtedly being among  

  Ibid., . “Hume and Superfluous Value,” –. Ibid., . Pieper does not elevate those who pursue the liberal arts above those who engage in manual work. In fact, he argues that we ought to elevate our conception of the manual laborer, not debase the intellectual. See especially Leisure, –.

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

those who enjoy the liberal arts as their work, insists that the enjoyment has something in common with the manual laborer who takes pride in his more physical enterprise. Both of them enjoy their occupation as its own reward. Hume recognizes the subversive tendencies of his praise of luxury, trade, and manufacturing, though he softens his voice for a public he wants to calm, not inflame. Yet in the second Enquiry, he acknowledges his radicalism in the third person: “Those, who prove, or attempt to prove, that [luxury and refinement] tend to the increase of industry, civility, and arts, regulate anew our moral as well as political sentiments, and represent, as laudable or innocent, what had formerly been regarded as pernicious and blameable” (EPM .). To change our opinions about economic institutions and their effects is to change our moral sentiments – a change profound in itself, which also touches every aspect of human life. Again, there can be no neat separation between developments in public policy and those in private character. Beyond Hume’s general remarks about the relations between industry, knowledge, and humanity, the Essays have much to say about the humanistic pursuits that resist the ethic of total work and its utilitarian ends. In the next chapter, I consider their treatment of one kind of these pursuits: our production and enjoyment of the beautiful.

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Beauty and its appreciation are not merely pleasant for Hume; they are important. In this chapter, I will explore what the Essays suggest about this importance, beginning with Hume’s assessment of modern eloquence as “much inferior” to the ancients’. I argue that understanding his judgment on these matters requires appreciation of the relation between aesthetic experience and the emotions. I then argue that this relation offers hope for those with emotional problems. Such problems take various forms, and Hume believes some forms are more likely in barbaric, others in civilized, societies. Regardless of their form, however, aesthetic sentiments promise improvement for disorders of the emotions. It is difficult to say what this chapter is about without falsifying Hume’s language. Hume uses “art” and “artist” more broadly than we are apt to now, often to refer to any human attempt to work on raw materials for our own ends. “Beauty” and “taste” are cognate terms, but Hume recognizes that we find beauty in and have a taste for parts of the natural world untouched by human intervention. This appreciation is beyond my scope in this chapter. Our experience of unimproved nature is important to many aesthetic theories, but Hume does not emphasize it in the Essays. “Criticism” is promising; he uses it to refer to a projected but never completed part of the Treatise. But “criticism” is too narrow, since I am interested in the activity of artists as well as audiences and judges.





Yet humans and their activities are natural, and beauty arises from our interaction with other things. We find this thorough intertwining of nature, humanity, and beauty in “Of the Standard of Taste”: “Though it be certain, that beauty and deformity, more than sweet and bitter, are not qualities in objects, but belong entirely to the sentiment, internal or external; it must be allowed, that there are certain qualities in objects, which are fitted by nature to produce those particular feelings” (..). See the  advertisement to Books  and : “If I have the good fortune to meet with success, I shall proceed to the examination of Morals, Politics, and Criticism; which will compleat this Treatise of Human Nature” (T p. ).



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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

I have therefore chosen “composing” to refer to the portion of human life devoted to producing and appreciating beauty created by human activity. Hume refers to paintings and treatises as compositions, as well as fictional stories and pieces of music. The term does have the opposing disadvantage of “criticizing”: “composing” may suggest only the artist’s activity, excluding that of her audience or judges. But criticism, as Hume conceives of it, requires imaginatively reconstructing the artist’s activity to some degree. Even those who never write about art, but only judge it as part of their aesthetic experience, engage in such reconstruction. Critics, then, must be composers as well.

. Much Inferior to the Ancients “Of Eloquence” contains the most direct statement of ancient superiority in the Essays. After some general remarks on the wide historical variations in taste and science, Hume states, “if we be superior in philosophy, we are still, notwithstanding all our refinements, much inferior in eloquence” to the ancients (..). What evidence does Hume offer for his denigration of modern oratory? At first, only indirect signs based on public judgment: instead of explaining the features of ancient eloquence he admires, he notes that the Greeks and Romans held eloquence in such high regard that they scrupled to judge any orators equal to the two greatest (Demosthenes and Cicero) or claim that even these two had attained perfection. But decent modern orators are a dime a dozen, and no one commands the awe awarded to these two. Perhaps more telling, the ancients treated their civilians’ speeches as prized occasions, traveling from all quarters and great distances to hear them. “At London,” on the other hand, “you may see men sauntering in the court of requests, while the most important debate is carrying on in the two houses; and many do not think themselves sufficiently compensated, for the losing of their dinners, by all the eloquence of our most celebrated speakers” (..). I have called public judgment indirect evidence, but it is direct in one sense. Hume thinks that great speeches just are those that the public judges to be great. But he does not leave the public reaction undiagnosed: modern speechmaking’s tepid and disorderly style, he argues, withers in comparison to the ancients’ bold and sublime poetic arts. The latter were better able to express and inspire passion in their listeners, and this skill is their oratory’s central virtue. Hume criticizes the speakers of his own day as too “temperate and calm.” Their sedate oratorical style eschews the imagery, tropes, and flourishes that were so effective in ancient

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assemblies. The ancients were not above calling on the most extreme analogies, or entering physically into their performances, stamping their feet to add force to verbal indignation. Such “vehemence of thought and expression” carries a danger: passion expressed fiercely but ineptly is the province of a clown, not a leader of the polis. But this very danger evinces the greatness of ancient rhetoricians. When Cicero claims that “the rocks and mountains” would be “moved with horror and indignation” at the report of a Roman citizen’s crucifixion, he risks appearing like a madman calling on inanimate objects as witnesses (..–). The most “noble arts and sublime talents” must surround such devices to convey appropriate passion to the audience (..). But here public judgment enters in again: the enduring reverence accorded to Cicero shows that his arts were indeed noble and his talents sublime. Perhaps that reverence endures only because modern audiences cannot watch Cicero thundering away about rocks and mountains, stamping his foot and smiting his brow. Perhaps Hume’s fellows were too sophisticated for such arts; perhaps “our modern customs, or our superior good sense . . . should make our orators more cautious and reserved than the ancient, in attempting to inflame the passions, or elevate the imagination of their audience.” But as with speakers’ temperance and calmness, what appears virtuous becomes a problem to be overcome. If modern audiences possess so much sense and so little sensibility, then modern orators should take up the challenge: “It should make them redouble their art, not abandon it entirely.” What efforts might be effective? Hume’s answer reinforces the centrality of passion to the rhetorical enterprise. Ancient orators were not inspiring passion in their audiences while floating stoically above the fray. “The orator, by the force of his own genius and eloquence, first inflamed himself with anger, indignation, pity, sorrow; and then communicated those impetuous movements to his audience” (..). A Cicero wanting to convey crucifixion’s horrors must first be horrified himself. In light of this centrality of passion, how can Hume ignore the dispute between the philosopher and the orator? Plato’s seminal portrayal of 

 

Hume seems to think that modern writers, unlike modern speakers, are in danger of the contrary problem. In “Of Simplicity and Refinement in Writing,” he says that the progress of learning can lead to an ill-judged “endeavour to please by novelty” that “leads men wide of simplicity and nature, and fills their writing with affectation and conceit” (..). From Cicero’s Against Verres, ... Hume does accord more sophistication to the British parliament than ancient audiences. He concludes a footnote elaborating on this argument thus: “It would be a strange prejudice in favour of antiquity, not to allow a British parliament to be naturally superior in judgment and delicacy to an Athenian mob” (..n).

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

this dispute in the Gorgias climaxes in a fight about passion. Callicles, defending the right of the stronger to rule through manipulative eloquence, defines strength in terms of large appetites, raging passions, and the ability to satisfy them. Socrates replies that such men enslave themselves to the whims of the people whom they manipulate and that his own love for philosophy is more satisfying and empowering. Callicles remains thoroughly unconvinced. Socrates’ brand of manliness cannot impress the Dionysian nature, however much he can fight imperviously in the bitterest cold, drink his companions under the table, and lie all night chastely tangled with the most sensual beauty. This is fighting without exultation, consumption without intoxication, and embracing without sex. “Of Eloquence” contains no traces of this battle. Here, Hume seems blithely unconcerned with rhetoric’s manipulative effects; indeed, one might read him as complaining that modern orators have too few powers of manipulation. But this reading imposes a Platonic or Kantian understanding of manipulation on Hume that he would not accept. As Marc Hanvelt points out in The Politics of Eloquence, Hume’s belief in the inertness of reason alone means that nonmanipulative persuasion cannot be defined by its absence of passion. Adam Potkay goes further: “In overturning the classical faculty psychology that places reason above passion, Hume elevates eloquence from a subrational to a suprarational art.” Hume’s view of the relation between passion and motivation means that rhetoric has an essential role to play in moving the public to good as well as ill. Hume is well aware of the dangers of manipulative rhetoric and the way these dangers are exacerbated in speech (as opposed to writing). In the first Enquiry, he notes that eloquence “at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection; but addressing itself entirely to the fancy or the affections, captivates the willing hearers, and subdues their understanding. Happily, this pitch it seldom attains” (EHU .). He acknowledges ancient concerns about vehement oratory in the original ending to “Of the Liberty of the Press,” mentioning the “ill consequences” of “the harangues of the popular demagogues of Athens and tribunes of Rome” (..d). A free press, he argues, does not present such a danger, since people read





See Politics of Eloquence, especially –, –, –, and –. Hanvelt also emphasizes the way Hume’s analysis of belief, which holds that beliefs vary from other ideas in a peculiar vivacity of feeling, elevates the importance of rhetoric. Rhetoric has a “special ability to produce lively ideas that mimic the empirical evidence of sense impressions” (). Fate of Eloquence, .

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alone rather than among mobs of people who “catch” each other’s passions and can execute immediate violent action. Hume also appeals to sympathy’s effects in “Of Eloquence,” but is silent about its dangers. We catch others’ passions more rapidly and easily when we are with other people, mimicking their expressions, hearing their murmurs and exclamations, and sensing the tension in their bodies. “The movements are mutually communicated between the orator and the audience” (..). But here, the effect is only a reason why “an elevated stile has much better grace in a speaker than in a writer”; in speaking, the elevation is “seconded by the graces of voice and action” (..–). Hanvelt argues that Hume promotes a “modernized version” of an idealized Demosthenean eloquence, “one that has been united with the ‘arts of conversation.’” Such eloquence requires, among other things, “elegance, clarity, simplicity, and ease . . . because they facilitate the mind’s natural processes for forming beliefs and for eliciting passions.” Hume’s double reference to grace in speaking of the orator’s “elevated stile” highlights the importance of beauty to great oratory. He demoralizes rhetoric as he does luxury, divorcing its potential for corruption from its appeal to the passions. To inspire virtuous action and public spirit, speakers must inspire emotion in their audiences, including the emotions of aesthetic appreciation. Sublime speeches inspire noble acts. But in addition to this instrumental end, the beauty of ancient speeches is itself an important good. Potkay writes that, while eighteenth-century “men of letters savored through [Demosthenes] a taste of self-transcendence, that flight hovered between aesthetic thrill and political commitment.” To see the significance of that thrill, we need to understand both Hume’s





 



For the last edition of the Essays, Hume replaces these sentences with a darker assessment: “It must however be allowed, that the unbounded liberty of the press, though it be difficult, perhaps impossible, to propose a suitable remedy for it, is one of the evils, attending those mixt forms of government” (..). Potkay suggests that Hume’s “doctrine of sympathy derives rather directly from classical rhetorical descriptions of ‘action’ or ‘delivery’” (Fate of Eloquence, ). “Action” refers here to an orator’s manner of speaking and physical gestures. Eighteenth-century rhetorical studies made much of Cicero and Demosthenes’ ability to inspire mirroring of emotion.  Politics of Eloquence, . Ibid., . It is not clear that Hume makes any principled distinction between “passion” and “emotion,” but he sometimes uses “passion” in a more restricted sense that excludes most aesthetic sentiments. I discuss this later in Section ... Fate of Eloquence, . Potkay goes on to note that “for eighteenth-century readers Demosthenes’ style derived much of its enrapturing power by being read through the magnifying lens of Longinus’s On the Sublime.” Hanvelt claims that Hume’s own idealized Demosthenes comes from Hume’s reading of Plutarch’s Lives. See Politics of Eloquence, .

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account of aesthetic judgments as grounded in emotions, and the importance of aesthetic emotions in human life. A large part of that importance, I argue, comes from the ability of aesthetic emotions to improve character. From Hume’s commitment to the inertness of lone reason, it follows that () all defects of character, because they involve action and the will, include defects of emotions and () improving such defects requires emotions, because reason alone can neither extinguish nor contravene emotion’s force. For emotional defects, the cure must fit the disease.

. Aggressive and Melancholy Passional Problems .. Aggression Before explaining how aesthetic experience might provide therapy, some diagnosis is in order. One emotional defect that Hume is concerned about is a preponderance of emotions that he calls boisterous, fierce, barbarous, and cruel. I will call these emotions “aggressive” rather than violent, because “violent” has a technical meaning for Hume that needs to remain distinct. Although Hume recognizes diversity in ancient temperaments, he ascribes a greater degree of aggressive emotions to ancient peoples overall than to modern ones. This preponderance of aggression was not confined to Greece and Rome. In the History, when discussing the manners of England’s ancient inhabitants, he describes the Anglo-Saxons as “addicted to intemperance, riot, and disorder” (H :). The violence of ancient war and the domineering of slavery provide two explanations for this aggression. Another explanation, Hume argues, is women’s exclusion from polite society. I have mentioned the discussion of this issue in “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences,” whose themes include the significance of conversation for social development. Conversation and manners may seem like small beer relative to battle and enslavement, but conversation can be the setting for private violence, as the battlefield is the setting for public violence. 



In “Of National Characters,” for instance, he writes that “the A were as remarkable for ingenuity, politeness, and gaiety, as the T for dulness, rusticity, and a phlegmatic temper” (..). It is also important to remember the significance of the eighteenth-century concept of “manners.” There is extensive literature about the modern development of this concept and the related “politeness.” See, e.g., Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History, especially chapter , “Virtue, Rights, and Manners”; Lawrence Klein, “Liberty, Manners, and Politeness”; and Nicholas

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Despite his praise of ancient oratory, Hume finds in it and in other ancient writing signs of inferior conversational habits. In “Of the Standard of Taste,” he goes so far as to say that the “want of humanity and of decency” of characters in ancient poetry diminishes these compositions and blocks the sympathy of more civilized audiences (..). Ancient compositions exhibit scurrility, vanity, licentiousness, and immodesty. Missing are the habits of restrained deference that are important for maintaining peace between interlocutors. For people to converse amicably, they must refrain from expressing their superior opinions of themselves. When others express their pride, we cannot but believe their self-assessment to some degree, and once we have sympathetically absorbed this opinion, we cannot but compare our own merit to that of others. This process “shocks our own pride” and “causes the disagreeable passion of humility” (T ...). In civilized societies, sympathy with this painful effect of conceit leads to moral disapproval of it, and virtuous people learn to hide their self-satisfaction. In “Rise and Progress,” he says that this “mutual deference or civility” pleases more than any other art of conversation, since it “leads us to resign our own inclinations to those of our companion, and to curb and conceal that presumption and arrogance, so natural to the human mind” (..). Such reticence is especially important when there is real inequality between conversation partners. If “a person’s situation may naturally beget any disagreeable suspicion in him, it is the part of good-manners to prevent it, by a studied display of sentiments, directly contrary to those of which he is apt to be jealous” (..). This consideration explains Hume’s belief that social interaction with women helps cultivate conversational deference. Polite people take special care in speaking to those who fear their contempt, and in patriarchal societies, women fear contempt. In addition to the desire of the sexes to please one another and the example of “female softness and modesty,” the “company of virtuous women” teaches manners through the fear of offending women whose “delicacy . . . puts every one on his guard” (..). Without training in reticence, people may attack others verbally without even realizing it. It is fair to assume that some braggarts mean only to express their own self-conception, not wound anyone else’s. But if Hume is right, most



Phillipson, “Politics and Politeness.” For a recent treatment of Hume’s concept of politeness that criticizes Pocock’s emphasis on virtuous sociability, see Tolonen, “Politeness, Paris, and the Treatise.” In the second Enquiry, Hume adds that conceit’s being a more common danger than excessive modesty contributes to this moral disapproval (EPM .; cf. T ...).

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others will be wounded nonetheless. Add in a little pugilism, and the interchange becomes a close occasion for violence. Hume does not claim that the presence of women will magically erase this problem. He also argues that a civilized monarchy, as opposed to a republic, can improve manners, because power in a monarchy requires deference to the court: the “long train of dependence from the prince to the peasant” aids modesty’s development by giving everyone a motive to please those in front of her in the train (..–). But he does ascribe serious aesthetic failures to the exclusion of women from polite society: it may be “the true reason why the ancients have not left us one piece of pleasantry that is excellent . . . though many of their serious compositions are altogether inimitable” (..). Is this a serious criticism? Does a culture fail in any important way by producing only coarse humor rather than witty and subtle comedy? Hume’s answer is both yes and no. Such a culture may produce many treasures; it may even hand down to a distant posterity the materials to revivify itself centuries later. But some gentle yet important emotions will be foreign to its people. In banishing women from polite society, it foregoes the refinement produced by free and active conversation between men and women. There are points of view from which it cannot see, and sympathies it cannot feel. These may indeed be serious failings. Spirited and aggressive passions drive action and sustain existence in the face of suffering. But they also encourage short-sighted behavior and cruelty. In Plato’s Symposium, the women must leave the room before real conversation can begin. Hume insists that a society that sees such banishment as necessary cannot help but produce too many men like Alcibiades. ..

Delicacy and Melancholy

Hume believes his own culture to be less cruel and less enamored with martial violence. “Treachery and cruelty, the most pernicious and most odious of all vices,” he says, “seem peculiar to uncivilized ages” (..). A civilized culture may coexist with ferocious, lying men, but it does not celebrate them. When Homer “represents heroism in  and prudence in , he intermixes a much greater degree of ferocity in the former, and of cunning and fraud in the latter, than  would admit of” (..). But civilization has its own woes. Hume’s Essays evince a concern with melancholic emotions, which coheres with the self-conception of the modern age. We associate with Nietzsche the thesis that modern life,

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deprived of heroic thumos and losing religious consolation, creates nihilistic danger – a state of “joyless unfruitfulness.” But by the middle of the previous century, the notion that modern people were unusually prone to melancholy was already commonplace. England, the “region of the spleen,” produced more than one tome on this modern epidemic. Hume himself composed no extended treatment of melancholy. But he does address issues that the early moderns associated with this disorder. Melancholy, like aggression, requires a therapy of the emotions. ... Melancholy Themes “Melancholy” is a protean term with a complex history. In The Nature of Melancholy: From Aristotle to Kristeva, Jennifer Radden provides a guide to its diverse meanings across the centuries. “Melancholy” has been used to refer to at least four different categories: “fleeting moods, mental disorders ranging from severe to very mild, normal reactions, and long-term character traits.” Even within these categories, the term’s referent has varied, ranging from the very specific (a psychological disorder with peculiar cognitive or affective manifestations) to the extremely general (any mental disorder whatsoever). Nonetheless, she identifies four enduring themes in writings about melancholy, one of which is this variety itself. The others include the identification of fear and sadness without cause (or without sufficient cause) as melancholy’s central subjective states, the linking of melancholy to genius and creativity, and the association of melancholy with idleness (with action and labor, especially meaningful labor, as the cure). Radden warns against inferring from the continuity of these themes that we have access to a unified, static pathology over time that is merely described in different ways. At best, we have something approaching a family resemblance term. This warning is important to bear in mind when thinking about what the Essays have to say about melancholy. Hume has no access to the concepts of contemporary psychology, and his notion of melancholy includes but goes beyond a disease. Each of Radden’s last three themes is present in the Essays. The first, the identification of both fear and sadness as melancholic affects, may seem

 



Nietzsche, “Schopenhauer as Educator,” . The absence in this chapter of a discussion of the unpublished essay “Of Suicide” may seem odd. But that essay’s primary task is to defend the permissibility of suicide against what Hume sees as the superstitious prohibition of it, not to examine the melancholy that might lead someone to consider it. I discuss the characterization of superstition in “Of Suicide” in the final chapter.   Nature of Melancholy, . Ibid.,  Ibid., .

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

strange. Current psychological taxonomies distinguish depressive disorders from those whose primary symptoms are fears or delusions. But this dichotomy gains ascendancy in the nineteenth century, largely through the work of Emil Kraepelin. Previous discussions made no such distinction. In The English Malady (), George Cheyne lists among symptoms of the “Vapours” “a deep and fixed Melancholy, wandering and delusory Images on the Brain, and Instability and Unsettledness in all the intellectual Operations, Loss of Memory, Despondency, Horror and Despair.” Hume also associates sorrow with fear. In “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” he describes the superstitious temperament as “subject to certain unaccountable terrors and apprehensions, proceeding either from the unhappy situation of private or public affairs, from ill health, from a gloomy and melancholy disposition, or from the concurrence of all these circumstances” (..). Hume envisions an amalgam of passions, with a correspondingly complex set of psychological results. He explains superstitious people’s propensity to submit to priests as “founded on fear, sorrow, and a depression of spirits,” which “represents the man to himself in such despicable colours, that he appears unworthy, in his own eyes, of approaching the divine presence” (..). The superstitious disposition ensnares its host with a sense of dangers she is too weak to overcome – a sense that arises from and reinforces paralyzing self-disgust. Hume describes the relevant fears as “unaccountable” and as effects of general situational factors or personal disposition rather than reasonable responses to threats. This explanation fits the notion that melancholic fear and sorrow is “without cause” or “without sufficient cause.” Writers on melancholy distinguished various ways that these passions could be groundless. Robert Burton, for instance, in The Anatomy of Melancholy () gives examples of fear and sorrow as extreme reactions to objects or events, as free-floating moods without intentional objects, and as responses to imaginary states of affairs. Sufferers may even believe that they are made of glass or, without reason, that they or their friends are dead or soon to be killed. 



The current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-) separates depressive disorders from anxiety disorders, which include phobias and panic disorders. It also includes, however, a reversion to the older association between melancholic disorders and fear or anxiety, with an “anxious distress” specifier to help identify and guide the treatment of patients with bipolar or depressive disorders who also struggle with anxiety. See the American Psychiatric Association’s “Highlights of Changes from DSM-IV-TR to DSM-V,” at http://dsm.psychiatryonline.org/doi/ ./appi.books..changes.   Nature of Melancholy, . English Malady, . Anatomy of Melancholy, .

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Hume’s explanation of superstitious people’s “unaccountable terrors and apprehensions” likewise acknowledges diverse origins and symptoms. Some come to superstition from difficult situations, whereas others begin from some physical disease or unfortunate temperament. Regardless, “where real objects of terror are wanting, the soul, active to its own prejudice, and fostering its predominant inclination, finds imaginary ones, to whose power and malevolence it sets no limits” (..–). Hume thus explains how unhealthy passions can cause what we might classify as a cognitive break (believing in imaginary spirits), generating another set of corresponding passions, more violent than before. The linking of melancholy to genius and creativity had the peculiar inflection in the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of being associated with moral and aesthetic sensibility. Those with strong sensibility (akin to our current concept of “sensitivity”) were thought to be delicate and responsive in body and mind. Thus Cheyne lists the following attributes as signs of overly relaxed, loose, and tender nerves: THOSE who Stutter, Stammer, have a great Difficulty of Utterance, speak very Low, lose their Voice without catching Cold, grow Dumb, Deaf, or Blind, without an Accident or an Acute Distemper; are quick, prompt, and passionate; . . . have a great Degree of Sensibility; are quick Thinkers, feel Pleasure or Pain the most readily, and are of most lively Imagination.

As this cluster of symptoms suggests, strong sensibility could be both blessing and curse: such people were exceptionally vulnerable, thoughtful, and receptive. “Composers” would have been well represented in the class of nervous patients. As Stephen Ahern notes, “In aesthetic theory, sensibility is a quality of refined receptivity to one’s environment, and is the source both of creative genius and of tasteful appreciation of artistic production.” Most eighteenth-century writers considered women especially prone to weak constitutions, and sensibility was often seen as a weakness of constitution. Yet the general association between sensibility and artistic genius did not promote the notion that sensibility made women better writers, thinkers, or artists. Physicians used various strategies to avoid this inference, including positing an exclusively (almost) male version of   

English Malady, –. “The Sex of Spleen and the Body of Sensibility in Early Romantic Lyric,” in Colburn, English Malady, . For the story of an exceptional woman diagnosed with hypochondria, see Nancy Isenberg, “Without Swapping Her Skirt for Breeches: The Hypochondria of Giustiniana Wynne, AngloVentian Woman of Letters,” in Colburn, English Malady, –.

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melancholy – hypochondria – that produced works of genius. Another strategy admitted that masculine nerve disorders inclined their victims to weaknesses but portrayed men as able to draw on other strengths to conquer these. In Glen Colburn’s introduction to The English Malady: Enabling and Disabling Fictions, he notes that writers who admitted the weakening effects of hypochondria sometimes exhorted men to fortify themselves “by adopting a new kind of internal, private heroism.” On these points, Hume proves to be both within and beyond his time. He too argues that strong sensibility enables discernment of beauties and refinements of character. In “Of the Standard of Taste,” Hume places “that delicacy of imagination, which is requisite to convey a sensibility of those finer emotions” of beauty at the head of his list of characteristics of qualified critics (..). Delicate taste enables production as well as appreciation of art: Ovid and Lucretius were “delicate writers” (..). Hume also portrays sensibility as Janus-faced. He begins the Essays with a dialectical study of two sides of delicacy, “Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion.” Delicate temperaments of both kinds make people vulnerable to pains that others do not feel or feel less strongly. Those with delicacy of passion suffer from emotional rawness, elevated and depressed in turn. Such people are “extremely sensible to all the accidents of life” and experience “a lively joy upon every prosperous event, as well as a piercing grief, when they meet with misfortunes and adversity” (..–). Those with delicacy of taste, on the other hand, possess “the same sensibility to beauty and deformity of every kind, as [someone with delicacy of passion] does to prosperity and adversity, obligations and injuries” (..). Both traits enlarge “the sphere both of our happiness and our misery, and [make] us sensible to pains as well as pleasures, which escape the rest of mankind” (..). Hume even suggests that delicacy of taste can produce the heterogeneous pleasure/pain that the literary cult of sensibility celebrated. It is not quite the “temple of Delight” where “Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shine,” but he does write that studies of beauty “produce an agreeable melancholy” (..). Hume’s treatment of the relationship between women and sensibility, however, departs significantly from the norm. He is not above referring to women as the weaker sex: “nature has given man the superiority above woman, by endowing him with greater strength both of mind and body” (..). And he does attribute to women greater delicacy or sensibility than men in general. But instead of adopting a defensive posture, he 

Colburn, English Malady, .

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

John Keats, “Ode on Melancholy.”

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admits that this greater delicacy may make women superior judges of taste to men of equal intelligence. In most editions of “Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion,” he remarks that “women, who have more delicate passions than men, have also a delicate taste of the ornaments of life, of dress, equipage, and the ordinary decencies of behavior. Any excellency in these hits their taste much sooner than ours” (..a). This praise is not as superficial as it may seem. In ascribing to women greater propensity to delicacy of taste, Hume credits them with an attribute that he believes to be important to happiness and social progress. What tempers the praise is that he also ascribes to women a greater vulnerability to the negative version of the trait, delicacy of passion. In “Of Essay-Writing,” Hume claims that “Women of Sense and Education . . . are much better Judges of all polite Writing than Men of the same Degree of Understanding.” He also assures his “fair Readers” that “all Men of Sense, who know the World, have a great Deference for their Judgment of such Books as ly within the Compass of their Knowledge, and repose more Confidence in the Delicacy of their Taste, tho’ unguided by Rules, than in all the dull Labours of Pedants and Commentators” (EWU .). Undeniably, these passages smack of condescending flattery, which may be why Hume withdrew them. Yet his serious remarks about women’s importance for maintaining and improving civil society remain. His respectful correspondence with a number of women, moreover, suggests a rare willingness to take women seriously as critics and interlocutors. The last theme is melancholy’s association with idleness, with the corollary that useful or meaningful work can be a cure. Burton writes: “Nothing begets [melancholy] sooner, increaseth and continueth it oftener, than idleness.” Cheyne agrees with those who blame luxury for the idleness that causes melancholy. Though ridiculing the notion that coffee, tea, or chocolate accounts for melancholy’s increase, he argues that the problem stems from the overall variety and richness of modern diets, along with ever-increasing efforts to make daily life as easy as possible – all of which 





Hume removed the sentence about women’s “excellency in taste” for the  edition, and none of this passage appeared in the  edition. “Of Essay Writing” was only in the  edition of the second volume of Essays, Moral and Political. See, for example, Hume’s letter to Madame de Boufflers on July , , in which he replies to her criticisms of John Home’s Douglas. He attempts to defend the play but acknowledges that all her criticisms are valid. He asks her to judge it on a “second perusal” but says that he will ultimately defer to her superior judgment (Letters :–). Anatomy of Melancholy, .

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

are fed by increasing trade and wealth in modern economies. “Is it any Wonder then, that the Diseases which proceed from Idleness and Fulness of Bread, should increase in Proportion, and keep equal Pace with those Improvements of the Matter and Cause of Diseases?” Given Hume’s high opinion of industry, we should expect him to be sympathetic to the notion that idleness produces melancholy, as indeed he is. Though rest is necessary, prolonged periods of it “beget a languor and lethargy, that destroys all enjoyment” (..). We know that he believed that idle and sedentary habits contributed to his own struggle with “the disease of the learned.” Hume distinguishes himself, however, by severing the link between luxury and idleness. As we have seen, he argues that economic advancement and luxury do not lead to unhealthy idleness but rather increase industry and its concomitant “stock of labor,” to the benefit of the populace as a whole. ... Modern Melancholy The eighteenth century had its peculiar inflections of melancholy, but of course melancholic emotions in general are not uniquely modern. The Essays do give some reason to think, however, that aspects of modern culture exacerbate those emotions. Consider fear and sadness without cause. Hume consistently associates the tendency to these pathological emotions with superstition. In “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” he claims that some people are prone to superstition because of natural temperament, occasional misfortunes, or illness. A disposition to fear and sadness can be part of natural temperament, so it seems that melancholic emotions cause superstition, not the other way around. But Hume’s account is more complex. Superstitious devotions or sects may arise out of people’s peculiarities, but as their practice evolves, they encourage the growth of melancholic emotions in those under their influence. The conduits of this influence are priests with increasing authority. As a natural outgrowth of a low view of humankind, superstition makes people believe they need an intercessor with God (..). As the religion advances, it “renders men tame and abject, and fits them for slavery,” even if, we may assume, this was not their natural disposition (..).

 

English Malady, . See Hume’s letter to an anonymous physician from March or April  in Letters :.

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The superstitious disposition, in other words, makes people think that they need priests. Once the priestly order is in place, priests have every reason to reinforce the laity’s humility. In “Of National Characters,” Hume describes the priesthood as a profession that turns men into either hypocrites or self-satisfied knaves, forcing them to sublimate anger into hidden vengefulness and binding them together in the common project of subduing the rest of humankind. To maintain their power, priestly masters must cultivate a race of slaves. Too few communicants could resist the message, preached from authority and reinforced by power and practice, that they are lowly, vile creatures, unworthy to judge or think for themselves. One needs no chemical imbalance to develop melancholic emotions under such circumstances. Ancient religions had their share of priests and other intermediaries, and Hume makes no principled distinction between ancient and modern superstitions in “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” as he does in the Natural History of Religion. But it is clear from the essay that he thinks that priests get more out of hand as time goes on. The bulk of “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm” consists of a discussion of three influences of false religion: one is superstition’s tendency to elevate the priesthood, and the other two concern superstition’s increasingly deleterious effects over time. Enthusiasm – the effect of violent and aggressive passions – initially has worse effects, but superstition sneaks in like a lamb and then attacks like a lion, upending social order. “How smoothly did the  church advance in her acquisition of power? But into what dismal convulsions did she throw all , in order to maintain it?” (..). Finally, superstition opposes, while enthusiasm promotes, civil liberty’s progress, both because of priestly tyranny and because followers of superstitious religions are taught to be comfortable only when servile. In a passage that he removed only in the  edition, Hume writes, “Modern Judaism and popery, (especially the latter) being the most unphilosophical and absurd superstitions which have yet been known in the world, are the most enslaved by their priests” and adds that the Church of England inherited the “propensity to priestly power and dominion” (..d). This particular source of melancholy thus reaches heights in the modern world that would have been unknown to the ancients. 

The distinction between superstition and enthusiasm would have already been familiar to many of Hume’s readers. For a discussion of Addison’s treatment of it in The Spectator, see Harris, Hume, –. For a discussion of Hume’s essay’s similarity to an essay in The Old Whig (first pointed out by Duncan Forbes), see Susato, “Taming ‘The Tyranny of Priests,’” –.

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Although the Reformation had diminished the Roman church’s power, its influence over the character of European people continued. Hume develops these ideas in the Natural History of Religion, published as part of Four Dissertations in . Polytheism, he claims, produces a range of qualities that sound quite attractive. When we imagine the gods as only a little higher than ourselves, they can be objects of emulation and even competition – “Hence activity, spirit, courage, magnanimity, love of liberty, and all the virtues which aggrandize a people.” Later monotheistic religions, however, insist on God’s infinite distance from humanity – a belief that “is apt, when joined with superstitious terrors, to sink the human mind into the lowest submission and abasement” (NHR .). Ancient religions promoted activity and spirit; modern religion promotes passivity and subjugation. Hume takes his criticism farther. Modern religion’s tentacles reach more deeply into the psyche, exacerbating the harm. He does not claim that religious adherence has become more common, only that it is now more influential. Relative to modern religion, “As many people gave their assent to [the superstition of antiquity]; though that assent was not seemingly so strong, precise, and affirmative” (NHR .). This stronger assent is more emotional response than intellectual conviction. Although monotheistic religions may be more philosophically reasonable than polytheistic ones, few people arrive at religious faith through rational argumentation. Furthermore, such argumentation, removed from experience and common life, is unlikely to produce enduring vivid belief. But here the priests’ tactics prove their worth. Where rational persuasion is lacking, priests supply fear and rituals to placate the fear. Peculiarly absurd ordeals satisfy the need to feel that one has done something specifically for God, as opposed to simple virtuous behavior with its obvious benefits to self and others (NHR ., .). The art and poetry at the service of the priests





In “Whether the British Government Inclines More to Absolute Monarchy, or to a Republic,” Hume does write that the “clergy have much lost their credit: Their pretensions and doctrines have been ridiculed; and even religion can scarcely support itself in the world” (..). This is not, however, Hume’s own voice, but that of an imagined defender of the notion that the British government leans toward a republic. That earlier editions had said that the clergy had “entirely” lost their credit shows both that Hume cared about this interlocutor’s arguments being respectable and that his own views about the influence of the clergy probably changed over time. The change was for the – edition of Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects. The older version last appeared in the  edition of Essays, Moral and Political. See NHR ., ., and .. Cf. the Sceptic’s claim that “an abstract, invisible object, like that which natural religion alone presents to us, cannot long actuate the mind, or be of any moment in life” (..).

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reinforce terror with tales of malicious devils who love to possess human souls, and “seas of brimstone” ready to ignite eternal tortures (NHR .). By contrast, ancient religious fables promise no such tortures to the common devotee. They did promise that it was bad practice to cross purposes with gods, but they did not torment people with the notion that they must perform humiliating rituals to purge themselves from guilt into which they fell simply by being born. Hume gives evidence that there was no shame for the ancients in publicly ridiculing ideas of an afterlife, and he claims that religion was an “easy and light” burden for ancient peoples (NHR . and ). A “traditional, mythological religion,” he concludes, “happily makes no such deep impression on the affections and understanding” as a “systematical, scholastic one” (NHR .). Modern religion’s final psychological torment comes in the form of traumatic cognitive dissonance. Latter-day believers conceive of the divine as more powerful and knowing, but they do not develop a genuine corresponding notion of divine goodness. They therefore ascribe to God horrifying acts of vengeance. Human parents who punished their children in such ways would be grossly vicious, but true believers must praise God for these terrible acts. The nonpsychopathic believer thus experiences ongoing spiritual turmoil: The heart secretly detests such measures of cruel and implacable vengeance; but the judgment dares not but pronounce them perfect and adorable. And the additional misery of this inward struggle aggravates all the other terrors, by which these unhappy victims to superstition are for ever haunted. (NHR .)

This is an advanced form of psychological pain, corresponding to an advanced, though perverse, notion of the divine. Hume presents all of these tendencies as symptomatic of popular and sometimes “false” religion, preserving the possibility of a true, if rare, religious practice without detrimental emotional consequences. He also claims that enthusiasm gains strength in the modern world, particularly in sects of Protestant 

Whether or not Hume believes “true religion” to be a genuine possibility, and what its content might be in any case, are questions of lively scholarly debate. For accounts of Humean true religion that give it the most substance and possible influence, see Livingston, Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium, –, and Andre C. Willis, “Potential Use-Value of Hume’s ‘True Religion’” and Toward a Humean True Religion. Other important discussions include Don Garrett, “What’s True about Hume’s ‘True Religion’?”; Lorne Falkenstein, “Hume on ‘Genuine,’ ‘True,’ and ‘Rational’ Religion”; Terence Penelhum, “Hume’s Views on Religion”; Willem Lemmens, “‘True Religion’ of the Sceptic”; Immerwahr, “Hume’s Aesthetic Theism”; and Paul Russell, Riddle of Hume’s Treatise, –.

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dissenters, with some positive psychological effects for its devotees. Nonetheless, in both the Essays and the Natural History, he also argues that modern religions provide unprecedented sources of fear and sadness without cause – terrifying common people with threats from an angry God and humiliating them with continual emphasis on their worthlessness. Moving to the link between melancholic emotions and sensibility, the notion that modern people were progressing in delicacy was so commonplace that Hume does not bother to argue for it, though he makes the occasional offhand remark showing that he accepts it. His surmise that the ancients lacked civility in conversation shows that he conceives of them as lacking what had become commonplace sensitivity. Modern delicacy is so advanced beyond such insensibility that it is in danger of veering too far in the other direction: “modern politeness, which is naturally so ornamental, runs often into affectation and foppery, disguise and insincerity” (..–). Sensitivity in itself makes one vulnerable to melancholic emotions, as Hume argues in “Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion.” But he also believes that the related dedication to genius and the sciences brought its own melancholy dangers. Cheyne and others believed that too much time spent in study instead of physical pursuits increased the risk of developing nervous disorders. Hume identifies intellectual work among the causes of his own youthful melancholy. He writes to an anonymous physician that “there are two things very bad for this Distemper, Study & Idleness,” and “two things very good, Business & Diversion” (Letters :). Throughout his life, he retains the belief that studious occupations can be dangerous for health. In December of , he warns his nephew about studying too much (Hume to David Hume the Younger, in Letters :). Hume does not think that scholarly life, even vigorously engaged in, necessarily produces melancholy. In later adulthood, he expresses confidence in his own “robust Constitution” and unusual ability to endure marathons of study and writing (Hume to Adam Smith, May , in Letters :). 



Cf. Burton (quoting Ficino): “other men look to their tools; a painter will wash his pencils; a smith will look to his hammer, anvil, forge: an husbandman will men his plough-irons, and grind his hatchet if it be dull; a falconer or huntsman will have an especial care of his hawks, hounds, horses, dogs, &c. a musician will string and unstring his lute, &c., only scholars neglect that instrument, their brain & spirits (I mean), which they daily use, and by which they range over all the world, which by much study is consumed. See thou (saith Lucian) twist not the rope so hard, till at length it break” (Anatomy of Melancholy, ). Actually, Hume seems to have arrived at this view of himself much earlier, only months after his letter to the anonymous physician. In May of , he writes from La Flèche to James Birch: “For my part, I spend alwise more of my Time in Study, than it would be proper for you, who certainly wou’d choose to give one half of the day to Company, & the other to Reading” (Mossner, “Hume at La Flèche,” ).

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But he accepts the notion that studious pursuits put one at risk for melancholic disorders and that modern science’s encouraging young men to become scholars rather than soldiers therefore promoted such disorders. But what of the compensations of modern economic progress, which Hume believes encourage activity and industry? Here there is reason for hope. Business and manufacturing provide occupation for common people, without the violent disadvantages of other solutions to boredom, such as pillaging neighboring countries. Two caveats are in order, however. First, given industry’s nascent state in much of eighteenth-century Europe, its promise was at best a well-founded hope. Hume believed that economic progress could improve the lives of all classes of people in civilized nations, but he knew that such progress was in its earliest stages. Second, he also recognized that the connections between economic development, individual happiness, and virtue were vulnerable. Certain economic innovations, he believed, could corrupt the people and their industry, such as amassing a large public debt. We have seen before his concern in “Of Public Credit” that public debt encourages “an useless and unactive life” as public stock falls into “the hands of idle people, who live on their revenue” (..). These men “will sink into the lethargy of a stupid and pampered luxury, without spirit, ambition, or enjoyment,” as well as interrupting the connection between labor and superfluous goods that provides an essential motive for others’ industry (..–). Siphoning away production’s fruits to remote cities would introduce profound inequalities, which demoralize the poor and encourage the few and powerful rich to “conspire to lay the whole burthen on the poor, and oppress them still farther, to the discouragement of all industry” (..). By this reckoning, modern life introduces risk factors for melancholy, in its more advanced superstition, its increased sensibility, and its emphasis on scientific learning rather than more active pursuits. Its developing economy also introduces hope for a different kind of active life for a broader distribution of people, but one that had yet to be fulfilled and was inherently precarious. One final consideration suggests that Hume would have been aware of the dangers of melancholic emotions: his own advocacy of women’s increasing prominence in society. Women had long been considered more vulnerable to nervous disorders of a destructive sort. But concern about this vulnerability for the sake of women themselves was novel. In ancient literature, women’s mental and emotional disorders typically trouble male writers only as presenting obstacles or threats to men or sometimes to the social order as a whole. Hume may have shared these concerns, perhaps in a more constructive sense of wanting to channel

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women’s delicacy into more socially beneficial forms. Pocock suggests that the Essays may have been inspired by Hume’s thinking “that the modern polity he wished to advocate was founded on opinion, that opinion was formed in conversation, and that the participation of women in both reading and conversation . . . had reached a level where attention must be paid to their inclusion in the formation of the polity.” On this issue, however, Hume’s experience would have led him to concerns that went beyond the health of the polity to the health of the self. In a letter to Madame de Boufflers in , he attempts to console her over her disappointment in hopes of marriage with the Prince de Conti, writing: “I foresee that your lively passions, continually agitated, will tear in pieces your tender frame: melancholy and a broken constitution may then prove your lot, and the remedy, which could now preserve your health and peace of mind, may come too late to restore them” (Letters :). Madame de Boufflers’s problem was an ancient one: she felt betrayed by a former lover. But Hume’s letter is not a screed against her vice or even her imprudence. It is the consolation of a friend, who is concerned for this woman for her own sake. Because modernity makes such friendship possible, it also makes the melancholic suffering of women important.

. Therapeutic Beauty .. Distinctions in the Passions How are emotional disorders significant for Hume’s views on taste and composition? They are significant because they explain one way in which aesthetics, for Hume, is not merely theoretically intriguing but profoundly significant for human life and happiness. Producing, enjoying, and reflecting on beauty can train our emotions and therefore our character, in ways that can help both the aggressive and the melancholy. To see this, we need to consider which emotions would predominate in a virtuous Humean character. I will argue that these emotions must be not only calm and strong, but also warm. In the terminology of the Treatise, emotions are reflective impressions; that is, they are feelings that “proceed from” sensations. Hume says that reflective impressions “are the passions, and other emotions resembling  

Barbarism and Religion, Vol. II, . Hume distinguishes between passions and character traits; only a significant propensity to passions constitutes the latter. See EPM .n.

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them” (T ...). He then divides the reflective impressions along two axes: calm/violent, on the one hand, and strong/weak, on the other. Sentiments of taste, including “the sense of beauty and deformity in action, composition, and external objects,” are typically calm. Love, hatred, grief, joy, pride, and humility are typically violent, and Hume writes that these are “properly call’d passions” (T ...). Hume immediately qualifies this apparently tidy taxonomy: “This division is far from being exact. The raptures of poetry and music frequently rise to the greatest height,” and typically violent passions “may decay into so soft an emotion, as to become, in a manner imperceptible” (T ...) He introduces this “vulgar and specious” distinction for expository convenience but does not pretend to be carving our emotional world at its joints. Nonetheless, there is some cause for ascribing to Hume a distinction between “passions,” strictly speaking, and “emotions.” At the beginning of Treatise , “emotions” seems to refer a broader category that includes the passions. His tendency to refer to aesthetic impressions as “sentiments,” not passions, as well as his distinction between delicacy of taste and passion, provide further reasons for this scrupulosity. On the other hand, we cannot equate violent emotions and passions, since Hume sometimes uses the term “calm passion.” In general, I will try to use “emotion” as the more general term, but I will not hesitate to use the term “passion” when Hume does so himself. Regardless, we should not let these scruples overshadow the point that sentiments of beauty and other emotions are the same kind of thing for Hume. They are all affective mental states, which we experience as pleasurable or painful in a variety of ways. The distinction between calmness and violence concerns an impression’s level of emotional agitation, whereas that between strength and weakness concerns its power to motivate action. Hume writes that 





There are precedents for the distinction between calm and violent passions in Hutcheson and Malebranche, among others, although the nature of their distinctions differs from Hume’s. Hutcheson, drawing on Malebranche, associates violent passions with “bodily motions” (Essay, ). On the differences between Malebranche’s distinction and Hume’s, see Éléonore Le Jallé, “Hume, Malebranche, and the Self-Justification of the Passions,” . See T ...–, ..., and ...; DP ., ; and EPM .. Hume’s Treatise discussion of why reason alone cannot generate moral distinctions appeals to the reason/passion distinction, but moral sentiments are typically calm emotions. I am agreeing with Árdal that the “fundamentum divisionis” between calm and violent passions is “emotional intensity” (Passion and Value in Hume’s Treatise, ). This way of understanding the distinction between calm and violent passions sidesteps the issues raised by analyses that emphasize the specific passions named at T ..., such as James Fieser’s in “Hume’s Classification of the Passions.” Fieser’s approach relies on a type/token distinction, so that moral approval is a calm

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“passions influence not the will in proportion to their violence, or the disorder they occasion in the temper; but, on the contrary, . . . when a passion has once become a settled principle of action, and is the predominant inclination of the soul, it commonly produces no longer any sensible agitation” (T ...). It is true that we can mistake calm passions for reason, which Hume claims “can never produce any action, or give rise to volition,” and is “incapable of preventing volition, or of disputing the preference with any passion or emotion” (T ...). He also advises that “when we wou’d govern a man, and push him to any action, ’twill commonly be better policy to work upon the violent than the calm passions” (T ...). But this policy does not capture the complexity of human nature. People “often counter-act a violent passion in prosecution of their interests and designs” (T ...). In fact, Hume associates personal strength with calm passions, not violent ones: “strength of mind, implies the prevalence of calm passions above the violent” (T ...). And the propensity to mistake calm passions for reason explains, according to Hume, why people likewise mistake reason for a motivating force: reason alone cannot motivate, but calm passions can. The Essays reinforce the idea that calm emotions can be very strong. In early editions of “Of the Dignity or Meanness of Human Nature,” Hume goes so far as to assert that “several great Moralists of the present Age” have “prov’d beyond Question . . . that the social Passions are by far the most powerful of any, and that even all the other Passions receive from them their chief Force and Influence” (..). “Social passions” refers here to disinterested passions in general; they may not all be calm. Erotic love could be social in this sense, yet quite violent. But Hume believes that some powerful social emotions are calm. In “Of Polygamy and Divorces,” he characterizes friendship as “a calm and sedate affection, conducted by reason and cemented by habit” (..). (As we will see, he appeals to habit to explain the power of all calm emotions.) In the same essay, he testifies to friendship’s importance, asking rhetorically, “Destroy love and friendship; what remains in the world worth accepting?” (..). In so



passion, though particular instances of it may be violent. But first, there is no reason to think that Hume’s listing here is an exhaustive classification of the calm or violent passions, especially since he gives other examples elsewhere. Second, this interpretation fails to take seriously Hume’s caution about the vague nature of the distinction. The debate about these issues is quite complex, and I do not pretend to have dealt with all of the related problems here. For an excellent summary of this debate with references to the current literature, see Radcliffe, “Hume’s Psychology of the Passions,” – and –. Cf. T ...: “The force of our mental actions in this case, [poetry and eloquence], no more than any other, is not to be measur’d by the apparent agitation of the mind.”

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doing, he echoes one of the most beautiful passages in the Treatise, in which he claims that the most fortunate person, who has all that is “useful or agreeable . . . will still be miserable, till you give him some one person at least, with whom he may share his happiness, and whose esteem and friendship he may enjoy” (T ...). The sedate passions of friendship not only make life worth living themselves; they undergird the strength of all the other passions that do so as well. But does Hume think that calm emotions are necessarily good? Immerwahr emphasizes the connection between calm passions, happiness, and virtue for Hume, saying that “calm desires in themselves yield greater satisfaction than violent ones” and that “human misery is caused by violent passions.” But Hume does not always portray calm emotions in a positive light. After remarking that we can mistake calm passions for reasoning, he mentions resentment as an example of “certain calm desires and tendencies” that may come from instinct (T ...). Resentment can be appropriate, but it is inherently unpleasant and could not be a dominant passion in a happy life. In a letter to Hutcheson, Hume writes that there “is a calm Ambition, a calm Anger or Hatred, which tho’ calm, may likewise be very strong, & have the absolute Command over the Mind” (January , in Letters :). Finally, “Of Avarice” discusses a calm, powerful passion that is clearly vicious. Hume wonders at the extremes to which avarice brings some people, who grip wealth even in the deathbed. It is bizarre “that so frosty, spiritless a passion should be able to carry us 







Hume’s Stoic eulogizes the social affections, the charm and power of which, he says, prevent the true sage from hardening his heart against the suffering of others. He also seems to attribute much of eros’s power to the associated passion of friendship. See ... “Hume on Tranquillizing the Passions,” , . Immerwahr does say that “Hume’s real enemy is violent passions experienced violently,” which leaves room for benign violent passions (). He still neglects the possibility that calm passions might be malignant. Much of his evidence for Hume’s preference for calm passions comes from “The Sceptic.” Radcliffe acknowledges that Humean calm passions can have a darker side, noting that it appears that “prevailing calm passions” might be “vicious traits of character” (“Strength of Mind and the Calm and Violent Passions,” ). This possibility plays an important role in her argument that strength of mind itself is a more complicated virtue than many take it to be. She argues that Humean strength of mind “is not simply any calm passion exercising control of actions over the violent actions” but “has to do specifically with those calm passions that have as their aim the longterm interest of the agent or the goals whose pursuit are approved by the moral sentiments” (–). Jacqueline Taylor also notes that “strength of mind might be cultivated by the vicious as well as the virtuous” (Reflecting Subjects, ). See EPM App .: “And what a malignant philosophy must it be, that will not allow, to humanity and friendship, the same privileges, which are indisputably granted to the darker passions of enmity and resentment?” For an important discussion of the positive function of Humean resentment in overcoming repression, see Baier, “Hume on Resentment.” See also Jacqueline Taylor, Reflecting Subjects, –.

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farther than all the warmth of youth and pleasure” (EWU .). He can only explain such perversion by presuming that its possessors have neither youth nor pleasure. Avarice is the characteristic vice of sour old men or unfortunate people whose temper never knew warmth. Without opposing passions, “the mind being incapable of remaining without some passion or pursuit, at last finds out this monstrously absurd one, which suits the coldness and inactivity of its temper” (EWU .). If it is difficult to imagine Hume’s greedy old man as calm, consider a more sympathetic portrait of a miser – George Eliot’s Silas Marner. Betrayed by his closest relations, he is left with only weaving and the money it brings: So, year after year, Silas Marner had lived in this solitude, his guineas rising in the iron pot, and his life narrowing and hardening itself more and more into a mere pulsation of desire and satisfaction that had no relation to any other being. His life had reduced itself to the functions of weaving and hoarding, without any contemplation of an end toward which the functions tended.

There is no violence in this greed, yet it becomes Silas’s sole motivating passion, determining the monotonous structure of his days. His avarice is a calm, cold master. If emotions can be strong and calm, yet unhealthy or vicious, we need a third axis of evaluation for a full understanding of the relationship between the emotions, happiness, and virtue. I propose a temperature axis, ranging from warm to cold. Though this distinction adds something to Hume’s taxonomy, it is consistent with both his language and his characterization of specific emotions. An emotion’s temperature is a function of its relation to others: warmer emotions promote fellow-feeling and affection; colder ones increase distance between persons. A cold emotion can be strong, like the miser’s avarice, but can also be weak. (One might easily, e.g., overcome mild contempt.) And a cold emotion can be violent, as hatred typically is, but it can also be calm. Hume describes friendship, on the other hand, as both warm and calm. ..

Calm over Violent?

Part of the reason why we believe in Silas as a character is that his avarice has no competition. Because he has no one to love, his greed almost 

Eliot, Silas Marner, .

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consumes him. But how can calm passions dominate when they must compete with violent ones? How do we explain strength of mind? Hume’s answer appeals to the power of custom (or habit). A passion becomes a “settled principle of action” once “repeated custom and its own force have made every thing yield to it,” so that “it directs the actions and conduct without that opposition and emotion which so naturally attend every momentary gust of passion” (T ...). Here, “emotion” suggests movement of the spirits or the physical disturbance that comes with overwhelming distress or joy. This phenomenology alone makes more plausible the distinction between violent and strong passions. Under such disturbance, particularly carried to its extremes, we may be incapable of action. If I am violently angry, I may strike some convenient person (not really), but I am (far) more likely to stand sputtering and fuming, paralyzed by ire. Opposition from other violent passions may explain some cases of such paralysis, but not all. Sometimes anger or sadness alone keep us from moving. Yet agitation can motivate, as Hume notes. What explains the triumph of calmness over violence in these cases? It appears here that repetition generates that strength: “repeated custom and its own force have made everything yield to it.” Jane McIntyre notes the importance of custom or habit in strengthening passions, adding the intriguing suggestion that strength of mind is peculiarly relevant to forming habits, because Hume also describes strength of mind as the ability “to persevere in a steady adherence to a general and distant interest” (EPM .). This trait therefore “involves the intentional shaping of character – the intentional creation of a pattern of action over time – since the actions chosen . . . are oriented toward a future good that we see our actions as realizing.” Yet something puzzling remains, as McIntyre acknowledges. Whence the original force, which overcomes violent passions in the first and second instance? Are the initial passions calm at all, or must they be violent, only made calm once habit has removed the opposition they met with earlier? Are some people 

 

In the next section, Hume connects the power of custom to his theory of motivation, by positing a pleasure produced by “moderate facility,” which he says consists “not so much . . . in any ferment of the spirits, as in their orderly motion; which will sometimes be so powerful as even to convert pain into pleasure, and give us a relish in time for what at first was most harsh and disagreeable” (T ...). See also T .... He had previously claimed that pain and pleasure are the “chief spring and moving principle” of human actions (T ...). “Strength of Mind,” . Baier suggests something like this possibility, observing that it seems that Hume’s view implies that the “most that could be expected to occur would be that a typically calm passion counteracts a typically violent one, by becoming briefly violent during the time of opposition” (A Progress of

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simply gifted with strong but calm passions? If we need strength of mind to cultivate habits, do we need strength of mind to develop strength of mind itself? Ultimately, Hume seems to despair of answering all these questions. He concludes Treatise .. by remarking that, in the struggle between “reason” (calm passion) and passion, philosophy “must leave all the smaller and more delicate revolutions, as dependent on principles too fine and minute for her comprehension” (T ...). He does give us a hint, however, noting that although violent passions are usually stronger, “’tis often found, that the calm ones, when corroborated by reflection, and seconded by resolution, are able to controul them in their most furious movements.” We can explain how such reflection and resolution could work, in accordance with Humean principles. Reflection enables us to bring the evils of a violent passion, as well as the goods of a calm one, closer to our imagination. The more vivid the conception of these goods and evils in our imagination, the more likely they are to generate corresponding passions. Resolution could evolve out of disapproval of oneself, as Hume describes in his discussion of the artificial virtues, saying that “a person who feels his heart devoid of [a virtuous principle], may hate himself upon that account, and may perform the action without the motive, from a certain sense of duty, in order to acquire by practice, that virtuous principle, or at least, to disguise to himself, as much as possible, his want of it” (T ...). Self-disgust may only motivate us to self-deception. But it may also serve as a motive to avoid the disgusting action in the future, eventually developing the habit of doing so. It is important not to mistake the sense of duty for strength of mind itself, given the common association of duty with character strength. Elizabeth Radcliffe points out that although strength of mind might involve the sense of duty, numerous calm passions besides moral sentiments could overcome violent passions. These triumphs would still be instances of strength of mind. And these calm passions may be virtuous in themselves, because Hume does not believe that virtuous action requires being motivated by the moral sentiment. Indeed, motives that are not explicitly moral typically motivate the natural virtues. The Humean Good

 

Sentiments, ). For criticism of this view, see Wright, “Butler and Hume on Habit and Moral Character,” –. See T ..., where Hume writes that the “imagination has a set of passions belonging to it.” “Strength of Mind,” .

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Samaritan acts from concern for his fellow human being, not from the moral sentiment. But do we yet have a compelling explanation for how one might develop strength of mind? Hume’s Sceptic offers an incisive statement of the problem. He acknowledges the value of strength of mind, saying that “Nothing contributes more to happiness” (..). But though application and habit may improve character, such efforts require antecedent blessing with a certain temper: Where one is thoroughly convinced that the virtuous course of life is preferable; if he have but resolution enough, for some time, to impose a violence on himself; his reformation needs not be despaired of. The misfortune is, that this conviction and this resolution never can have place, unless a man be, before-hand, tolerably virtuous. (..)

The good may become better, the Sceptic argues, but the bad can only hope to remain where they are. The problem is that the Sceptic’s position seems all too reasonable, especially given Hume’s vagueness in describing the possibility of reforming the temper and acquiring strength of mind. .. A Passion for Beauty The Treatise does not provide sufficient resources for understanding how we might develop habits of warm, calm emotions. In this and the following two sections, I argue that the Essays help fill the gap by showing how aesthetic experience can aid this development. First, developing taste can reorient our perspective toward other people. Second, experiencing art provides an independent source of benign emotions: aesthetic delight itself. Finally, art’s communal nature enables us to experience these emotions publicly, which strengthens calm emotions that might otherwise be weak. In encouraging emotions that are warm and strong, art ameliorates both aggression and melancholy. The Essays begin with this theme, in “Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion.” Delicacy of passion, again, makes people unusually vulnerable to life’s vicissitudes. It allows great pleasure in small joys but also leaves people at the mercy of life’s more frequent disappointments. It would be difficult to cure delicacy of passion through resolution and repetition, even for those aware that such practice could form an opposing habit. For those with this trait, habit has always been on the side of passionate extremes. Perhaps we can imagine such a person successfully resolving to improve, if the ill effects of delicacy of passion became manifest in a striking way.

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Marianne Dashwood undergoes such a transformation in Sense and Sensibility, but only after the betrayal of her lover, public humiliation, and a near-fatal illness. Regardless, it stretches the imagination too far to ask her to serve as an example for most people with delicacy of passion. She possesses uncommon talents, intellectual ability, and an influential, prudent elder sister. Hume’s recommended cure for delicacy of passion does not require dashing, villainous suitors or wasting illnesses. It does, however, draw on one of Marianne’s other resources, more widely available and less dangerous. He recommends attempting to transform the delicacy into its sister trait, delicacy of taste. The aim is not to exterminate emotion but to change its objects. After all, delicacy of passion offers significant satisfaction to its possessors: they experience “more lively enjoyments, as well as more pungent sorrows, than men of cool and sedate tempers” (..). In needing to feel, those with delicacy of passion are no different from the rest of us. “Whatever supports and fills the passions is agreeable to us; as on the contrary, what weakens and infeebles them is uneasy” (T ...). They differ only in continually experiencing intense passions, which have been satisfying often enough to make their absence a difficult evil. Philosophical sedation can be no cure. The only hope is to learn to feel differently, to respond to objects whose availability depends less on the whims of fortune. What are these objects? Hume tells us that delicacy of taste produces “sensibility to beauty and deformity of every kind” (..). The range of beauties is broad: he mentions poems, paintings, conversation, interpersonal manners, books, pieces of reasoning, music, and “the characters of men” (..–). These varied objects have in common that they can inspire passionate responses, cost relatively little money, and are to a large degree subject to the agent’s control. This last claim seems strange. How can the characters of others be under our control, when even our own proves recalcitrant? Isn’t Marianne a victim of her lover’s vice? But Hume claims not that others’ characters are under our control, but only whether or not we associate with them: “we are pretty much masters [of] what books we shall read, what diversions we shall partake of, and what company we shall keep” (..). But this response is not enough. It fails to illuminate how we might become the kind of people who choose company wisely, and it fails to acknowledge that we have people in our lives from whom it would be difficult to disassociate but who contribute to our unhappiness. A fuller response requires thinking about different stances that we can have toward the people in our lives. Delicacy of passion responds to others

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as sources of potential good or evil. Their behavior is of interest insofar as it might promote happiness (one’s own or others) or cause trouble. From the perspective of delicacy of passion, in other words, other people form part of fortune’s chain of causes. Delicacy of taste, on the other hand, contemplates others’ behavior to reach an aesthetic judgment. This requires prescinding from the behavior’s immediate effects, inferring what character traits explain it, and correcting for the bias that interest introduces into the situation. Readers of the Treatise and second Enquiry will recognize this description as part of the imaginative exercise that Hume calls taking up a general or common point of view. Although moral judgment depends on operations of sympathy that vary widely, when we are using that judgment, we correct for variability by considering not only how someone’s character trait affects us and our loved ones but also how it affects other people related to its possessor. In explaining this correction, Hume compares moral with physical beauty, noting that in “like manner, external beauty is determin’d merely by pleasure; and ’tis evident, a beautiful countenance cannot give so much pleasure, when seen at the distance of twenty paces, as when it is brought nearer to us. We say not, however, that it appears to us less beautiful: Because we know what effect it will have in such a position, and by that reflection we correct its momentary appearance” (T ...). Moral beauty shares with external beauty a tendency to redirect the gaze of the person appreciating it, away from her nearer interests and toward the beautiful object itself and its effects. In judging the virtue of my enemy’s bravery, I must let go of the thought that her bravery endangers me. Likewise, “when any work is addressed to the public, though I should have a friendship or enmity with the author, I must depart from this situation; and considering myself as a man in general, forget, if possible, my individual being and peculiar circumstances” (..). In his discussions of moral beauty in the Treatise and aesthetic beauty in “Of the Standard of Taste,” Hume acknowledges the difficulty of letting go of the interested perspective. Language and passion may not follow where 

See T ... and EPM . and .. The variability of sympathy causes problems for understanding how the correction works, given that the same factors that make our sympathy vary for the object of our judgment would affect our sympathy with those affected by her traits. For some important discussion of this problem and related issues, see Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, “On Why Hume’s ‘General Point of View’ Isn’t Ideal”; Abramson, “Correcting ‘Our’ Sentiments”; and Jacqueline Taylor, “Hume on the Standard of Virtue” and Reflecting Subjects, –. Taylor argues that the Treatise fails to adequately address these problems and that the Enquiry improves Hume’s account of moral judgment by, among other things, emphasizing the virtues needed for discerning judges.

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

reflection and fairness lead. And we may not want them to. It is passion’s nature to interest its bearer in its continuance: “all the passions avoid as much as possible” suffering a diminution (T ...). The general topic of this Treatise passage is love and hatred. Hume initially observes: “One that has a real design of harming us, proceeding not from hatred and ill-will, but from justice and equity, draws not upon him our anger, if we be in any degree reasonable; notwithstanding he is both the cause, and the knowing cause of our sufferings” (T ...). But then he acknowledges the idealism of this pronouncement. How many criminals fairly assess their accusers and judges? And even we law-abiding citizens see our competitors as enemies, “tho’ we must acknowledge, if we wou’d but reflect a moment, that their motive is entirely as justifiable as our own” (T ...). Hume then moves to a much darker assessment. Not only do we conceive of people who justly punish us as enemies; we tend to criminalize their behavior in our minds. Here is clear evidence of how recalcitrant our passions can be: “any harm or uneasiness has a natural tendency to excite our hatred, and . . . afterwards we seek for reasons upon which we may justify and establish the passion” (T ...). This description could be an analysis of emotion’s progression in someone with delicacy of passion. Rousseau suffers harm from D’Alembert and redirects his pain to its cause. This redirection generates the resembling impression of hatred. Even if D’Alembert caused the pain unintentionally, or with good reasons, Rousseau blames D’Alembert, tying him more closely to the suffering, obfuscating other causes, such as the operations of chance or Rousseau’s own foolish behavior. The hatred thus intensifies, along with its corresponding suffering. Again, Hume thinks that we are all prone to these transformative exercises of passion and imagination. But for those with delicacy of passion, the operation proceeds more quickly, more violently, and without the checks of calmer passions. The resulting indignation may make one feel justified, but none of the passions involved here is pleasant. Indignation serves a need at the expense of happier passions, like humanity and kindness. Unfortunately, as Hume observes, it is likely to prove tenacious. Once in the grip of the interested perspective, then, we find it difficult to extricate ourselves. This is the quotidian condition of someone with  

Le Jallé argues that Hume borrows this idea from Malebranche (“Hume Malebranche, and the SelfJustification of the Passions,” –). This is an example of the “double relation of impressions and ideas,” which Hume argues is the source of the indirect passions. See T ..– and Section ., below.

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delicacy of passion. Again, the disposition has its rewards: it produces happy social passions as well as the darker ones. Vehemence of gratitude may be as common as vehemence of resentment. But Hume does not think that this is likely, because “great pleasures are much less frequent than great pains” (..). I doubt that there is much cause for disagreement with this judgment, but regardless, an asymmetry recommends delicacy of taste over delicacy of passion. To see this, we need to return to the former stance, which we might call contemplative – appreciation of others’ characters as potential objects of beauty. From this stance, we can regard even our friends as something other than part of the productive chain of good and evil. I have in mind the perspective that Aristotle mentions in the Nicomachean Ethics, from which observing a friend’s worthy activities and character is pleasant in itself, since “in simultaneously perceiving what is good in itself, [virtuous people] feel pleasure” and the happiest person “chooses to contemplate actions that are decent.” This description may sound cold, but the perspective itself need not be. Consider George Eliot’s description of Will Ladislaw’s “unspeakable content in . . . feeling that he was in the presence of a creature worthy to be perfectly loved.” The narrator adds, “I think his own feelings at that moment were perfect, for we mortals have our divine moments, when love is satisfied in the completeness of the beloved object.” At this point in Middlemarch, Ladislaw has no hope of Dorothea’s constituting the happiness of his own life, or even her returning his love. He simply wants to be in her presence, to appreciate her internal and external beauty. This sublime sentiment is pleasant in itself, as are all sentiments of beauty. The asymmetry between delicacy of passion and delicacy of taste appears when we consider more painful impressions. Not all contemplation of character leads to sublime, happy sentiments. For every Dorothea, there is a Rosamond Vincy, and I fear that in real life we are more likely to encounter a Mrs. Bennet than one of her two eldest daughters. Again, 



Timothy Costelloe suggests something like this conception of Humean aesthetic judgment by invoking Iris Murdoch to explicate his idea that Hume’s models of taste are ideals. He cites Murdoch’s claim that art “transcends selfish and obsessive limitations of personality and can enlarge the sensibility of its consumer” (Aesthetics and Morals in the Philosophy of David Hume, ). One could accept this function of the models without accepting that they are “visions of perfection” that “represent standards that can never be realized,” as Costelloe characterizes them (). Given his analysis of the relation between Hume’s true judges and a specific kind of philosophical rule, it may be that these judges would have to be unrealizable ideals (see –). But an “ideal” can draw people toward it, even if they believe it can be obtained; indeed, at least some people would require this belief to find the ideal motivating.  Nicomachean Ethics, b and a–,  and . Middlemarch, –.

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Hume acknowledges that delicacy of taste, like delicacy of passion, sensitizes us to pains as well as pleasures. But the displeasure from observing an insipid or vicious character from the perspective of taste is less poignant than the displeasure from considering that same character from the perspective of “passion.” So we laugh at Mrs. Bennet when we read about her outbursts but do not find her traits so amusing if they are present in our own mothers. In the latter case, however, we might learn something from Mr. Bennet’s own consolation. Having discovered that he married a contemptible woman, he takes refuge in the amusing study of human folly, for which she provides ample material. “This is not the sort of happiness which a man would in general wish to owe to his wife,” Austen remarks, “but where other powers of entertainment are wanting, the true philosopher will derive benefit from such as are given.” Insofar as the “true philosopher” can consider a negative character from a distance, as an object of critical judgment, she acquires a corresponding distance from painful consideration of the evil done by such a character. If adept at such contemplation, she may even derive a new kind of pleasure (like satirical amusement) from it. Therefore, while someone with delicacy of passion experiences a broad range of violent pleasures and sharp pains, someone with delicacy of taste experiences an equally broad range of calm pleasures and calm pains, with the possibility of transforming the pains into pleasures. This asymmetry means that taste provides the possibility of a refuge, even when we must be in the company of less than admirable people. Two caveats are indispensable: first, I have characterized the stance of delicacy of passion as one from which we see other people as potential sources of good and evil. I have also followed Hume in referring to this as an interested perspective. But this need not be a self-interested perspective. “Interested,” in eighteenth-century English, can mean self-centered or even selfish. But Hume recognizes that we are interested in good or harm done to others, especially those we love. It is clear that he sometimes viewed others with such passion, even when their traits could not possibly harm anyone near to him, or indeed any live person at all. Recall his remark in “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations” about those responsible for ancient Rome’s “amphitheatrical entertainments”: “A man could almost be pleased, by a single blow, to put an end to such a race of monsters” (..). This is violent disgust, not calm distaste, arising 

Pride and Prejudice, . Austen clearly does not mean to commend Mr. Bennet’s course of action, especially as it includes withdrawing from rearing his children.

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from the thought of a long-abandoned practice of a long-dead people. Reflection on any character with the propensity to do great good or great harm can arouse violent passions; the self need not be the beneficiary or the victim. Hume’s reaction to gladiatorial contests shows the need for the second caveat. He does not consider violent passion to be necessarily bad. To sometimes feel violent passions is not the same as having the disposition of delicacy of passion. Delicacy of passion interferes with the well-being of its possessor and those related to her. It is an extreme tendency to feel violent passions to a stronger degree and in reaction to a broader range of occasions than is normal. Always taking the contemplative stance would arguably be a worse psychological fault than delicacy of passion; it implies distance from the object of contemplation that, if maintained constantly, would be incompatible with genuine friendship or love. Hume is not envisioning such a frosty character; he even claims that delicacy of taste is more conducive to friendship than delicacy of passion. Someone with delicate taste loves deeply rather than broadly: “his affections being thus confined within a narrow circle, no wonder he carries them further, than if they were more general and undistinguished” (..–). Though it is sometimes appropriate to take the interested perspective, it is still the primary perspective from which aggression and cruelty arise. The dominance of this perspective, Hume argues, is part of what leads to the high levels of aggression in pre-civilized societies. In the second Enquiry, he claims that “a rude, untaught savage regulates chiefly his love and hatred by the ideas of private utility and injury, and has but faint conceptions of a general rule or system of behaviour” (EPM .n). He thus hates his enemy in battle forever and is not “satisfied without the most extreme punishment and vengeance.” Is there anything we can do if we discover the savage within? Perhaps all Hume has accomplished is the detail of two irreconcilable dispositions, which are either the gift or punishment of nature. But he offers delicacy of taste as a cure for delicacy of passion (..). Though natural gifts help, we can cultivate taste, and excellent taste requires cultivation. How might we begin? In “Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion,” Hume summarizes the qualities that good aesthetic judgment requires, but he specifies these in more detail in “Of the Standard of Taste.” They include delicacy of sentiment sufficient for sensitivity to hidden beauty, strong 

Radcliffe also argues that violent motives can be virtuous; see “Strength of Mind and the Calm and Violent Passions,” .

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powers of causal reasoning, and the ability to enter into the perspective of an artist’s intended audience. In addition, one must spend considerable time getting to know some genre of art, and repeatedly observe a particular work before judging it. Such cultivation requires extensive and dedicated study, with no guarantee of success. But success promises significant benefits. “Our judgment,” he says, “will strengthen by this exercise: We shall form juster notions of life: Many things, which please or afflict others, will appear to us too frivolous to engage our attention: And we shall lose by degrees that sensibility and delicacy of passion, which is so incommodious” (..). The notion that an unstable character, disposed to emotional extremes, might be substantially improved by aesthetic training may seem absurd. I do not think it is. Hume is describing the development of what we might call an intellectual passion. We readily believe that other passions have the capacity to transfigure the self; why not this one? In detailing the ill effects of delicacy of passion, Hume is showing us how miserable it is to be jerked around by our emotions. If we could feel that misery – if we might have felt it yet been unable to name its source before – and if we had some hope that we might overcome it, would we all be too lazy or despairing to try? It is true that someone truly barbaric – deaf to civilization’s advantages and enslaved to her need for excitement – is not going to find the life of taste attractive. But neither is such a person going to read Hume’s Essays in the first place. The world is not peopled by characters pure in either barbarity or civility. To someone with violent passions, Hume’s proposal has the advantage of promising a life with changed, not absent, passions: “a cultivated taste for the polite arts . . . improves our sensibility for all the tender and agreeable passions; at the same time that it renders the mind incapable of the rougher and more boisterous emotions” (..). The person with delicacy of taste is not without passion. But her passionate life differs in both affect and dominant objects from those with delicacy of passion. It is a life with a stronger promise for steady pleasure, and some

 

I have argued more extensively for the claim that delicate taste can improve character in “Delicate Magnanimity.” As George Eliot observes in Middlemarch, “We are not afraid of telling over and over again how a man comes to fall in love with a woman and be wedded to her, or else be fatally parted from her. Is it due to excess of poetry or of stupidity that we are never weary of describing what King James called a woman’s ‘makdom and her fairnesse,’ never weary of listening to the twanging of the old Troubadour strings, and are comparatively uninterested in that other kind of ‘makdom and fairnesse’ which must be wooed with industrious thought and patient renunciation of small desires?” (Middlemarch, ).

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degree of freedom from the tyranny of the emotions, even when we find ourselves living in situations apt to activate the aggressive sides of our nature. ..

Taste as Cure for Anhedonia

Melancholy seems on the opposite end of the emotional spectrum from aggression, although some forms of these might share a common root. But the Essays suggest that at least some versions of melancholy, particularly those that produce an inability to feel pleasure (anhedonia) might also respond to the therapy of aesthetic experience. Anhedonia is now considered a symptom of major depressive disorder but may take less severe forms. Both Hume and Madame de Boufflers experienced periods of this malady. In a letter to her from July of , Hume expresses gratitude for her friendship, which, he says, has saved him from descent into “a total indifference towards every thing in human life,” which he “was falling very fast into” and “is perhaps worse than even the inquietudes of the most unfortunate passion” (Letters :). Two years later, Madame de Boufflers writes, “I desire nothing and everything bores me.” Despite maintaining an active, hospitable life, “never have I had more serenity because never have I had more indifference. I do not know if this is a symptom of healing or of excess dejection.” As painful as sorrow and fear can be, they can make people aware of being alive. The deadness and lack of motivation associated with anhedonia, by contrast, can prove insufferable. Melancholy tortures with languor and ennui as well as with sadness, anxiety, and fear. To show how aesthetic experience could ameliorate these states, I will turn to Hume’s consideration in “Of Tragedy” of our odd propensity to enjoy feeling certain kinds of pain. He asks why people seek experiences that mimic the most painful ones we might witness, satisfied more with more accurate mimicry of suffering. The essay begins by assuming that whatever we seek in tragedy is some pleasure, albeit one that seems “unaccountable,” as it arises out of “sorrow, terror, anxiety, and other passions, that are in themselves disagreeable and uneasy” (..). The notion that we seek pain for its own sake deserves no hearing, as it conflicts





See also his remark in a letter a couple of years later: “Age and a natural equability of temper were in danger of reducing my heart to too great indifference about every thing: it was enlivened by the charms of your conversations, and the vivacity of your character” (Hume to the Comtesse de Boufflers, April , in Letters :). This is my translation of the passage footnoted in Letters :.

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with common experience and with Hume’s account of motivation in the Treatise. “’Tis obvious,” he says, “that when we have the prospect of pain and pleasure from any object, we feel a consequent emotion of aversion or propensity, and are carry’d to avoid or embrace what will give us this uneasiness or satisfaction” (T ...). These sensations, whether they arise immediately from our perception of objects or through passions that confer them on objects, lead to our denominating agreeable objects as good and disagreeable objects as evil. We then pursue or rejoice in the good and avoid or feel sorrow over the evil. We may recognize an object as painful, yet seek it to achieve an overriding good. But we do not see an object as painful and seek it out for the sake of that pain. If we arrive at pleasure by way of pain, this requires explanation. In “Of Tragedy,” Hume uses two French men of letters, Jean-Baptiste Dubos and Bernard de Fontenelle, as interlocutors – critics who, he says, “have some tincture of philosophy.” As Hume portrays them, both argue that tragic performances serve our need to feel, but they disagree about the nature of that feeling. Dubos argues that we enjoy tragedy because in a state of “languid, listless . . . indolence,” any feeling will do. “No matter what the passion is: Let it be disagreeable, afflicting, melancholy, disordered; it is still better than that insipid languor, which arises from perfect tranquillity and repose” (..). But all the better if the passions are high and the opportunities for engagement numerous. Despite his claim in “Of Refinement in the Arts” that no “gratification, however sensual, can of itself be esteemed vicious,” in this section Hume focuses on examples (at least some of which Dubos uses as well) that suggest a desperate and distasteful search for passion (..). Among the pursuits that Hume lists as possible “amusements” are executions; we know his opinion of gladiatorial entertainment. He seizes on a gaming example, describing spectators surrounding high-rolling players likely to win big or lose everything. He mentions common liars’ talents for embellishing fables with severe oppressions and magnificent joys. These people are hardly sages worthy of emulation.   

In the Dissertation on the Passions, he backs away from the language of pleasure, instead referring to “agreeable” and “disagreeable” or “painful” sensations (DP .–). For a concise presentation of the influence of Hume’s contemporaries and near predecessors on his aesthetics, see Costelloe, “Hume’s Aesthetics,” –. For our purposes, it is probably best to think of this Dubos as a character that Hume constructs for a dialogue. Amyas Merivale argues convincingly that Hume’s treatment of Dubos is so selective as to significantly distort the subtlety of Dubos’s position (“Enquiry Concerning the Passions,” –).

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On the other hand, Hume acknowledges both the importance of occupation and the pain of lassitude and inactivity. Moreover, he believes that beautiful and fecund things can arise out of ugliness and cruelty. Consider the combination of his attacks against hallowed origin theories of the constitution with his respect for the complex systems of law that arose from bloodshed and ignorance. The same principles of human nature may produce both the gladiators and Racine; that does not mean that the products are on a level. Nonetheless, the darker notes of Hume’s exposition – the disordered passions, the “absurd secret” of the liar, the executions – suggest a correspondingly darker moral. Hume goes on to say that Dubos’s theory is insufficient, because “the same object of distress, which pleases in a tragedy, were it really set before us, would give the most unfeigned uneasiness; though it be then the most effectual cure to languor and indolence” (..). Some spectators, on the other hand, might enjoy watching the events portrayed in tragedy unfold in real life. But the amusements of such people cannot explain virtuous appreciation of the dramatic arts. The theory that tragedy’s pleasure comes from stoking such passions is either false or frightening. As a corrective, Hume introduces Fontenelle’s proposal that tragedy’s fictionality weakens the relevant emotions, transforming pain into pleasure. As tickling might cause pleasure or pain at varying intensities, an event might produce painful sorrow in reality but agreeable sorrow when softened by the idea of falsehood. This account also depends on the notion that we enjoy being moved as such. Fontenelle seems to envision vacillation between sympathetic pain while watching the characters suffer and the comfort of “reflecting, that it is nothing but a fiction” (..). The resulting admixture is sorrowful enough to be moving but soft enough to be pleasing, though the relative strength of the sorrow ensures its dominance in both our affect and the external manifestations of feeling. The audience should not appear consoled at the end of King Lear.



 

Such enjoyment would be malicious, perhaps caused by comparison, as I discussed in Chapter . The occasional experience of malice does not make a person vicious, but generally taking delight in others’ suffering does. Other theories of tragedy countenance such delight in a more amiable guise. Burke argues that we delight in others’ suffering because it activates sociable pity: “as our Creator has designed we should be united by a bond of sympathy, he has strengthened that bond by a proportionable delight; and there most where our sympathy is most wanted, in the distresses of others” (Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful, ). Merivale notes that Dubos also makes this point (“Enquiry Concerning the Passions,” ). See ...

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To some extent, this account coheres with Hume’s own principles. In his discussion of belief’s influence in the Treatise, he also accounts for tragedy’s pleasure by appealing to the distancing effect of acknowledged fictions. Poetry can excite any passion, but “the feelings of the passions are very different when excited by poetical fictions, from what they are when they arise from belief and reality.” A passion raised by tragedy “feels less firm and solid: And has no other than the agreeable effect of exciting the spirits, and rouzing the attention” (T ...). He then claims, in keeping with his theory of the passions, that the agitation accompanying a passion need not be proportional to its strength. We may become more animated watching a fictional epic than reading an accurate historical account of similar events. Yet the latter experience, which shares the conviction of belief as opposed to the flights of fancy, may prove more solid and forceful. Like Fontenelle, Hume describes the distancing effects of fiction as resulting from reflection. The difference in affect between poetical enthusiasm and serious conviction “proceeds in some measure from reflection and general rules.” Knowing that poetic fictions are not real, we “only lend ourselves, so to speak, to the fiction” (T ...). Our ideas of an event differ when arising from fiction rather than real occurrences; the corresponding impressions must therefore differ also. But why a fictional idea should produce an impression of an opposite quality to a similar real idea remains unexplained. Why should the impression be enjoyment rather than fainter displeasure? By the time Hume was composing “Of Tragedy,” he was no longer satisfied with this account, if he ever was. He objects that we feel the same pleasure listening to beautiful descriptions of real horrors, where no falsehood can soften the passion. Cicero’s audiences were delighted by his speeches, even when they described profound cruelties, although “the audience were convinced of the reality of every circumstance” (..). The experience of Cicero’s contemporary audience is essential, since a proponent of the softened passions theory could object that modern readers take pleasure in Cicero’s speeches only because the great distance between them and the historical events he narrates has a softening effect analogous to that of fictions. 



Mossner suggests that Hume probably wrote the text between  and  in between his service to General St. Clair and his beginning work on the History (“Hume’s Four Dissertations,” ). The essay was first published as part of Four Dissertations in . See T ....

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Hume now rejects the notion that unpleasant passions, when softened, become pleasant. “You may by degrees weaken a real sorrow, till it totally disappears; yet in none of its gradations will it ever give pleasure; except, perhaps, by accident, to a man sunk under lethargic indolence, whom it rouzes from that languid state” (..). He thus retains the idea that someone desperate to feel anything may derive some pleasure from negative passions, but this pleasure would not be that offered by the aesthetic experience. An anhedonic spectator may feel more alive because of the suffering, and that feeling may be pleasant. But she would be taking pleasure not in the play but, on a second-order level, in her experience of the play. This, in itself, is not aesthetic delight (though a similar feeling could result from such delight.) A very bad play could produce the same result. Another problem with Fontenelle’s theory, going beyond Hume’s own criticism, comes from the appeal to the spectator’s reflection. Reflection enables distance from the composition. But to the extent that we only “lend ourselves to the performance,” something else is lost – namely, our immersion in the performance itself. Arguably, this doubling of experience would diminish our enjoyment of the art. Hume implies as much in his second Enquiry discussion of sympathy’s power in the theater. If the poet be skillful, we weep with characters who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. But if she introduces characters extraneous to the events of the play, our lack of interest in them might check the “progress of the passions” (EPM .). Likewise, in “Of Simplicity and Refinement in Writing,” Hume warns authors against asking so much of their readers’ imagination that the authors’ wit interferes with the movement of the readers’ affections. The most excellent performances conceal rather than emphasize their pretense: “It is the business of poetry to bring every affection near to us by lively imagery and representation, and make it look like truth and reality” (EPM .). The better the performance, the more readers of taste will give themselves, rather than lend themselves, over to it. It would be odd, then, if distance from reality were the source of the pleasure. Finally, Alex Neill points out that the “weakening passions” account clashes with an aspect of our experience of tragedy that Hume foregrounds in the essay on tragedy but not in the Treatise. This point also relates to the  

See ... See also T ...– and EHU, p. , where Hume discusses the importance of unity of action in compositions, “in order to preserve the concern or sympathy entire and undiverted.” (This passage was removed after the  edition. It originally appeared after ..)

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

audience’s immersion in the performance. The first paragraph of the essay stresses that our pleasure is proportionate to our affliction, that the spectators “never are so happy as when they employ tears, sobs, and cries to give vent to their sorrow” (..). If what the audience wants in its sympathetic suffering really is this intensity of experience, a theory that depends on softening that intensity must be inadequate. What is Hume’s solution? Weakening painful passions never produces pleasure; pleasure requires a positive contribution. Beauty itself – an inherently emotional experience – provides that contribution. If a tragedy portrays its events with sufficient beauty, then the vehemence of our sympathetic pain with the characters fuels the sentiment of beauty itself. As a result, “the soul, being, at the same time, rouzed by passion, and charmed by eloquence, feels on the whole a strong movement, which is altogether delightful” (..). Hume had laid the groundwork for this account in the Treatise, in his discussion of the causes of the violent passions. Two passions that “are both present in the mind . . . readily mingle and unite . . . The predominant passion swallows up the inferior, and converts it into itself. The spirits, when once excited, easily receive a change in their direction; and ’tis natural to imagine this change will come from the prevailing affection” (T ...). He then gives examples, many of which also appear in “Of Tragedy,” including the power of artfully delaying a revelation so that impatience adds to a passion’s force, and jealousy’s or absence’s encouragement of love. The contrariety of passions can have a similar effect, as the conflict agitates the spirits. “This new emotion is easily converted into the predominant passion, and encreases its violence, beyond the pitch it wou’d have arriv’d at had it met with no opposition” (T ...). Tragic performances produce such a conflict by raising painful sorrow and pleasant sentiments of beauty. In both these ways, tragedy can transform the normally calm sentiment of beauty into a violent passion. Many commentators have criticized Hume’s solution in “Of Tragedy,” particularly its appeal to an alleged “conversion principle,” whereby the sorrow the audience feels on behalf of the tragedy’s characters either disappears altogether or becomes a strange pleasure-sorrow or pain-delight. The first option does not capture any audience’s true experience, and the  

  Neill, “Unaccountable Pleasure,” . See also DP .. See also DP .. For a summary of this debate with references, see Costelloe, “Hume’s Aesthetics,” –. Significant treatments of the problem that appeared after Costelloe’s article include Eva Dadlez, “Humean Approach to the Problem of Disgust and Aesthetic Appreciation,” and Merivale, “Mixed Feelings, Mixed Metaphors.”

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second runs up against Hume’s own depiction of sorrow as inherently painful. Both options also make the essay sloppy, since Hume depicts the audience as grieving along with the characters, and explicitly says that sorrow will never give pleasure “in any of its gradations.” Robert Yanal responds that all of these criticisms misrepresent Hume’s view in “Of Tragedy,” which does not in fact depend on the problematic conversion principle. Yanal argues that “Hume’s view is . . . that our experience of tragedy and kindred depictions is made pleasurable overall through the infusion of pleasure from the aesthetic qualities of the work,” despite the genuine pain we also feel. The sorrow neither disappears nor becomes an incoherent pleasure-sorrow, but the gestalt is pleasant because of the power of the sentiment of beauty. I think Yanal is on the right track here: charity requires that we not interpret Hume as committed to a version of the conversion principle that conflicts with the rest of his theory, and Hume clearly thinks that the overall experience of tragedy is pleasant. In itself, however, Yanal’s explanation does not quite account for the conversion language that Yanal himself says Hume “clobbers us over the head with.” Neill provides an alternative interpretation, which is consistent with Yanal’s general proposal, addresses the problems with the conversion principle, and does justice to the text of “Of Tragedy.” This interpretation holds that what is converted is not the sorrowful passions themselves but their emotion or movement – the agitation that accompanies violent passions. Here we confront the truth that Hume’s language can be looser than is ideal for purposes of analysis. Sometimes “emotion” means something roughly equivalent to current usage, which is roughly equivalent to his general use of “passion.” It often refers, however, to the motion, sometimes rising to the level of agitation, that goes along with some passions. Neill argues that what “Hume has in mind in his talk of affective conversion is . . . the appropriation by one passion of the emotions or movements produced by another, a process that strengthens the first passion without extinguishing or changing the hedonic character of the second.” We can thus make sense of the physical resonance of Hume’s references to “impulse and vehemence,” “strong movement,” “a large stock of spirit and vehemence,” and even “an infusion of new feeling” (..–). The normally calm  



 “Hume and Others on the Paradox of Tragedy,” . “Still Unconverted,” . Neill does not find Hume’s account of tragedy satisfactory overall, and he disagrees with Yanal’s account in an earlier exchange. See Neill, “Hume’s ‘Singular Phenomenon’” and “Yanal and Others on Hume and Tragedy.” “Unaccountable Pleasure,” .

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sentiments of beauty take on the violence of the painful passions that tragedy inspires, so that “the soul [is both] rouzed by passion, and charmed by eloquence” (..). This view would also capture and explain what is plausible about Fontanelle’s theory. As the subordinate passion transfers its movement to the dominant sentiment of beauty, the passion would become less violent. Perhaps this thought is behind Hume’s claim late in the essay that a passion that would be quite painful if raised by real events “is so smoothed, and softened, and mollified, when raised by the finer arts, that it affords the highest entertainment” (..). Understood in this way, Hume’s account of the appeal of tragic emotions has at least four advantages. First, it does not rely on an occult transformation at some vague point during the diminishment of the passion. Second, it preserves the moral integrity of the aesthetic experience: it does not require that the audience have sadistic or masochistic tendencies. The spectator’s pleasure is in beauty, not suffering. Third, it has a built-in theory of aesthetic failure. If we do not find the performance sufficiently beautiful, then we feel no sublimity and come away disgusted, angry, or even traumatized. The overall pleasure depends on the sentiment of beauty being the predominant emotion. If the beauty is not strong enough, or if the horrors are too horrible, then the performance fails. Worse, instead of the sorrow contributing to beauty’s strength, scant artfulness increases the sorrow. Finally, it partially explains the importance of aesthetic experience. Compositions are important not in spite of their tendency to promote emotional experiences, but because of that tendency. In the second Enquiry, Hume writes that “life, without passion, must be altogether insipid and tiresome” (EPM .). Again, no advice that recommends only suppressing, ignoring, or warring against the passions 

 



At T ..., Hume does write that the “predominant passion swallows up the inferior, and converts it into itself.” But as Neill notes, this passage is an outlier (“Unaccountable Pleasure,” ). And it is certainly possible that Hume’s views about this mechanism had become more precise in between the compositions of the Treatise and “Of Tragedy.” Merivale’s objection to Neill’s claim, on the grounds that Hume refers to the subordinate or inferior item as a “passion” many times, misses the mark (“Mixed Feelings, Mixed Metaphors,” n). There is no doubt that the subordinate item is a passion; the question concerns whether the whole of that passion, or only its emotion, is converted through the experience of tragedy. The last clause need not imply that the painful passion is itself entertaining, but only that it provides the entertainment that we get from the vivified sentiment of beauty. Cf. Montaigne’s claim about the appeal of tragedy: “Nothing tickles that does not pain” (“Of Physiognomy,” in Essays, ). Postema notes that Hume’s account of tragedy, unlike other extant ones, does not depend on a self-centered Lucretian comparison between spectators’ safety and the characters’ distress (“Cemented with Diseased Qualities,” ). See ...

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offers realistic hope of widespread, enduring success. Someone in the grip of violent passions might succeed for a brief time in distancing herself from these feelings or resisting their influence. But unless she cultivates habits that fill her hours with happier passions, the cure might prove more painful than the disease, and relapse is highly likely. For someone with anhedonic tendencies, aesthetic experience could provide passionate feelings not available in quotidian activities. I am not suggesting that a little Othello could cure those with clinical conditions that prevent their taking pleasure in anything. But any reasonable understanding of emotional illness recognizes that such problems lie on a continuum, and for someone not as far gone, one could offer plenty of advice worse than “Cultivate an interest in the finer arts.” Would “Cultivate an interest in tragic arts” be better advice? Perhaps, in certain cases. Intensely passionate experiences may be more likely to be sorrowful than joyful. As Hume says in “Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion,” sorrowful experience is simply more common. Moreover, for someone needing to be “moved and affected,” it is unfortunately often easier to stimulate pain than pleasure. (And many “easy” ways to get pleasure cause more harm than good.) Perhaps because sorrowful experience is so common, the artistic task of arousing pain can be easier than arousing pleasure. (This does not imply that the tragedian’s job is easier than the comedian’s; it is one thing to raise emotion, and another to do so beautifully, with restraint and taste.) Or perhaps sorrowful passions simply tend to move us more deeply in general. Hume suggests something like this view in the Treatise, arguing that sympathy operates with peculiar force in cases of “affliction and sorrow,” since these passions “have always a stronger and more lasting influence than any pleasure or enjoyment” (T ...). One possible reason for this greater influence may be that affliction interests us in the future concerns of sufferers. In a footnote to “Of Tragedy,” Hume claims that the poet’s task, unlike the painter’s, obliges the composer to portray melancholic subjects. The painter only need capture an instant in time. “But nothing can furnish to the poet a variety of scenes and incidents and sentiments, except distress, terror, or anxiety. Compleat joy and satisfaction is attended with security, and leaves no farther room for action” (..n). Though tragic compositions may provide passionate experiences more reliably than others, this general rule does not preclude the consoling 

Cf. EHU, p. , where Hume writes that in comedy, “the Movements and Passions are not rais’d to such a height as in Tragedy.”

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effects of other forms of art. If we need elevation of spirit, then a beautiful symphony in a major key may serve very well. In the second Enquiry, Hume suggests that portrayals of admirable passions – both sublime ones like magnanimity and tender ones like friendship – are peculiarly charming in poetry, pleasing us “from more than one cause or principle” (EPM .). These passions are inherently pleasing in addition to the pleasure that arises from eloquence, and various forms of composition can express them. No single genre has proprietary rights to the virtuous passions. It is essential, however, that Hume holds that the dominant component of experiencing a successful aesthetic performance is none of these passions, but the peculiar pleasure associated with beauty. This sentiment of beauty is typically calm, but when other emotions accompany it, it can become violent. The violence of aesthetic delight could draw spectators back to the theater, and these revivals may cultivate a disposition to appreciate beauty in other contexts as well. In short, an experience of initially violent passions may begin the development of a propensity to experience passions that are typically calm – a propensity that, just because it is a habit rather than an isolated experience, includes strong passions. Herein lies the hope for those afflicted with melancholy passions. Repeatedly seeking aesthetic experiences should help train the taste, bringing the advantages of delicacy of taste that we have already discussed but also enriching life with a wellspring of strong, pleasant, even life-giving passions. ..

Publicity of Art as Strengthener of Passions

Here I want to return to the thought that virtuous character requires emotions that are warm, narrowing the distance between persons. The perspective of taste provides reason not to fear the violent emotions that art can sometimes induce. Aesthetic experience teaches us to take up the critical perspective that is less reactive to injuries from others, less likely to encourage aggression and revenge. But there is also reason to believe that aesthetic experience positively encourages warm emotions. Aesthetic sentiments are quintessentially shared emotions. They thus encourage awareness of our common humanity. Moreover, Hume’s view that social reinforcement strengthens calm emotions suggests that these warm emotions can develop into calm yet strong habits. It is of course possible to have an aesthetic experience alone. But many things about such experiences depend on and foster sociality. And in one sense art is always a public endeavor, even if the artist or spectator is not aware of this publicity in a particular case. To begin with the easiest cases,

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many genres of art include public performances, such as theater and live music. Here, there is an obvious connection between artist and audience, but Hume recognizes a significant connection between the members of the audience also. Because sympathy can operate through physical means as well as verbal communication, spectators’ emotions reinforce one another. We respond to the “natural symptoms” of sorrow and mourning, so that “tears and cries and groans never fail to infuse compassion and uneasiness” (EPM .). In the theater, the size of the crowd multiplies the effect. The “very aspect” of the audience disposes a new member to share in its feelings and increases her susceptibility to the emotions expressed in the performance (EPM .). The appearance of so many spectators elevates the emotions of the performers. And if the performance is good, the audience may “weep, tremble,” and otherwise mirror the emotions of those within the drama (EPM .). We get the sense of a vibration between the performer and the audience, and among the audience members themselves, producing a resonance of emotion that gathers force in the echo. The communal nature of the experience thus vivifies whatever emotions the performance inspires, but an effective performance can also promote a sense of connection with one’s fellow spectators. I remember the first time I saw a Shakespeare film adaptation with an audience who could appreciate it. It was a small art theater, and the film was Kenneth Branagh’s farcical Much Ado about Nothing. The audience laughed together in all the right places and were on the edges of their seats as Hero suffers from the unjust accusation made against her. This was an entirely different experience from enduring a poor production in which the audience barely follows the plot, and I left the theater with a euphoric, friendly feeling toward all of my fellow spectators. But the communality of artistic pleasure is by no means limited to public performances. From many points of view, there are reasons to see art as a public endeavor. If we view it as a linguistic act of communication, we may recognize with Wittgenstein that languages themselves are public. If we believe that its function is to challenge and transcend contemporary mores, we envision it as directed to a populace tempted by complacency. 

Language is only one way in which we transmit the ideas of emotions so that they then can become impressions for others. In his initial explanation of sympathy’s operation, Hume notes the importance of facial expressions in conveying the requisite ideas. “A chearful countenance,” he says, “infuses a sensible complacency and serenity into my mind; as an angry or sorrowful one throws a sudden damp upon me” (T ...). The “external signs in the countenance” are often our first indication that the other person is experiencing an emotion, and therefore our first source of the idea of that emotion (T ...).

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If we see it as an attempt to express aspects of life common to the human condition, then we need the judgment of the public to verify that the artist has captured a true commonality. And one might argue with some plausibility that a composition created with no intention to hand it over to others, in however limited a circle, can only be mere amusement and not art at all. A full consideration of these arguments would require a work apart, but there are two pieces of evidence that Hume himself conceived of art as public. The first has to do with his repeated claims that, over time, the public’s judgment of a composition cannot be mistaken. The second concerns his claim that compositions must be judged from the perspective of their intended audiences. Hume’s strongest statement of the first claim is in “Of Eloquence.” Although an inexperienced public may applaud inferior oratory, more excellent speakers will always win over audiences who have the opportunity to hear them. “The principles of every passion, and of every sentiment, is in every man; and when touched properly, they rise to life, and warm the heart, and convey that satisfaction, by which a work of genius is distinguished from the adulterate beauties of a capricious wit and fancy.” He even expresses suspicion of “more refined judges” of oratory, since its purpose is to appeal to the common public. In this case, reasonable people “must submit to the public verdict, without reserve or limitation” (..). Must the critic of other kinds of compositions be subservient to the public? The answer is no, but not because Hume abandons the principle that the public is a reliable judge of artistic greatness. In “Of the Standard of Taste,” he does complicate that principle by admitting that individual people may often be bad judges. Still, the “rules of composition” are nothing “but general observations, concerning what has been universally found to please in all countries and ages” (..). Proper judgment of finer compositions requires a confluence of favorable external conditions, natural delicacy, and extensive training. Yet the ultimate basis of such judgment resides in the sentimental responses of our common human nature. Hume still insists that if elements of a composition “are found to please, they cannot be faults; let the pleasure, which they produce, be ever so unexpected and unaccountable” (..). Even excellent critics, however, may miss elements of a work or allow themselves to be inappropriately swayed by prejudice on a particular occasion. Some commentators have emphasized the idealism of Hume’s 

I am indebted in this section to Collingwood’s The Principles of Art, especially chapter , “The Artist and the Community.”

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depiction of true aesthetic judges. Costelloe’s interpretation has it, for instance, that Hume’s “true judge is ideal, a personification of general rules and a model which, if followed, would always lead to the correct judgment.” Conceiving of the true judge in this way makes sense of Hume’s references to the standard of taste as both a rule and the joint verdict of good critics. But understanding the true judge to be an ideal does not mean that judges will never fail. On the contrary, it suggests that they often will, as an ideal sets a standard that our efforts may approach only asymptotically. Even those who strive to live up to the ideal will have bad days or miss important features; therefore, they need corroboration and sometimes correction from others similarly well qualified. In “Of Simplicity and Refinement in Writing,” Hume claims that orators, philosophers, and critics all lose by being “never blamed or censured” (..). The standard for judging art must therefore be public, either because the public has the final word or because even the best judges rely on conversation with their fellows. But does this need for a public standard imply that art itself is essentially public? Perhaps it only suggests that art criticism must be public. Great artists might never choose to subject their work to such criticism in the first place. I suspect that Hume would consider a purely solipsistic artist no artist at all. He believes that the artist’s task is to produce something beautiful. To remove all reference to the public from this task, we must presume that the artist conceives of herself as producing the work either for herself alone or for no one at all – perhaps for the sake of art itself. Insisting on “art for art’s sake,” she conceives of the work as of strictly intrinsic value – not only because it is not fungible in the marketplace but because its value does not depend on its relation to other things, including people. The artist may think of her work in this way, but such thinking rests on a mistake, according to Hume. The art’s beauty consists in its being appreciated by human observers, since there is no beauty in the object itself, but only in the sentimental response that it engenders in human minds. So whether  

Aesthetics and Morals in the Philosophy of David Hume, . See ibid., –. This brief summary does not do justice to the subtle complexity of Costelloe’s interpretation. He makes it clear that his ideal judge is not an ideal observer, construed as someone with suprahuman sympathies or omniscience (). Moreover, the rules in question are not propositions that anyone could follow in abstraction from the practice of criticism; they are more like rules of excellent prose than instructions for assembling Ikea furniture. They are rules that require knowing-how, which “cannot be separated from the activity in which they are instantiated” ().

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she is aware of it or not, the work’s value must come from its relation to at least one person. How, then, does she know the work to be beautiful? Suppose she possesses the requisite delicacy and good sense of a competent judge. While these characteristics may reside within a single person, one cannot conceive of the other requirements for good judgment in this way. Hume says that delicate sentiment must be “improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice” (..). Some of the practice consists of looking at only the single work of art to be judged, coming to know it better under different lights, literal or metaphorical. But it also requires studying numerous instances of the same genre, both to acquire experience in discerning their relevant particulars and to recognize gradations between more and less excellent instances. Such practice requires immersing oneself in an artistic community’s work, if only for a limited time. Freedom from prejudice, moreover, requires overcoming a narrow firstperson perspective. It does not require breathing the rarefied air of the view from nowhere, but instead demands expansive sympathy with a work’s intended audience. Imagine judging Greek tragedy with no understanding that Athenians conceived of the gods as personifications of natural forces. From this perspective, could we appreciate the profound realism of these narratives? To imagine one’s life destroyed by a vindictive Aphrodite is, for us, fantasy. But to imagine overpowering lust having the same effect requires only sympathy and some experience of the world. These two different imaginative exercises go with two radically different genres. We cannot judge tragedy well as long as we are seeing it as fantasy – meaning as long as we are failing to take up the intended audience’s perspective. In short, the artist conserving her art for herself alone cannot know that what she has produced is beautiful, without sympathizing with the judgment of others. This is not to say that she could not experience the kind of sentiments that produce judgments of beauty in looking at her work. Such sentiments arise naturally in human beings, according to Hume, and feeling them does not require cultivation. Nor does Hume insist that all good critics possess the same sentiments on the way to or after passing judgment on a work of art. As James Shelley argues, Hume leaves room for true judges to differ in their preferences (though not in their judgments or verdicts), because of the difference between “merely feeling and judging by feeling.” Our feelings are indications of the excellence of art, and they are 

See ...



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“Hume and the Joint Verdict of True Judges,” .

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responsible for the great pleasure that we take in art. But a judgment that art is beautiful requires freeing oneself from prejudice, including the predilections that come from our upbringing, age, or temperaments. I may prefer Beethoven to Mozart, but I err if I take that preference by itself to indicate that Beethoven is a superior artist to Mozart. It “belongs to [beauty’s] essence,” Shelley contends, “that it is only from the general point of view that we grasp it, and . . . it belongs to the essence of this point of view that others – certain others – can occupy it.” It follows that if “you care about beauty,” then “you have no choice but to care about what others – certain others – find beautiful.” As long as we refuse to seek confirmation of our feeling in a standard of taste, our feeling does not rise to the level of a normative judgment. Whatever seems right to the artist about her work is going to be right. “And that only means that here we can’t talk about ‘right.’” To see an experience as private in principle is to remove it from the realm of aesthetic experience. It is to place it in the category of taste as mere preference, about which it makes sense to say de gustibus non est disputandum. To prohibit dispute about something, however, is to diminish its importance in real conversation and therefore in common life. So it is natural, Hume writes, “to seek a Standard of Taste; a rule, by which the various sentiments of men may be reconciled; at least, a decision, afforded, confirming one sentiment, and condemning another” (..). Aesthetic experiences, then, fortify connections between people in at least two overlapping ways. First, by enjoying art with other people, we establish a community of emotions, where each person undergoes a deeper experience because it is seconded by others. The shared experience can give rise to emotions that are warm. In the theater, the warmth may be moderate – something akin to the “goodwill” that Aristotle says can exist between people who have never met. In private settings, it can reinforce and regenerate emotions of friendship and love. Suppose I drag my husband into the room just to listen to Plácido Domingo sing a single note, because I think it is the most beautiful sound ever produced by the



 

True Humean judges, Shelley emphasizes, do not expect a precise ranking of works of art or artists. Instead, they agree on the general merits while acknowledging that “human sentiment is too various . . . to establish boundaries sharp enough” to provide such a ranking (ibid., ). See also Shelley, “Hume and the Nature of Taste,” ; and Ted Cohen, “Partial Enchantments of the Quixote Story in Hume’s Essay on Taste,” –. “Hume and the Joint Verdict of True Judges,” . Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, .

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human voice. He does not have to agree with me, but if he appreciates what I hear, we will feel closer afterward. Second, suppose he does not agree. Then we enter the realm of critical discussion. Here, the endeavor to understand requires us to see ourselves as engaged in a common project – to hear through each other’s ears, as it were, and to sympathize with one another, with Domingo himself, and with the many people whose joint efforts made possible the production of that note. The conversation could devolve into snarky, self-serving argumentation, producing cold rather than warm emotions. But this can happen only if we lose sight of the critical aim, which includes shared and communal goods. Finally, because producing, enjoying, and judging art are communal practices, they provide social support for the emotions that we feel while engaging in them. And social support, Hume argues, can strengthen calm emotions. Because we naturally seek a standard in art, as we do in morals, aesthetic discourse drives us to find others who share our emotions and even to adapt our sentiments in response to others’. In the second Enquiry, to explain the influence of the moral sentiments, he writes that “as the benevolent concern for others is diffused, in a greater or less degree, over all men, and is the same in all, it occurs more frequently in discourse, is cherished by society and conversation, and the blame and approbation, consequent on it, are thereby rouzed from that lethargy, into which they are probably lulled in solitary and uncultivated nature.” These “social and public principles” therefore triumph over other emotions, which were “perhaps originally stronger,” but “selfish and private” (EPM .). Theatrical experience can make emotions more violent and therefore increase their strength. But social reinforcement can provide a calmer source of strength as well, akin to the effects of habit. The need for a common standard in aesthetics is not as pressing as it is in morals, and again, Hume allows for differences in temperament and conventional manners to cause corresponding differences in preferences. Within the house of aesthetic achievement, there is room for comedy, satire, romance, tragedy, cerebral reflection, and fervid display – and room for those who might admit the virtues of other styles but keep returning to the one that speaks most intimately to themselves. Our need for a standard of taste does not override the other needs that art serves as well. Yet the search for an aesthetic standard remains and inclines us to not just passively receive compositions but to discuss them with others, to rejoice when we find someone whose taste corresponds to our own, and to feel some ire when others fail to see what we see. But if we fail to reach

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agreement, we need not construe our conversation partner as dangerous or vicious, and we might still come away with warm feelings toward her. Hume believes that emotions that are shared become stronger in the sharing, even if they are calm. This effect reveals vulnerabilities of the human condition: we need others to support our joys as well as commiserate with our sorrows. Our propensity to echo emotions also has a dark side. We may sometimes need, as Spinoza says, that “singular power of mind” that enables one “to restrain oneself from imitating” certain affects. McIntyre notes this problem but argues that Hume has resources for a response in his view that we sympathize more with those whom we esteem. If we are good aesthetic judges, these are the people whose conversation and correction we will seek. And if we have delicacy of taste, we will be better at picking them out of a crowd. In this light, Hume’s claim in “Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion” that one who “has well digested his knowledge both of books and men, has little enjoyment but in the company of a few select companions” sounds less like snobbish elitism and more like wise self-protection (..). Aesthetic experience can improve the emotions in numerous ways. Its enlivening of calm emotions can encourage habits of innocent, pleasurable emotions. The natural propensity to judge art and seek a standard of approval for it prolongs the experience of calm emotions as we reflect on and reimagine the sentiments of beauty (thus, to some degree, experiencing them again) and promotes conversation about those emotions. Such conversations require our conceiving of ourselves as engaged with common projects with others. These projects depend on and fortify the cultivation of warm emotions, and the social support of such discourse provides further support for the calm emotions. Finally, the habits of taste promote reflective tranquility, because they require careful study and finegrained reasoning and transfer our concerns from the violent vicissitudes of life to more stable and inexpensive goods. I have distinguished two emotional failures – melancholy and an overabundance of aggressive emotions. The power of aesthetic experience lies in its ability to ameliorate both these conditions. Neither the casual reading of a poem nor intermittent trips to the theater will effect an emotional sea-change, but the deliberate pursuit, study, and appreciation of objects of taste just might. Aesthetic experience encourages calm emotions or benign violent ones and transforms icy emotions into warm ones. 

A Spinoza Reader, .

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“Strength of Mind,” .

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The habits associated with such emotions would benefit the imprudent, the angry, and the depressive. Readers may mistake Hume’s remark in the second Enquiry that “life, without passion, must be altogether insipid and tiresome” for a celebration of Dionysian pursuits. But Hume’s point is both more limited and more profound. No moral advice that recommends only suppressing, ignoring, or warring against the emotions offers realistic hope of enduring success. Unless we cultivate habits that fill our hours with happier emotions, the cure might prove more painful than the disease. We need habits of calm, warm emotions to cure emotional defects. If so, then art’s ability to promote such habits places it among the significant sources of human good. Eloquence’s ability to raise the emotions, thus, makes it an important and significant source of such good, even though it can be misused. Standard interpretations attribute to Plato the view that the poets’ ability to arouse emotion makes their work dangerous, and to Aristotle the claim that poetry is good because it purges us of emotion. Without embracing Dionysius, Hume escapes this extreme Apollonianism. Art is important because of, not despite, its tendency to promote emotional experiences – the only experience out of which warm, calm habits can evolve.

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Self-Loving

Those with delicacy of taste, Hume contends, confine their friendship to a narrow circle of select companions, who are most dear. But what of our relationship to the dear self? Hume’s reflections on this relationship prove quite complex: he recognizes various forms of what might be called selflove, with correspondingly various effects. Some of those forms are virtuous, and Hume even considers some egoisms to be benign. Others prove more damaging, threatening efforts for personal and interpersonal progress. With the ancients, Hume proposes that we can counter these effects by recognizing that the best self-lovers are also the best friends.

. Egoisms, Benign, and Malignant It is rare to find a philosopher accused of egoism who deserves the label, or at least the condemnation that accompanies it. Hobbes, Locke, Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Hume himself have borne the accusation, yet all of them celebrate the goods of friendship and acknowledge the possibility of love of others. They also condemn the grasping, vicious behavior we associate with “selfishness.” Nonetheless, many intelligent readers interpret them as egoists.





I use this term for the sake of concision somewhat reluctantly, given its anachronism. As far as I know, Hume never uses it, and it does not seem to have had its current meaning during his lifetime. The OED’s first citation of the use of “egoism” to mean the “theory which regards selfinterest as the foundation of morality” or “systematic selfishness” comes from  (Oxford English Dictionary Online, s.v. “egoism,” accessed November , , www.oed.com). (This citation refers to the “new word Egoism” in French; Hume might have been familiar with the French usage. A definition of “égoïsme” that includes this sense appears in the  edition of Le Dictionnaire de L’Academie Française (from Dictionnaires d’autrefois, accessed October , , http://artflsrv .uchicago.edu).) See, for example, Stephen Darwall’s casual attribution of egoism to Hume, on the basis of Hume’s hedonistic theory of action (British Moralists and the Internal “Ought,” ).



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Hume’s predecessors and contemporaries often expressed fear that egoism was gaining ground and taking more malignant forms. Shaftesbury accuses “Modern Projectors” of trying to “new-frame the human Heart; and . . . reduce all its Motions, Balances and Weights, to that one Principle and Foundation of a cool and deliberate Selfishness.” Epicurus’ warning against attachments that distract from the pursuit of self-interest is a sign of his “fatherly Love of mankind.” But the Hobbesian self-lover is cunning, selfish, and angry. Hutcheson emphasizes more the ancient origins but also diagnoses an insidious modern resurgence. “Whatever Confusion the Schoolmen introduced into Philosophy, some of their keenest Adversaries” do worse by “making the most generous, kind and disinterested of [our desires and affections], to proceed from Self-Love, by some subtle Trains of Reasoning, to which honest Hearts are often wholly Strangers.” Joseph Butler, like Hume, argues for moderation in disputes between old and new, but supposes that “it may be spoken of as very much the distinction of the present to profess a contracted spirit, and greater regards to selfinterest, than appears to have been done formerly.” Hume, on the other hand, foregrounds the perennial nature of egoistic hypotheses. In the second Enquiry, he refers to Epicurus, Atticus, Horace, Hobbes, and Locke as proponents of the “selfish system of morals” (EPM App .). In “Of the Dignity or Meanness of Human Nature,” he says that the dispute between those who elevate and those who demean humanity “seems to have divided philosophers and poets, as well as divines, from the beginning of the world to this day” (..). (He later identifies ascribing selfish motives to all as the most serious way to demean humanity.) But Hume refrains from mentioning some infamous alleged egoists, who are witty, known for their cynicism, and very modern. I have in mind the early Bernard Mandeville and François de La Rochefoucauld. How are these enfants terribles relevant to discussions that they are not mentioned in? I suspect they are lurking offstage, representing a position that Hume finds more insidious than the anatomistic Hobbes or the  



   Characteristicks, Vol. I, . Ibid., . Essay, . Fifteen Sermons, . Mikko Tolonen’s helpful study of the relation between Mandeville and Hume gives a sustained argument against seeing the later Mandeville as a proponent of the “selfish theory.” Tolonen argues that Mandeville’s later works exhibit a clear break with the Hobbism of the original Fable. Tolonen acknowledges that Hume distances himself from the early Mandeville (Mandeville and Hume, –). In what follows, I am only discussing the original Fable. Jennifer Welchman also emphasizes the commonalities between Hume and Mandeville in “Who Rebutted Bernard Mandeville?” See especially –. For a discussion of “Of the Dignity or Meanness of Human Nature” that assumes Mandeville to be Hume’s interlocutor, see Andrea Branchi, “Vanity, Virtue and the Duel,” –.

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paternalistic Epicurus. Hume associates the latter thinkers with the second form of egoism that he identifies in the Enquiry. This egoism reduces care of others to self-love but does not ascribe conscious awareness of the underlying passion to people in general. We believe ourselves to be acting for disinterested motives but are really pursuing the satisfaction of our own desires “even unknown to ourselves,” “whatever affection one may feel, or imagine he feels for others” (EPM App .). After presenting this view, Hume quickly defends the character of its proponents. Epicurus, Atticus, and Horace possessed and cultivated “generous and friendly dispositions.” Hobbes and Locke get the chillier but still complimentary notice of having “lived irreproachable lives” (EPM App .). The moral innocence of this egoism is not surprising from Hume’s perspective, since he considers this “selfish system” to be impotent in practice. Even if all friendship and virtue were reducible to self-love, that self-love would take various directions – a variance wide enough to accommodate all our language distinguishing virtue from vice. “I esteem the man, whose self-love, by whatever means, is so directed as to give him a concern for others, and render him serviceable to society: As I hate or despise him, who has no regard to any thing beyond his own gratifications and enjoyments.” The egoist’s insistence that these two characters are the same at bottom cannot counteract our different experiences of interactions with each, nor our tendency to approve of the first and disapprove of the second. “I find not in this,” Hume concludes, “more than in other subjects, that the natural sentiments, arising from the general appearances of things, are easily destroyed by subtile reflections concerning the minute origin of these appearances” (EPM App .). Yet Hume concludes the appendix by asking “what a malignant philosophy it must be, that will not allow, to humanity and friendship, the same privileges, which are undisputably granted to the darker passions of enmity and resentment?” (EPM App .). How can an inert idea be malignant? He gives us a clue by claiming that this philosophy “may be a good foundation for paradoxical wit and raillery, but is a very bad one for any serious argument or reasoning.” He describes another form of egoism at the beginning of the appendix, which holds that benevolence, friendship, public spirit, and fidelity are all “fair disguises” that we wear “to put others off their guard, and expose them the more to our wiles and machinations.” In a single paragraph dense with ad hominem insinuations, Hume dismisses this ascription of conscious, malevolent motives to everyone. Such claims “can proceed from nothing but the most depraved disposition”; it is easy to imagine what “heart one must be possessed of who

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professes such principles” – viz., a “corrupted” one; the most complimentary possibility is that its proponents are “superficial reasoners” engaging in “the most careless and precipitate examination.” This view is pernicious: “as it can proceed from nothing but the most depraved disposition, so in its turn it tends still further to encourage that depravity” (EPM App .). Though we cannot know which specific thinkers, if any, Hume had in mind, the possibilities I am suggesting – La Rochefoucauld and Mandeville – were influential at the time and familiar to him. La Rochefoucauld was among the moralistes of the ancien régime, a group of thinkers who influenced Mandeville. Both are difficult to interpret, in part because their literary styles resist straightforward reading. But though these styles inspire caution in scholars, they appeal to common readers in ways that academic treatises never will. La Rochefoucauld’s most famous work is in the form of maxims; for these to endure, they must express ideas that speak to the experience of their readers without sounding trite or commonplace. In Two French Moralists, Odette de Mourgues reflects on the advantages and disadvantages of the maxim for psychological investigation. The maxim’s “brevity was attractive, the more so as it was a difficulty”; it “presupposed nimbleness in the use of words, even wit.” On the other hand, it also had a history of expressing “heavy moralising” or “practical advice in keeping with a worldly wisdom which left no room for discovery.” The form in some ways fit rigidity of thought better than La Rochefoucauld’s trenchant but delicate insight. To overcome this problem required masterful rhetorical technique, relentless care in choosing words, and rigorous revision. His unique success in this project produced, in de Mourgues’s judgment, “a triumph of art.” She calls Maxim  “perfect communication, reality forced on our consciousness and acknowledged by us . . . with a shock of illumination.” (Maxim  reads, “Le soleil ni la mort ne se peuvent regarder fixement.” [Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily.]) In others, the Maximes have inspired less admiring responses. After perusing the collection, Madame de La Fayette (who became La Rochefoucauld’s closest friend) wrote to Madam de Sablé: “We have read here the Maxims of M. de La Rochefoucauld: Ah Madame! what corruption one must have in mind and in heart, to be capable of imagining all that!” De La Fayette’s language anticipates Hume’s own ascription of a “corrupted heart” to proponents of the noxious “selfish system”; her reaction   

  See Odette de Mourgues, Two French Moralists, . Ibid., . Ibid.  Ibid., . Maxims, . In Edouard Fournier, Variétés historiques et littéraires, “Lettres à Mme de Sablé,” accessed October , , http://fr.wikisource.org.

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anticipates that of the next few centuries. In his Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries (), Henry Hallam observes that few “books have been more highly extolled or more severely blamed than the Thoughts or Maxims of the Duke of Rochefoucauld.” The aphorisms are “without pedantry, without method, without deductive reasonings, yet wearing an appearance at least of profundity, they delight the intelligent though indolent man of the world, and must be read with some admiration by the philosopher.” Revulsion and admiration, popular success and elite appeal: some found La Rochefoucauld’s unmasking of hypocrisy refreshing, some accused him of blurring the lines between virtue and vice, and some even found in his work an Augustinian portrayal of human nature without divine grace. Voltaire comments on his influence: One of the works that contributed the most to form the taste of the nation, and give it a spirit of justness and precision, was the little collection of the Maxims of François duc de La Rochefoucauld . . . This little collection was read eagerly; he was accustomed to think and to enclose his thoughts in a lively, precise, and delicate turn. This was a merit that no one had had before him in Europe, since the rebirth of letters.

The vivacious, piquant style of the Maxims gave them an influence over the popular mind that has lasted centuries. By contrast, Mandeville has been relatively neglected, but he was not in the eighteenth century, though much of the attention was negative. The germ of The Fable of the Bees is the brief, often hilarious poem “The Grumbling Hive.” Before getting over the insults he hurls at one set of people, readers find themselves laughing at those given to another. Lawyers may be displeased to find themselves described as: The Lawyers, of whose Art the Basis Was raising Feuds and splitting Cases.

but then tickled a couple of stanzas later: Among the many Priests of Jove, Hir’d to draw Blessings from Above, Some few were Learn’d and Eloquent, But thousands Hot and Ignorant.

   

 Introduction to the Literature of Europe, –. See, e.g., Anthony Levi’s French Moralists. My translation. Le Siècle de Louis XIV, chapter . For an investigative study of Mandeville’s attempts to defend himself against attack, and their relation to the Fable’s publication history, see Tolonen, Mandeville and Hume, –.  Mandeville, Fable of the Bees, . Ibid., .

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“The Grumbling Hive” is a small fraction of the Fable. In Mandeville’s many additions, he uses numerous literary genres and rhetorical techniques, including paradox, dialogue, fable, medical anatomy language, and even the methods of the “emblem-book.” These techniques vivify already striking ideas and engage readers. In his dissertation on Mandeville’s early works, Anthony Patrick Francis McKee shows how the paradoxes that confront the reader from the subtitle onward (“Private Vices, Publick Benefits”) demand active reflection. Hume’s psychology of the passions recognizes the pleasure that paradox generates with its surprising nature (T ...). In his introduction to the Fable, F. B. Kaye reflects on the enduring power of Mandeville’s style, which he describes as “the most idiomatic and homely vigour . . . combined with sophisticated control of rhythm and tone – a style at once colloquial and rhetorical, retaining all the easy flow of familiar speech and yet with a constant oratorical note, and never failing to make even the most abstruse analysis so concrete as to strike beyond the intellect to the sympathies.” As with the Maxims, the many attacks on the Fable and its author speak to the work’s power. Those, like Mandeville and La Rochefoucauld, whose rhetorical prowess gives them a hook into readers’ minds may be the proponents of the “malignant philosophies” Hume mentions in the Enquiry. Neither Hobbes nor Locke provides such a hook; even patient readers find their prose exhausting. Hume notes in the History that Hobbes is “much neglected” by contemporary readers. All “reputations, founded on reasoning and philosophy” are precarious relative to the more durable fame granted to a “pleasant comedy, which paints the manners of the age, and exposes a faithful picture of nature” (H :).

. Self-Love, Pride, and Vanity La Rochefoucauld tells us, “Self-interest speaks all manner of tongues and plays all manner of roles, even that of the disinterested.” His style attracts a broader reading public, but is this attraction enough to overcome the “natural sentiments” that Hume claims will withstand reflections about   



 McKee, Anatomy of Power, –. McKee, Anatomy of Power, –. Mandeville, Fable of the Bees, xxxviii. Hume also attributes to Hobbes “Clearness and propriety of style,” but Hume is not under the illusion that this propriety will appeal to the masses of any age. Though Hobbes’s ethics are “fitted . . . to encourage licentiousness,” Hume seems to think Hobbes’s style to have neutered the bulk of the threat. Maxims, .

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the “minute origin” of our motives and allow people to continue distinguishing virtue from vice? I doubt it, and I doubt that Hume’s concern in speaking of “malignant philosophy” is that we might lose our capacity to make moral judgments. It is instead that the dim view of humanity advanced by these more rhetorical egoisms will deflate our capacity to live up to our moral ideals. Hume discusses “selfish systems” at length in “Of the Dignity or Meanness of Human Nature.” The essay’s frame is intellectual factionalism: there are “certain sects, which secretly form themselves in the learned world, as well as factions in the political” (..). The debate over human nature’s stature is the “most remarkable” form of this factionalism. Its partisans are extreme: admirers see humanity as a little lower than the gods; detractors class us beneath the beasts. Hume first locates the disagreement’s source in different stylistic talents: “If an author possess the talent of rhetoric and declamation, he commonly takes part with the [admirers]: If his turn lie towards irony and ridicule, he naturally throws himself into the other extreme” (..). But by what standard might we decide whether humans are great or wretched? Are we high or low compared with what? If compared with other animals, humanity emerges victorious. Unlike other animals, our thoughts roam beyond our experienced space, and beyond the present to learn from the past and wonder about the future. We can (though we often do not) reason carefully about cause and effect, infer laws from individual instances, and profit from our mistakes through reflection. Compared with human possibility, animal nature appears imprisoned in whatever capacities environment and instinct provide. Our expansive thoughts, however, make us vulnerable to detraction. Imagining “beings of the most perfect wisdom,” we can see ourselves as miserably and forever falling short (..). Hume dismisses this comparison as unreasonable; complaining that we are not gods is akin to complaining that slugs are not humans. Another error arises from forgetting that superlatives are in fact superlative. We pick as our standard people whose uncommon wisdom or virtue surprises us and then complain that others lack the same degree of wisdom and virtue.

 

The essay appeared in the first collection, Essays, Moral and Political, in , but its title was only “Of the Dignity of Human Nature” until the  edition of Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects. See also EPM .n.

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

The only comparison that Hume finds worth considering in detail is that among our varying motives: “Were our selfish and vicious principles so much predominant above our social and virtuous, as is asserted by some philosophers, we ought undoubtedly to entertain a contemptible notion of human nature” (..). This standard is not the same as the previous one, which compares one person with others. Condemning human nature based on the inability to find many exemplars of excellence is an elementary reasoning error. Those who are excellent, by definition, excel others in the quality being judged. But an independent evaluation of human qualities underlies the complaint about our selfishness. Although he does not explain the basis of that evaluation here, we can infer that it is our moral response to qualities. Our having this response does not essentially depend on a certain number of people having the quality in question. In contrast to the Enquiry’s lengthy and subtle critique of oversimplified hedonism, the essay dismisses it in a couple of sentences: “The virtuous sentiment or passion produces the pleasure, and does not arise from it. I feel a pleasure in doing good to my friend, because I love him; but do not love him for the sake of that pleasure” (..–). Hume spends more time discussing the selfish system’s suspicion of vanity. He acknowledges that virtuous people “are far from being indifferent to praise” but denies that this susceptibility warrants reassessing them as vicious. Unlike avarice or revenge, which we suspect of polluting any virtuous act they contribute to, vanity is “closely allied to virtue.” Our “taste or disposition” determines the objects of our vanity, inflecting the passion with widely different characters. The object of Nero’s vanity was his chariot-driving, but the object of Trajan’s vanity was “governing the empire with justice and ability. To love the glory of virtuous deeds is a sure proof of the love of virtue” (..). 





Despite Hume’s reference to the “selfish and vicious” and “social and virtuous,” he does not equate self-interested motives with vice, or altruistic motives with virtue. His catalog of the virtues includes traits that we approve of only because they benefit their possessor, and those that are immediately agreeable to others though their possessors do not exhibit them in order to please others. Contingent factors may make such numbers important, but this effect actually would reduce our expectations of virtue along with the number of people who possessed it. For instance, our approval of justice requires that a critical mass of people follow the rules of justice. Were a virtuous man to find himself in a society of lawless “ruffians,” with no regard to equity, order, or even prudential care for their own future interests, then his only recourse, Hume says, would be “to arm himself, to whomever the sword he seizes, or the buckler, may belong” (EPM .). Something analogous is true for all of the artificial virtues, whose usefulness stems from social convention. And reasonable expectations, founded on experience and observation, circumscribe even the natural virtues’ standards. See EPM App .–.

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This argument reiterates the claim that discovering ulterior motives behind virtuous behavior cannot erase moral distinctions. If vanity lies behind all pursuits, then the morally significant question is: what does a person desire to be admired for? Some objects of vanity are low, but not all are. Hume thus introduces a distinction that discussions of egoism often neglect. In the second Enquiry, he notes that our language includes no clear term for the pleasure of reflecting on our own character and finding it virtuous. “Pride” seems most promising, but it has undeserved pejorative connotations. French fails here too: “amour propre” can refer to “self-love as well as vanity,” giving rise to “a great confusion in , and many of their moral writers” (EPM App .n). Hume resorts to using three terms – self-love, vanity, and pride. What are the differences between them, and how does each relate to the possibility of genuine friendship and love? The Treatise insists that “self-love” is, strictly speaking, a misnomer: love, unlike pride, takes another person as object. Hume also identifies a phenomenological difference between love and self-love, because “the sensation [self-love] produces” has nothing “in common with that tender emotion, which is excited by a friend or mistress” (T ...). In A Dissertation on the Passions, he defines love as “complacency in another, on account of his accomplishments or services” (DP ., emphasis added). But he eventually acquiesces in using “self-love,” especially in the second Enquiry. Hume is surely right about one aspect of the phenomenology: love of self does not feel the same as love of others. We can more easily imagine a violent (in Hume’s sense) love of others than love of self. (Again, greater violence does not imply greater strength.) George Eliot provides an example of violent self-love in Daniel Deronda’s heroine, Gwendolen Harleth. As she considers her reflection, she finds herself kissing the “cold glass which had looked so warm.” Few of us experience this kissthe-mirror passion, but Hume claims that all people have self-love. In the introduction to The Natural History of Religion, he distinguishes religious sentiments from dispositions in human nature that spring “from an original instinct or primary impression of nature.” The latter “instincts” have “been found absolutely universal in all nations and ages” (NHR Intro.).  



See also EPM ., where Hume includes vanity in a list of “passions vulgarly, though improperly, comprized under the denomination of self-love.” Mikko Tolonen emphasizes that Hume and Mandeville both distinguish self-love from “self-liking” (or pride) and argues that the distinction aimed to “discourage debate as to whether humans are selfish or other-regarding by nature” (Mandeville and Hume, ). Daniel Deronda, .

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

He includes self-love in the list of such instincts. Moreover, though loving another person often involves pain, or even periods of indifference, love originates in and standardly produces pleasure. We take pleasure in seeing our beloved, thinking about her, and feeling the love itself. But we love ourselves even before we can reflect on our own characters, and even if such reflection engenders more pain than pleasure. Humean self-love is not complacency in ourselves; pride comes closer to that description. But then what is self-love? What is its affective quality, and what object does it pursue? Hume does not give us a definition, but his uses of the term refer to pursuing and caring for one’s private interest. To this extent, Humean self-love corresponds to Butler’s understanding of it as “a regard to our own interest, happiness, and private good.” It therefore corresponds not to love of others but to benevolence. (Humean benevolence is “a desire of the happiness of the person belov’d, and an aversion to his misery” [T ...].) The closest Hume comes to providing a definition of self-love is in the second Enquiry. He refers to “self-love, or a regard to private interest” and observes that because self-love is powerful and because individual and community interest are bound together, we can understand why some philosophers imagine that “all our concern for the public might be resolved into a concern for our own happiness and preservation” (EPM .). He also notes that vicious passions can conflict with self-love: “selfish and social sentiments or dispositions . . . are really no more opposite than selfish and ambitious, selfish and revengeful, selfish and vain” (EPM .). We can contravene self-love by pursuing objects that might be called “selfish,” such as revenge. Although self-love generates desires for our own satisfaction, the contrariety between self-love and ambition, vengefulness, and vanity implies that self-love is not the desire to have all of our other desires satisfied. Self-love pursues one’s genuine welfare, and particular desires may frustrate that goal. In the Treatise’s terms, then, “self-love” is to self what benevolence is to others. Self-love seeks the self’s interest, as benevolence seeks another’s     

See also EHU .n. Hume recognizes that love of one’s children shares this characteristic of self-love; it too is among the natural instincts. See T ..., NHR Intro., DP .n, and EPM .. Butler, Fifteen Sermons, . See also EPM .’s reference to “self-love, or a concern for our own individual happiness.” Hume believes that passions like vengefulness can be truly disinterested, in the sense that the vengeful person desires the object of revenge, not merely the satisfaction that results from that revenge. Someone can thus be vengeful even if she recognizes that it is contrary to her own best interest. See EPM App ..

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well-being. Likewise, it seems that pride is complacency in self as love is complacency in others. But there is an important difference. Love of another is always “follow’d by, or rather conjoin’d with benevolence” (T ...). This conjunction, however, “chiefly distinguishes” love from pride. Pride is among the “pure emotions in the soul,” not necessarily producing desire or motivating action. It is easy to overlook this difference in light of the close analogy between pride and love. Christine Swanton proposes that it “is plausible to think that for Hume [pride and self-love] are connected, as are benevolence and love, as part of the ‘internal frame of our constitution.’” Given Hume’s taking pains to distinguish pride from love in precisely this respect – its not generating any desire as love generates benevolence – this hypothesis is not plausible as a reading of Hume. The misreading obscures something important about his understanding of self-love. Our desire for our own well-being does not require the support of pride. According to Hume, we do not feel benevolence in the presence of love’s opposite, hatred. Yet self-love can withstand pride’s opposite, humility, although humility will distort its operations. I will discuss these distortions in the next section. Pride also differs from self-love in affect. Self-love not only lacks the “tender” quality of love of others; it does not necessarily have any one affective quality. In a letter to Hutcheson, Hume denies that self-love is necessarily calm; it may “become impetuous & disturb’d, especially where any great Pain or Pleasure approaches” (January , in Letters :). Its universality suggests a widely varying phenomenology. Socrates’ self-love does not feel like Alcibiades’; my self-love in the morning may not feel the same in the evening. As a background propensity generating more particular desires, it may often feel like nothing at all. Humean pride, in contrast, is by definition pleasant. The sensation that pride “excite[s] in the soul” constitutes its “very being and essence” (T ...). Its object is the self,

     

See DP .: “it is essential to pride to turn our view on ourselves with complacency and satisfaction.” He argues that this conjunction is an original propensity of human nature for which there can be no further explanation (T ...). See also DP .. Virtue Ethics of Hume and Nietzsche, . That desire, of course, may often miss its mark because of our own misapprehensions, when we fail to recognize our true self-interest. Hume claims that hatred, contrary to love, “produces a desire of the misery and an aversion to the happiness of the person hated” (T ...). Even if self-love is pleasant, it remains phenomenologically distinct from pride, according to Hume. For a defense of the qualitative distinctness of Humean pleasures, see Gill, “Moral Phenomenology in Hutcheson and Hume,” –. Gill criticizes aspects of Hume’s phenomenology in this paper.

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

and it arises when we notice that we possess some quality that produces an independent pleasure. Finally, how is vanity distinct from pride? Hume uses “vanity” and “vain” in multiple senses, sometimes as synonymous with pride. In his Treatise discussion of pride’s causes, he skates between references to what produces pride and what gratifies vanity. He also says that the power of producing pleasure or uneasiness is “the very essence of true and false wit; and consequently the cause of that pride or humility, which arises from them” (T ...). The corresponding sentence in the Dissertation on the Passions concludes that this power is “the cause of that vanity or mortification, which arises from one or the other” (DP .). Sometimes, “vanity” denotes a vice, as in the Enquiry’s reference to that “, which is so justly regarded as a fault or imperfection” (EPM .). In such places, vanity often refers to ostentatious conceit, particularly about frivolous things. In yet another usage, “vanity” connotes a positive feeling about oneself that specifically originates from or requires the support of others’ good opinion. Hume indicates in the Treatise that this sense of “vanity” is distinct from but closely related to pride. People who “are satisfy’d with their own character, or genius, or fortune” want to show “themselves to the world” and acquire “the love and approbation of mankind” (T ...). The causes of this vanity are “the very same qualities and circumstances” that cause “pride, or self-esteem.” Hume’s remarks at the end of “Of the Dignity or Meanness of Human Nature,” which associate vanity with love of fame for virtue, employ this last sense of the term. Vanity thus makes us vulnerable because of its dependence on others’ opinion. But we are naturally prone to it, and it is difficult to lose it without losing much of value as well. Hume includes the “secondary” influence of the opinion of others as a final cause of pride, without which the other causes “have little influence” (T ...). Although we may correct this need by attending to the opinions of others whose approbation is worth having, its roots in our sympathetic tendency to adopt others’ sentiments and beliefs ensure that we cannot escape it entirely. Nor should we want to. Breaking this tie is possible only through perversion – or worse, extirpation – of sympathy itself, a

 

See T ...–. See Jacqueline Taylor, Reflecting Subjects, section ., “Sympathetic Mirroring and the Sustaining of the Passions,” –.

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phenomenon Hume describes in his discussion of tyrants, inveterate factionalists, and those gripped by superstition or enthusiasm.

. Close Allies to Virtue Given all these ways of being concerned with ourselves – self-love, pride, vanity – is there any space left in Hume’s psychology for loving others? In fact, Hume holds that all three of these open that space in different ways. Hume does say that self-love, “when it acts at its liberty, instead of engaging us to honest actions, is the source of all injustice and violence” (T ...). But this conflict is between self-love and public justice, not self-love and love of particular others. The same conflict with justice arises from love of particular others, which produces the same “opposition of passions, and a consequent opposition of actions” as narrow self-interest (T ...). Hume recognizes that many people see their well-being as requiring the well-being of their family and friends – and even their own active contribution to the latter. Philosophically, he believes that we desire others’ good for their own sake and not out of concern for ourselves. But practically, the point has little relevance. These two motivating principles are not in tension with one another. Nothing is more natural than loving one’s children or, Hume thinks, a sexual partner. These tendencies persist not in spite of self-love, but in harmony with it. Pride is more delicate, because taking pleasure in our own qualities can hurt relationships with others. It is difficult to love someone who expresses her high opinion of herself, because of the dual effects of sympathy and comparison. Sympathy ensures that we cannot entirely avoid adopting her self-valuation, and as “no comparison is more obvious than that with ourselves,” we inevitably compare her qualities with ours (T ...). Suppose reflection seconds her self-appraisal: we believe in her excellent qualities and, moreover, believe them superior to our own. We then respect her, but it will be more difficult to love her. As Hume notes in “Of the Middle Station of Life,” friendship prefers equality. Friends need not be equal in every respect, but a preponderance of superiorities on one side upsets the relationship’s balance. 



Cf. Butler’s claim that “there is no peculiar contrariety between self-love and benevolence; no greater competition between these, than between any other particular affections and self-love” (Fifteen Sermons, ).  See ... See EWU ..

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

Suppose, on the other hand, that we do not endorse a conceited person’s self-valuation. Though we will not sympathize enough with his judgment to produce a positive sentiment about his character, we will sympathize enough to experience unpleasant cognitive dissonance. In his company, “the firm perswasion he has of his own merit, takes hold of the imagination, and diminishes us in our own eyes” (T ...). We are unlikely to love someone whose presence continuously occasions such unpleasant feelings. In the Enquiry, Hume identifies another displeasure such characters produce. The vice of vanity, which “seems to consist chiefly in such an intemperate display of our advantages, honours, and accomplishments” and “an importunate and open demand of praise and admiration,” again pains our own self-conceit. But it also raises our suspicions. Why “that impatient desire of applause; as if you were not justly entitled to it, and might not reasonably expect, that it would for ever attend you?” (EPM .). The display is “a sure symptom of the want of true dignity and elevation of mind.” It seems that we dislike people who make a show of pride, because we suspect that it evinces a lack of pride. Our sentiments about this passion are complicated. I suspect that Hume is on to something here. Even if we are sure of our superiority, anxious self-praise is obnoxious. By including this observation in his discussion of qualities immediately agreeable or disagreeable to others, he signals that there is little to say about why this bothers us. Maybe we feel that these people – outwardly arrogant but inwardly insecure – are asking for reassurance that we cannot honestly provide. Maybe we find their self-praise boring. But Hume’s thought is that we just do not enjoy observing pusillanimity. We love people in spite of smallness of soul, not because of it. What we prefer, Hume claims, is that people have a fair degree of pride, expressed by reticence rather than speech (EPM .). To remain quiet about something is not the same as hiding that thing. Jacqueline Taylor notes that Hume thinks that pride reveals itself in behavior, even though, as a “pure emotion,” it need not be joined with motivating desire. The “character” of the passion includes ways of seeing oneself that result in



Cf. EPM . on the “want of spirit and dignity of character, or a proper sense of what is due to one’s self.” In footnote  to this paragraph, Hume writes, “Where we expect a beauty, the disappointment gives an uneasy sensation, and produces a real deformity. An abjectness of character, likewise, is disgustful and contemptible in another view. Where a man has no sense of value in himself, we are not likely to have any higher esteem of him.”

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physical manifestations. Some of these manifestations are ways of carrying one’s body, akin to the posture of swans, peacocks, and turkeys (!) that allow us to ascribe pride to nonhuman animals also (T ...). The secure stride of pride has little in common with the shifting gait of humility. Other manifestations reflect a certain quality that pride gives to everything else that we do. It produces a feeling of elation and “invigorates and exalts the mind” (T ..., ...). Taylor notes that these effects mean that “sustained pride is particularly important for our sense of agency,” as it “gives us the confidence to plan and carry out our projects, or to stand by our convictions and not submit to tyranny or oppression.” Pride is therefore a valuable quality in a friend: it is pleasant to behold (when properly obscured), and a proud person is more capable of exerting herself in the shared activities and good offices of mature friendship. Humility (as opposed to modesty) might be charming at first; it is easy to fall in love with a self-effacing character. Such a person does not threaten our own sense of self-worth, and she brings out protective instincts. We might enjoy encouraging such people and offering them the praise they never offer themselves. But if our encouragement and praise prove ineffective – if our humble friends remain prone to dejected states of mind, how long will our pleasure in their company endure? Once such a friendship has formed, the friend’s self-disparagement is an attack on someone we love. That the attacker is also the person we love mitigates but does not withdraw the offense. Of course, the friend’s good qualities, or merely habit, may ensure that our love endures despite this unpleasantness, but unpleasant it remains. Furthermore, it may be unwise to trust someone prone to mortifying humility as we need to trust our friends. We need friends to share important endeavors and stand up for us when we are vulnerable. Such activities require the proud spirit’s energy and courage. A disposition to one positive passion becomes a wellspring of other positive and motivating passions: “our temper, when elevated with joy, naturally throws itself into love, generosity, pity, courage, pride, and the other resembling affections” (T ...). This list reads like a catalog of the temperamental passions needed in a good friend.

 

Reflecting Subjects, –. Reflecting Subjects, –. Cf. Postema’s argument that pride “gathers together that which one most admires and regards as worthy, not at a distance or impersonally, but as a proper focus of one’s concern and energy – as that around which the various aspects of our lives have and can be seen to have personal meaning” (“Cemented with Diseased Qualities,” ).

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

In suggesting proper pride to be requisite for, rather than opposed to, friendship, Hume sounds an ancient theme. Aristotle seems to associate virtuous friendship with magnanimity, which includes being aware of one’s excellence as well as being willing to demand the honor that is its proper reward. But despite this apparent concern with reputation, the megalopsychos is an ideal of extreme self-sufficiency – an inability, as Alasdair MacIntyre puts it, “to give due recognition to affliction and dependence.” This self-sufficiency extends to the support of pride itself. The great-souled man has “complete contempt” for honors from the average person and “is not disposed even toward honor as though it were a very great thing.” As a matter of justice, he requires that others see him as great, and he is not so self-sufficient that he does not need friends. But his deigning to care what his equals make of him seems a concession to humanity that this other-worldly creature would rather not have to make. Hume, on the other hand, recognizes that no one achieves a wellgrounded opinion of her own merit without evidence of others’ approval. To want the respect and admiration of those whom one respects and admires is both natural and reasonable. This is why vanity is “closely allied to virtue”: proper pride is itself a virtue and supports the operation of other virtues, and vanity supports proper pride. Again, the “love of fame” is a secondary cause of pride, almost always needed to support the other causes, including “virtue, beauty and riches” (T ...). Virtue remains on the list: contra Aristotle, even virtuous people need others’ approval to assure themselves of their virtue. One side of Hume appreciates the Aristotelian model of self-sufficient pride. He associates overdependence on others’ applause with weakmindedness: those with little cause for self-approval become obsessed with comparative judgments and surround themselves with idiots to ensure that the contest comes out right. “A man of sense and merit,” he says, “is pleas’d with himself, independent of all foreign considerations: But a fool must always find some person, that is more foolish, in order to 

 

Several characteristics of Aristotle’s virtuous friends cohere with his depiction of the magnanimous man. For instance, he describes both as assigning great things to themselves. See Nicomachean Ethics, b– and a–.  Dependent Rational Animals, . Nicomachean Ethics, a– and –, . Philip Reed argues that vanity supports virtue by strengthening the usually weak moral sentiments (“Alliance of Virtue and Vanity in Hume’s Moral Theory”). Reed places more emphasis on the moral sentiments as motives to virtuous action, and their combat with self-interested passions, than I do. Because Humean virtues (especially natural virtues) typically produce action through motives with no explicit reference to morality, Reed’s proposed alliance between virtue and vanity is not, by my lights, very robust. Nonetheless, Humean vanity could support virtue in this way in some cases.

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keep himself in good humour with his own parts and understanding” (T ...). But another side of Hume recognizes that independent, wise self-assurance is not so easy. We see this side in “Of Impudence and Modesty” – a withdrawn essay that considers the odd relationship between impudence, modesty, and virtue. In this case, the vice (impudence) can be both more profitable and more difficult to obtain than the virtue. These traits violate the usual pattern, as virtues tend to benefit those who have them, and vices are maddeningly easy to encourage. The aberration comes from the way that impudent and modest people relate to other people’s reactions. Impudent people get ahead by fooling most of the people most of the time. “Such indolence and incapacity is there in the generality of mankind, that they are apt to receive a man for whatever he has a mind to put himself off for; and admit his overbearing airs as proofs of that merit which he assumes to himself” (EWU .). Because the modest conceal their excellence, others fail to notice it and pass them over. Modest people might attempt to rectify this injustice by pretending to feel confidence. But those same observers who are so gullible in interacting with impudent people can smell fake confidence a mile away. Whereas an impudent person might laugh at being caught acting a part, a modest person will feel abashed, thus making repeat performances more difficult: “the remembrance of that failure will make him blush, and will infallibly disconcert him: After which every blush is a cause for new blushes” (EWU .). Modest people are not going to win this game; their best hope is to stop playing. If they are lucky, accidents of fortune might bolster their selfconfidence. Acquiring wealth might help: “Riches naturally gain a man a favourable reception in the world, and give merit a double lustre, when a person is endowed with it” (EWU .). Humean wealth, Taylor has argued, is power, and felt power may be synonymous with confidence. But properly directed and corrected vanity might help also. Because “good sense and experience make [people of merit] diffident of their judgment,” they look to others’ judgments to assess their own merit. If they choose these judges wisely and are lucky enough to have some discerning fellows who offer a positive assessment, they will find the support that their fragile pride needs. Hume’s wry observation remains in force: “Nothing carries a man through the world like a true genuine natural impudence” 

Reflecting Subjects, –.

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

(EWU .). But modest people would benefit from a cultivated pride’s enlivening effects. Hume’s various, sometimes paradoxical, remarks about pride, selfesteem, conceit, and vanity reflect the frustrating, paradoxical ways that we experience these attributes in ourselves and others. We have contempt for servility but disgust for conceit. Pride feels wonderful, but the more we deserve it, the more difficult it may be to obtain. We lament humility in those we love but demand that those who love us endure our own selfabasement. We should be suspicious of any philosopher who proposes a finite set of abstract norms for relating to these passions and their associated tendencies. Hume’s primary justification for concealing pride acknowledges its value: we must not express a high opinion of ourselves, lest we humiliate others. This prohibition extends only to the expression, not the feeling, of pride (EPM .). Pride is both important and vulnerable. Hume writes that people “have, in general, a much greater propensity to over-value than under-value themselves” (EPM .). But a trait can be natural and common yet still vulnerable. Postema notes that, unlike Mandeville, for whom “a sense of self – indeed, an inordinate sense of one’s value – is the presupposed source of pride,” Hume sees pride and humility as giving “the self its determinate shape.” Likewise, Hume explains pride as arising from more fundamental social principles of human nature. These differences with Mandeville shift pride from a given aspect of human nature, to be shaped and manipulated in useful or pernicious ways, to a common attribute that can nevertheless be lost under adverse conditions. The commonality of a tendency to overvalue oneself increases the chances that pride will be vulnerable, by increasing the odds that people’s selfassessment will be challenged by comparison. I have clear self-knowledge about my lack of athletic talent, so I am never mortified to find that someone can run faster, lift more, or aim more accurately than myself. I take no pleasure in these weaknesses, but comparing myself with others does not exacerbate my humiliation. But if I suffered from the delusion 



Hume contrasts his view with Aristotle’s, presumably thinking of Aristotle’s claim in the Nicomachean Ethics that “smallness of soul is more opposed to greatness of soul than vanity is, for it both occurs more often and is worse” (a–, ). Although Hume disagrees with the claim that smallness of soul or humility is more common than unwarranted pride, he seems to agree with Aristotle that the former is worse. See T ...: “’Tis requisite on all occasions to know our own force; and were it allowable to err on either side, ’twou’d be more advantageous to over-rate our merit, than to form ideas of it, below its just standard.” “Cemented with Diseased Qualities,” .

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that I were a fast runner, I would suffer new pain every time I went out for a run and got lapped by an elderly man walking his dog. Because lack of pride stultifies capacity for action, this vulnerability constitutes a significant problem. With his positive assessment of certain kinds of vanity, Hume suggests that in the problem we may find a solution. We judge our worth, at least in part, through perceiving how others feel about us. We therefore have a motive to please others by cultivating traits that they love or esteem. With some luck and discernment in judging whose opinion we care about, that vanity can improve our character and capacity for loving relationships. It makes sense to aim, then, for vanity that consists in loving “the fame of laudable actions.” I argued that Hume is not concerned about egoism’s effects as a psychological theory but worries about the rhetorically powerful writings of thinkers like Mandeville and La Rochefoucauld. But it was unclear why, given Hume’s view of egoism’s practical irrelevance, even this rhetorical power would be dangerous. We can now see the problem. Such satire does not increase our propensity to self-love or nullify our ability to make moral distinctions. It does, however, threaten our pride, and thus discourages us from living up to a brighter view of human nature. Hume says at the beginning of “Of the Dignity or Meanness of Human Nature”: “When a man is prepossessed with a high notion of his rank or character in the creation, he will naturally endeavour to act up to it, and will scorn to do a base or vicious action, which might sink him below that figure which he makes in his own imagination” (..). To scorn humanity’s capacity for genuine love and friendship withholds from that capacity this important nourishment.

. Beyond Egoisms To see how different versions of Hume’s selfish systems might raise or sink our image of ourselves, let us look a little more closely at Epicurus in comparison with La Rochefoucauld and Mandeville. Some of Epicurus’ statements suggest an instrumental view of friendship, though complicated by a sense of its inherent value: “All friendship is desirable in itself, though it starts from the need of help.” But he portrays his hedonism as compatible with the highest human possibilities. “For the virtues,” he says,  

For an argument that Hume manifests this positive sense of vanity himself in “My Own Life,” see Aaron Garrett, “Hume’s Own Life,” . Vatican Collection, The Extant Remains, .

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

“are by nature bound up with the pleasant life, and the pleasant life is inseparable from them.” These possibilities include perfect sympathy with friends: wise people find their friends’ torture just as painful as being tortured themselves and will even die for their friends. On friendship’s value and importance, he is most eloquent, calling it an “immortal” good: “Friendship goes dancing round the world proclaiming to us all to awake to the praises of a happy life.” Far from proclaiming humanity incapable of “social and virtuous” principles or dominated by “selfish and vicious” ones, Epicurus’ overriding message is that human nature is most in harmony with itself when it discovers its pleasures in love and companionship. It may be that Epicurus’ devotion to the ideal of friendship outstrips his own moral psychology. Julia Annas argues that Epicurus’ position requires a two-level view: I pursue my friend’s good for its own sake in the context of individual actions of the friendship, while recognizing on another level that I pursue friendships as part of the grand end of my own pleasure. But this kind of view, Annas argues, both seems to contradict some of Epicurus’ explicit statements and would regardless require a problematic moral schizophrenia. If Annas is correct, reflective Epicureans would indeed struggle to maintain their theory or to live in accordance with it. Nonetheless, this theoretical tension is not going to infect the populace with a generally dim view of human nature, even if all members of the conversible world were reading Epicurus. While elevating the pursuit of pleasure, Epicurus insists that virtue and friendship offer most excellent pleasures, so that “nothing is presented on any side, but what is laudable and good” (T ...). This selfish system, even if it deserves the name, will prove as inert as Hobbesian analysis, though for quite different reasons. Compare Epicurus’ tone to La Rochefoucauld’s: “All the passions make us make mistakes, but love [l’amour] makes us make the most ridiculous ones.” At times La Rochefoucauld seems to agree with Hume on vanity’s positive effects: “The desire to merit the praises that we are given fortifies our virtue.” But La Rochefoucauld suspects that such support rarely produces genuine virtue, because of self-love’s sovereignty: “Virtues lose  

  

“Letter to Menoeceus,” The Extant Remains, . Vatican Collection, The Extant Remains, . Some translations include the claim that the wise man will die for a friend in the fragment about shared torture. For Diogenes Laertius’ ascription of this view to Epicurus, see “Life of Epicurus,” The Extant Remains, . Ibid. Hume’s Epicurean is likewise eloquent in speaking of friendship. See ...  The Morality of Happiness, –. Maxims, –. Maxims, . See also : “He is truly an honorable man who wants to be always exposed to the sight of honorable people.”

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themselves in self-interest, as rivers lose themselves in the sea.” Most apparent virtues are false: sincerity is usually “only a subtle dissimulation in order to win the trust of others”; the love of justice “only the fear of suffering injustice”; fidelity “a means of elevating ourselves above others, and of making ourselves trustees of the most important things”; and pity “a sentiment of our own ills in the ills of others.” Friendship receives particular abuse, as “only a reciprocal management of interests, and only an exchange of good offices; it is, finally, only a relation in which self-love always presents itself with something to gain.” The Maxims portray society as a web of deceit and manipulation, where everyone puts on a mask of virtue for the gratification of vanity and the rewards of apparent virtue. Few people are capable of true virtue, and selfdeception aggravates their weakness by immunizing them from correction. The Maxims do not encourage pride; they mortify it. I am not suggesting that Hume thought the Maxims were worthless – still less that they actually are so. They are brilliant, incisive, and funny as hell. La Rochefoucauld deserves his place alongside Pascal and Montaigne as French moralists who thought that human nature could benefit from deflation. A judicious reader might take La Rochefoucauld’s advice, which is to read the Maxims as if they applied to everyone else (in order to judge their merit fairly, away from the angry whisperings of pride). She could then reorient her vision to see how they might apply to herself, deriving insight about self-deception, diffidence about expressing self-esteem, and even amusement about the absurdity of ubiquitous posturing. All of these would be happy effects, from Hume’s perspective. What may benefit an individual, however, can still harm most people. Common readers may derive from the Maxims despair over the possibility of genuine virtue, love, and friendship. The Maxims could serve as excuses for vicious cynicism: since society is a Hobbesian war of all against all, necessity justifies rapacious coercion and manipulation. Hume’s remarks in “Of the Dignity and Meanness of Human Nature” suggest that such reactions to mean views of human nature would be quite damaging. Satirical psychology may be bad public policy.  

 

    Ibid., . Ibid., . Ibid., . Ibid., . Ibid., . Ibid., . See also : “Most friends leave one disgusted with friendship, and most devout people leave one disgusted with devotion”; and : “However rare true love may be, it is still less rare than true friendship.” Hume was particularly fond of Maxim , which he quotes in the Treatise, the Dissertation on the Passions, and in a May  letter to Adam Smith (T ...; DP .; Letters :). See the “Note to the Reader,” Maxims, –.

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

Mandeville acknowledges that his work humiliates people: “every one looks upon [the Fable] as an Affront done to himself, because it detracts from the Dignity, and lessens the fine Notions he had conceiv’d of Mankind, the most Worshipful Company he belongs to.” There might be some consolation in Mandeville’s notion that humanity’s frailties, when well manipulated by civil society, produce more good than attempts to deny our impulses. But this notion can console only our desires for goods, not our pride. And nothing guarantees that social pressures will lead to more good than evil overall. He notes that respectable women are more likely to murder their illegitimate children than “Common Whores, whom all the World knows to be such,” since the latter’s self-love has inured itself to shame. Mandeville’s language is less careful and more harsh than La Rochefoucauld’s. He avoids neither generalizations nor demeaning language, and while claiming to recommend virtue, he represents it as difficult, unpleasant, and generally unattainable: Ashamed of the many Frailties they feel within, all Men endeavour to hide themselves, their Ugly Nakedness, from each other, and wrapping up the true Motives of their Hearts in the Specious Cloke of Sociableness, and their Concern for the publick Good, they are in hopes of concealing their filthy Appetites and the Deformity of their Desires; while they are conscious within of the Fondness for their darling Lusts, and their Incapacity, barefac’d, to tread the arduous, rugged path of virtue.

Ugliness, filthy appetites, deformed desires – this is a mean view of human nature, to be sure. Although Hume points out human weakness and occasionally makes fun of it, he never insults his readers like this. He is aware of human frailty and sometimes loses his patience with it. He is also aware that average people may be obnoxious or even repulsive. And he repeatedly acknowledges the ubiquity of self-love and other partialities, as well as their complex and problematic effects on communal living. Hume does not believe, however, that demeaning human nature as such is a promising strategy for overcoming these problems. Although pride and humility are in one sense opposites for Hume, humiliation does not cure pride, if by “cure” we mean a remedy that increases virtue. If we are seeking revenge – wanting only to mortify the person whose pride has mortified us – then inducing humility through criticism may work very well. But since humility enervates and encourages a conception of oneself



Fable of the Bees, –.

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

Ibid., –.

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as incapable of the good and the great, such criticism is unlikely to reform a character in the direction of positive action. A more effective remedy for selfish tendencies begins by recognizing, as Hume does, the significance of variations in pride or vanity. Someone who takes pride in her ability to deceive all comers has little in common with someone who takes pride in her ability to listen closely and to constructively comfort those in need. Even less striking differences in pride’s objects can constitute great differences in character: consider the difference between someone whose primary source of pride is her children’s accomplishments and someone whose artistic productions play that role. Virtuous people, Hume argues, are not those without pride. They are those who take pride in virtue itself and its objects. On pride, Hume thus sees beyond Aristotle, La Rochefoucauld, and Mandeville. Against the modern thinkers who ridicule the pride they see everywhere, Hume rehabilitates pride in virtue’s service. His view shares something with Aristotle’s insistence that the best self-lovers make the best friends. Hume transfers moral assessment from the question of whether or not one has self-love or vanity to questions about which objects satisfy one’s self-love or vanity. Likewise, Aristotle claims that the important questions concern which goods a self-lover assigns to himself. The best self-lover “does many things for the sake of both his friends and his fatherland, and even dies for them if need be: he will give up money, honors, and, in general, the goods that are fought over, thereby securing for himself what is noble.” The wise want such people for their friends, and even the unwise probably would not object to such generosity. Similarly, Hume argues that people whose gratification requires a reputation for honor, benevolence, and humanity can possess a stable form of pride and make excellent friends. He doubts that we make people better for others by making them feel worse about themselves. But even if we have been fortunate enough to learn to take pride in our virtue, Hume recognizes that this pride requires ongoing support from our fellows. Vanity, in a strict sense, is the desire for this support. 



Modern suspicion of pride is, of course, related to its being considered the most capital of the capital vices by some Christian thinkers. It is easy to oversimplify the relation between pride and Christianity, however. Condemnation of hubris had deep roots in pre-Christian thought, and anyone who thinks Christian thinkers to be united in a sweeping condemnation of pride should read Aquinas’s treatment of magnanimity. These complexities do not vitiate the claim that Hume himself saw his theory of pride as undermining Christian moralizing, which Stephen Buckle argues for in “Hume on the Passions.” I doubt that Hume spent much time reading Aquinas. Nicomachean Ethics, a–, .

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

Unlike Aristotle, Hume’s conceptions of self-love and proper pride are not bound up with unrealistic illusions of manly self-sufficiency. As Taylor has argued, the development of Humean pride requires an education in a social context. The objects people in different cultures take pride in therefore vary. Some of this variance is insignificant: does it matter if Pittsburghers take pride in their sports teams, whereas Austinians take pride in their weirdness? Some variance, however, is both significant and subject to moral luck: it does matter that some of my relatives taught me to take pride in my “Southern heritage”; it also matters that some of my teachers and other relatives countered this message. It follows from Hume’s account of pride that someone reared under conditions of constant humiliation will likely not develop a strong understanding of her place in the community, what she has to offer in relationships, or perhaps much of a sense of herself at all. But even those reared in better circumstances will discover vulnerabilities – holes in the self’s mosaic that need patching by the loving care of friends, family, and lovers. For Hume, this is a sign of humanity, not vice. 

Reflecting Subjects, –.

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The intimacy of love and friendship has not shielded them from the philosopher’s gaze. As Epicurus demonstrates, philosophical reflection on friendship did not need to wait for what Charles Taylor calls the “affirmation of ordinary life.” Much of that reflection, however, has examined the connection between private and public relationships, between friendship and the state. In the first two sections of this chapter, I consider how the Essays illuminate this relation. I return to the political intervention question and argue that Hume again provides grounds for thinking that government is ill-equipped to forward progress. His views contradict the ancient notion of a natural harmony between well-governed states and virtuous friendships. The last two sections consider what the Essays have to say about erotic love and the related topic of friendship across gender lines. In most respects, Hume’s treatment of these issues itself constitutes progress, as he moves beyond the positions of both his predecessors and contemporaries. Nonetheless, I argue that in his treatment of homosexuality and, to a lesser degree, gender equality, he retards rather than encourages improvement.

.

Friendship and the State

Aristotle calls humans political animals. Perhaps we are. But we are also animals who love, bear children, cling to parents and offspring, sometimes cherish siblings, and form some of our strongest bonds with those not related to us at all. For Aristotle, there is no inherent tension here. The city is not the family, but the master art of politics orders all subservient arts, including those of friendships and the household. The administration of the polis is analogous to that of the household, and the relation between 

See Sources of the Self, Part III.



See Politics, a.



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citizens is something like that between friends. Among the noblest activities of friendship is promoting the city’s welfare. Aristotle does not imagine that things work so smoothly in Athens, but he strives for an architectonic science to prescribe a better imposition of logos on communal lives. Friendships of the highest type support rather than conflict with polities of the highest type. This is not the spirit of scepticism. From Hume’s perspective, although well-run states and intimate relationships are both essential for happy human lives, nothing guarantees symbiosis between them. Some older treatments of the possible tension between friendship and the state assume that such conflicts signal a failing in either the friendship or the polity, or both. Hume’s Essays offer reasons for questioning this assumption – perhaps even stronger reasons than he recognized. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle introduces the “political art” as follows: We . . . see that even the most honored capacities – . . . generalship, household management, rhetoric – fall under the political art. Because it makes use of the remaining sciences and, further, because it legislates what one ought to do and what to abstain from, its end would encompass those of the others, with the result that this would be the human good. For even if this is the same thing for an individual and a city, to secure and preserve the good of the city appears to be something greater and more complete: the good of the individual by himself is certainly desirable enough, but that of a nation and of cities is nobler and more divine.

Behind these lines lies a hope for knowledge of how to pursue the common good, through the medium of institutions arranged as neatly as Russian nesting dolls. When things go well, all subservient institutions contribute to individuals’ flourishing within a state, whose good is inseparable from the good of the whole community. With this hope comes another: that virtuous friends might pursue local goods together, contributing to and being supported by the city’s good. Aristotle knows well the story of his philosophical grandfather, executed by the state because of conversation with those he called friends, and called by some friends to violate the state’s laws to save himself. We see a darker note also in Aristotle’s insistence that among the most precious goods of friendship is protection from slander. Slander in such a state is not only humiliating; it is dangerous. Today’s slanders become tomorrow’s charges.



Nicomachean Ethics, b–, .

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

Ibid., a–.

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But Socrates’ interlocutors were rarely true friends, and Athens was not an ideal polity. It was a contentious, unstable city that Aristotle eventually had to leave to protect his own life. Here lie two neat explanations for why friendships often warred with the city, despite their joint aim of human flourishing. First, few friendships are based on virtue; such people are rare, and their finding one another is rarer still. Second, Athens careened between forms of government, none of which mirrored Aristotle’s good polities. By the time Cicero writes his essay on friendship, De amicitia, the tension between duties to state and love of friends is intimately present to him. Where Aristotle mentions in passing that excellent friendships form slowly, Cicero dwells on the need to test friends to be sure, among other things, that they will not ask you to do treasonous things. These tests are delicate; the only way to test what sort of friend someone will be is to take her as a friend. Once we have done so, however, our feelings get the better of us: “thus friendship outruns the judgement and takes away the opportunity of a trial.” To find the rare friend who is “firm, steadfast and constant,” we must “check the headlong rush of goodwill as we would that of a chariot.” We need to know that friends will not ask us to do horrible things, since common men often do ask such things and resent denial. Moreover, since it is dishonorable to plead friendship in defense of sins “against the State,” if friends band together to betray their country, then we may conclude that both friends failed to that extent in virtue. Cicero puts these warnings in the context of parallel warnings about corruption in the state itself. The threat of treasonous friendship is grave, because Roman “political practice has already swerved far from the track and course marked out for us by our ancestors.” Civil order is in disarray, and Laelius foresees a “people estranged from the Senate and the weightiest affairs of state determined by the caprice of the mob.” This state’s structure provides no bulwark against corruption. But these are precisely the conditions under which exceptional men may be tempted to act against the State, believing their actions promote the greater good. Cicero’s suggestion, however, is not that the conditions produce exceptions to duties of allegiance. Rather, they provide reasons to be especially careful in forming friends and in acceding to their requests. This thought is not foreign to Hume. We saw that in “Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion,” he argues that delicacy of taste enables selectivity in  

 Ibid., b–. Cicero, De Senectute, De Amicitia, De Divinatione, .   Ibid., . Ibid., –. Ibid., .

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choosing friends and protection against negative influence. Yet for Hume, no amount of care can entirely prevent friendly associations that are potentially threatening to the state. Tension between friendship and the state is an ineliminable feature of social life. Our constant propensity to factions is one source of this tension. Strong factionalism threatens civic stability, and friendship often generates factionalism. In “Of Parties in General,” Hume initially divides factions into personal and real, where the former are “founded on personal friendship or animosity among such as compose the contending parties” (..). Personal factions are special dangers in small republics, but the tendency to form them is perennial and pervasive: Hume writes that “the smallest appearance of real difference will produce them” (..–). Even if the faction originated in genuine disagreements, personal considerations may cause it to persist beyond the disagreements’ resolution. “When men are once inlisted on opposite sides, they contract an affection to the persons with whom they are united, and an animosity against their antagonists: And these passions they often transmit to their posterity” (..). Aristotle also claims that people who engage in common activities for a cause bond with one another and that such activities reinforce alreadyexisting bonds. Hume’s point sounds darker, because he emphasizes that love for some people can generate antagonism toward others. Are we incapable of loving some without vilifying others? Surely, magnanimous people love their friends without condemning everyone with whom those friends disagree. Unfortunately, the relevant question is not: are some people capable of such nobility? Questions about political structures must consider common tendencies, not the nobility of the rare. Hume makes this point in “Of the Independency of Parliament,” noting that it is reasonable to design political arrangements around the assumption that all people act only for selfinterest, with no regard for the public good. Though the assumption is false, in a legislative system of majority rule, a selfish majority can impede pursuit of the common good. And it is reasonable to presume that selfish members will always be the majority. The real problem, however, is not selfishness so much as our limited social passions – what Pocock calls the “undisciplined sociability of mankind.” Hume claims “men are generally more honest in their private than in their public capacity, and will go to greater lengths to serve a party,  

Real factions are “founded on some real difference of sentiment or interest” (..). “Hume and the American Revolution,” in Virtue, Commerce, and History, .

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than when their own private interest is alone concerned.” Party ties undermine the generally strong fear of dishonor, since “where a considerable body of men act together, . . . a man is sure to be approved of by his own party, for what promotes the common interest; and he soon learns to despise the clamours of adversaries” (..). As we saw in the previous chapter, our vanity and pride need the support of others’ approval. Public disapproval, moreover, can have severe consequences. But factions provide alternative sources of approval and protection against society’s disapproval. What promotes the party’s interest garners its applause, even if this interest crosses the larger public’s. When the applause takes the form of moral approval, people feel not only useful but virtuous, as long as they serve the party’s interest. Hence the apparently paradoxical character of factionalist behavior that Hume observes in “Of the First Principles of Government”: “When men act in a faction, they are apt, without shame or remorse, to neglect all the ties of honour and morality, in order to serve their party; and yet, when a faction is formed upon a point of right or principle, there is no occasion, where men discover a greater obstinacy, and a more determined sense of justice or equity” (..). When people are most self-righteous – united by a noble cause, for which they will sacrifice much – they also, to serve this same cause, prove willing to stoop to the most ignoble means to defeat their opponents. Our sociability leads to both results, because our sensibility to honor and dishonor, like all moral categories, is social at various levels. Moral language demands the social correction that the general point of view provides, so moral reflection on the self requires taking the perspectives not only of those close but also of any others affected by your behavior. But for the partisan, another sociability intervenes. The strong passions tying her to her fellows block her ability to sympathize with the extended group. The contracted group of her party becomes her social world, so she believes them, even when they praise sliminess as resourcefulness. Should she express any reservations about the sliminess, her party friends will dismiss her objections and may even question her loyalty. Passions not





See EPM .: “Popular sedition, party zeal, a devoted obedience to factious leaders; these are some of the most visible, though less laudable effects of this social sympathy in human nature.” Hume applies this analysis to William Russell’s case in the History: “By many passages in his speech he seems to the last to have lain under the influence of party zeal; a passion, which, being nourished by a social temper, and cloathing itself under the appearance of principle, it is almost impossible for a virtuous man, who has acted in public life, ever thoroughly to eradicate” (H :). See EPM ..

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seconded by others are difficult to sustain. How long can her scruples endure when starved of reinforcement? Under the sway of faction, it becomes difficult to resist becoming a knave in the service of one’s party. We are familiar with the blame Hume places on religious factions and speculative principles in general for such knavery. As Jennifer Herdt puts it, “Members of religious factions perceive actions in defense of their party as selfless and principled, but this simply licenses them to do greater harm with a clean conscience.” There is no gainsaying Herdt’s emphasis on the peculiar threat that Hume ascribes to religious factionalism. But his remarks about our ineliminable tendency to form personal factions, which also threaten stability and retard public spirit, suggest that no attempts to overcome the various forms of superstition will extirpate these threats. Nor would an attempt to do so be wise. Again, we cannot avoid the problem by eliminating parties, which arise from a strong, natural human propensity. To condemn the tendency to cleave to those near in relation and interest would even be somewhat perverse. Our disposition to love a few intensely is not a fault to be lamented, but a feature of humanity that enables some of its most beautiful and honorable activities. The common root of destructive factionalism and loving intimacy suggests that conflicts between friendship and citizenship will likely arise even in well-structured polities, among people who are not exceptionally vicious. Hume indicates, however, that developing certain virtues may mitigate such conflicts. He includes “your country” among those things to which we feel close because of their relations to ourselves. Elsewhere, he claims that cultivating this feeling may help overcome factionalism’s divisive effects. In “That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science,” he recommends moderation in response to Britain’s party divisions but notes that “perhaps the surest way of producing moderation in every party is to increase our zeal for the public” (..). He also writes that “a man, who is only susceptible of friendship, without public spirit, or a regard to the community, is deficient in the most material part of virtue.” So Hume envisions a virtuous person who loves his family, his friends, his party, and the public as a whole without conflict among these loves. But even here, his language suggests how difficult it would be to produce such people and maintain their happy balance of passions. After commending “zeal for the public,” he asks his readers to “try, if it be possible, . . . to draw a lesson of moderation with regard to the parties, into which our country is at present 

Religion and Faction in Hume’s Moral Philosophy, .

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divided; at the same time, that we allow not this moderation to abate the industry and passion, with which every individual is bound to pursue the good of his country” (.., emphasis added). It may not be possible, and not only because people embroiled in controversy rarely listen to calls for moderation. Again, the Sceptic’s pessimism seems wise, when he notes that it is difficult to “diminish or extinguish our vicious passions, without diminishing or extinguishing such as are virtuous” (..). Zealots who lose the animating passion of their causes may land on apathy or despair rather than zeal for the public good. And again, on a systemic scale, it matters little if a few honorable people achieve this delicate balance, if the vast majority must choose between angry factionalism or indolent apathy. Is there any real conflict here with Aristotle’s view that private relations conflict with public ones only when there is vice on one side or another? Since Aristotelian virtue is rare, the rarity of those zealous for both private interests and public good is expected. But though Aristotle acknowledges virtue’s scarcity, he believes that it would be less scarce among the citizens of a good state for two reasons. First, the ideal state excludes from citizenship those whose form of life is “ignoble and contrary to virtue” – that is, the entire merchant and artisan classes – as well as those without leisure to develop virtue, such as people who work the land, who will preferably be slaves. Second, such a state promotes virtue’s cultivation in its citizens, taking special care to promote civic friendship and “drive out discord.” Aristotle’s ideal city is ideal in part because of its freedom from such discord, resulting from a confluence of virtue, external conditions, and good legislation. He recognizes that such an ideal would be rarely, if ever, actualized. His study of less-than-ideal constitutions warns against the causes of factionalizing instability. But that study is nonetheless informed by the hope that wise legislators in fortuitous circumstances could promote civic friendship, thereby reducing the inequality and vice that generate discord. Robertson notes that Hume shares some hope that wise legislators can palliate discord. “In the early Essays,” Robertson writes, “Hume’s response . . . to the problem of faction reveals a clear commitment to identifying the institutional framework which would ensure a harmony of interest between government and society.” Robertson’s insight reflects Hume’s concern   

Politics, b, . For the claim that it is best if farmers are slaves, see a–. In Greek, στασις (stasis), which can also be translated as “faction” (Nicomachean Ethics, a–, ). “Scottish Enlightenment at the Limits of the Civic Tradition,” –.

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for political structures that do not require extraordinary virtue on the part of rulers to protect the well-being of subjects. But from Hume’s premises, there is really no ensuring the harmony of interests. We can erect many bulwarks against destructive factionalism, but the malleability of how we conceive our own interests outstrips even the wisest legislators’ predicative capacities. The human capacity to subjugate self-interest to the interest of a party will inevitably elude the political art. Robertson adds that the problems of factions from “principle and affection as well as interest” made Hume emphasize “also that government must exercise a general responsibility for the manners and character of society at large.” As I have argued, although Hume believes that a constitution can alter a people’s habits, he is not very optimistic about the results. Wise legislators can take steps to avoid corrupting their people, but efforts to positively reform them are as likely to fail as succeed. Attempts to habituate people against personal factionalism would be particularly dangerous, given that the tendencies that give rise to it are the same tendencies that promote the bonds of friendship that are so important for human well-being. From Hume’s sceptical perspective, we have no reason to believe that well-designed states can prevent conflicts between public and private goods. The opposing view requires an architectonic vision of the good life in which Hume has no reason to hope. Ties of friendship will become ties of faction – and sometimes destructive ones. Only rare noble souls will escape these tendencies, abiding by Hume’s counsel in the advertisement to the Essays “to love the Public, and to bear an equal Affection to all our Country-Men” rather than hating “one Half of them, under Colour of loving the Whole.”

. Delicate Taste versus Love of the Public Even on the individual level, there are problems with combining the virtues of private friendship with public spirit. In Chapter , I argued that cultivating delicacy of taste can improve the tendency to violent, cold passions. These are the passions of factionalism; might this cultivation, then, also help cultivate virtuous public spirit? Overcoming destructive factionalism requires the contemplative, critical stance: party members must come to see other citizens less as those whose actions threaten evil or promise good and more as intricate complexes of traits, desires, and experiences. Yet since delicacy of taste promotes close friendships, we need 

Ibid., .

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not fear that adopting this stance will create someone so publicly bound that she is no private good. Though I find this suggestion promising, I fear that the project would be futile. In his portraits of the party zealot and the delicate, tasteful friend, Hume offers two quite recognizable characters. But when I try to imagine what is good in both combined into one model of public spirit, my imagination fails me. It does not seem a realistic personality type. Delicate taste comes with unusual sensitivity, not to life’s daily vicissitudes but to beauties and deformities. The latter include natural, aesthetic, and moral qualities, and sensitivity to these gives our excellent friend impatience for vulgar conversation and rudeness, as well as deep appreciation for her friend’s excellence. In other words, the quality that enables her to value an excellent character’s unique beauty also causes her to find most conversation insipid. Hume says that “delicacy of taste is favourable to love and friendship, by confining our choice to few people, and making us indifferent to the company and conversation of the greater part of men.” Unlike “mere men of the world” – gregarious types who find pleasure in most people’s conversation – those with delicate taste have “little enjoyment but in the company of a few select companions.” They “feel too sensibly” the failures of the rest of the world (..). Because they love few, they love deeply. Consider the difference between those with delicate taste and “mere men of the world.” Hume does not choose the latter type as the opposition because he believes them to be the worst sort; on the contrary, he seems to think they are the next best thing. Neither pole is a misanthrope. And the man of the world has this consolation: because he can enjoy anyone’s company, few particular persons are indispensable to his happiness. People with delicate taste, on the other hand, share with those with delicate passion an enlarged sphere of pains as well as pleasures, relative to the average person. Some of these pains arise from experiencing others’ failings. Can someone with this range of pains also possess zeal for the public? In the Essays, Hume associates public spirit with love for the public 

Note that Hume contrasts delicacy of taste with both delicacy of passion and the sensibility of the sociable “man of the world.” We should not infer that the latter two dispositions are the same. The world is not made up only of those with one or another form of delicacy. The man of the world seems unlikely to have delicacy of passion, since this trait makes one highly sensitive to perceived affronts. He seems too easygoing to be delicate of passion. To give a literary example, Mr. Weston in Jane Austen’s Emma fits the description of a man of the world, and his passions are very resilient. He is the last person to take offense, perhaps even when he should. Marianne Dashwood, however, who has delicacy of passion, would be the last person to be suspected of being a woman of the world in Hume’s sense. She finds most people’s company insufferable.

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(the Advertisement), “regard to the community” (..), “affection to a country or community” (..), and even “amor patriae” (..). But it is difficult to explain such love in accordance with Hume’s principles, and even more difficult to imagine someone with delicate taste achieving it. To see why, we must turn to Hume’s account of the origins of love and hatred. The generation of these indirect passions requires a double relation of impressions and ideas. The object of these passions, Hume says, is always another person “of whose thoughts, actions, and sensations we are not conscious” (T ...). When we conceive of another possessing some quality that produces pleasure (like beauty), these relations produce love, which is affectively similar to pleasure. Conversely, if the quality produces pain, we hate the object. (Hume uses both “love” and “hatred” broadly; they need not indicate extreme feelings.) This account seems unable to explain why we might love our fellow citizens as such, given that we cannot know all of them well enough to perceive their pleasing qualities. Hume’s discussion of love of relations gives some response. In certain cases, love appears to arise from a single relation: we feel affection for relatives, people who remind us of ourselves, and even those whose only recommendation is long acquaintance. These affections proceed independently of our recognizing others’ pleasing qualities and can even survive recognizing painful qualities. Why? Hume’s answer appeals to the principle that human minds crave stimulation, and nothing is so stimulating as another human. Alone, we become bored, restless, and melancholy. We seek objects of thought to escape these pains, and when we find one that answers, the “blood flows with a new tide: The heart is elevated: And the whole man acquires a vigour, which he cannot command in his solitary and calm moments.” Nothing answers so well as human company, “as presenting the liveliest of objects, viz. a rational and thinking being like ourselves.” Crudely put, we enjoy company because other people give our minds something to do. Therefore, anyone whose company we share repeatedly, all else being equal, becomes a source of pleasure. Repetition gives the person’s effect a “more durable influence.” Any relation between two people, moreover, enhances their 



Arguing against Livingston’s ascription of the civic tradition to Hume, Christopher Finlay claims that Hume uses “public spirit” to mean “an attachment to those structures which best protect the interests of society,” even if these structures do not promote civic humanist ideals (Hume’s Social Philosophy, ). Hume does want to promote the moderate attitudes that would support such structures, but his language implies that public spirit also requires affection to fellow citizens. See also DP ..

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enlivening effects on each other’s spirits. “Whatever is related to us is conceiv’d in a lively manner by the easy transition from ourselves to the related object” (T ...). Because such people are sources of pleasure, we have all the materials for producing the indirect passion of love, even if we can identify no pleasing quality in the other person. That person, by virtue of entertaining the mind, does produce an independent pleasure, and this impression can generate the resembling impression of love. Hence, we love our relations (again, all else being equal) in proportion to the closeness of our relation. Parental love is strongest, but we “love our countrymen, our neighbours, those of the same trade, profession, and even name with ourselves” (T ...). Perhaps people with delicate taste would be more sensitive to these passional transitions. Trained to perceive delicate connections, they are more alive to their connections to fellow citizens. On the other hand, they are also more alive to those citizens’ qualities that tend to produce hatred or contempt. They confine their affection to a few people, Hume says, because they feel “too sensibly how much all the rest of mankind fall short” (..). Hume lists the following as potential causes of love: virtue, knowledge, wit, good sense, good humor, bodily accomplishments, and “the external advantages and disadvantages of family, possessions, cloaths, nation and climate” (T ...). With this list in mind, we can see that delicate taste produces two effects favorable to love. First, it makes people better at perceiving the positive qualities near the beginning of the list, where others might mistake virtue for pretension or wit for foolishness. Second, it leads them to deemphasize the qualities at the bottom of the list, as delicate taste knows that much pleasure can be had without many worldly goods. “When a man is possessed of that talent, he is more happy by what pleases his taste, than by what gratifies his appetites, and receives more enjoyment from a poem or a piece of reasoning than the most expensive luxury can afford” (..). 

Hume summarizes this thesis more succinctly in the Dissertation on the Passions: “A person, who is related to us, or connected with us, by blood, by similitude of fortune, of adventures, profession, or country, soon becomes an agreeable companion to us; because we enter easily and familiarly into his sentiments and conceptions: Nothing is strange or new to us: Our imagination, passing from self, which is ever intimately present to us, runs smoothly along the relation or connexion, and conceives with a full sympathy the person, who is nearly related to self. He renders himself immediately agreeable, and is at once on an easy footing with us: No distance, no reserve has place, where the person introduced is supposed so closely connected with us” (DP .). Hume also claims that love of children is a natural instinct. See Chapter , note .

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

Nonetheless, delicate taste still seems more likely to engender hatred than love for one’s fellow citizens in general. Hume says that the tasteful are dissatisfied with the conversation of most people: it reveals their crudeness, ignorance, dullness, silliness, or ill-temper. Tasteful people love more deeply but also more narrowly. Being free from the tendency to proportion love to material success is a real advantage. But it also increases the distance between those with delicate taste and the general population, who do possess this tendency. Hume’s paragon of intimate friendship, in other words, is unlikely to also be a paragon of civic friendship. She is not misanthropic; she may approach each person she meets with optimism that here may be a rare fellow qualified for the highest kind of friendship. Usually, however, she will be disappointed. Such repeated disappointment is not conducive to love of the people. Note that this issue is related to, but distinct from, the question of whether love of humankind as such is among the principles of human nature. In the Treatise, Hume explicitly denies that there is such a passion, in his discussion of the origin of justice (at T ...). His denial rests on the absence of evidence that we have any “kind affection to men, independent of their merit, and every other circumstance.” The diffuseness of its object appears to be an obstacle to public spirit, as it would be to a general love of humankind. But the question I am raising is not whether or not people can love humankind in general, independently of merit and circumstances. It is rather whether a person with delicate taste can love others bound to her by the circumstance of common citizenship while recognizing their lack of merit. Can the mechanisms that produce love of relations, which Hume says cause us to love our fellow countrymen, come to the rescue? The notion that we repeatedly share compatriots’ company seems a nonstarter, even 





I would not go so far as to say that delicate taste alone is sufficient to make someone excel in virtue in general. Interestingly, it is difficult to find any ascription of public spirit to Hume’s paragon of virtue in section  of the Enquiry, Cleanthes (EPM .). John Kekes argues that supplementing Aristotle’s account of civic friendship with Humean sympathy and custom will produce an understanding of civility suitable for modern societies (“Civility and Society”). Kekes’s civility is not the same as public spirit, but it is a closely related concept, and it would be interesting to explore what role civility might play in addressing the problems I raise in this section. For a helpful discussion of Hume’s denial of the love of mankind and its relation to our ability to feel benevolence toward a broad range of people, see Rico Vitz, “Hume and the Limits of Benevolence.” Gill points out that, in the Treatise passage, Hume is siding with Mandeville against Shaftesbury and even echoing Mandeville’s examples (British Moralists on Human Nature, ).

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for a country as small as eighteenth-century Scotland or England. Yet Hume suggests in “Of National Characters” that members of the same nation will frequently interact with each other. He proposes that a national character might arise among citizens of the same nation by sympathy, as “like passions and inclinations . . . run, as it were, by contagion” through the populace. “Where a number of men are united into one political body, the occasions of their intercourse must be . . . frequent, for defence, commerce, and government” (..). If we interpret this passage as saying that each citizen of a nation interacts frequently with every other citizen, its plausibility suffers dramatically. The contagion metaphor suggests a better interpretation. As a virus carrier need not have contact with a hundred people to be the source of infection to those hundred, individual citizens need not interact with an entire populace to exert influence over its character. One group of people share traits; some subset of them mingle with another set, who adopt some of those propensities, and so on. Because character traits require more reinforcement than viruses in order to spread, the analogy is weak. Nonetheless, the influence does not require person-to-person contact amid the whole citizenry. Yet in the absence of this contact, we do not have the familiarity needed to breed love among fellow citizens. We are left with the idea that the relation of shared citizenry itself greases the mechanisms of sympathy to such a degree that we find our countrymen “immediately agreeable.” This commonality vivifies the transition from self to other, so that we take pleasure in the idea of another citizen as we do the idea of family member. The problem with this suggestion is that our ties with fellow citizens are extremely weak. Later in the Treatise, Hume writes, “An Englishman in Italy is a friend: A European in China; and perhaps a man wou’d be belov’d as such, were we to meet him in the moon. But this proceeds only from the relation to ourselves; which in these cases gathers force by being confin’d to a few persons” (T ...). The more people who have a claim to our affections, the weaker those affections will be. To love every Englishman is only a little easier than loving everyone in the world. Again, this problem will be worse for someone with delicate taste. She loves a few deeply and is unlikely to diffuse love over large groups of people, of whose defects she must be all too aware. Moreover, she will not get help from similarity of temper with many people. That which gives delicate taste its advantages – its propensity to cultivate passions that are more fine, calm, and careful than what is common – exacerbates the problem.

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

Delicate taste shares something with the traveler’s vanity that Hume identifies in the Treatise. Some people, he writes: depreciate their own country, in comparison of those, to which they have travell’d. These persons find, when they are at home, and surrounded with their countrymen, that the strong relation betwixt them and their own nation is shar’d with so many, that ’tis in a manner lost to them; whereas their distant relation to a foreign country, which is form’d by their having seen it and liv’d in it, is augmented by their considering how few there are who have done the same. For this reason they always admire the beauty, utility and rarity of what is abroad, above what is at home. (T ...)

Delicate taste enables people to roam widely, if figuratively, among the world’s ideas, arts, and experiences. A person who has done this will feel how rare her experience is. It is reasonable to expect that she may feel, like the traveler, closer to others like her (from whatever country) than to her fellow citizens. Delicate taste, in other words, may make one feel like a foreigner in one’s own land. Cultivating delicate taste is therefore unlikely to ameliorate the tension between public spirit and private friendship. But the case is not hopeless. Someone with delicate taste may recognize the importance of love of public and strive to overcome her tendency to disdain the members of that public. She might try to think of them as fellows engaged in a common enterprise and make a concerted effort to recognize the noble hopes and virtues present in any sector of humanity. She might even endeavor to protect her sensibility by avoiding interactions with people that bring out their lowest side, as some of us do by not reading anonymous online comments. It remains true, however, that one of the best dispositions in Hume’s catalog – delicacy of taste – is by nature in tension with another one – love for the public. For people with delicate taste, cultivating what Hume calls the “most material part of virtue” will be an uphill struggle. Moreover, everyone possesses to some degree one of the tendencies that create an obstacle to public spirit, so many people will experience such a struggle. We all feel relations more weakly as they become looser ties. The tension between public and private will be perennial, and perennially complicated. Social passions that generate the warmest, noblest aspects of our nature also incline us to factionalism. Furthermore, we have no reason to expect that those who make the best private friends will also incline to civic friendship. But there is also no reason for Hume to deny these tensions; accepting them coheres with a moderately sceptical view of human relations. We can and must continually search for solutions, but we must do so without unfounded assurance. Some resources for this search

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might be provided by Hume’s claim in the second Enquiry that “it is always found, that a warm concern for the interests of our species is attended with a delicate feeling of all moral distinctions” (EPM .). I have raised the concern that delicacy can produce contempt for others; this sentence suggests that concern for others can produce a kind of delicacy. If the latter claim is right, then we might draw a lesson about the order of education. If we cultivate love for others first, before concentrating our energy on developing delicacy of taste, then perhaps a significant portion of that delicacy can be channeled into warm concern for others. Regardless, the task of balancing public and private love will be ongoing and often frustrating – yet too important to abandon.

. The Amorous Affection There is something charming, but unsatisfying, about Hume’s writing on sex. His description of erotic passion in “The Epicurean” is eloquent. His retelling of Aristophanes’ Symposium speech in “Of Love and Marriage” is a delightful little burlesque. But his adherence to standards of refinement, exhibited in a parade of euphemisms for sexual desire (“the amorous passion,” “gallantry,” and even (gasp!) “the appetite between the sexes”) can be tiresome. Despite his acquaintance with diverse sexual practices, he sometimes appears uncomfortable with human bodies. Compare, for example, the different ways that Hume and Montaigne handle an earthy passage from Plutarch about ire between brothers. Montaigne makes the line even more crude than in the original: “And that other, whom Plutarch wanted to reconcile with his brother, said: ‘I don’t think any more of him for having come out of the same hole.’” Hume, in “Of Moral Prejudices,” reports that the brother “was too much a Philosopher to think, that the Connexion of having sprung from the same Parent, ought to have any Influence on a reasonable Mind, and exprest his Sentiment after such a Manner as I think not proper to repeat” (EWU .).







Jacqueline Taylor cites this Enquiry passage in the context of discussing varieties of the sentiment of humanity; superior people cultivate humanity as a “warm concern” (Reflecting Subjects, ). For a discussion of the possible tension between the Enquiry’s emphasis on humanity and the Treatise’s denial of a universal love of mankind, see Remy Debes, “Humanity, Sympathy, and the Puzzle of Hume’s Second Enquiry.” Montaigne, “Of Friendship,” in Essays, . The Loeb translation of Plutarch’s “On Brotherly Love” has the brother saying, “I account it no momentous or important matter to have sprung from the same loins” (Moralia, ). Potkay suggests that Hume became aware of the anecdote through reading Montaigne (Fate of Eloquence, ).

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

Hume writes within the standards of politeness expected by his contemporary readers, and unlike Montaigne, gives little indication of finding these standards constraining. But Hume was no prude. A closer look reveals, underneath their polite coverings, healthy views of sexual relationships. I will consider three aspects of his treatment of sexual relationships in the Essays: sex’s value for the individual and society, Hume’s understanding of the relationship between sexual customs and nature, and sex and marriage. .. The Value of Sex Because sex is pleasant, it is, for Hume, presumptively good. Recall his claim in “Of Refinement in the Arts” that no “gratification, however sensual, can of itself be esteemed vicious” (..). We naturally pursue gratification of sensual desires; we naturally approve of others who do so also; and only the perversion of “the frenzies of enthusiasm” would claim otherwise (..). Although Hume’s topic in “Of Refinement in the Arts” is more commercial than bodily indulgence, we can presume that what he says about the former applies to the latter. Such indulgence becomes vicious only when it interferes with satisfying obligations of virtues like justice, generosity, and humanity. Sexual violence, callousness, and carelessness are vicious not because they are sexual, but because they are harmful and painful for self and others. They also, on Hume’s view, reveal that something has distorted the natural course of human passions – indeed, the natural course of animal passions in general. Although instinctual desire may motivate sexual acts, these desires naturally accompany caring and friendly passions. Hume’s view, as expressed in “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences,” is too strong to be credible. “Nature has implanted in all living creatures,” he says, “an affection between the sexes, which, even in the fiercest and most rapacious animals, is not merely confined to the satisfaction of the bodily appetite, but begets a friendship and mutual sympathy, which runs

  

See T ... and DP .–. Compare Spinoza’s claim in the Ethics: “Nothing forbids our pleasure except a savage and sad superstition” (A Spinoza Reader, ). The original title of the essay, “Of Luxury,” could have had a sexual connotation for Hume’s readers. The term’s original meaning in English was “lasciviousness” or “lust,” and this usage survived into the nineteenth century (Oxford English Dictionary Online, s.v. “luxury,” accessed February , , http://oed.com). See Chapter , note .

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through the whole tenor of their lives” (..). (We must assume that Hume was either unaware of or preferred not to think about the prevalence of postcoital cannibalism among insects.) A softened version of this claim, however, is more plausible: it is normal for affection and sexual desire to generate and reinforce one another. All else being equal, we tend to like and have benevolent feelings toward people who are willing to have sex with us, especially when the feeling is mutual. These feelings do not require the intention to have sex; erotic frisson may be enough. If so, then sexual desire’s value goes beyond mere physical pleasure. It promotes tenderness and affection – sometimes leading to profound friendships: “The happiest marriages, to be sure, are found where love, by long acquaintance, is consolidated into friendship” (..). The friendship that allows marriages to flourish subsists on an affection that “never rises to such a height, as when any strong interest or necessity binds two persons together, and gives them some common object of pursuit” (..). Sex itself, done well, is an activity where mutual interest binds people together in a common pursuit. Over time, partners can carry this sensibility into other enduring and profound pursuits. Hume resists, however, the cult of sensibility’s insistence on the singularity of erotic attachment. The propensity of sexual encounters to promote loving feelings does not imply that they promote singular, immortal devotion. Directly after the strong claim from “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences” quoted above, he writes that in humans, “the confinement of the appetite” to a single object “is not natural; but either is derived accidentally from some strong charm of love, or arises from reflections on duty and convenience” (..). In other words, humans naturally feel sexual desire for multiple people. Hume sees the dispersion 



Hume’s discussion of “the amorous passion” in the Treatise, while consistent with this claim, is more nuanced and recognizes the fragility of the relevant “friendship and mutual sympathy.” He analyzes eros as composed of the sensation of beauty, sexual desire, and “a generous kindness or good-will” (T ...). But he acknowledges that the passion may begin from any one of these elements (though it most commonly begins from seeing its object as beautiful). “Kindness or esteem,” he says, “and the appetite to generation, are too remote to unite easily together. The one is, perhaps, the most refin’d passion of the soul; the other the most gross and vulgar” (T ...). Beauty aids the transition because of its intermediary position between these extremes. Kindness and esteem are therefore vulnerable inasmuch as beauty, or one’s sense of it, can change and fade. Hume removed this passage, which goes on to scorn the possibility of “raptures and extasies beyond the honey-month” for the  edition. (It is still relevant to friendship between lovers, however, since he presumably never meant to imply that married couples only have sex for a month.) I rather like that Hume, in his old age, took out such a cynical note about the possibility of enduring erotic pleasure in marriage.

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

of sexual interest as a further advantage: the tenderness associated with sexual companions diffuses itself, generating the passions and practices of gallantry. Far from a silly and superficial practice, this promotion of goodwill between the sexes is an important restraint to men’s ability to tyrannize physically over women. Moreover, eros performs a foundational social function. Because humans are “born in a family,” we are “compelled to maintain society, from necessity, from natural inclination, and from habit” (..). But we are only born in families because of antecedent sexual attraction, which brings men and women together and, as Hume says in the Treatise, “preserves their union, till a new tye takes place in their concern for their common offspring” (T ...). Sexual desire is “the first and original principle of human society.” Sex is valuable because it is pleasant, because it promotes intimate friendship and tenderness between the sexes, and because it makes human society possible. This is high praise, but if we are tempted to overestimate sex’s importance, Hume provides several correctives. First, he characterizes sexual desire as a common, low-minded passion, not part of the elevating sublime. In “Of National Characters,” he argues that the only plausible character differences ascribable to climate would be the northern preference for liquor and the southern for sex. (Women “ripen sooner in the southern regions” [..].) But these differences being caused by climate would only show that “climate may affect the grosser and more bodily organs of our frame” (..). This language echoes the Treatise’s assessment of sexual desire as “the most gross and vulgar” passion of the soul (T ...). In one of the few philosophical treatments of Hume’s views of sexual desire, Dan O’Brien cites this last passage as evidence for a puzzle. Hume’s calling sexual desire “gross and vulgar” is “seemingly contradictory” to his rejection of the monkish virtues. The latter, O’Brien says, might lead us to “expect Hume not to have moral qualms concerning sexual attraction.” O’Brien responds to the puzzle by appealing to the condemnation of vicious indulgence in sexual passions and the negative consequences thereof. But this explanation requires narrowing the referent of the Treatise passage to only vicious lust, in a way not supported by the text. Fortunately, no explanation is actually necessary. Hume does not have moral qualms with sexual attraction in general. The language of grossness and vulgarity may 

See also T ....

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

“Hume on Sexual Attraction,” –.

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seem to reflect a very unhealthy attitude toward sex, but the present sense of “gross” as meaning repulsive or disgusting is late American slang. Neither “gross” nor “vulgar” is a compliment coming from Hume’s pen, but the insult is mild. He only means that sexual desire is a common passion, requiring no advanced discernment of mind or perfection of taste. Hume’s second corrective to overestimating sexual importance is his low assessment of how much pleasure sex itself actually produces. He goes so far as to claim that most of sex’s pleasure does not come from actual sex. Again, he speculates implausibly about animals, claiming that “even among brute-creatures, . . . their play and dalliance, and other expressions of fondness, form the greatest part of the entertainment.” Mental pleasures are even more important for rational beings: “Were we to rob the feast of all its garniture of reason, discourse, sympathy, friendship, and gaiety, what remains would scarcely be worth acceptance, in the judgment of the truly elegant and luxurious” (..). To accept the claim about brute creatures’ preference for fore- and afterplay, we would have to put aside the many species of animals for whom sex is always more rape than romp. But is less elegant sex “scarcely worth acceptance”? Before laughing, notice the actual condition that Hume describes – sex with no discourse, sympathy, friendship, or gaiety. Would such sex be worth acceptance – with someone you have no wish or ability to converse with, whom you do not like, whom you cannot play with, or even share the feelings of? This is sex from the prostitute’s position, and now Hume seems to speak weakly in saying that it is scarcely worth acceptance. Sex’s value is part of the complex human condition, in which all activities can be integrated into our inner lives and our relations with others. This integration relates to a further indication of Hume’s moderate view of sex’s importance – his insistence that, although personal freedom promotes erotic experience, such experience is less important than the friendship that can result from marriage’s curtailment of that freedom. These friendships may originate with sex, but Hume believes that they become the more important aspect of the relationship. In “Of Polygamy and Divorces,” he takes seriously the suggestion that the freedom to divorce might preserve marriages, because such freedom may be “the only secret for keeping alive that love, which first united the married couple” (..). We do not want what we are forced to have. “In vain you tell me,” says the proponent of this view, “that I had my choice of the person, with whom I would conjoin myself. I had my choice, it is true, of my prison; but this is but a small comfort, since it must still be a prison”

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

(..). Although Hume concedes that passionate love “requires liberty above all things,” friendship “thrives under constraint” (.., ..). The necessity of staying together and marriage’s common projects will therefore promote friendship, and “the marriage-knot . . . chiefly subsists by friendship” (..). Hume is not at his most insightful here, particularly when he argues that people who cannot escape one another will overlook small annoyances and frivolous disputes for harmony’s sake. His notional interlocutor is more persuasive in asking, “How often does disgust and aversion arise after marriage, from the most trivial accidents, or from an incompatibility of humour; where time, instead of curing the wounds, proceeding from mutual injuries, festers them every day the more, by new quarrels and reproaches?” (..). But my point here is that Hume does not consider preserving erotic desire worth the sacrifice of the friendship that can develop in a prolonged marriage. If legal divorce would promote the former yet discourage the latter, he infers that divorce should not be legal. We need not accept this reasoning to accept the wisdom of prizing friendship over sex. If Hume is right, these two forms of love naturally go together. And “Of Polygamy and Divorces” does suggest that enduring marriages might include periods of waxing and waning eros over time. Not all spouses forever lose their desire for one another shortly after the vows. Though friendship’s gentle warmth and calmness may be in tension with erotic desire’s fire and intensity, such contrary principles need not “always destroy each other; but the one or the other may predominate on any particular occasion, according as circumstances are more or less favorable to it” (..). Nonetheless, Hume is clear that he believes the rewards of friendship to exceed those of sexual passion. Solomon, with his hundreds of wives and concubines, presumably had inexhaustible means of satisfying the latter. But Hume understands how such a man could have written the Hebrew Bible’s most eloquent treatise on the vanity of human 





Cf. Montaigne: “As for marriage, it is a bargain to which only the entrance is free – its continuance being constrained and forced, depending otherwise than on our will – and a bargain ordinarily made for other ends” (Essays, ). Baier notes that the asymmetrical chastity standard Hume describes in the Treatise “accords badly with Hume’s proper evaluation of the importance of friendship in marriage, and its incompatibility with male sovereignty. That ‘entire and total union’ which he takes as the telos of marriage would seem to be possible only if whatever restrictions there are on sexual freedom be mutual” (“Good Men’s Women,” –). Hume’s retelling of Aristophanes’ myth at the end of “Of Love and Marriage” also supports this possibility. Its recipe for happy marriages requires that love be the foundation of marriage, but with a view toward satisfying the practical requirements of “care” and the erotic needs of “pleasure.”

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existence. “Had he tried the secret of one wife or mistress, a few friends, and a great many companions, he might have found life somewhat more agreeable. Destroy love and friendship; what remains in the world worth accepting?” (..). .. Sex Free from Superstition Hume’s recommendations for a happier life than Solomon’s suggest either one wife or one mistress. This is one of many places in which Hume expresses openness to unorthodox sexual arrangements. He does not consider all such arrangements equally good; “Of Polygamy and Divorces” recommends monogamous marriage without legal divorce. But his openness to other possibilities indicates some freedom from the superstitious notions about sex that have disproportionately damaged women over millennia. His attitude about the relevant relations between custom and nature is reasonable. He leaves open the possibility that our judgments about sexual virtue and vice may progress as customs change. Finally, he avoids associating virginity or chastity with purity, and, with one important exception, he does not condemn those who transgress current sexual norms as “unnatural.” Consider Hume’s assessment of the relative viciousness of overindulgence in alcohol or sex. In “Of National Characters,” he claims that “the passion for liquor [is] more brutal and debasing than love” (..). “Love” refers here to sexual love; this is part of his discussion of the prevalence of the “amorous disposition” in southern climates. He does go on to say that the passion for love is still dangerous, because it leads to extreme jealousy and other disadvantages when it “goes beyond a certain pitch.” But he does not take back his claim that the passion for liquor is worse, and he says here that sexual love “when properly managed, is the source of all politeness and refinement.” “Of Refinement in the Arts” makes the more extreme claim that drunkenness is “more pernicious both to mind and body” than “libertine love, or even infidelity” (..).  

Solomon was long held to be the author of Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth). In the History, Hume reports Sir John Lambe’s reported remark about the Puritans: “That to the world they seemed to be such as would not swear, whore, or be drunk; but they would lye, cozen, and deceive: That they would frequently hear two sermons a-day, and repeat them too, and that sometimes they would fast all day long.” Hume’s comment seems to count both drinking and lust as lesser vices: “This character must be conceived to be satirical; yet, it may be allowed, that that sect was more averse to such irregularities as proceed from the excess of gaiety and pleasure, than to those enormities, which are the most destructive of society” (H :).

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

This view is not unique; Dante, after all, puts drunkards in a deeper circle of hell than the lustful. But it is a view that has long been at odds with common moral judgments: men, at least, who drink too much are winked at as engaging in boyish indiscretion, whereas women who have sex outside marriage have been excoriated as damaged goods, who can never be clean again. Compare Richard Allestree’s treatment of intemperance with that of lust (in The Whole Duty of Man). Both are wicked, but alcohol is evil only when one drinks to excess, and because of its harmful effects. Chastity “or Purity,” on the other hand, is the only bulwark against moral filth. It “consists in abstaining from all Sorts of Uncleanness,” pollutes both body and soul, and bars the doors of heaven, “where no unclean Person or Whoremonger hath ever enter’d.” Adultery “is the most irreparable Injury that can be, and brings GOD’S Wrath down in the most severest Judgment: Adulterers GOD will Judge.” Hume does not celebrate sexual promiscuity; chastity remains among the virtues. But the problem with failures of chastity is not that they pollute women with a stain no time can remove. In a letter to John Home, written from Vienna in , Hume seems to condemn pimps more harshly than prostitutes. “A Court of Chastity is lately erected here,” he reports, “who send all loose Women to the Frontiers of Hungary, where they can only debauch Turks & Infidels: All Whore-masters are punishd as they deserve, that is, very severely” (Letters :). What is the problem, then, with being unchaste? In the Treatise, chastity is an artificial virtue, which serves to convince men that their progeny is truly theirs and therefore deserves their care and protection. The Enquiry appeals to the need for a “combination of parents” for the “long and helpless infancy of man.” If chastity did not promote this combination, “such a virtue would never have been thought of” (EPM .). The influence of general rules accounts for the extension of chastity rules to women beyond child-bearing age and for society’s virulence in condemning transgressions. But he acknowledges that a “speculative philosopher” might think that “they are more excusable [than all other injustices], upon account of the greatness of the temptation” (T ...). By tracing chastity’s value to the needs of child-rearing, Hume grounds the artificial virtue in humankind’s natural conditions. But the opening of

 

 Whole Duty of Man, –. Ibid., . Most treatments of Hume’s views on sexuality focus on his account of chastity. See, e.g., Baier, “Good Men’s Women”; Ann Levey, “Under Constraint”; Berry, “Lusty Women and Loose Imagination”; and Catherine Villanueva Gardner, “Chastity and the Practice of the World in Hume’s Treatise.”

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“Of Polygamy and Divorces” makes it clear that he does not see these natural conditions as dictating a single set of marriage rules to protect the utility of chastity. Although Hume claims marriage’s purpose is “propagation of the species,” he first calls it “an engagement entered into by mutual consent” and infers that it is therefore “susceptible to all the variety of conditions, which consent establishes,” as long as they serve this end (..). Without positive law, marriages would vary with circumstances and needs. He then details several arrangements that have served unusual needs – sailors who marry for a single season while docked on land, one man joined to multiple wives, one wife joined to multiple men, wives and children held in common. “All regulations . . . on this head,” he writes, “are equally lawful, and equally conformable to the principles of nature; though they are not all equally convenient, or equally useful to society” (..). Hume’s arguments in favor of his society’s established conventions of marriage do not rely on circumstances unique to eighteenth-century Europe. He contends that polygamy and divorce are likely to produce ill effects for any people, and have done so when implemented. He criticizes the tyrannical practices encouraged by “eastern” marriage institutions and the dim view of marriage among the Romans when divorce was common. Nonetheless, these arguments are striking by virtue of what they do not say about the relation between custom and nature. In contrast to those who argue that biological nature determines humans to mate for life with one member of the opposite sex, Hume insists that we naturally have desires for multiple sexual partners. He does not appeal to any moral law inscribed on our souls, prohibiting violations of traditional chastity norms. He thus severs the discussion of sexual practices from the appeals to nature that have caused so much suffering and oppression, as various forms of sexual activities have been deemed unnatural or “against nature.” As Jonathan Dollimore has argued, the “natural/unnatural opposition has been one of the most fundamental of all binaries, and one of the most violent of all hierarchies.” It raises the specter of monsters, of interfering with the most basic conditions of existence – and thus inspires both fear 

 

It is possible that when Hume says in “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences” that “confinement of the appetite is not natural,” he has in mind what we would now call serial monogamy. But the weight of evidence tells against this interpretation. He infers from his claims here that the mutual goodwill that goes along with erotic attraction is naturally widespread among human beings at any one point in time, not that it is natural for us to have a series of partners in flirtation, one after the other. Baier emphasizes the unnaturalness of chastity rules in “Good Men’s Women.” Sexual Dissidence, .

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

and disgust. The list of sexual activities to which these epithets have been applied includes not only polygamy and incest but also homosexuality and the dangerous practice of women enjoying sex. Hume’s theory allows for strong condemnation of certain sexual practices, such as rape, as horrifically unjust and inhumane. But we do not strengthen this condemnation by adding that such behavior is unnatural. Behavior that would be rape if the participants were human is quite common in nature. Pretending otherwise only weakens the case against human rape, by suggesting that we have only weak resources for its censure. It may be that our contemporary norms about sex and marriage incline us to misunderstand Hume’s views about the relation between marriage and chastity. Falkenstein argues that by the time Hume publishes “Of Polygamy and Divorces,” he has concluded that “male promiscuity cannot be reconciled with female chastity” and that the “best policy is to place equal obligations to chastity on both sexes.” Falkenstein then claims that this is “the stated conclusion” of the essay. Though I am generally sympathetic to Falkenstein’s hypothesis that Hume’s views on these matters evolved, this inference is unwarranted. The stated conclusion of the essay is: “The exclusion of polygamy and divorces sufficiently recommends our present  practice with regard to marriage” (..). Insofar as there was a single European practice, it prohibited divorce (unless one had some special connection to the reigning powers) and marrying more than one person at a time. Monogamy does not imply sexual exclusivity. We now often use “monogamy” to refer primarily to a sexual arrangement, which may or may not be instantiated in marriage. But this is an extended usage from the original meaning of the restriction of marriage to one other person, more or less regardless of sexual behavior. Marriage practices could be monogamous even if no one expected sexual fidelity on the part of the husband, as has often been the case, as Hume often notes. I say “on the part of the husband,” of course, because requiring fidelity of women but not men has been so common. Hume’s explanation of chastity as an artificial virtue assumes an asymmetry of expectations, about which commentators have raised compelling complaints. But what 

 

See T ... for Hume’s argument that “nothing can be more unphilosophical than those systems, which assert, that virtue is the same with what is natural, and vice with what is unnatural.” “Without Gallantry and without Jealousy,” . See especially Baier’s argument that this asymmetry produces the need for a double standard between different classes of women, as men will depend on unchaste women to satisfy their lesscondemned desires. See “Good Men’s Women,” –.

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matters for my point here is that Hume would not have assumed that the norms that apply to marriage necessarily apply to sex, though they are obviously related. So when he claims that reproduction is the purpose of marriage, it does not follow that he believes reproduction to be the purpose of sex. He can thus avoid the many distasteful implications of the latter view. He also avoids the need for rhetorical cartwheels to explain why it is not vicious to have sex more times than is necessary to produce a finite number of children. Hume’s treatment of marriage leaves open two interesting possibilities. First, in extraordinary circumstances, alternative practices may prove more beneficial and therefore would be justifiable. The system that Hume says the Sevarambian captain contrives may be the best solution to an unusual problem. The inhabitants of a wrecked ship in a deserted place are disproportionately male, so women pair with multiple men. Such accommodations are in keeping with his suggestion in “Of Some Remarkable Customs” that “irregular and extraordinary appearances are frequently discovered in the moral, as well as in the physical world” and that such appearances can justify practices contrary to cherished rules (..). Second, Hume’s view implies that, should human circumstances significantly change, our judgments of sexuality and marriage institutions could evolve. If wives and children became less dependent on a father’s financial support and protection (as they now are), women would not need to live in fear of their husbands doubting their chastity. These changed circumstances remove one justification for the asymmetrical burden placed on women to protect their sexual reputation. They also encourage us to think more profoundly about the nature of fidelity in marriage and the genuine goods it serves. In these respects, Hume is progressive, but this assessment requires two important qualifications. One concerns his treatment of homosexuality, and the other his report of a radical woman who dares to separate reproduction from marriage. Hume’s general method of dealing with homosexuality is to ignore it as much as possible. One might think that ancient homoerotic practices 



Potkay discusses this silence about homosexual behavior as part of the development of stricter “polite codes” during the eighteenth century; these codes “comprehended a growing list of what could not be said (and perhaps not thought) about the body in general” (Fate of Eloquence, ). It is true, as I indicated above, that Hume is reticent about all sexual matters. I recognize the legitimate objection, most famously made by Foucault, to calling these practices homosexual. They were part of a form of life foreign to the one in which our sense of homosexuality has its home. The same is true of all of the homoerotic activity Hume would have been aware of. Moreover, there is no reason to think that most of the men and boys engaged in pederasty were uniquely attracted to men. Nonetheless, as they did include homoerotic activity, they are relevant to

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

would be relevant to the issues he discusses in “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations,” given that these practices were associated with later marriage for men and may have affected reproductive rates. But he relegates them to one sentence in a footnote about the aversion to marriage in Plutarch’s Rome. In retelling Aristophanes’ myth from the Symposium, he omits the primal humans who become homosexual pairs and says that “each individual person was a compound of both sexes” (EWU .). This averting of the eyes is consistent with his other writings: he seems unwilling to believe kings capable of homoerotic desires and has his speaker in “A Dialogue” say that he does not “care to examine more particularly” the “ loves” (EPM Dia.). In the little that he does say about homosexuality, Hume uses the damaging language of purity and unnaturalness. In the footnote in “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations,” he refers to “the unnatural lusts of the ancients” (..). In a letter to Gilbert Elliot, Hume explains his acceptance of the amusing hypothesis that the practice of men exercising naked together led to pederasty. Contrasting these practices with those of Homer’s age, he writes that the “Friendship betwixt Achilles & Patroclus was pure” and that “Homer takes Care to lay them apart, & gives each of them a Wench in his Arms” (February , in Letters :, emphasis added). In the History, he describes the “buggery” charge that got Titus

 





this discussion. For subtle critiques of Foucault’s claim that homosexual behavior became associated with an identity only in the nineteenth century, see Dollimore, Sexual Dissidence, and Jordan, Invention of Sodomy. He calls it “P’ account of the origin of love and marriage.” For instance, Hume describes James I’s affection for Robert Carre in the most romantic terms, as arising out of “the king’s passion for youth, and beauty, and exterior appearance” and characterized by “unlimited fondness” (H :, ). One would be forgiven for thinking Hume is making a rather lewd joke in saying that the king, “laying aside the sceptre, took the birch into his royal hand, and instructed [Carre] in the principles of grammar” (H: :). Yet a few sentences later, Hume says that “such incidents, are the more ridiculous, though the less odious, as the passion of James seems not to have contained in it any thing criminal or flagitious.” That is to say, it does not seem to Hume that James’s love for Carre was erotic. The interlocutor refers to one who engages in homosexual behavior as “something else too abominable to be named” (EPM Dia.). These remarks are especially striking in light of the second Enquiry’s general lenience with respect to sexual issues, which is among the charges raised against Hume in the effort to excommunicate him from the Scottish Kirk. For John Bonar’s charge that Hume defends the proposition that “adultery is very lawful, but sometimes not expedient,” see Fieser, Early Responses to Hume’s Life and Reputation, –. On Bonar’s role in Hume’s prosecution, see Harris, Hume, –. Cf. Hume’s description of the exaggerated reports gathered by Cromwell about activities at convents and monasteries, including tales of “abortions procured, of infants murdered, of unnatural lusts between persons of the same sex” (H :).

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Oates removed from his ship chaplaincy as a “complaint of some unnatural practices, not fit to be named” (H :). It is unsurprising that Hume fails to extend his principles about the inherent permissibility of all pleasures and the customary nature of sexual unions to homoerotic desires. He is expressing a view that his readers and peers would be unlikely to challenge. Expressing an opposing view, moreover, would have been dangerous, and Hume is much gentler on homoerotic practice than many of his contemporaries. On the other hand, he is not just silent on the point; he uses what amount to slurs in both print and correspondence. As with his racism, we should hesitate to assume that the fault is mere ignorance. It is even less likely that Hume never encountered homosexuals than it is that he never had contact with intelligent people of other races, although the former may have had an easier time hiding themselves. In this case, Hume seems incapable of sympathizing with passions so different from his own. It is no wonder that he resorts to the language of naturalness and purity, given that he has turned his eyes away from the consideration of consequences that he applies to feminine chastity. No analogous argument could have explained homosexuality’s condemnation anyway, since such unions did not produce children who needed a father’s care. In another case, however, Hume expresses sympathy with someone engaged in radical sexual practice. In “Of Moral Prejudices,” he relates the story of a wealthy, independent Frenchwoman who resolves never to marry and subject herself to a man’s rule. Since she wishes to rear a son, she finds a man, whose person and mind please her, to father her child.





I am grateful to Andrew Sabl for pressing me on these issues in both conversation and correspondence. Sabl believes that Hume’s condemnatory remarks about homosexuality are tongue-in-cheek, cases of “praising with faint damns.” I am willing to accept that Hume may have had a light-hearted attitude toward homoerotic behavior, and maybe that birch-in-hand remark is an instance of it. But humor cannot explain away the language of impurity and unnaturalness that I identify here. He also could not have been ignorant of the cruelties perpetrated against homosexuals. He reports in the History that Edward II was murdered by having a hot iron “thrust into his fundament . . ., which they inserted through a horn” (H :). Although Hume does not accuse Edward II of having homoerotic relations, it stretches the imagination too far to suggest that he would not have connected this abuse to the king’s reputation for liaisons with men. See Ormrod, “The Sexualities of Edward II.” Ormrod notes that there are rumors of Edward’s alleged sodomy from the fourteenth century onward; moreover, this charge was considered politically important and therefore of interest to the History.

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

Although she would happily remain his friend, he wants marriage and ultimately sues for custody of their son. Hume leaves us wondering about the case’s outcome, but he describes the woman sympathetically. She possesses strength of mind and is motivated by a sense of her own independence combined with the evidence of friends whose husbands are controlling, unfaithful, jealous, or indifferent. She does not settle for the first eligible lover she meets, but searches long for a suitable mate and then puts him through a trial of discourse before inviting him into her bed. She intends no cruelty to the young man but is unwilling to let his violent passion overtake her calm resolution. Yet Hume introduces the story as a warning against a too “Philosophic Spirit” – “an Example . . . not to depart too far from the receiv’d Maxims of Conduct and Behaviour, by a refin’d Search after Happiness or Perfection” (EWU .). In one sense, this woman has “reason” on her side, and the man has been misled by passion. But this asymmetry does not decide the dilemma in her favor: here Hume reminds us that sexual mores are always bound up with political customs. Interestingly, the woman’s defense in court appeals to a contract, whereas the man’s case relies on convention. He claims “a Right to educate [his son] as he pleas’d, according to the usual Maxims of the Law in such Cases”; she “pleads, on the other Hand, their express Agreement before their Commerce” (EWU .). Recall that Hume begins “Of Polygamy and Divorces” by claiming that marriage is a contract that could take many forms, were it not true that “human laws restrain the natural liberty of men” (..). This woman has attempted to fashion her own contract, ignoring conventional laws governing sexual relations that produce children. Such laws do restrain natural liberty, and Hume’s political philosophy warns that contracts without convention’s backing always prove unstable. Marriage is a political institution, in two senses. First, the state recognizes and regulates marriage, as it must, since spouses share property and produce children who need the law’s protection. Second, spousal relations inevitably involve power dynamics analogous to those of a state. But marriage is also home for two of human life’s most intimate activities – sexual relations and, ideally, close friendship. These activities are as delicate and particular as human life gets, whereas the political aspects are as crude 

Harris’s summary of this story is misleading: “She in effect seduced a man, got herself a child by him, and then offered him money to leave her and the child alone” (Hume, ). Hume writes that the woman communicated “her whole Intention” to the man before having sex with him. The man seems more manipulative. He enters into the relationship knowing her desires for its limitations but then refuses to accept them.

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and general as other institutions that the state must manage. The necessary intrusion of the public into the private in this case means that there may again be irresolvable tension within this aspect of human life. Perhaps this is why Hume leaves us in suspense about the outcome of the Frenchwoman’s case, “which puzzles all the Lawyers, as much as it does the Philosophers” (EWU .).

. Gallant Men and Rare Women It would be remiss to end this chapter on love without a word about Hume’s mitigated defense of gender equality. If we are to take seriously, as he suggests, the possibility of friendship between men and women, then we must also consider how equal such a friendship might be. How close does Hume think such friendships can come to the ideal, which requires equality of mind and character? It is difficult to read Hume’s remarks on this point without a wistful desire that he had taken his somewhat radical views a step further. Though retaining this desire, I want to explain why he might have been unable to take that step. Blocking his path was a specific vision of progress in virtue, which combines the humanity of the modern ideal with the proper pride and sublime spirit of the ancient. It was hard enough to find examples of such men and, for reasons compatible with Hume’s psychology, nearly impossible to find examples of such women. The withdrawn essays include two gallant epistles to women, “Of EssayWriting” and “Of Love and Marriage.” Looking past their saccharine tone, we find some radical statements about women’s equality. “Of Love and Marriage” contains the subversive suggestion that marriages should involve “no pretensions to authority on either side”; he would wish “that every thing was carried on with perfect equality, as between two equal members







Baier suggests that Hume’s ambiguity here intentionally leaves “the court of the reader’s judgment to give the verdict on just what his own intentions were” in portraying such a strong woman and enslaved man. Her own opinion is that “Hume is challenging the accepted gender stereotypes under the guise of a recommendation that we not let our philosophic spirit move us to ‘depart too far from the receiv’d Maxims of Conduct and Behaviour’” (Moral Prejudices, x). There is a rich literature on Hume’s views of women. For readers interested in these issues, Anne Jaap Jacobson’s anthology, Feminist Interpretations of David Hume, is indispensable. In addition to the pieces mentioned below and elsewhere, see Baier, “Hume on Women’s Complexion”; Livia Guimarães, “The Gallant and the Philosopher”; Jane Duran, “Hume on the Gentler Sex”; and Jacqueline Taylor’s Reflecting Subjects, sections . and .–.. For a spirited defense of the philosophical merit of the essays that seem written to appeal specifically to women, see Vicki J. Sapp, “The Philosopher’s Seduction.”

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

of the same body” (EWU .). “Of Essay-Writing” even ascribes some superiority to well-educated women, calling them “the Sovereigns of the Empire of Conversation,” who are “better Judges of all polite Writing than Men of the same Degree of Understanding” (EWU ., ). Here he grants women dominance only in the “conversible world,” which requires only the easier and less rigorous operations of the mind. But he speaks favorably of the French salons, where women in a manner led the learned world as well, and the essay’s overarching aim is to encourage the union of these two worlds. These compliments do not come with the familiar insults, such as Malebranche’s assertion that “everything abstract is incomprehensible” to women or Rousseau’s that women do not “have sufficient precision and attention to succeed at the exact sciences.” Furthermore, as we have seen, Hume associates increasing equality for women with civilization’s advancement. He criticizes the ancients for confining women to the domestic sphere and credits increased interaction between the sexes with improved humanity in men. There is also a striking remark in the History, in which Hume says that during “the first race of the monarchy, the Franks were so rude and barbarous a people, that they were incapable of submitting to a female reign” (H :). These considerations are promising, but Hume also repeatedly acquiesces in and reinforces the notion that women are naturally inferior to men. His approval of gallantry depends on the claim that men should treat women generously, since “nature has given man the superiority above woman, by endowing him with greater strength both of mind and body” (..). In “Of the Immortality of the Soul,” he cites as a disadvantage of “the religious theory” of immortality that it cannot account for “the inferiority of women’s capacity” (EWU .). He ascribes negative traits to women, such as a disposition to vengefulness (..n) and “love of dominion” or tyranny over men (EWU .). As I discuss below, Hume softens these ascriptions with charitable explanations of what might 

 

For a reading of “Of Love and Marriage” that takes Hume’s retelling of the androgyne myth as having serious implications for the possibilities of equality between the sexes, see Sheridan Hough, “Humean Androgynes and the Nature of ‘Nature.’” Malebranche, The Search after Truth, ; Rousseau, Emile, . On the alternative view, which accepts human mortality, women are inferior because their “domestic life requires no higher faculties either of mind or body” (EWU .). This passage is ambiguous. One might read Hume as employing a subtle elenchic technique – showing that traditional religious views, which subordinate women to men, are not compatible with themselves. Because Hume criticizes the ancients for confining women to the domestic sphere, it is possible to read him as leaving open the possibility that women might improve as they are more allowed to move beyond this sphere. Given his remarks elsewhere, however, this interpretation seems implausible, and there is insufficient evidence to accept it rather than the straightforward reading.

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produce these traits. Nonetheless, here he does not see beyond the dominant ethos of his age. Hume does, however, defend women in two important respects. Despite believing women to be inferior to men, he renounces the cruelty that often accompanies this belief. He also admits that there are many exceptions to the general rule: particular women are often superior to particular men. His most powerful statement against cruelty to women is in “Of Polygamy and Divorces,” where he argues against strong male sovereignty. By nature, he says, men and women share a “nearness of rank,” so that they should be friends and lovers. “Would we willingly exchange such endearing appellations,” he asks, “for the barbarous title of master and tyrant?” (..). He calls these practices “inhuman”; they are sure to destroy any love wives may have had for their husbands. And in discussing gallantry in “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences,” he scorns men (again, as barbarous) who abuse women as a show of superiority, such as the “ancient Muscovites,” who “wedded their wives with a whip, instead of a ring” (..). We can add to all of Hume’s remarks about the inferiority of women a similar caution to the one he gives about national stereotypes at the beginning of “Of National Characters.” To infer that any individual woman must be inferior to any individual man (or to men in general) would be to make the same kind of “undistinguishing” judgment as that of refusing to admit that a Brit may be an excellent cook, or a Swiss a good lover (..). In his story in “Of Moral Prejudices,” the Frenchwoman’s superiority to most men makes it hard for her to find a worthy man to father her child. Even the man she finds may be inferior to herself, as his violent passions lead him to extreme and aggressive behavior. The History is also telling here: Hume admires Elizabeth I as a ruler above most of the men who came before and after her, and warns against letting “prejudice . . . founded on the consideration of her sex” influence our judgment on this point (H :). Finally, in a section of the Treatise that assumes men’s general superiority, Hume still notes that it “often happens” that a mother is “possessed of a superior spirit and genius to the father” (T ...).

 

Again, he is careful to add here, “not to say equality.” For a study of Hume’s treatment of Queen Elizabeth as a “rational being,” see Wade Robison, “Hume the Moral Historian.” Robison argues that Hume’s impartiality with respect to Elizabeth’s sex calls into question accusations that the Hume of the Histories is a party man.

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Falkenstein links Hume’s recognition of these exceptional cases to the justification for gallantry, arguing that the pains men take not to treat women as inferiors avoids the uneasiness that would occur should a man find himself presuming superiority to women who are in fact superior to him. The practice also forestalls nasty contests that would ensue from the clash of opinions about who the superior truly is. But these are not the considerations that Hume appeals to. He refers to gallantry as a “generous” effort to “alleviate that superiority” of mind and body that men have over women (..). We might in fact accuse Hume of failing to observe polite gallantry in the conversational space of this essay, as his discussion does nothing to alleviate the discerning female reader’s sense that Hume believes in her inferiority. In truth, there is little indication in the text that polite, gallant men worry much about encountering exceptions to the rule of male superiority. Hume’s admitting the numerous exceptions to the alleged rule highlights the harm of his own nonchalance in this regard, including his several remarks about women’s inferiority. During a time when women’s education was so limited, it is not surprising that women seemed generally inferior. Jacqueline Taylor adds to Hume’s insight that polygamy harms men by depriving them of friendship, that the associated “need to tyrannize women also has the epistemic cost of not seeing women for who they really are, the capacities they really possess, and their (near) equality with men.” We can add that a similar, if less severe, epistemic cost comes with complacent pride in male superiority. Hume can never quite get beyond that “near.” Relative to the domestic tyrant, this is a gentle failing, and Hume does emphasize the exceptions. But propagating the stereotype, especially in works for the general reading public, increases the hardship of the already 







“Without Gallantry and without Jealousy,” –. Falkenstein is careful to point out that the system of gallantry “does not impose moral obligations or serve as a foundation for rights” (). It is only a step on the road to more substantial reforms in gender relations. The possibility that Elizabeth I might have affected sorrow at the death of Mary Queen of Scots in order to appear more womanly and gain the affections of her subjects presents an interesting foil to male gallantry. It suggests how a woman who does know herself superior to men might be similarly “generous.” On Elizabeth’s “excellent hypocrisy,” see Baier, Death and Character, –. Cf. Mary Wollstonecraft: “But avoiding, as I have hitherto done, any direct comparison of the two sexes collectively, or frankly acknowledging the inferiority of woman, according to the present appearance of things, I shall only insist that men have increased that inferiority till women are almost sunk below the standard of rational creatures. Let their faculties have room to unfold, and their virtues to gain strength, and then determine where the whole sex must stand in the intellectual scale” (Vindication of the Rights of Woman, ). Reflecting Subjects, .

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difficult position of women who were exceptions to the rule. Public reassertion of the generalization decreases the chances of extraordinary women being taken seriously as intellectual and moral peers, thus muffling potential counterexamples. Hume’s account of pride implies that when others fail to reinforce a person’s sense of her positive qualities, the results include enervation of spirit and an undermining of positive selfassessment. Extraordinary women, then, may despair of opportunities for exercising their talent. Even if they do not, their accomplishments cannot acquire public significance if the dominant culture dismisses them as female trifling. The consequent silencing of superior women makes it less likely that they will inspire other women to attain greater excellence of mind and character, and more difficult to discover that the stereotype is ill-grounded. Having accused Hume of this much, it is only fair to admit that there are mitigating circumstances. His practical philosophy portrays an ideal character who shares the noble pride admired by the ancients and the commitment to humanity admired by the moderns. To inspire that “noble emulation” that he says “is the source of every excellence,” one must have traits of both the good and the great (..). One may possess much personal merit without the more sublime virtues. But those virtues seize the public’s attention in ways that inspire esteem and imitation. For such purposes, we need power without tyranny and strength without cruelty. However rare this combination may be in general, the situation of women for most of human history would make it even rarer among members of the “fair sex.” Consider the ancient examples of powerful women, some of whom Hume cites in various places: Clytemnestra, Medea, Hera. Consider the real-life examples of Elizabeth I and Isabella, wife of Edward II. All these powerful women were also known for vindictiveness, cruelty, and aggression. This is precisely what Hume would predict, given the enduring oppression of women. In his ascriptions of negative qualities to women, he sometimes attributes those qualities to circumstantial causes rather than innate gender differences. When he says in “Of National Characters” that the passion of revenge “seems to reign with the greatest force in priests and women,” he gives this mollifying explanation: “Because, being deprived of the immediate exertion of anger, in violence and combat, they are apt to fancy themselves despised on that account; and their pride supports their 

Hume mentions Clytemnestra in “A Dialogue” at EPM Dia.. Corneille’s portrayal of Medea appears at EPM .; Timomachus’s painting of Medea at ...

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

vindictive disposition” (..n). Likewise, after accusing women of violent love of dominion in “Of Love and Marriage,” he blames the situation on men’s abuse of their authority. “Tyrants, we know, produce rebels; and all history informs us, that rebels when they prevail, are apt to become tyrants in their turn” (EWU .). These explanations leave open the possibility that treating women better may prevent their developing such vicious traits. They also help explain why so few women exemplified the ideal of strength without cruelty. Having been long oppressed by men, women were unlikely to gain power without exertions of cruelty. (“Of Love and Marriage” also includes a story of Scythian women who rebel against their male enslavers, overpowering the men by stabbing out their eyes.) Even if women were, through lucky accident, able to gently acquire power, the natural course of human passions would run toward a desire for revenge against those who had previously tyrannized them. It is significant that Hume ascribes this train of sentiments to priests as well as women: women react to such frustration just as analogously confined men do. Despite Hume’s experience and study of outstanding women, he fails to seriously question the age-old belief in women’s inferiority. Despite holding a theory of the passions that acknowledges humiliation’s powers to stifle efforts toward self-improvement, he allows himself to judge feminine capacity on the basis of a sample corrupted by centuries of humiliation. On the other hand, Hume’s critical gaze notices the damage done by tyranny over women, and he provides grounds for experiments in gender equality – the very experiments that in some places now make it possible for women to be both strong and humane. At the end of the day, despite his occasional condescension, one senses that Hume simply liked women and, especially as he grew older, respected them as well. He enjoyed their company and wanted them as friends. Since he recognized that true friendships require equality, he had every reason to promote as much equality between the sexes as was feasible. Though we may wish he had seen that more was feasible than eighteenth-century Europe acknowledged, we can admire the worthiness of the aim and the amiability of its motive. 

Unfortunately, Hume’s saying that this is the reason why he would have perfect equality in marriage suggests that his support for such equality is more a matter of policy than persuasion of actual equality between men and women.

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. On the Use and Abuse of “Philosophy” in the Essays Did the mature Hume abandon philosophy – or “real philosophy”? Some of those who think so place the dividing line after the Treatise, some after the first Enquiry, and some after the second Enquiry. We are told that he abandoned philosophy for history, for literature, or for journalistic prose. Or the story may go that he abandoned one type of philosophy – metaphysics or moral philosophy, for instance – for another, such as practical ethics or politics. These debates too often assume conceptions of “philosophy” that would have been foreign to Hume, without considering his own use of the term. He distinguishes between types of philosophy at the end of the Treatise and the beginning of the first Enquiry. But how does Hume use the term “philosophy” in the Essays? If he had rejected philosophy as a suitable occupation for a man of letters, we would expect him to characterize it as useless or worse. Does he? He does, but only occasionally – far less and in a more qualified way than one would expect of someone who had dismissed the enterprise altogether. Of course, he might have abandoned philosophy himself yet held it an estimable activity for others. But this is not Hume’s position in the Essays. We find instead a remarkable continuity with his attitude toward philosophy in earlier works, particularly the first Enquiry. We can divide Hume’s negative remarks about philosophy into two broad, sometimes overlapping, categories: those that accuse philosophers of overreaching and those that warn against philosophy contributing to factionalism. Overreaching philosophy can be amusing, like watching an   

For a summary of the history of these debates, see the introduction to Harris’s Hume. See Introduction, Section .. For a review of the scholarly confusion surrounding Hume’s distinction between philosophical anatomy and painting, see Abramson, “Philosophical Anatomy and Painting.”



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adolescent boy trying to carry something whose weight he cannot bear. Or it can be dangerous, as when the weight becomes precarious rather than awkward. For example, philosophers – particularly of a Stoic bent – sometimes fancy that they can free humans from the human condition and that studying their precepts will “render happiness entirely independent of everything external” (..). Here, in “Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion,” this effort appears as a worthy aim, pushed a little too far. The wise person knows that she cannot be sufficient unto herself, but she endeavors to come as close as is compatible with physical and social nourishment. In “Of Moral Prejudices,” however, the related “grave philosophical Endeavour after Perfection” hardens the heart, enervates the spirit of virtue, and produces contempt for fellow human beings. This pretended wisdom is “the most egregious Folly of all Others” (EWU .). Likewise, ambitious philosophers sometimes think that they can replace the work of politicians, with laughable or lamentable results. If even the best governments can do little to improve the moral character of their people, efforts to do so by disseminating “the most refined precepts of philosophy” must prove impotent (..). The “wise magistrate” does not develop a plan of state on the basis of any “supposed argument and philosophy” but respects people’s predilection for established practices and institutions (..). Last, philosophy in its speculative guise can confound the practitioner and, if it somehow gains popular ascendancy, damage the public sense of duty. Hume recommends the study of history as an antidote to what happens when “a philosopher contemplates characters and manners in his closet,” so that “the general abstract view of the objects leaves the mind so cold and unmoved, that the sentiments of nature have no room to play, and he scarce feels the difference between vice and virtue” (EWU .). And both “Of the Original Contract” and “Of Passive Obedience” warn against the pernicious consequences of philosophical theories invented to support political parties. “Of the Original Contract” ascribes these dangers to false philosophy that refines away virtues and duties by “sifting and scrutinizing [them], by every captious rule of logic, in every light or position, in which [they] may be placed” (..). “Of Passive Obedience,” 

Related usages contrast philosophical schemes with those that are politically feasible. See, for example, Hume’s suggestion that were it not for the strength of historical testimony, Sparta would seem “a mere philosophical whim or fiction, and impossible ever to be reduced to practice” (..). “Of the Original Contract” often refers to philosophical ideas in this way.

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on the other hand, acknowledges that real philosophy may identify circumstances that warrant suspending the rules of justice, but Hume warns that detailing these circumstances would be an irresponsible gift to those looking for reasons to act like knaves (..). So philosophers are prone to conceit, which should be no surprise. Hume seems especially concerned, however, with the danger of philosophy itself becoming sectarian or attaching itself to other forms of sectarianism. Hume claims that “sects of philosophy, in the ancient world, were more zealous than parties of religion” (..). The underlying tendency, however, did not die with Chrysippus or Speusippus. Accidental factors have held philosophy in check, such as the proximity of nations with varying prejudices. The resulting intellectual competition prevents a single philosophical sect from becoming dominant, as Hume says happened when the “Peripatetic philosophy was alone admitted into all the schools.” Modern Europe thus escapes the hegemony of “the Cartesian philosophy, to which the French nation shewed such a strong propensity towards the end of the last century” (..). A worse evil can arise when philosophy attaches itself to a religious sect. Hume argues that this union has promoted violent wars and stultified genuine inquiry. Ancient religious followers defined themselves by narratives, but “as philosophy was widely spread over the world, at the time when Christianity arose,” Christian teachers had to place their views within the confines of a speculative system. The resulting sect allied the agonistic character of philosophy with the political motives of priests, who had their own reasons for seeking victory rather than dialectic. The dominance of late medieval Aristotelianism led to “the utter depravation of every kind of learning” (..). The “keenness in dispute” characteristic of philosophy exacerbated the violence when this dominance fractured during the Reformation (..). This is the worst of what Hume has to say about philosophy in the Essays. It can exacerbate violence and become an accessory to pusillanimous power plays, in addition to overreaching and thinking it can conquer or retool nature. These are serious evils. But Hume thinks that they are evils associated with philosophy gone awry and that another mode of

 

For years, I have been reading this word as “deprivation”; Hume chooses the much stronger depravation. Learning is corrupted, perverted, depraved, not merely stifled. Philosophy only gets some of the blame here: Hume first mentions the conflict between early Christians and civil authorities, which concentrated power in priests who would not submit to the state’s authority. See ..–.

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philosophy offers important compensatory goods. Let us now consider what Hume says in the Essays about the benefits of philosophy. First, Hume refers to philosophy as a search for wisdom and personal moral improvement, not always with an ironic wink at the pretensions of the Stoic sage. The most striking instance is Hume’s footnote correction to the Sceptic’s pessimism, where he lists twelve “philosophical topics and reflections” that can improve the passions: Philosophy greedily seizes these, studies them, weighs them, commits them to the memory, and familiarizes them to the mind: And their influence on tempers, which are thoughtful, gentle, and moderate, may be considerable. But what is their influence, you will say, if the temper be antecedently disposed after the same manner as that to which they pretend to form it? They may, at least, fortify that temper, and furnish it with views, by which it may entertain and nourish itself. (..n)

This is restrained, but not insignificant, praise of philosophy. Hume knows – perhaps from personal experience – that even thoughtful, gentle, and moderate tempers need nourishment. This temperament cannot protect anyone from all the vicissitudes of life or from the violent, unpleasant passions that arise in response to attacks from within and without. The Stoic’s promise is overstated. But one can store up resources for such pains, both by “frequent perusal of the entertaining moralists” and by “habit and study” to encourage “that philosophical temper which both gives force to reflection, and by rendering a great part of your happiness independent, takes off the edge from all disorderly passions, and tranquillizes the mind” (..n). In short, there is a multiform continuum between being even-tempered and serene, on the one hand, and reactive and wretched, on the other. Those closer to serene still need fortification to maintain a satisfied relationship with the human condition. For such fortification, it is reasonable to turn to philosophy, which allows us some perspective on present sufferings. We know Hume as the mitigated sceptic; here, it seems, we have Hume the mitigated sage.



 

For other positive uses of “philosophy” in this sense, see “Of the Standard of Taste,” where Hume writes that an older man may take “pleasure in wise, philosophical reflections concerning the conduct of life and moderation of the passions” (..), and “Of the Middle Station of Life,” in which Hume says that those in this station “form the most numerous Rank of Men, that can be suppos’d susceptible of Philosophy” (EWU .). For a nuanced discussion of Hume’s view of philosophy’s role as a therapy of desire for those with philosophical temperaments, see Lemmens, “Melancholy of the Philosopher.” For a recent helpful discussion of Hume’s relation to his characters, the Stoic and Sceptic, see Walker, “Reconciling the Stoic and the Sceptic.”

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Moreover, Hume argues that philosophy can effect one personal improvement of special importance, beyond these general resources for the passions and temper. Philosophy is uniquely qualified to oppose the vices of false religion, particularly in its superstitious form. In “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” he writes that there is “nothing but philosophy able entirely to conquer [the] unaccountable terrors” that give rise to superstition (..). In “Of Suicide,” he employs a medical rather than martial metaphor: philosophy provides a “sovereign antidote” to superstition’s “pestilent distemper” (EWU .). No other remedy is as reliable: even those with good sense, experience, and happy temperaments can find themselves slaves of “so virulent a poison” that they “feel many of their joys blasted by this importunate intruder” (EWU ., .). The efficacy of the cure depends on the germ of the disease: “Love or anger, ambition or avarice, have their root in the temper and affections, which the soundest reason is scarce ever able fully to correct. But superstition, being founded on false opinion, must immediately vanish, when true philosophy has inspired juster sentiments of superior powers” (EWU .). The cure fails only, Hume goes on to say, when philosophy is “false and sophisticated.” This passage is, at best, misleading. I will return later to the objection that such confidence in philosophy’s powers is naïve, or at least unsceptical and un-Humean. The more specific problem is that these remarks seem contrary to Hume’s own earlier account of superstition’s origin. “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm” locates the source of superstition in a combination of factors, including “weakness, fear, melancholy, [and] ignorance” (..). To call superstition “founded on false opinion,” therefore, makes the phenomenon less psychologically complex than Hume acknowledges it to be. This oversimplification, in turn, calls into question the optimism about philosophy as an immediate cure. We can find some help in the claim that not fear alone, but fear combined with our propensity to invent threats to justify it, produces superstition. When “real objects of terror are wanting, the soul . . . finds imaginary ones, to whose power and malevolence it sets no limits” (..–). Belief in these malevolent fictions looks like a candidate for



Cf. H :: “neither is there any instance that argument has ever been able to free the people from that enormous load of absurdity, with which superstition has every where overwhelmed them.” Jennifer Herdt discusses the apparent tension between such remarks and Hume’s claims in “Of Suicide” in Religion and Faction in Hume’s Moral Philosophy, –.

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false opinion grounding superstition. By providing guidance to an unruly imagination, philosophy may indeed provide a check on such beliefs. On the other hand, philosophy might yoke itself to such fancies and exacerbate superstition’s negative effects, as in Hume’s description of the union of Christianity with medieval Aristotelianism. Only true philosophy can provide the requisite cure. Mitigated scepticism can foster rejection of metaphysical claims about occult causes, reconciliation to reason’s limits, and cheerful submission to nature’s dominance. This mode of philosophy might enable people to overcome the contrary tendencies of superstitious opinions. The Sceptic’s caution still stands: only those with a certain temperament are likely to follow such guidance. But philosophy’s ministrations can still be worthwhile. Russell, who reads Hume as on a “Lucretian mission” to undermine religion theoretically and practically, suggests one way that Hume’s philosophy might have power against superstition despite its impotence with ordinary people. Hume would first emancipate “the most able and gifted members of society” and “redirect [their] intellectual energies” to real contributions to human welfare, thereby weakening “the conditions that encourage and promote religion in society.” I do not deny that Hume might have had hope in some such trickle-down policy. But the significance of Humean philosophy is not exclusively dependent on its influencing the masses. Someone with a temperament prone to true philosophy may yet be susceptible to superstitious impulses, particularly if she lives among those who fortify them. For such a person, true philosophy offers hope. This hope is significant, even if its effects are confined to her own welfare. Hume thus credits philosophy with effects that are both psychologically and morally important. Curing superstition does not merely replace an unreasonable belief with a reasonable one; it alters one’s fundamental stance toward experience. It inspires “juster sentiments of superior powers” and liberates people from crippling fear. “Reason” working on the passions in this way is no problem for Hume, as long as “reason” stands for a suitably Humean concept. The training of the imagination that true philosophy requires is a promising possibility. In the first Enquiry, Hume observes that the imagination’s natural tendencies, though they can be amusing, often cross the ends of good judgment. The imagination “is naturally sublime, delighted with whatever is remote and extraordinary, and running, without controul, into the most distant parts of space and time, in order to avoid the objects, which custom has rendered too familiar 

Riddle of Hume’s Treatise, .

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to it.” Coming to terms with “the force of the Pyrrhonian doubt” and the sole corrective of “natural instinct” helps the philosopher correct her judgment (EHU .). Thus reining in the imagination would also rein in the passions: as the idea of a malevolent, vengeful deity recedes, the passions attending that idea must recede likewise. Reason, as part of the imagination in a broad sense, can affect passions by increasing or decreasing the vivacity of ideas to which we have passionate responses. Genevieve Lloyd compares the Enquiry’s assertion of the need to restrain the imagination with the Sceptic’s complaint that philosophers “imagine that [nature] is as much bounded in her operations as we are in our speculation” (..–). These philosophers thus assume that what makes them happy makes everyone happy, that everyone’s passions are the same as their own. Here the fault, Lloyd notes, “lies in a lack of mental expansiveness of mind – an inappropriate limiting of the imagination.” “The Sceptic” and the Enquiry thus identify two contrary vices of the imagination. It can be too constricted as well as too wide-roaming. Yet in both works “there are echoes of the Pyrrhonian idea of the transformative effects of exposure to doubt – of acknowledged not-knowing as the key to the contented life.” Lloyd observes that the essay addresses questions about the good life, as opposed to the Enquiry’s “desire to set proper limits to philosophical inquiry.” Yet, through palliation of superstition, setting those limits shares a connection to promotion of the good life. Nevertheless, discrete exercises of philosophical reflection have limited power. Being convinced of the power of sceptical doubt and realizing the submission to nature required to overcome it is not the work of a single moment or meditation. It requires developing a habit of philosophical reflection, in which one gradually learns to attend to arguments and overcome fear of abandoning cherished convictions. Though this habit requires a certain antecedent temperament, it also fortifies that temperament. This understanding of philosophy fits with Hume’s propensity to use the term “philosophy” to refer to a way of life, type of character, and habit of reflection. Only such a comprehensive practice could have the power that he claims for it in “Of Suicide” – of curing the mind of a vice with a peculiarly “pernicious tendency” to make its possessors miserable. The Essays credit philosophy with one more serious benefit, in addition to its power over superstition and capacity for general moral improvement.  

See T .... Ibid.



See T ...n.

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Enlightenment Shadows, .

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

In spite of his cautions about mingling philosophy and politics, Hume suggests in several places that philosophers can render serious political service. Philosophy intrudes on politics to everyone’s detriment when it attempts to transform human nature rather than serve it. But philosophers who avoid this error, along with that of attaching themselves to factions, provide a unique perspective on political questions. The early political essays make several strong statements to this effect. “That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science” includes the claim that if a constitution is very bad, then “the zeal of patriots is in that case much less requisite than the patience and submission of philosophers” (..). “Of the First Principles of Government” begins with a testimony to philosophers’ resistance to political manipulation that dominates most people: “Nothing appears more surprizing to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers” (..). Hume does not abandon this view as he matures. In “Of the Protestant Succession,” published first with the Political Discourses in , he writes that only a philosopher without party affiliation can weigh the advantages and disadvantages attending the Hanovers and Stuarts as heirs to the British throne. He then takes up the charge, hoping to “show the temper, if not the understanding of a philosopher” (..). The preceding paragraph’s description of the nonpartisan philosopher shows that Hume has set himself no easy task: Such a one will readily, at first, acknowledge that all political questions are infinitely complicated, and that there scarcely ever occurs, in any deliberation, a choice, which is either purely good, or purely ill. Consequences, mixed and varied, may be foreseen to flow from every measure: And many consequences, unforeseen, do always, in fact, result from every one. Hesitation, and reserve, and suspense, are, therefore, the only sentiments he brings to this essay or trial. Or if he indulges any passion, it is that of derision against the ignorant multitude, who are always clamorous and dogmatical, even in the nicest questions, of which, from want of temper, perhaps still more than of understanding, they are altogether unfit judges. (..)

“Of Commerce” says that the “chief business of philosophers” is to “regard the general course of things” (..). If such thinkers are to wade into particular questions, then they must do so on tip-toe. And it may still 

The essay was written, however, by . See Chapter , note .

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prove an ordeal: “essay” suggests the indefatigable researches of Montaigne; “trial” calls to mind the many methods humans have devised for distinguishing guilt from innocence. The task’s difficulty, however, by no means diminishes its importance. Because of their practice at regarding the general and the abstract, philosophers have some hope of keeping their minds fixed on vague and unpredictable consequences. Ideas of such consequences, hazy as they must be, cannot attract the steady gaze of the common thinker. The required level of emotional restraint also constitutes a significant difficulty. Perhaps Hume is grappling with this difficulty when he indulges in that ugly sentiment about deriding the ignorant multitude. (This remark highlights the obstacles, noted in the last chapter, to combining love for the public with a philosophical temperament.) Despite these difficulties, Hume’s opinion in the Essays is that suitably chastened philosophers can be appropriate judges of political matters. Their contributions can range from the foundational (the nature of a constitution, for example) to the adjudication of specific issues (such as the claims of competing royal dynasties). What of even more foundational questions concerning the rights and obligations of rulers and subjects? Hume has plenty to say about such matters and does not think that they are in principle too difficult to put into language comprehensible by the essay-reading public. Several of the Essays, particularly “Of the Original Contract,” include such efforts. Here philosophers must tread very carefully. The theory that Hume finds philosophically most plausible does not preach. It is difficult to explain the basis of justice and allegiance in utility without encouraging short-sighted people who fail to recognize the very great utility in a stable government and who underestimate the profound harms of civil war. Alternative theories do not escape this problem of inspiring rebellion or the contrary one of justifying tyranny. Both contract theories and theories of divine right have occasioned abuses in both directions. Moreover, any theory that roots around in the foundations of governmental institutions can uncover the “force and violence” behind the establishment of almost all of them, generating repulsion against the laws (..). So there is ground on which the philosopher must tread lightly, and perhaps some over which she should pass in silence. But the hesitation and reserve she has cultivated ought to help her practice such restraint. Hume goes so far as to suggest that even a thinker who fails to absorb the lessons of mitigated scepticism may be of considerable benefit. The Political Discourses begins with Hume dividing the majority of humankind into “shallow thinkers, who fall short of the truth,” and “abstruse thinkers, who

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

go beyond it” (..). But instead of condemning metaphysical overreachers, he remarks that, between these two types, the abstruse thinkers are “by far the most useful and valuable. They suggest hints, at least, and start difficulties, which they want, perhaps, skill to pursue; but which may produce fine discoveries, when handled by men who have a more just way of thinking” (..). They do not live up to the mean – “those of solid understanding” (..–). But their novelties are amusing, and they may suggest genuine advances. As long as she avoids joining a political or religious faction, the abstruse thinker can cause little harm – and she may do some good.

. Philosophy as Distance I have shown that in the Essays Hume uses “philosophy” in three positive senses: as a source of individual character improvement, as a cure for superstition, and as a counselor to politicians. But is there anything that these three modes of advantageous philosophy have in common? Can we offer any positive definition of “philosophy” in the Essays? If by “definition” we mean a list of necessary and sufficient conditions, surely not. But we can trace a family resemblance, and its features return to an idea from Chapter , on “Composing.” Philosophy, in these various modes, requires regarding one’s world and the people who inhabit it from a certain distance. The understanding of philosophy is consistent with the way Hume portrays his discipline in the first Enquiry. Hume’s recommendations for salutary philosophical reflections in the footnote to “The Sceptic” require moderate detachment. Reflection always requires distancing oneself from the objects on which one wishes to reflect, at least far enough to “see” that object from a second-order perspective. Hume suggests seeing suffering and agitating desires from broader perspectives – for example, that of a larger group of people (“every condition has concealed ills,” so “why envy any body?”; “How many are happy in the condition of which I complain? How many envy me?”), of a longer duration of time (“Custom deadens the sense both of the good and the



Cf. Harris’s characterization of Hume’s life as a man of letters as philosophical, meaning that he was “free enough to be able to rise above the everyday and the particular and, from that vantage point, to identify and characterize general principles that were otherwise hard, if not impossible, to discern” (Hume, ). The emphasis on forming general principles makes this conception of philosophical thinking more narrow than the one I have in mind here, but they share the notion that philosophy requires distance from objects of reflection.

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ill, and levels every thing”; “Anticipate by your hopes and fancy future consolation, which time infallibly brings to every affliction”), or of the fullness of one’s life rather than confrontation with particular goods or evils (“How many other good things have I? Then why be vexed for one ill?”) (..–). These are not prescriptions for seeing the world sub specie aeternitatis. He also recommends enjoying the present and cultivating the esteem of one’s acquaintance. He prizes the social comforts of friendship, mutual regard, and compassion. But he belongs in that tradition of thinkers who believe that a little holy indifference enables one to feel these passions with more generosity. The relevant form of indifference is not to other people’s concerns but to the effects of those concerns on one’s own particular interest. All of these prescriptions, moreover, are moderated by Hume’s general cautions about the limits of human nature, summarized by another one of his philosophical reflections in “The Sceptic”: “Expect not too great happiness in life. Human nature admits it not” (..n). Lloyd, discussing “Humean detachment,” emphasizes the Sceptic’s own enjoyment of “the humanizing and ennobling force of the shared life of the mind.” Though a severe critic of the Stoic’s overreaching dogmatism, the Sceptic presents an engaging model of the “Stoic ideal of acceptance,” which includes “resilience in the face of adversity, a sustained calm tranquillity, and – above all – a capacity for enjoyment.” One of the ways that the Sceptic expresses that enjoyment is by his quick-fire mocking of philosophical consolations. “Your sorrow is fruitless, and will not change the course of destiny,” the philosopher intones. “Very true,” the Sceptic replies, “And for that reason I am very sorry.” He approves more of Antipater the Cyreniac’s consolation for his blindness: “What! says her, Do you think there are no pleasures in the dark?” (..). We need not conflate the Sceptic with Hume entirely to see that Hume is laughing, too. Humor is another way of distancing ourselves from the causes of suffering. Sometimes the amusing folly studied by the true philosopher is her own. Likewise, philosophy as a cure for superstition requires a perspective of moderate distance. To be “thoroughly convinced of the force of the Pyrrhonian doubt” requires retreating from the notion that one’s reason has a firm grip on the world in itself. It chastises, however, the philosopher’s tendency to roam too far from common life into “distant and high enquiries.” But is this really recommending distance? Isn’t Hume  

I take this as pointing out that one’s sense of goods and evils fades as one becomes accustomed to them over time – hence my placing this in the category of reflections from a longer duration of time.  Enlightenment Shadows, . Ibid., .

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

counseling immersion in nature’s dominance, avoiding flights of fancy above our necessary engagement with the world? Not so simply as might appear. The sceptical philosopher, by this rendering, appears no different from a common dogmatist who has never engaged in reflection at all. To benefit from the philosophical exercises that lead to mitigated scepticism, we must remember their lessons. One of those lessons is the confinement of philosophical researches “to such subjects as fall under daily practice and experience.” This confinement may seem the easiest thing in the world to an average person, but to someone with philosophical leanings, it is not at all easy. The drive to understand, the hunter’s urge to satisfy curiosity about metaphysical questions, lies deep within such characters. Normal people, immersed in the world, may go about their business without questioning whether colors are really in objects or their perceivers’ minds. The philosopher, however, will ever want to snatch up the object, hold it at the remove necessary for philosophical contemplation, and attempt to discover its substantial nature. Avoiding this temptation, as Hume says, requires keeping in mind “the imperfection of those faculties which they employ, their narrow reach, and their inaccurate operations” (EHU .). This, in turn, requires considering not only the objects of the world but also one’s own faculties, from the distance of the philosophical gaze. Hume also praises mitigated scepticism for its ability to humble our natural tendency “to be affirmative and dogmatical,” reducing our pride in our own opinions as well as our prejudice against opposing ones (EHU .). The similarities between Hume’s language here and his description of the philosophical temper in “Of the Protestant Succession” are striking. There, he credits the philosopher with an attitude of hesitation, reserve, and suspense. Here, he concludes his discussion of the deflating benefit of sceptical doubt by noting that “there is a degree of doubt, and caution, and modesty, which, in all kinds of scrutiny and decision, ought for ever to accompany a just reasoner” (EHU .). Among the things from which the philosopher must distance herself are her own judgments. To do so without falling into weak-mindedness may prove a delicate operation, requiring, one suspects, what Nietzsche calls “light feet.” But again, this is why the philosophical stance must be one of moderate distance – a 



On the difference between the true philosopher and the unreflective dogmatist, despite possible similarities in their outward behavior, see Livingston, Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium (especially chapter ), and Laursen, The Politics of Skepticism, . See, e.g., Twilight of the Idols, “What the Germans Lack,” .

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perspective from which one can grasp one’s own judgments when necessary, while seeing that alternative ones are available as well. Besides the chastening of judgment, there is another sense in which an anti-superstitious attitude implies distance from the world. In truth, not everyone trips along accepting the evidence of their senses as revealing the Ding-an-sich. Many people see omens everywhere, occult powers in natural objects, and anthropomorphic desires and willings at every level of external existence. Superstitious observers are not disengaged from the natural world; they are wholly immersed in reading it through the superstitious hermeneutic. In certain circles, it is common to lament the “disenchantment of the world,” which allegedly has robbed us of our sense of wonder at being part of the Great Chain of Being. Hume, however, notes that seeing the world as enchanted inspires terror as well as wonder. The sceptical philosopher avoids this fear by coming to terms with the thought that moons and suns undergo eclipses, cocks crow, and black cats wander about with neither concern for nor direct influence on human affairs. There are definite losses here – of a readily available narrative of meaning, and the wonder that comes from belief in events that run contrary to the laws of natural experience. Hume testifies to the pleasure of wonder in “Of Miracles,” noting that it is such an agreeable emotion that even those whom the pleasure does not seduce into believing in miracles enjoy hearing stories of them (EHU .). But this wonder has a dark side too: “if the spirit of religion join itself to the love of wonder, there is an end of common sense” (EHU .). And another source of surprise and wonder is available to the mitigated sceptic – that of finding herself inhabiting a world so much larger than herself, which she cannot expect to comprehend. Whether one finds this wonder pleasant or not, I suspect, depends on whether one has the temperament of a sceptical philosopher. Regardless, such wonder requires recognizing that the distance between one’s mind and the world may be unbridgeable. Finally, the philosopher who offers counsel in political matters must maintain distance from the factionalist quarrels that characterize much of political business. Political parties are not famous for their toleration of hesitation, reserve, and suspense in their members. Moreover, for reasons I discussed in the previous chapter, maintaining these sentiments within a party is difficult, because of both social pressure and social consolation. Political parties affect both one’s passions and one’s judgments about truth 

Charles Taylor discusses this lament in a relatively nonpartisan way in The Ethics of Authenticity. See especially chapters  and .

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

(not that there is any easy separation between the two). Again, Hume argues that belonging to a party can encourage vicious impulses, because we get moral reinforcement from our fellows for anything we do that serves the party’s interest, regardless of our behavior’s effects on others. At its extremes, this encouragement promotes Manichean worldviews, from which one sorts even new acquaintances into crude categories – “for us or against us.” More subtly, we might find what Bernard Williams (in a different context) calls debasing the “moral currency.” As party ends justify questionable means, one’s commitment to some virtues may erode. Particularly vulnerable are those virtues that concern the broader human community – justice, extensive benevolence, and humanity. In addition to these moral consequences, political partisanship threatens the operation of reason itself. Parties tend to insulate their members from opposing points of view and countervailing evidence. This effect is intimately related to the previous ones: a sense of justice, for example, might lead one to insist on hearing from an opposing side, and the erosion of that sense would correspondingly reduce the motivation to do so. But it is fair to identify intellectual lassitude as an independent effect. With a party platform readily available, one need not do the work of thinking about which views to hold. One might do so, of course, and perhaps some thinking about such views preceded the decision to join the party in the first place. But the party will be happy to take over the job of reasoned reflection about issues. Kant is correct in “What Is Enlightenment?”: it is so easy to be immature. A party affiliation does not consign one to being a vicious automaton toeing the party line. Again, Hume does not think that we can eliminate political parties, nor that attempting to do so would be good policy. A philosopher, however, who offers the political counsel that Hume suggests she might, must be on her guard against the social and intellectual pressure parties create. She must be able to see things from alternative perspectives, so she must distance herself from all parties to take up a more general point of view. In extreme situations, such a philosopher would need yet one more kind of distance, perhaps of a most difficult sort. This point is suggested by Hume’s claim in “That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science” that if a constitution is very bad, the state needs philosophers rather than zealous  

Morality, . On the expansion of Hume’s conception of justice beyond property rights after the Treatise, see Baier, The Cautious Jealous Virtue, chapter .

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patriots. In this situation, in which the fundamental structure of a nation proves unstable, wise women and men will fear for their security and perhaps mourn the loss of the ancient regime, though they recognize it to have become untenable. To be of service in such a situation, a philosopher would have to distance herself both from the fear and from the country she once knew. This does not necessarily require seeing oneself as a citizen of the world, but it does require a certain leaving home. Sometimes maturity demands that we distance ourselves even from those who gave us life.

.

Ancients and Moderns: A Pas de Deux

If philosophy requires distance, then we will be true philosophers, it appears, to the extent that we can avoid getting too close. But that seems harsh and un-Humean. Closeness helps make us human – the more so as it allows us to enter into the deeper level of sympathy that promotes true compassion. And we should be wary of any recommendation to aim for a stratosphere of reflection from which all-too-human things seem to have been overcome. “Be a philosopher,” Hume advises, “but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man” (EHU .). It is difficult to be a man while one plays with the illusion of being an angel or a Kantian saint. Fortunately, we can work with many of these forms of distancing as we do with a camera lens – zooming in and out as necessary. In the morning, I can reflect on my pain as one moment in a whole life, remembering Montaigne’s adage that evils too “have their life and their limits, their illnesses and their health.” In the evening, I can let myself feel its full depths, as I confide those depths to my partner whose commiseration requires knowing my misery. I can see that same partner as someone whose love and intelligence offer me support and consolation, but then later look at him as a work of art whose person and character would be beautiful to me even if he had never brought goods into my own life besides this pleasure of observation. And a mitigated sceptic can reflect on the imperfections and instability of all human reasoning if she feels herself being seduced by dogmatism. But she might also hold her own reasoning close, defending her faculties against attacks from those who do not share such diffidence.

 

I have in mind the kind of Kantian saint that Rae Langton describes in “Duty and Desolation.” See especially . Essays, “Of Experience,” .

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

Such footwork is not easy; the power of habit extends to our modes of thinking. Changing the perspective of thought is not as easy as changing the focus on a camera. Our inner eyes are trained by their movements. But we can train for suppleness, too, and it is no small benefit of sceptical practice that it provides such training. In this last section, I want to return to theme of progress – both social and individual. For Hume, thinking about progress often includes comparing the ancients with the moderns, since it was ancient culture that acted as an alluring ideal for some aspects of the modern imagination. It is plausible to see the ongoing contest of ancients and moderns as a kind of factionalism, and factions limit the possibilities for supple thought. Parties from principle especially promote calcification of opinion, as Hume notes in “Of Parties in General.” If our agreement on some “abstract speculative principle” holds us together, I cannot disagree with you about that principle and remain in the party (..). Hume observes that we tend to be tetchy about our opinions: “such is the nature of the human mind, that it always lays hold on every mind that approaches it; and as it is wonderfully fortified by an unanimity of sentiments, so is it shocked and disturbed by any contrariety” (..–). The interplay of fortification and disturbance can lock the camera lens into whatever position is best for reflecting the image of my fellow partisans’ ideas. I am supported in my opinions by my fellows, and I do not want to look at anyone else’s. This effect does not require the infrastructure of a political party. All it requires is partisan-like allegiance to an opinion or set of opinions. In place of allegiance to the court or country party, we pledge ourselves to supplyside economics or Keynesianism, to romanticism or realism, to progressivism or narratives of decline. It is as difficult to maintain distance from a system of thought as it is to be loyal to a party only some of the time – perhaps more so. Once one is convinced by such a system, it becomes part of the perspective from which one sees everything else. Surely the line between having a healthy commitment to a set of worldview-structuring beliefs and being a partisan of an ism is vague. The other side of the mean is an intellectual vice exhibited by those who agree with whichever argument they heard last. But we all know the symptoms of those who make the opposite (and probably more common) error: they dismiss counterevidence to any claim made by the system; they become angry at those who question its validity; they cherry-pick their reading lists either for supporting arguments or for targets to attack. A thinker bound so closely to her views cannot, if Hume is right, be a true philosopher. The true philosopher must leave herself the freedom to

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travel between points of perspective. This is not to say that she must occupy the view from nowhere. Like Hume’s general points of view, philosophical perspective requires sympathetically taking up multiple points of view. If we want to philosophize about social contract versus divine-right theories of sovereignty, then we must offer the best arguments each affords, and even look at the question from both a speculative and a practical side to put each theory in its best light. If we want to judge which limitations on marriage are most beneficial, we must try to see what the proponents of both closed and open arrangements see in their own proposals. And if we want to understand the prevalence of and possibilities for progress, we must sometimes think with the ancients and sometimes with the moderns. To participate in the dance of judgment, the philosopher cannot remain in the audience. She must enter into the dance, taking up partners for a series of delicate pas de deux. Hume assays such a dance throughout the Essays. How graceful is this dance? Hume has set himself a difficult task. He does not claim to be superhuman, without partisan tendencies or particular humors, manners, and opinions that direct his own judgment. He complains repeatedly and explicitly about nostalgia for the past and the tendency toward antiquarianism. In each of the areas of human life that we discussed, he praises modern advances. The rule of law, less destructive and fewer wars, the rejection of slavery, increased trade and industry, refined poetry and prose, and the welcoming of women into polite society are all developments to be celebrated. At each step of the way, however, we have also seen him in conversation with the ancients, often using their ideas to correct the moderns. And at no point is he complacent in his praise of modernity: determined assurance that human nature and institutions will continue to progress is as unwarranted as reactionary attachment to the past. If this is a dance, it is fair to say that Hume is usually more comfortable with his modern partners. But the tune, I submit, is an ancient air. This description is deliberately vague. I am not making a claim about the influence of specific ancient thinkers on particular Humean theses. I instead contend that the Essays exhibit a cast of mind that has ancient roots in the Hellenistic philosophers, especially the sceptics.



For two important treatments of Hume’s scepticism that focus on his epistemology, see Robert J. Fogelin’s “Hume’s Skepticism” and Donald C. Ainslie’s Hume’s True Scepticism. Julia Annas criticizes Hume’s own understanding of ancient scepticism in “Hume and Ancient Scepticism.”

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To see that cast of mind, we must reflect on what Hume is doing in writing essays. “Endeavouring to open the eyes of the public,” he quips as a dying man. But writers do not write only for others, nor can they write for all others. Hume aims some of his methods at a relatively unreflective audience. But in recommending the cultivation of philosophical distance as a habit of mind, he will only reach the few philosophically minded among his readers. For those few, however, who are able to take the perspective of a moderate distance, he recommends thought that leads to something close to what the ancient Sceptics called epochē, with the ultimate aim of something close to the general Hellenistic ideal of ataraxia. Pascal Massie, commenting on Sextus Empiricus, writes that the sceptical “ethos involves creating an internal space between oneself and one’s own thoughts . . . Thus, the skeptic is not identical with her thoughts; she is rather spectator and judge of the thoughts she entertains and continues to examine but to which she never gives her full assent.” Such mental distance, whereby we might become critics of our own thoughts, is the primal distance on which all other forms of philosophical distance depend. The seeking, hesitating tendency characteristic of someone who manages such distancing allows her to query the importance of her desires, to wonder how her friends appear in isolation of the good or evil they cause her, to recognize the limitations of her own faculties, and to observe the operations of nature without assuming that they exist to benefit or punish her. It also moves her to look for alternative perspectives on political questions – so that when she encounters those who disagree with local party sentiments, or foreigners whose perspective on her country may be quite different from her own, she can take this as an opportunity for escaping her earlier narrowness, rather than a threat against her identity. In such perspective lies our best hope for tranquility. The mature Hume no doubt tempers his hope for the “Greatness & Elevation of Soul” that “can alone teach us to look down upon humane Accidents” (Hume to

  

“Letter from Adam Smith,” in Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, xlvi. “Ataraxia: Tranquility at the End,” –. Penelhum argues that “Hume is a neo-Hellenistic thinker . . . in maintaining that we should avoid anxiety by following nature” (“Hume’s Moral Psychology,” ). Hume’s psychological science is then a method whereby the philosopher comes to understand the nature that she must accept. “Hume thinks a philosopher must, first and foremost, learn to accept his or her nature for what it is” (). The acceptance of nature is a helpful way to see Hume’s relation to the Hellenistics, but at the risk of taking “first and foremost” too literally, I would argue that the philosopher must first cultivate the habits of mind on which such an acceptance can rest.

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Michael Ramsay, July , Letters :). But he does not abandon it altogether. Distance gives the philosopher some armor against the vicissitudes of life and provides her with internal sources of consolation. If her efforts to accomplish something fail, she can zoom out to consider the other aspects of life and the possibilities of the future. If she suffers physically, she can reflect on the elevating beauty of her friend’s character, or the awe-inducing otherness of the natural world. And if new evidence contradicts her opinions, that is precisely what she ought to expect will happen, at least once in a while. But the tranquility, like the distance, is only moderate. Complete independence from external forces is the Stoic’s illusion, not the Sceptic’s. In his own voice, Hume argues that it is an illusion in “Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion.” “That degree of perfection is impossible to be attained” (..). For one thing, the Humean sceptic does not believe that her reason alone can be the source of her judgment about anything, including her own passions. These judgments, as well as those of other people and the external world, all proceed from her sentimental constitution. This constitution requires external goods, particularly other people, for its cultivation and sustenance. Its vulnerability is ineliminable. Whether she generally – or at any particular moment – has the strength to take up a position of moderate distance is not entirely up to her. Moreover, she cannot in honesty comfort herself with assurances that, with Reason at the helm, all will turn out well in the end. All is not right with the world, and there is no certainty that it ever will be. Since our wellbeing is intimately bound up with the world, we are again vulnerable. Political instability constitutes a particularly strong threat, since a stable civic environment is the good without which pursuit of other goods is impossible. “If the reason be asked of that obedience,” Hume writes in “Of the Original Contract,” “which we are bound to pay to government, I readily answer, because society could not otherwise subsist” (..). If society cannot subsist, neither can its members – at least not for long, and not without creating a new society in some other image. Hume does not pretend that in extreme situations of instability, such as civil war, philosophy will save a single soul. In his concern about civic destabilization, he perhaps evinces less confidence than some ancient sceptics about the power of epochē as a response to the soldier at the door. Those ancients, however, 

We should hesitate to read Hume’s expression of that hope, even at age sixteen, too piously. In a couple of sentences he is practicing “Mortification” by descending to vulgar life, sharing with his friend that “John has bought a horse he thinks it neither cheap nor dear,” etc. (Letters :).

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tended to be cautious in their promises of ataraxia itself, since to affirm a necessary connection between Sceptical practice and tranquility would itself be a form of dogmatism. Commentators will sometimes admit that Hume admires the practical moral philosophy of the Hellenistics, but then take pains to argue that he assesses their theoretical philosophy as beneath serious consideration in light of the advances in modern thought. Peter Loptson gives a thoughtful analysis of Hume’s relation to the ancients along these lines, claiming that Hume admires the “painterly” philosophy of the ancients but not their abstruse or anatomical theory. With some reservations about the terminology, I have no objection to this story about Hume’s relation to the ancients, as long as it does not include the implicit premise that the latter is real philosophy and important, whereas the former is a lesser mode of thought with correspondingly lesser significance. Hume’s own understanding of philosophy, as shown by his use of the term in the Essays, is more expansive. And the time that he spent on practical philosophical work as a mature thinker demonstrates his own recognition of its importance. That importance is a function of philosophy’s benefit to both the public and the philosopher. The peculiar danger of political instability offers philosophers both motive for and hope of exercising public spirit in a manner harmonious with their philosophical tendencies. Hume, recognizing the dangers of factionalism, picks up his pen with a conciliating aim and crafts essays that resist Manicheanisms. Forestalling these dangers would of course serve every citizen’s interest, by protecting their safety and liberty. But in serving this end of the majority, rarer spirits benefit themselves as well: they practice their own habit of moderate distance and therefore advance their pursuit of tranquility. Hume makes no promise that philosophy leads to eudaimonia. He claims that it is an enjoyable practice for those with a certain temperament, but this is not overall flourishing toward the highest good. The way that he portrays philosophy in the Essays, however, does suggest that its practice might offer the more modest goal of tranquility. His theory of sympathy, moreover, offers the hope that such practices and the resulting passions might be catching, so that their promotion could have an influence beyond those with that certain temperament. In acknowledging that Humean philosophy has a political as well as a personal aim, am I cleaving a breach between Hume and the Hellenists?  

On this point, see Massie, “Ataraxia: Tranquility at the End,” –. Loptson, “Hume and Ancient Philosophy.”

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Hegel’s analysis of the Hellenists endures – according to which their thought was an understandable retreat, in response to the dominance of Rome, from the political science of Plato and Aristotle. When there is no hope of unity with the political world one inhabits, “man is driven within his inmost self” and must “seek the unity and satisfaction, no longer to be found in the world, in an abstract way.” Despite the differences between Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, they shared a common purpose: “rendering the soul absolutely indifferent to everything which the real world had to offer.” Scepticism takes this indifference to its limits: “the immobility of Scepticism made aimlessness itself the object of the Will”; it “was the counsel of despair to a world which no longer possessed anything stable.” From this point of view, the Hellenistics have little to offer to political thought. Their relation to the state was either one of quietistic withdrawal or conservatism based on passive acceptance of prevailing customs. Such thinkers would not waste energy attempting to persuade the public, as Hume evidently does, that specific policies promote or fail to promote the well-being of the citizenry. But is this a fair interpretation of the Hellenists? Or is it an accusation based on a particular understanding of what real political philosophy is that then judges these sects for not agreeing that such political philosophy is viable? Recent scholars have argued that the Hegelian opinion fails to take into account the diversity of thought among the Hellenistic philosophers, the availability of alternative interpretations of that thought, and the difficulty of making any claims about what these thinkers did not address, given the volume of their writing that has been lost. In an overview of Hellenistic social and political thought, Malcolm Schofield argues that although Epicurus does recommend quietism, the Epicureans nonetheless give theoretical accounts of political society’s purpose and the development of laws. Some of these ideas sound strikingly Humean: Hermarchus, for instance, argues that the establishment of laws “is a formalized substitute for perception of mutual advantage and consequential self-restraint,” as  

 Lectures on the History of Philosophy, . Hegel, The Philosophy of History, . Ibid. Blame for the “quietist” interpretation of the Hellenistic philosophers is usually placed on Hegel, but there are seeds of it at least in the eighteenth-century writings of Giambattista Vico. In his Autobiography, he writes that the Stoics and Epicureans share “a moral philosophy of solitaries: the Epicurean, of idlers inclosed in their own little gardens; the Stoic, of contemplatives who endeavor to feel no emotion.” These philosophies stand opposed to those of Cicero, Aristotle, and Plato, which were “all worked out with a view to the good ordering of mankind in civil society” (Autobiography of Giambattista Vico, ).

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people forget why their conventions of restraint toward one another serve their own interest. The Stoics also theorize about the relations between nature, justice, and law, and often advocate immersion in political activity. What of scepticism? Here the divisions between groups of even ancient sceptics, combined with the diversity of interpretations of their views (and, again, the loss of so many of their writings) exponentially complicate the question. But, as John Christian Laursen has argued in The Politics of Skepticism in the Ancients, Montaigne, Hume, and Kant, the assumption that scepticism must lead to quietism or conservative acceptance of a prevailing regime fails to attend to what we know of the sceptics’ involvement in political activities. This assumption can also come from a failure to take sceptical nondogmatism seriously: the dogmatist assumes that if a strategy (such as submitting to prevailing conventions) seems appropriate to a sceptic at one moment, it must be a commitment that follows from the sceptical system of thought – even if the sceptic denies that she has any such commitment or, indeed, any system of thought at all. Mitigated sceptics might find it reasonable to immerse themselves in political questioning or even political activity, when it seems worthwhile to do so. And that activity need not be aimed at upholding the status quo, given the mental freedom that scepticism aims to cultivate. In Academica, Cicero locates the essential difference between the sceptic and the dogmatist in the former’s capacity for freedom in judgment – a freedom that can enable escape from the boundaries of a stale or corrosive tradition. “We are more free and untrammelled,” he says, “in that we possess our power of judgment uncurtailed, and are bound by no compulsion to support all the dogmas laid down for us almost as edicts by certain masters.” Is this attitude just another retreat into mental freedom, helpful for those for whom political freedom is not possible but no aid to the public spirit who actively seeks public good? Cicero does explain that only his release from the burden of public service enables him to record his philosophical reflections. But freedom of thought is a necessary precondition for any political activity that seeks to challenge an existing regime.  



Schofield, “Social and Political Thought,” . Hermarchus was a successor of Epicurus; Schofield draws this interpretation from a long passage quoted by Porphyry. Schofield’s gloss on Chrysippus’ position on the choice between active and contemplative lives corresponds, I would argue, to Hume’s view: “Indeed it is as if Chrysippus is saying: ‘Choose the active life, but don’t conceive it in monolithic terms. In particular don’t contrast the active with the contemplative life, since the wise man acts out his social nature and contributes to the public advantage by his philosophical and scientific writing and teaching’” (ibid., ).  Cicero, De Natura Deorum; Academica, . Ibid., .

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For such a challenge to be anything other than reactionary prejudice, the thought that freedom enables must be philosophical in the broad sense outlined above. Mental freedom can enable living an externally conventional life without internal submission. Such a course may be the only wise one available in conditions of extreme violence. On the other hand, when we ascribe such a course to sceptical philosophers, we often forget that disseminating radical ideas is itself a political act. Can we seriously call the Montaigne who published “An Apology for Raymond Sebond” and “On Some Verses of Virgil” politically submissive? Nothing within scepticism itself prevents a thinker from attempting to persuade the public of the political views she finds most probable. Cicero himself did more by becoming a political leader. Perhaps learning from Cicero’s example, Hume did not pursue this course. But both in attempting to persuade the public of particular positions and in endeavoring to mollify the tone of public dispute, Hume pursues a political good without risking complete loss of tranquility. In doing so, he follows the only course that could enable philosophy to offer those benefits to political thinking that require disengagement from parties to a dispute. Hume’s seeking political improvement through his writing, then, does not necessarily put him at odds with the Hellenistic philosophers whose ideal of tranquility he shares. He is far from unique among the moderns, of course, in drawing on Hellenistic ideas. Moreover, finding inspiration in the Hellenistics as opposed to those medieval favorites, Plato and Aristotle, was itself a progressive move in the early modern period. But Hume’s attitude is in sharp contrast to those modern philosophers whose hopes for mastering nature with the club of new scientific knowledge led to wildly optimistic proposals for human progress, as well as those who trusted that advancing reason would guarantee such progress for all time. Can we imagine Hume, for instance, proposing a work with the title, “The Plan of a Universal Science Which Is Capable of Raising Our Nature to Its Highest Degree of Perfection,” as Descartes did? Or claiming that, with proper study, one “ought infallibly to find” a medical science that will “rid oneself of an infinity of maladies, as much of the body as of the mind, and even perhaps also the frailty of old age”? Descartes did not envision such possibilities for a long-distant future: there is evidence from  

See Descartes’s Letter to Mersenne from March of ; this work became the Discourse on the Method (The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Vol. : The Correspondence, ). Descartes, Discourse on Method, .

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The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays

his correspondence that he thought he might prolong his own life to the age of  or . Indirect evidence suggests a more ambitious goal: a third-hand account in Baillet’s biography reports Descartes’ confidence that “it was possible to lengthen out his life to the period of the Patriarchs,” upward of  years. Contrast these hopes with Hume’s claim that “useful inventions in the arts and sciences” may be influential but produce less sensible benefit than wise laws (..). What of those wise laws? Do we have reason to expect progress in this most significant of public institutions? In a sense, yes: Hume clearly thinks progress has been made since the “barbaric” ages he reads about in ancient histories and writes about in the History. He also finds hope in the possibility of the civilizing effects of the arts and trade. But such progress is by no means guaranteed: as I have argued, Hume recognizes threats to it both from the virulence of political factionalism and the fragility of the related economic institutions. The economic progress in which he has genuine hope depends on a concurrence of moral causes. For instance, he argues against the notion that the quantity of available money determines interest rates, fixing instead on the borrowing and spending habits of the populace. A set of idle landlords and indigent peasants will always drive up the demand for lending; the resulting high interest depends “on the habits and manners which prevail” (..). He does then identify principles that suggest that further progress in industry will ameliorate these habits, but he also recognizes that various causes can deter such progress. The hatred and fear of neighboring nations that motivate bad trade policies are perennial problems, not easy to stamp out of either citizens or sovereigns. Finally, Hume expresses hope of progress against superstition, whose harmful effects he sees across vast areas of human life. His explanation of superstition (and enthusiasm) as rooted in natural tendencies of various kinds of people, however, recommends diffidence about expecting to extirpate false religion altogether. Indeed, after ridiculing the Roman Catholic doctrine of the real presence in the Natural History, he prophesies not progress but merely the creation of new absurdities. Though people “in a future age” will be incredulous that anyone ever accepted such a doctrine,   

See Descartes’s letter to Constantyn Huygens from January , . Quoted in Gruman, “History of Ideas about the Prolongation of Life,” . Ibid., . Gruman also discusses Descartes’s ambivalence about this aim, revealed in his own promotion of a Hellenistic aim – the removal of the fear of death. See also .., where Hume writes that religion, politics, metaphysics, and morals “form the most considerable branches of science. Mathematics and natural philosophy, which only remain, are not half so valuable.”

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“it is a thousand to one, but these nations themselves shall have something full as absurd in their own creed, to which they will give a most implicit and most religious assent” (NHR .). Hume is being witty here, but his wit has a solemn edge. He appreciates and hopes for the continuation of modern advances. Progress in philosophical ideas may be slow going, but once it is well begun, might we have reason to hope for its picking up speed? In “Of the Middle Station of Life,” he emphasizes the extreme rarity of great philosophers, but the two he names are both moderns: “Galilœo and Newton seem to me,” he writes, “so far to excel all the rest, that I cannot admit any other into the same Class with them” (EWU .). But what does Hume admire most about Newton? He explains in the History: In Newton this island may boast of having produced the greatest and rarest genius that ever arose for the ornament and instruction of the species. Cautious in admitting no principles but such as were founded on experiment; but resolute to adopt every such principle, however new or unusual: From modesty, ignorant of his superiority above the rest of mankind; and thence, less careful to accommodate his reasonings to common apprehensions . . . While Newton seemed to draw off the veil from some of the mysteries of nature, he shewed at the same time the imperfections of the mechanical philosophy; and thereby restored her ultimate secrets to that obscurity, in which they ever did and ever will remain. (H :)

Hume’s Newton, in other words, had that hesitation, reserve, and suspense that “Of the Protestant Succession” identifies as requisite for the true philosopher’s character. The ultimate benefit from his philosophy, as Hume characterizes it, is not mastering and possessing nature but respecting its mystery. This is not the mystery of the Great Chain of Being, but the mystery of the mitigated sceptic. In the face of this mystery, true philosophers are willing to make use of whatever resources avail themselves, whether ancient or modern. This stance has political ramifications, because of our entrenched tendency to divide political views according to whether they wish to conserve the past or overturn it for the progress of the future. But the stance also has ramifications for the life of the philosopher herself – for any hope she may have for happiness. In resisting party affiliations, including temporal ones, Hume consciously promotes his own tranquility as well as the possibility 

This question is not the same as the question of whether or to what degree Hume’s own philosophy was Newtonian, though these questions are related. For a recent treatment of this question that provides a summary of and citations to the ongoing debate, see Matias Slavov, “Newtonian and Non-Newtonian Elements in Hume.”

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of enjoyable philosophical reflection, which he values so highly. To “possess our power of judgment uncurtailed” is to live with the freedom unique to the philosophical life. Nietzsche tells us that “philosophy offers an asylum to a man into which no tyranny can force it way.” We condemn such freedom, such asylums, as feckless quietism if we fail to recognize that the rarest spirits can also need comfort, or if we fail to appreciate another quasi-Nietzschean lesson – that only by cultivating such spirits can we hope for progress for all. Perhaps mitigated hope is the proper mood for the mitigated sceptic. The note on which the Essays ends suggests as much. After detailing a commonwealth as perfect as he can imagine, Hume ends with a caution. Even under such a system, threats both internal and external might abound – enthusiasm, personal factions, ambition, and rust on the political machine. “It is a sufficient incitement to human endeavours,” Hume concludes, “that such a government would flourish for many ages; without pretending to bestow, on any work of man, that immortality, which the Almighty seems to have refused to his own productions” (..). 

Schopenhauer as Educator, .

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I hope it is clear that all of the earlier chapters in this book are about thinking. They show the breadth of Hume’s thinking in the Essays. Given the understanding of philosophy sketched in Chapter , this thinking is all to some degree philosophical. I do not claim that Hume always maintains an ideal philosophical distance from his subject matter. He seems to divide religious practitioners into those with dangerous forms of superstition and those whose faith has scant influence over their lives. There are other live options. Likewise, he sometimes fails to appreciate the experience and promise of people whose lives are very different from his own – most strikingly, in his contempt for all those of African descent. Both errors could result from perspectives either too near or too far, and I do not pretend to know the proper diagnosis in Hume’s case. Yet the Essays as a whole show a commitment to expanding vision, for both author and reader. We think better about each subject when we are in the grip of neither a thesis nor a party. And these benefits can endure, even if our thinking tells us to immerse ourselves in certain experiences, such as friendship or art. Philosophical thinking about social and institutional structures provides hope for improvement primarily through its suggestions for how we should or should not modify those institutions and structures. In his political and economic thought, Hume encourages us not to let our reverence for the past blind us to modern advancement, nor to let our attachment to the present blind us to what we might learn from the past. He shows us how changes in practice can effect changes in humanity – as have alterations in war and the abolition of legal slavery. But he also warns us that some dark principles in human nature – such as our attraction to domineering over our fellows – can reemerge in different guises when we thought they had disappeared. These complex studies of human nature suggest some specific recommendations for legislators who, if the polity is well structured, must be interested in the well-being of their subjects. 

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Such legislators would do well to resist facile distinctions between the strength of a nation, its economic prosperity, and its promotion of liberal arts and sciences. Hume the philosophical essayist also has recommendations that do not require political mobilization. He shows how the cultivation of an aesthetic sensibility can improve our passionate lives, and explores the difficult terrain of our most intimate relationships, including those with our own selves. Though appreciating the brilliance of satire, he warns us against the form of it that finds nothing great in human nature. Without condemning the physical pleasures of sex, he celebrates more the possibility of intellectual friendship between men and women. And while recognizing the rarity of the philosophical spirit, he commends its joys to those who share his temperament. Here is a final way in which the Essays can contribute to philosophical progress. If we do happen to share the philosophical temperament, there is no need to read the Essays themselves as a historical artifact. They can be both a challenge and a stimulus to our own thinking, in ways that Hume himself might never have imagined. In finding such stimulations in a historical text, we are following a method Hume valued himself. We may have good reasons sometimes to set aside our more creative philosophical talents, as we seek to understand a philosopher on his or her own terms. But to set aside these talents altogether would be to disregard Hume’s own advice (in his response to his Sceptic) to take advantage of the favorable temper with which nature has endowed some fortunate people. It would also be to abandon an opportunity to inspire others to similar reflection and cultivation. We can be grateful that, in his long-standing dedication to the Essays, Hume provides such inspiration himself. 

See ..n.

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Watkins, Margaret. “Delicate Magnanimity: Hume on the Advantages of Taste.” History of Philosophy Quarterly , no.  (): –. “‘Slaves among Us’: The Climate and Character of Eighteenth-Century Philosophical Discussions of Slavery. Philosophy Compass , no.  (): –. Webster, Alison. “The Contribution of the Scottish Enlightenment to the Abandonment of the Institution of Slavery.” European Legacy , no.  (): –. Welchman, Jennifer. “Who Rebutted Bernard Mandeville?” History of Philosophy Quarterly , no.  (): –. Wennerlind, Carl. “The Role of Political Economy in Hume’s Moral Philosophy.” Hume Studies , no.  (): –. Wertz, S. K. “Collingwood’s Understanding of Hume.” Hume Studies , no.  (): –. Whelan, Frederick G. Hume and Machiavelli: Political Realism and Liberal Thought. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, . Whyte, Iain. Scotland and the Abolition of Black Slavery, –. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, . Williams, Bernard. Morality: An Introduction to Ethics. Cambridge: Canto, . Willis, Andre C. “The Potential Use-Value of Hume’s ‘True Religion.’” Journal of Scottish Philosophy , no.  (): –. Toward a Humean True Religion: Genuine Theism, Moderate Hope, and Practical Morality. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, . Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations: The English Text of the Third Edition. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. New York: Macmillan, . Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Women. In A Vindication of the Rights of Men, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, . Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. London: Penguin, . Wright, John P. “Butler and Hume on Habit and Moral Character.” In Hume and Hume’s Connexions, edited by M. A. Stewart and John Wright, –. University Park: Penn State University Press, . “Hume on the Origin of ‘Modern Honour’: A Study in Hume’s Philosophical Development.” In Philosophy and Religion in Enlightenment Britain: New Case Studies, edited by Ruth Savage, –. Oxford: Oxford University Press, . Yanal, Robert J. “Hume and Others on the Paradox of Tragedy.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism , no.  (): –. “Still Unconverted: A Reply to Neill.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism , no.  (): –. Young, David B. “Libertarian Demography: Montesquieu’s Essay on Depopulation in the Lettres persanes.” Journal of the History of Ideas , no.  (): –.

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Index

Abramson, Kate, n, n, n Addison, Joseph, n, n adultery, , n aesthetics. See beauty; contemplation; delicacy; emotions; passions; pleasure; taste, standard of Ainslie, Donald C., n Alcibiades, ,  allegiance, , , , See also contract theory, divine right government role in cultivating virtue of,  moral obligation to, –, , – Allestree, Richard,  anger, , , –, , , ,  anhedonia, , , , See also melancholy Annas, Julia, , n Antipater the Cyreniac,  Árdal, Páll, n Aristophanes, , n,  Aristotle, , , , , n, –,  on friendship, , , , , n politics, , , –, n,  Athens, , n, , n, , – Atticus, – Austen, Jane, , , n Baier, Annette, n, n, n, –, n, n on Hume’s views of women, n, n, n, n, n, n, n balance of power, n, –, ,  Baumstark, Moritz, n, n Bayle, Pierre, n beauty. See also delicacy, emotions moral, ,  sentiment of, n, , , –, , – benevolence, , , , –, , , n, 

Berkeley, George, n Berry, Christopher J., n, n, n, , n Bill of Rights (England),  Black, Scott, n Boufflers, Comtesse de, n, ,  Box, M. A., n, , n, , n, – Boyd, Richard, n Branchi, Andrea, n Brown, Christopher Leslie,  Buckle, Stephen, n, n, n Burke, Edmund, n, – Burton, Robert, , ,  Butler, Joseph, ,  Caffentzis, C. George, n Caligula,  Castiglione, Dario, n, n Castro, Juan Samuel Santos, n Catholicism, , –, , See also Christianity, priests, religion, superstition character. See also character traits, virtue national, how formed, –, ,  strength of mind forming,  character traits, , –, n industry as a trait, , – chastity. See Sex Cheyne, George, –, –,  children, , n, , n,  Christianity, , , , , See also Catholicism, priests, religion, superstition Chrysippus,  Cicero, , –, , , – Cohen, Alix, n Cohen, Ted, n Colburn, Glen,  Collingwood, R. G., , n comparison, effects on emotions or passions, , –, n, , – conservatism, –, –



. F 2565 7 9CC , FFF 42 3 :586 7 D 6 2E2: 23 6 2C 9CC , FFF 42 3 :586

8 4 6 1 :E6 :C 7 /5: 3D 89 8 4 6 C6 9CC , 5 : 8

063

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,

,

D3 64C C C96 2 3 :586

6 C6

Index constitution, myth of ancient, , –, See also past, admiration or veneration of contemplation, , –, , –, , , , n contract theory, –, –,  Costelloe, Timothy, n, n, n, n courage, –, –, –, ,  The Craftsman, n,  custom, , , , See also habit and law, ,  relation to sexual practices, , ,  role in strengthening passions,  Dadlez, Eva, n Darwall, Stephen, n Debes, Remy, n debt, public, , –, , –, ,  Dees, Richard, n delicacy, –, , , See also imagination, delicacy of; melancholy; pleasure, of those with delicacy; women, delicacy or sensibility of of taste or passion, –, , , , – democracy, , , ,  Demosthenes, , , ,  depression. See melancholy Descartes, René, – Dew, Thomas Roderick, n, – divine right, –,  divorce, –, –, See also marriage Dollimore, Jonathan,  Drescher, Seymour, ,  Dubos, Jean-Baptiste, – Duran, Jane, n education, , –, , , , , ,  Edward II (King of England), n egoism,  effects of malignant forms of, ,  forms of, – Eliot, George, , , ,  Elizabeth I (queen of England), n, – eloquence, , –, , , , ,  Emerson, Roger, , , n emotions. See also comparison, effects on emotions or passions, passions, as distinguished from emotions; sympathy; specific emotions aggressive, , ,  and defects of character,  and tragedy, –

. F 2565 7 9CC , FFF 42 3 :586 7 D 6 2E2: 23 6 2C 9CC , FFF 42 3 :586



as reflective impressions, – as related to beauty, , , ,  as related to passions, –,  distinction between calm and violent,  distinction between strong and weak, – distinction between warm and cold,  improved by aesthetic experience, – England. See Great Britain enthusiasm, n, , –, , ,  Epicurus, –, –, ,  essay, genre of, – Evnine, Simon, –, n,  Eze, Emmanuel C., n factionalism, , –, , See also friendship, and the state; Great Britain, parties or factions in; justice, and factionalism; philosophy, as non-partisan; public spirit; reason, threatened by partisanship; religion, and factionalism; sympathy, and factionalism conflict with public spirit, , – Hume’s efforts against, –, ,  religious, , ,  Falkenstein, Lorne, n, ,  fame, love of. See vanity fear, , , –, , , ,  and superstition, , –, –,  Fieser, James, n Finlay, Christopher, n Fletcher, Andrew, – Fogelin, Robert, , n Fontenelle, Bernard de, – Forbes, Duncan, , n, –, n,  France, , –, ,  friendship, , , , , , – and egoism or self-love, , , , –, – Epicurean, , – its emotions or passions, –,  and pride, – and sex, –, –, – and the state, –, ,  between women and men, , ,  Galileo,  gallantry, , –, –, See also sex, women Gardner, Catherine Villanueva, n Garrett, Aaron, n, n Garrett, Don, n genius, –, –, , –,  Gill, Michael B., n, n, n Goldie, Mark, n

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

Index

Great Britain, –, , See also Scotland “Glorious Revolution” of England (-), , ,  constitution, – parties or factions in, –,  relations with France, –,  slavery practices of,  greatness of soul. See magnanimity Grose, T. H.,  Gru¨ne-Yanoff, Till, n Guimarães, Lívia, n habit(s), –, , , , See also custom encouraged by aesthetic experience, – industry as, – of peoples, , –, , , , See also character, national, how formed of the poor, – philosophical, , , , ,  and strength of mind, – and virtue,  Hanvelt, Marc, – happiness, , , , , See also indolence, industry, pleasure and delicacy, ,  essays on, – and friendship, ,  and industry, – and philosophy, , , , ,  others’, as aim of benevolence, ,  Hardin, Russell, n Harper, William,  Harris, James A., –, n, n, n, , n, n, n, n, n hatred, –, , , , – between nations, , ,  calm, – Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, , ,  Herdt, Jennifer, n, , n Hermarchus, – Heydt, Colin,  history, conjectural, ,  Hobbes, Thomas, , , –,  Homer, ,  homosexuality. See sex honor, , n, , , ,  Hont, Istvan, –, n Horace, – Hough, Sheridan, n human nature, as variable or uniform, n, –, , , –, , See also courage; genius; industry, as constant or variable aspect of human nature

. F 2565 7 9CC , FFF 42 3 :586 7 D 6 2E2: 23 6 2C 9CC , FFF 42 3 :586

humanity, as virtue, , , , n, , , See also inhumanity; virtue modern improvement in, , , –, , –,  as related to government, , – Hutcheson, Francis, n, n,  idleness, , , –,  imagination, , , , , , ,  and superstition, – delicacy of,  Immerwahr, John, , –, n, , n, , n,  indolence associated with the poor, – as ingredient of happiness, ,  unpleasant, , –,  industry,  as constant or variable aspect of human nature, –, –,  and essays on happiness, – evidence of less in ancient societies, – Hume’s ambiguous use of the term, – relation to liberty,  relation to other forms of progress, , , , –,  as virtue both useful and immediately agreeable, –, – inhumanity, , ,  and slavery, , ,  Jacobson, Anne Jaap, n James I (king of England), n, n James II (king of England),  Johnson, Samuel,  Jordan, Mark D., n, n Jordan, Will R., n justice, , , n, , , , , , , ,  and factionalism, ,  government cultivation of, –,  Kaye, F. B.,  Keats, John,  Kekes, John, n Klein, Lawrence E., n knowledge, , ,  link to industry and humanity, –, , , – Kraepelin, Emil,  La Fayette, Madame de,  La Rochefoucauld, François de, , –, , – Langton, Rae, n

8 4 6 1 :E6 :C 7 /5: 3D 89 8 4 6 C6 9CC , 5 : 8

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,

,

D3 64C C C96 2 3 :586

6 C6

Index language, , , , , See also rhetoric Laursen, John Christian,  law, , , , –,  influence on character,  and marriage, ,  rule of, – and slavery, ,  Le Jallé, Éléonore, n, n Lemmens, Willem, n, n Levey, Ann, n Levi, Anthony, n liberal arts, , , , –,  liberty, , –, ,  ancient spirit of, , , , , ,  civil, , , –,  relation to industry,  relation to marriage, ,  Livingston, Donald, –, n, n, n, n Lloyd, Genevieve, ,  Locke, John, n, –, –,  Loptson, Peter,  Lucretius, n, ,  luxury, , , , –, –, , – MacDowell, Andrew Bankton. See McDouall, Andrew (Lord Bankton) Machiavelli, Niccolò, , n,  MacIntyre, Alasdair, n,  magnanimity, , , , , n, n,  Malebranche, Nicolas, n, n,  Malthus, Thomas Robert,  Mandeville, Bernard, , , , , , n defense of luxury, – rhetorical style, – treatment of pride, n, , – Marcus Aurelius,  marriage, n, , –, –, See also divorce, sex, women Mary II (queen of England),  Massie, Pascal, , n McArthur, Neil, n, n, –, n, , n McClennen, Edward F., n McDouall, Andrew (Lord Bankton), ,  McIntyre, Jane, ,  McKee, Anthony Patrick Francis,  melancholy, , –, –, –, ,  Merivale, Amyas, n, n, n, n miracles,  modesty, , –, –

. F 2565 7 9CC , FFF 42 3 :586 7 D 6 2E2: 23 6 2C 9CC , FFF 42 3 :586



monogamy, , n,  Montaigne, Michel de, , n, , –, n, , ,  as inventor of the essay, ,  Moore, James, n Mossner, Ernest Campbell, n, n Mourgues, Odette de,  Murdoch, Iris, n Neill, Alex, – Newton, Isaac,  Nietzsche, Friedrich, , , , –, , ,  Norton, David Fate, n, n Norton, Mary J., n O’Brien, Dan,  oratory. See eloquence, rhetoric Ormrod, W. Mark, n Ovid, , ,  Palter, Robert, n parties. See factionalism; Great Britain, parties or factions in Pascal, Blaise, ,  passions. See emotions as distinguished from emotions, –, See also delicacy past, admiration or veneration of, , –, , –, , ,  Penelhum, Terence, n, n Phillipson, Nicholas, n, n philosophy Hume’s negative remarks about in the Essays, – Hume’s positive remarks about in the Essays, – meaning of, , ,  as non-partisan, , , , – Pieper, Josef, –,  Plato, , –, , , n, ,  pleasure, n, , See also anhedonia; beauty, sentiment of Epicurean view of, –,  increased by comparison,  from industry or difficulty, –,  as ingredient of happiness,  no forms of in themselves vicious, ,  sexual, , ,  as source of pride or love, –, –,  of those with delicacy, , , –,  of tragedy, – of wonder,  Plutarch, , 

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,

D3 64C C C96 2 3 :586

6 C6



Index

Pocock, J. G. A., , –, n, n, n, ,  poetry, , , , , , –, –,  politics as a science, –, , , n polygamy, , –,  Popkin, Richard, n population density (and well-being), ,  populousness. See population density (and well-being) Postema, Gerald, , n, n,  Potkay, Adam, , –, n, n poverty, , , , –, , – pride, , , , , , –, , – priests, –, , –, , –, n,  property, , , , , , , , n Protestant Reformation, , , ,  public opinion, –, –, ,  public spirit, , , , , ,  difficulty of combining with delicate taste, – Hume’s own,  Pyrrhonism, , , See also scepticism race, , –,  Radcliffe, Elizabeth, n, n, n, n, , n Radden, Jennifer, – Rasmussen, Dennis, n Raynor, David R., n reason, –, , –, n, , ,  as calm passion, –,  and imagination, – and mitigated scepticism, , ,  threatened by partisanship,  rebellion, , , , , ,  Reed, Philip, n religion, n, –, , –, See also Christianity, factionalism, priests, Protestant Reformation, superstition ancient compared to modern, – and factionalism, –, ,  government establishment of, – Hume’s treatment of, n,  resentment, ,  rhetoric, , n, –, –, , See also eloquence, language Richardson, David,  Robertson, John, , , n, –, – Robison, Wade, n Rome, , , , n, , , , ,  marriage in, ,  reasons for decline, 

. F 2565 7 9CC , FFF 42 3 :586 7 D 6 2E2: 23 6 2C 9CC , FFF 42 3 :586

Ross, Ian Simpson,  Rothschild, Emma, n Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, ,  Russell, Paul, n,  Sabl, Andrew, n, n Sablé, Madame de,  Sapp, Vicki J., n Sayre-McCord, Geoffrey, n scepticism, –, , , –, –, See also happiness, essays on; Pyrrhonism; reason, and mitigated scepticism as cure for superstition,  and progress,  Schabas, Margaret, n, ,  Schneewind, J. B., n Schofield, Malcolm, – Scotland, , , See also Great Britain selfish system. See egoism Seven Years War,  sex, , , –, See also pleasure, women, marriage chastity, – homosexuality, – Hume’s language about, –, – and marriage, –,  moral status of, , –, –,  natural relation to love, , – social functions of, – Sextus Empiricus, ,  Shaftesbury, Lord (Anthony Ashley Cooper), , , , n Shelley, James, – Shovlin, John,  Silverthorne, Michael, n, , n,  slavery, , –, n, , –, , , , , See also Great Britain, abolition; inhumanity; race as result of government tyranny,  religion rendering people fit for, – Slavov, Matias, n Smith, Adam,  Socrates, , , ,  Sparta, , –, n The Spectator, , n Spencer, Mark G., , n Speusippus,  Spinoza, Benedict de, , , n Stewart, Dugald, , n Stewart, John B., , , n, n stoicism, –, , , , , , –, See also happiness, essays on Strabo,  Strahan, William, 

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,

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6 C6

Index strength of mind, , , n, –,  superstition, , n, , , , See also Catholicism, melancholy, priests, religion about the constitution,  more severe in modern religion, –,  origin in passions, – philosophy as cure of, –, ,  progress against, – promoted by priests, –, – and sex,  Susato, Ryu, n, n, n, n Swanton, Christine,  sympathy, , n, –, , , n, , ,  as cause of national character, ,  and factionalism,  relation to cruelty toward enslaved people, – relation to love or benevolence, –, , n, , , ,  relation to sentiments of beauty, , , –, , – as source of moral sentiments, n, , ,  as source of pride or humility, , –



Virgil,  virtue. See also delicacy; friendship; law, influence on character; strength of mind; sympathy, as source of moral sentiment; particular virtues and egoism, , –,  and emotions or passions, – as an end,  government influence on, – not identical to altruism, n of rulers,  public spirit most material part of, ,  supported by pride, self-love, and vanity, –,  Vitz, Rico, n Voltaire, 

Tacitus,  taste delicacy of. See delicacy standard of, –, , –, – Taylor, Charles, , n Taylor, Jacqueline, n, n, n on humanity, n, n on Hume’s views of women, n,  on Humean pride, –, ,  Tise, Larry E.,  Tolonen, Mikko, n, –, n, n, n, n, n trade, , , , –, See also industry, luxury tragedy, –, , See also beauty, sentiment of; emotions, and tragedy Trajan,  tranquility, , , –, ,  tyranny, , , , –, , , , , –, , ,  of men over women, , , –,  of women over men, 

Walker, Matthew, n Walpole, Robert, – war ancient versus modern, –, ,  as origin of government,  relation to public debt, – Webster, Alison, n Welchman, Jennifer, n Wennerlind, Carl,  Wertz, S. K., n Whelan, Frederick G., n Whigs, , , n,  Whyte, Iain,  William III (king of England),  Williams, Bernard,  Williams, Eric,  Willis, Andre C., n Wittgenstein, Ludwig,  Wollstonecraft, Mary, n women. See also chastity; friendship; marriage; sex; tyranny, of men over women; tyranny, of women over men alleged vindictiveness of, ,  company of improving manners or virtue, , , – delicacy or sensibility of, – equality with men, – as melancholic, – Woolf, Virginia, – Wright, John P., n, n

vanity, , , –, –, –,  Vico, Giambattista, n

Yanal, Robert,  Young, David B., 

. F 2565 7 9CC , FFF 42 3 :586 7 D 6 2E2: 23 6 2C 9CC , FFF 42 3 :586

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,

D3 64C C C96 2 3 :586

6 C6

. F 2565 7 9CC , FFF 42 3 :586 7 D 6 2E2: 23 6 2C 9CC , FFF 42 3 :586

8 4 6 1 :E6 :C 7 /5: 3D 89 8 4 6 C6 9CC , 5 : 8

063

2C

,

,

D3 64C C C96 2 3 :586

6 C6