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Hume, a Scottish Socrates?

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PenelhumTerence, Themes in Hume: The Self, The Will, Religion. Oxford: Clarendon2000. Pp. xix + 294.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Donald C. Ainslie
Donald C. Ainslie*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, CanadaM5S 1A1
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Type
Critical Notice
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Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , March 2003 , pp. 133 - 154
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Copyright © The Authors 2003

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References

1 There are thirteen in total, three of which have not previously appeared elsewhere.

2 Ardál, Páll S. Passion and Value in Hume's Treatise, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 1989)Google Scholar; Baier, Annette A Progress of Sentiments: Reflections on Hume's Treatise (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1991)Google Scholar

3 Penelhum is clear that by ‘Socratic’ he means the Hellenistic Socrates, not Plato's version of him (vii, 8,154, 272). But both the earlier and later portrayals of Socrates share a view of him in which our active confrontation with our nature is necessary for living well — even if, as the Pyrrhonists hold, we must engage in this confrontation only to recognize the impossibility of reaching a proper conclusion. (I owe thanks to Doug Hutchinson for some very helpful conversations on this point.)

4 A Treatise of Human Nature, Norton, David F. and Norton, Mary J. eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000)Google Scholar; and A Treatise of Human Nature, Selby-Bigge, L.A. ed.; 2nd ed., Nidditch, P.H. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1978)Google Scholar, Book 3, Part 3, Sections 4-5. Hereafter I will refer to the Treatise parenthetically as ‘T’ followed by Book, Part, Section and paragraph numbers as given in the Norton and Norton edition, followed by ‘SBN’ and the page number as given in the Selby-Bigge and Nidditch edition.

See also Appendix 4 of An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, in Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, Selby-Bigge, L. A. ed.; 3rd ed., Nidditch, P.H. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1975)Google Scholar; and Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals: A Critical Edition, Beauchamp, Tom ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press 2000)Google Scholar.

5 See Fieser, James ‘Hume's Wide View of the Virtues: An Analysis of his Early Critics,’ Hume Studies 24 (1998) 295–311Google Scholar, for a discussion of how Hume's contemporaries responded to Hume's leveling of virtues and natural abilities, often for reasons quite similar to those Penelhum provides.

6 279e-281e. Penelhum (148, 175) points to Aquinas's formulation of it at Summa Theologiae, Ia-IIae, q. 55,4.

7 Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, 3rd ed., Ellington, James W. trans. (Indianapolis: Hackett 1993)Google Scholar; see 393-4 in the Akademie edition.

8 See Dees, Richard ‘Hume on the Characters of Virtue,’ Journal of the History of Philosophy 35 (1997) 45–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 History of England (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics 1983), Vol. 5, Ch. 59,542

10 Laches 198b-199d and elsewhere.

11 It is because of the non-prescriptive element of his theory that when Hume does turn to critique — say, when he rejects the monkish virtues in Part 1 of the ‘Conclusion’ to the second Enquiry — the arguments come across so poorly.

12 See Hume's description of the ‘ultimate test of merit and virtue’: ‘[When] we enumerate the good qualities of any person, we always mention those parts of his character, which render him a safe companion, an easy friend, a gentle master, an agreeable husband, or an indulgent father. We consider him with all his relations in society; and love or hate him, according as he affects those, who have any immediate intercourse with him. And ’tis a most certain rule, that if there be no relation of life, in which I cou'd not wish to stand to a particular person, his character must so far be allow'd to be perfect. If he be as little wanting to himself as to others, his character is entirely perfect’ (T 3.3.3.9, SBN 606).

13 Such ‘making sense’ would have to be disinterested, or it would not qualify as an attempt to make sense of who someone is — it would instead count as an attempt to make sense of what impact someone has on us.

It might seem that Hume will have difficulty accounting for our capacity to recognize persons as falling into kinds. But I have argued elsewhere (‘Scepticism about Persons in Book II of Hume's Treatise,’ Journal of the History of Philosophy 37 [1999] 469-92) that the philosophical rationale for Hume's lengthy discussion of the indirect passions in Book 2 of the Treatise is to account for how people are defined as who they are on the basis of only some of their many characteristics. The problem, I suggested, is that just as the connection between a cause and an effect is not rationally discernible, so also the connection between a person and the features that define her is not rationally discernible. And just as, in light of the former fact, Hume turns to an associative mechanism to explain our beliefs about causes and effects, so also, in light of the latter fact, he turns to an associative mechanism — in this case the indirect passions — to explain our beliefs about persons (see especially T 2.1.5.11, SBN 290). And just as Hume allows an attenuated version of objectivity to apply to causal judgments (T 1.3.15), so also he allows an attenuated version of objectivity to apply to our judgments about what makes a person into who she or he is (T 2.1.6.8-9, SBN 293-4). Thus I think that the linkage between the moral sentiments and the indirect passions, so notable throughout Book 3 of the Treatise (T 3.1.2.5, 3.3.1.3, 3.3.5.1; SBN 473, 575, 614; see also T 2.1.7.2, SBN 295), results from the fact that virtues and vices, talents and flaws, are the categories by which we divide people up in light of their mental qualities.

14 Hume defines the idea of self that is the object of pride and humility as the idea of ‘that succession of ideas and impressions of which we have intimate memory and consciousness’ (T 2.1.2.2, SBN 278), and Penelhum assumes that this is an invocation of the bundle view from Book 1 (63, 120). There are four reasons why I think that this cannot be right. First, the self as mind includes all of our perceptions, not just those of which we have ‘intimate’ consciousness. Second, it would be strange to think that pride and humility make us think of ourselves as minds; instead, as Hume himself says, these passions make us ‘think of our own qualities and circumstances’ (T 2.1.5.6, SBN 287); they ‘cause us to form an idea of our merit and character’ (T 2.1.8.8, SBN 303). Third, in the ‘Appendix’ to the Treatise, Hume rejects his account of the self as mind developed in ‘Of personal identity’ (T 1.4.6); yet he does not seem to think that this rejection requires him to revisit the discussion of the indirect passions. And, fourth, as I go on to argue in what follows, I think that, for Hume, the idea of self as mind is an abstruse, philosophical idea, and thus in most cases will not be avallable to serve as the object of the passions. I take Hume's definition at T 2.1.2 to indicate what goes on in the mind when the passions cause us to think of our defining ‘qualities and circumstances’: Some of our perceptions are made ‘intimate’ to us, in that the objects of these perceptions are taken to be important in making us who we are. See ‘Scepticism about Persons’ for a full defense of this Suggestion.

15 Penelhum also thinks that, since the unity of the mind is merely fictitious and since the actual unity of the mind is presupposed in an episode of the indirect passions, Hume should hold that all instances of these passions are ‘unreasonable’ in that they are ‘founded on a false supposition’ (T 2.3.3.7, SBN 416). And this means that, once we realize the falsity of our belief in mental unity, we should stop feeling the indirect passions at all, since ‘[the] moment we perceive the falshood of any supposition … our passions yield to our reason without any Opposition’ (T 2.3.3.7, SBN 416). Of course, Hume also thinks that we do continue to believe in the unity of mind despite its falsity, and so we will continue to feel the indirect passions despite their unreasonableness (77). I find it notable, however, that Hume never seems tempted to take the line Penelhum draws for him; he displays no anxiety over the rationality of the indirect passions. I take this as support for my Suggestion that the discovery about the unity of mind that Hume makes in Book 1 is insulated from the passional self of Book 2.

16 ‘Scepticism about Persons,’ 483 n.28

17 Search after Truth, Lennon, Thomas M. and Olscamp, Paul J. eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1997)Google Scholar, Book 2, Part 1, Ch. 8,125

18 Hume seems to have borrowed the term ‘presensation’ from Shaftesbury, who in his ‘Moralists’ says that animals have ‘pre-sensations’ of such things as what preparations to make when pregnant; humans have such pre-sensations ‘not in any proportionable degree.’ He goes on to suggest that our recognition of beauty is dependent on the same kind of pre-sensation ‘of a higher degree’ (Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, etc. Vol. II, Robertson, J.M. ed. [London: Grant Richards 1900], 76,136).Google Scholar

19 ‘My attitude toward him is an attitude towards a soul. I am not of the opinion that he has a soul’ (Philosophical Investigations, 3rd ed., Anscombe, G.E.M. trans. [New York: Macmillan 1968]Google Scholar). See Pitson, Tony ‘Sympathy and Other Selves,’ Hume Studies 12 (1996), 255–71.Google Scholar

20 Penelhum is here quoting from T 2.2.6.2, SBN 366: ‘In examining those ingredients, which are capable of uniting with love and hatred, I begin to be sensible, in some measure, of a misfortune, that has attended every System of philosophy, with which the world has been yet acquainted. ‘Tis commonly found, that in accounting for the operations of nature by any particular hypothesis; among a number of experiments, that quadrate exactly with the principles we wou'd endeavour to establish; there is always some phaenomenon, which is more stubborn, and will not so easily bend to our purpose. We need not be surpriz'd, that this shou'd happen in natural philosophy…. But as the perceptions of the mind are perfectly known, and I have us'd all imaginable caution in forming conclusions concerning them, I have always hop'd to keep clear of those contradictions, which have attended every other System’ (emphasis added). I think it important that Hume is here describing what those engaging in philosophy think, not a knowledge of perceptions that is avallable in everyday life. As I will suggest in what follows, philosophers, while introspecting, take themselves to have unmediated access to their minds, even though their observations actually depend on the presence of secondary ideas in them.

21 ‘Hume's Reflections on the Simplicity and Identity of Mind,’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 62 (2001) 557-78

22 Baxter, Donald considers a reading of the ‘Appendix’ that is similar to mine, and makes a response similar to Penelhum's in ‘Hume's Labyrinth Concerning the Idea of Personal Identity,’ Hume Studies 24 (1998) 203–33Google Scholar, n.32. Baxter's own Suggestion about Hume's second thoughts has to do with the difficulty for him of explaining how an idea can represent many things as one. But I think Hume's whole point is that it is the succession of associated secondary ideas that constitute the belief in the unity of mind. Moreover, as Baxter admits, if he were right in his interpretation of Hume's problem, he should recognize that it goes to the heart of his explanation of our belief in external objects in T 1.4.2 and 1.4.3, and so he would not describe the problem in the ‘Appendix’ as his Single ‘very considerable mistake’ (T App.l, SBN 623) in the whole of Books 1 and 2.

23 See ߢ57 of the ‘Dialogue’ appended to the second Enquiry (see 343 of the Selby-Bigge and Nidditch edition).

24 I presented §1 of this notice at the Twenty-eighth International Hume Conference, Victoria, British Columbia, July 2001.1 would like to thank Terry Penelhum for his comments on that day, and for his ongoing help in my work on Hume. I also have a debt to Jennifer Nagel, who provided very useful comments on a penultimate draft of the whole notice.