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Pride, Virtue, and Self-Hood: A Reconstruction of Hume1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Pauline Chazan
Pauline Chazan*
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, 3052, Australia
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Extract

Hume’s account of how the self enters the moral domain and comes to a consciousness of itself as a moral being is one which he superimposes upon his Treatise account of the constitution of the non-metaphysical self. This primordial self is for Hume constructed out of the passions of pride and humility which are themselves in tum constructed out of certain feelings of pain and pleasure, these feelings being worked on by memory and imagination, and converted back and forth into series of ideas and impressions. In presenting this account of the way in which we achieve a coherent self-awareness and self-knowledge such that we ‘know our own force’ (T 597), Hurne in fact employs a radical psychology which he must discard once the moral self comes into view. The use Hume makes of this psychology has gone unnoticed in the literature, but once we understand its implications we will be able to dispel the confusion that some have found in his story.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , March 1992 , pp. 45 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1992

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References

1 This paper has benefited from being read to the University of Melbourne Philosophy Colloquium, and at the 17th International Conference on Hume, held in Canberra in 1990. My thanks are owed to Graeme Marshall and Christopher Cordner for their helpful comments on an earlier draft. I would particularly like to thank Kim Lycos for the very great help he gave me in clarifying my thoughts regarding Hume’s thesis, for his detailed comments on earlier drafts, and for his encouragement.

2 The account referred to here is that gleaned from both The Treatise of Human Nature, L.A. Selby-Bigge, ed. (Oxford: Clarendon 1978) and Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, L.A. Selby-Bigge, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1974). References to these works appearing in parentheses will be abbreviated as T and E respectively.

3 Hume argues in Book One of The Treatise that reason is unable to disclose our personal identity: there is, according to him, no metaphysical pure ego that reason can find. In Book Two he shows that our passions disclose our personal identity. What they disclose is the self as possessor of certain qualities and attributes, the self for which we care and are concerned. This is the self of experience: the non-meta-physical self.

4 Primordial because it is (as we will see below) extremely primitive as well as pre-moral. It precedes the moral self which supersedes it.

5 Passmore, John Hume’s Intentions (London: Duckworth 1968), 126-7Google Scholar

6 Taylor, Gabriele ‘Pride,’ in Rorty, A. ed., Explaining Emotions (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press 1980), 388Google Scholar

7 Since Hume makes no distinction between pride and self-esteem, and in fact often uses these terms interchangeably, in what follows I assume that for him the generators of pride and of self-esteem are one.

8 Hume writes, with respect to our personal identity, that ‘the uniting principle among our perceptions is as unintelligible as that among external objects’ (T 169).

9 The mind passes from one perception to another and ascribes a continued existence and identity to what is in reality a bundle of distinct perceptions for which there is no underlying support. Hume denies the existence of some underlying unchanging something which provides identity and sameness. There is, according to him, no simple impression which is the self since there is no individual substance which is the self or which can give us an idea of the self. So there can be no such thing as a purely intellectual self-knowledge.

10 Pride, for example, involves a reflex to another’s pleasure — it involves a reflection where judgments concerning oneself are reinforced by others’ esteem: one’s own judgment and sentiment are not of much use unless ‘seconded by the opinions and sentiments of others’ (T 316).

11 Thus Hume claims that animals can feel both pride and humility. See Treatise, 327-8. For more on this see Baier’s, Annette discussion, ‘Knowing Our Place in the Animal World,’ in her Postures of the Mind, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1985)Google Scholar.

12 For Hume’s explanation of the relationship between impressions of reflection and impressions of sensation see Treatise, 7-8.

13 See Baier’s, Annette ‘Master Passions,’ in Explaining Emotions, 406-7Google Scholar.

14 See, for example, Passmore, John Hume’s Intentions, and Neu, Jerome Emotion, Thought, and Therapy (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1977).Google Scholar For a more recent discussion of a number of objections to Hume’ s account of pride and the idea of the self, and some possible replies on Hume’s behalf, see Rorty’s, Amelie ‘Pride Produces the Idea of Self: Hume on Moral Agency,’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy 68 (1990) 255-69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Thus ‘What is meant by saying that I am the object of pride, is that the feeling of pride is always and everywhere followed by the idea of myself (Neu, 8), is not quite right My reconstruction of Hume’s account will show that for him the idea of my self always accompanies pride: the idea of myself (as possessing such and such qualities) and my pride are simultaneous constructs. As we shall see more clearly below, we should say that the construction of pride and the construction of the idea of the self (as possessing such and such qualities) are systemic effects which cannot be disentangled from each other or from the system of perceptions which gives rise to them. Neu writes of Hume’s account ‘I have shown that one is forced (on pain of more immediate incoherencies) to understand Hume’s notion of object in such a way that the object is not an effect either of the emotion [pride] itself or of the cause of the emotion, but rather is a cause of the emotion. That is, within Hume’s system, the object collapses into the cause. And this is devastating to the whole system .. .’ (28). Neu writes, further, ‘One must have the idea of self in contemplating the thing and its pleasant quality if one is to experience pride (rather than merely joy), so the idea of self is involved in the very idea of the subject or cause of pride. But if it is involved it is present, and if it is present it need not arise .... No new idea of self emerges as object. If the idea of self is still said to be the object of pride, the relation may still be said to be causal, but now the relation is seen to be reversed: the “object” must be seen as a part of the cause of the pleasant sensation which is pride, and not its effect’ (28). Neu looks for a non-Humean cause of pride in Hume’s account, one which Hume successfully undermines, and points to incoherencies in it. We will see below that in his account of pride, Hume successfully gets rid of any metaphysical notion of ‘cause’ where pride would need to be presented as producing an effect (the idea of the self) which is independently describable from, and later than, pride. Self enters into both the cause and object of pride, and this is what has confused Hume’s readers. We will see that the account Hume presents is such that for him, self can enter in an unproblematic way into the cause of pride, as well as be its object.

16 So my reconstruction only apparently goes against Hume’s claim that pride produces the idea of the self. When we understand him to be getting rid of any metaphysical notion of ‘cause,’ and asserting instead a relationship of mutual interaction and construction between pride and the idea of the self, we remove the confusions that philosophers have found in his account without needing to be at loggerheads with, or contradicting, anything Hume actually says. It might be asked why Hume does not instead say that the self produces pride. Were Hume to have said this, it would look as though he were asserting a Cartesian order of things with the self there as a given. I take Hume’s saying that pride produces the idea of the self to be a rhetorical way of undermining the view that the self is something given in experience. I thank Christopher Cordner for making me consider this question.

17 One must distinguish two things here. The first is the performer’s misestimation of the degree of excellence of her performance, and the second is the illusion that she has certain qualities. Both are caused by what is given her in experience: the audience’s pleasure. But, as we will see below, only the second involves a projective act.

18 I will show below that while proto-pride, on the Humean view, contributes towards the constitution of a primitive, pre-moral self, it is not sufficient to constitute the moral self.

19 In Freudian terms, this is the way in which the ego copes with reality: a reality that poses a constant threat of undermining it.

20 See Taylor’s, Gabriele Pride, Shame, and Guilt: Emotions of Self-Assessment (Oxford: Clarendon 1985), 22.Google Scholar

21 Gabriele Taylor thinks Hume regards such a person ‘as uncommonly silly and so perhaps as not requiring serious attention’ (‘Pride,’ 388), an observation for which I can find little evidence in the Treatise. Hume’s point is rather that the capacity to feel proud in virtue of ‘an inconsiderable relation’ such as ‘being present at’ is ours by nature, yet once we are social and moral beings convention restricts our pride to closer relations than this.

22 This is Gabriele Taylor’s suggestion in ‘Pride’ (389). See also her Pride, Shame, and Guilt: ‘Hume is wrong, then, in setting out the conditions of pride in the way he does: they cannot be stated in terms of what is as a matter of fact the case, but must be stated in terms of the beliefs of the person concerned .... Within the new framework his “causes” become explanatory beliefs, and what they explain is the person’s identificatory belief, that which identifies the feeling as pride rather than some other emotion’ (23). Taylor wrongly accuses Hume of failing to appeal to the agent’s beliefs. Hume’s theory of the double relation between impressions and ideas (and the psychology this theory employs) can make perfectly good sense of Hume’s boastful guest without any appeal to his beliefs, mistaken or otherwise.

23 Neu’s claim that ‘Hume’s point should be: that belief in a relation to self is required if a thing or quality is to serve as a ground or source of pride’ (37; emphasis added), is wrong in view of our capacity to feel proto-pride without the exercise of intellectual judgment or belief being necessary. See Baier’s, Annette ‘Hume’s Analysis of Pride,’ The Journal of Philosophy 75 (1978) 27-40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for more on why Humean causes are not to be construed as reasons.

24 It is tempting here to draw an analogy between the Freudian demands of reality and the entrance of the Humean self into the moral domain. With proto-pride, the Freudian pleasure principle (where perceptions are organized according to the dimensions of the perceiver’s advantage) is being observed; for proto-pride, being a projected fantasy, is independent of the truth of sound judgment. The construction of proto-pride involves something that is akin to primary process thinking: a purely self-oriented, subjective, infantile thinking that suspends logic. With the attainment of moral personhood, it is required that the reality principle be observed, since pride proper requires an exercise of true judgment Now, secondary process thinking, which utilizes the logic of objective assessment and judgment, is required.

25 Hume’ s virtuous person shares in common with Aristotle’s paradigm of virtue, the megalopsuchos, a readiness to present himself for assessment before an impartial (and therefore virtuous) audience. The self-conscious self-assurance of the megalopsuchos is revealed in his self-confident desire to present himself in a manner that is truly admirable, and so he is concerned to be judged by notabilities according to the standards of excellence they hold, rather than by ‘men with no special qualities to recommend them.’ He wants his virtue to be apparent, and the approval and honor he is after is that bestowed by persons who have sound judgment. Humean and Aristotelian agents are both concerned with the presentation of their own virtue, but this concern is, in each case, not a concern with how they merely appear to others (‘appear’ being taken here in the sense of ‘seem’ rather than ‘putting forth an appearance’). The mere good opinion of just anyone will not satisfy them, for the primitiveness of proto-pride does not befit the presentation of a self concerned with its own virtuous worthiness. For Hume, just as for Aristotle, ‘Our reputation, our character, our name are considerations of vast weight and importance’ (T 316). These require suitable moral judges, and being a suitable moral judge requires the possession of virtue, a pre-requisite here being that the judge have the capacity, when she makes moral judgments, to take an impartial view. The claim is not that the megalopsuchos’s sense of his own virtue and self-esteem are, as is true of the Humean virtuous agent, generated socially. The megalopsuchos, unlike Hume’s agent, does not depend on others for a sense of who and what he morally is. He does not gain the sense he has of his own moral goodness by becoming an object that is pleasing to others. Rather, knowing what he morally is, he has an eager readiness to be morally assessed by those who are equipped to function as moral judges. By contrast, for Hume, one becomes an object that is pleasing to others when one performs actions that conduce to the good of all. Since what is approved is good, it is by perceiving oneself to be pleasing to others that one gains a sense of one’s own goodness. So one can gain a sense of one’s own goodness by correcting one’s motivations and actions so that they accord with what is in everyone’s interests. For in doing this one becomes an object that is pleasing to others. Interestingly, Ross translates ‘megalopsuchia’ as ‘pride’ in Ethica Nicomachea, W.D. Ross, trans., in Richard McKeon, ed., The Basic Works of Aristotle (New York: Random House 1941), 991-5; and in Nicomachaen Ethics of Aristotle, World’s Classics Series (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1954). Yet in the 2nd ed. of his Aristotle (London: Methuen 1930) he translates ‘megalopsuchia’ as ‘self-respect.’ If pride depends for its maintenance, as Hume thought, on the reinforcing attentions and regard of others, then ‘self-respect’ is certainly a preferred translation, since virtue for Aristotle is far more closely allied with the integrity of a certain character-structure, including the true holding of values and their expression in thought and action, rather than (as it is for Hume) with the reflected esteem of others.

26 Of course, for Hume, if I take a perspective that identifies with the party of mankind, I adopt a view that everyone can share, but not the completely impersonal view ‘from nowhere.’ For Hume, partiality being dropped by me means that ‘our view’ becomes ‘my view.’ Yet that my perspective and sentiments be shareable by all would not satisfy the requirements of the Kantian demand for impartiality and impersonality. It would not satisfy the requirement that I take ‘the point of view from which noumenal selves view the world’ (Rawls, John A Theory of Justice [Oxford: Clarendon 1972], 255).Google Scholar