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ABSTRACT
Hume says that sympathy is the source of our moral feeling of approval for useful qualities. But does Hume give the same psychological explanation of our approval of immediately agreeable qualities as he does to our approval of useful qualities? Does he trace our moral approbation of immediately agreeable qualities to sympathy? Some commentators, including Rachel Cohon and Don Garrett, argue that he does not. Let us call this view the ‘narrow view’ of sympathy in contrast to the ‘wide view’ of sympathy, which holds that sympathy is required for every moral sentiment. There is indeed some apparent textual evidence in Hume’s work that seems to support the narrow view. My aim in this paper is to examine that evidence and show how it is merely apparent, in particular by showing how a number of passages can be and are misread. I thus want to argue indirectly for the wide view.
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this paper was read at the 42nd Annual International Hume Society Conference in Stockholm; I am grateful to the audience and my commentator, Erin Frykholm, for helpful feedback. I also thank an anonymous referee for many instructive suggestions.
Notes
1 References to Hume’s Treatise are cited parenthetically by book, section, part, and paragraph number and refer to David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature [T], ed. David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). References to Hume’s Enquiry are cited parenthetically by section and paragraph number and refer to An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals [EPM], ed. Tom L. Beauchamp (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
2 When qualities are harmful, we sympathize with those who receive the quality’s detrimental effects and disapprove of the quality accordingly. To keep things manageable, I will usually mention only the positive account from this point forward. This should not be taken to imply that our approval and disapproval (or virtue and vice) are perfectly symmetrical.
3 Cohon also remarks that ‘almost all moral judgment is caused by sympathy. (The sole small exception is our approval of traits immediately agreeable to the observer)’ (‘Hume’s Artificial and Natural Virtues’, 271). Here she changes the claim that sympathy is not involved in all cases of immediately agreeable qualities to the claim that it is not involved in qualities immediately agreeable to others. See also Cohon, Hume’s Morality, page 130 n. 4 and Cohon, ‘Hume’s Indirect Passions’, 175.
4 See also Garrett, Hume, 108, 248, 326. Others who hold some version of this view include Hedenius, Studies in Ethics; Debes, ‘Humanity, Sympathy, and the Puzzle of Hume’s Second Enquiry’; Debes, ‘Hume on Personal Merit’; and Stroud, Hume, 196.
5 Unlike Árdal and Darwall, Mercer does not argue for the wide view. For others who appear to hold the wide view without arguing for it, see Taylor, ‘Moral Sense and Moral Sentiment’, 431–2 and Beauchamp in his annotation of EPM 7.29, at 233.
6 The quotation is from Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, which is one of Abramson’s citations for supporting the wide view; ‘On Why Hume’s ‘General Point of View’ Isn’t Ideal’, 206.
7 An anonymous referee suggests that the wide view is the simplest and most obvious interpretation and the burden of proof lies with defenders of the narrow view. While this might be right, I think the passages that apparently support the narrow view are so easy to interpret in that direction that I am ultimately unsure how to assess claims for where the burden of proof is supposed to lie.
8 The exception to some extent is Debes, ‘Hume on Personal Merit’; see Section 4.
9 The analogy is not perfect, since the explanation for hearing will be physiological rather than psychological.
10 Another way that sympathy has to be corrected (less important for my purposes) is that we consider the general rules by which qualities produce certain effects rather than their actual effects or lack thereof (T 3.3.1.19-20).
11 Or perhaps the combination of utility and sympathy together; in order to feel pleasure at the tendency of some trait to the public good, I have to sympathize with the public who will benefit.
12 Don Garrett seems to be giving this interpretation when he cites 3.3.1.10 as evidence in support of the narrow view. See his Hume, 248.
13 A different plausible interpretation consistent with the wide view was suggested by an anonymous referee: admit that when Hume says ‘sympathy gives rise to many of the other virtues’ he is talking about sympathy exclusively but deny that the ‘many’ implies ‘some but not all’. It could just as well be that Hume is merely being cautious here, since he has not yet argued that sympathy gives rise to all of the other virtues. In particular, he has not yet argued that sympathy is the source of our approval of the natural virtues, so it would make perfect sense to hedge in just this way.
14 Hume sometimes shows a willingness to refer to this combination in the singular; for example, ‘a convenient house, and a virtuous character, cause not the same feeling of approbation; even tho’ the source of our approbation be the same, and flow from sympathy and an idea of their utility’ (T 3.3.5.6, emphasis added).
15 T 3.3.6.1 also appears to suggest sympathy accounts for our approval of only most of the virtues, but again here we should read this as the sympathy and utility combination.
16 I attempt to give a charitable reading of 3.3.1.27 in a way that supports the narrow view, but Cohon and Garrett in particular do not make their reading of this passage explicit so I cannot be sure this is the reading they would give.
17 This passage is sometimes read, unjustifiably to my mind, as prohibiting sympathy from all qualities immediately agreeable to others (rather than a subclass of them); see Cohon, ‘Hume’s Artificial and Natural Virtues’, 271; Debes, ‘Humanity, Sympathy, and the Puzzle of Hume’s Second Enquiry’, 43 n. 47; and Debes, ‘Hume on Personal Merit’.
18 The fact that ‘principles’ is plural just could mean that the explanation has several components.
19 Despite Norton and Norton’s helpful and comprehensive notes in their edition of the Treatise, including cross-referenced passages, they do not give any indication about what the principles are (and more surprisingly) nor about what the ‘particular enquiry’ in 3.3.1.27 is referring to.
20 And of course I also acknowledge that Hume does refer to sympathy when he mentions ‘general principles’, for example, at 3.1.2.6. But if the term ‘general principles’ really is as generic as I am claiming, then it is not surprising that every time he uses it he does not have sympathy in mind.
21 It should be obvious that Hume’s mention of ‘general rules’ in 3.3.2.5 is not related to the more technical notion of ‘general rules’ that he employs at various points in the Treatise (e.g. T 1.3.13.12, 3.2.2.24, 3.2.9.3, 3.3.1.19-20).
22 This distinction between moral and non-moral pleasure is not lost on all proponents of the narrow view: see Garrett, Hume, 248; but Garrett does not seem to notice that there are two different explanations at play as well: one explanation for how the moral pleasure is produced in a spectator who is evaluating the agent (which requires sympathy) and a different explanation for how the non-moral pleasure is produced in persons who are around the agent and are directly experiencing the immediate agreeableness.
23 And: ‘The pain or pleasure, which arises from the general survey or view of any action or quality of the mind, constitutes its vice or virtue, and gives rise to our approbation or blame’ (T 3.3.5.1). See also T 3.3.4.3 and EPM 9.5-8.
24 For more discussion of how moral sentiments require sympathy and the general point of view, see, for example, Abramson, ‘Sympathy and the Project of Hume’s Second Enquiry’; Sayre-McCord, ‘On Why Hume’s ‘General Point of View’ Isn’t Ideal’; and Mercer, Sympathy and Ethics.
25 As Hume remarks, we are ‘over-power’d by a stronger and more immediate sympathy’ in such a case (T. 3.3.2.15).
26 The ‘under-parts’ are plural because Hume is thinking of how sympathy has to be regulated by the general point of view (and also by certain ‘general rules’). I think Hume is also referring to sympathy regulated by the general point of view with his use of the plural ‘principles’ at T 3.1.2.6, 3.3.1.29, 3.3.3.3, and 3.3.6.3.
27 Commentators who support the narrow view have trouble making sense of the conjunction of 3.3.1.27 and 3.3.1.29; see Cohon, Hume’s Morality, 130 n. 4 and Debes, ‘Humanity, Sympathy, and the Puzzle of Hume’s Second Enquiry’, 43 n. 47.
28 Debes emphasizes 8.14 a great deal (‘Hume on Personal Merit’). We might note that even if it were true that Hume is disavowing sympathy here, it would hardly lead to the idea that sympathy is excluded from all qualities agreeable to others, as Debes claims. Instead, it would show that sympathy is excluded from one quality, which Hume calls ‘manner’ in this passage (EPM 8.14).
29 Or perhaps three sentiments, where the ‘approbation’ is the moral sentiment and the ‘affection’ is the passion of love.
30 Making this distinction does not mean that the two pleasures are always easy to distinguish in experience or phenomenologically. See also T 3.1.2.4.
31 See also Debes’s distinction between a principle being an ‘originating source’ of our moral sentiments and a principle that is ‘the necessary mediator’ that ‘gives rise’ to our moral sentiments (‘Humanity, Sympathy, and the Puzzle of Hume’s Second Enquiry’, 43 n. 47). I do not find any textual justification for this distinction. Does not a source give rise to whatever it is the source of?