Contempt for the Poor, Esteem for the Rich: The Interplay of Comparison and Sympathy in Hume’s Treatise

ABSTRACT

Hume’s concept of sympathy is often discussed in isolation from the concept of comparison, which plays an important role in his social and moral philosophy. If both concepts are discussed at all in tandem, comparison is often seen as disruptive of sympathy, which is, in addition, treated as the more natural stance toward others. This article reverses this line of interpretation in presenting the comparative stance as equally fundamental as the sympathetic stance and as potentially outweighing it. Further, it analyzes the complex interplay of both psychological stances in either upholding or uprooting relations of inequality. In contrast to many positive readings of the moral role of sympathy, I argue that sympathy often obstructs the uptake of the comparative mode by fostering imaginary identification with positions of wealth and power. What I will label “comparisons from below” are thus transformed into non-comparative sympathy. At the same time, the socioeconomically privileged, through what I call “relational proximities of power,” do compare downward even if this implies overcoming large affectively stabilized socioeconomic distances. Since sympathy is responsible for producing the general esteem for wealth and privilege, I conclude that it mirrors structures of inequality as much as it helps to establish emotionally backed judgments that help to strengthen these structures.

KEYWORDS:

• David Hume
• sympathy
• comparison
• inequality
• imagination
• power

Nothing has a greater tendency to give us an esteem for any person than his power and riches; or a contempt, than his poverty and meanness.

—David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739)

Introduction

Much ink has been spilled on the role the principle of sympathy plays in Hume’s moral philosophy and in his philosophy at large. Much less ink has been spilled on another principle that Hume often discusses alongside the principle of sympathy, namely the principle of comparison.¹ This is surprising given the importance of comparison in Hume’s philosophy, and particularly in the Treatise of Human Nature. Hume is the philosopher of comparison, and in fact, at some point in Book 1 of the Treatise he suggests that reasoning consists in nothing but comparison.² In what follows, I discuss Hume’s principle of comparison at greater length than is usual in order to counter interpretive tendencies that align Hume with a philosophical tradition of responding negatively to what might be called the comparative mode. Ever since Rousseau related, in his Second Discourse, part of the evilness of amour propre to its ineluctably comparative mode, those following his lead struggled to contain comparison’s disruptive potential. According to this tradition, comparisons trigger a sense of inequality and competition and motivate the drive to be better than others. In other words, if social comparisons are fueled by self-love they pit one individual against another and lead each individual, in Rousseau’s words, “to set greater store by himself than by anyone else” (faire plus de cas de soi que de tout autre).³

Hume, however, does not join this line of interpretation and is quite realistic about the force of the drive to compare. Being the social beings we are, comparison and (typically comparative) envy are only to be expected, and it is simply not of any help to vilify these phenomena and wish them away. Commercial societies, one might add, work with this deep-seated human tendency and try to channel it into generally profitable avenues—private vices, public benefits—that is Bernard Mandeville’s famous formula for a political economy governed by a version of self-interest that mostly pretends not to be what it really is. Hume adds quite a lot of layers to this psychological realism in making processes of comparison tantamount to understanding his conception of the self and his conception of the establishment of social hierarchies, of what he and his Scottish contemporaries labeled “a society of ranks.” Further, he argues that a certain kind of sympathy is able to obstruct processes of comparison and thus serves as one of the means to establish and stabilize social hierarchies. As will be shown, it is sympathy with the rich and powerful that diverts attention away from the comparative mode and thus leads the less privileged to accept even large socioeconomic inequalities.

This aspect of Hume’s work has not been adequately assessed and reverses some of the established interpretations of his concept of sympathy by admitting that people’s sympathy is typically affected by their social position and by highlighting factors such as the comparative mode (itself affected by people’s social position) that hinder sympathy.⁴ Hume’s approach can be treated as offering what Charles W. Mills has recently called “non-idealized descriptive mapping concepts” that take account of non-ideal realities and prevent mere conceptual idealization.⁵ In this sense, Hume’s claim that “nothing has a greater tendency to give us an esteem for any person than his power and riches; or a contempt, than his poverty and meanness” (357) should not be taken to appraise what it states but rather as indicating observable affective registers that governed social distinctions in eighteenth-century Scotland. By refraining from joining the traditional critique of the comparative mode, Hume supplies realistic conceptual instruments (abstract but not ideal in Mills’s terms) to study how these registers help to normalize social inequality and vice versa.⁶ Thus, while Hume’s political philosophy has sometimes been called conservative, his moral and social philosophy need not be conservative by necessity, but can, on the contrary, be put to critical use.⁷ Norman Kemp Smith, in an early classic study of Hume, remarked that the instances which Hume gives of the operation of the law of causality “are so invariably taken from blood and social relationships: those of parent and child, of master and servant, of owner and property.”⁸ I see this willingness to situate concepts such as causality in social relations as a strength of Hume’s account that opens it up to the interests of a critical social philosophy.⁹

Admittedly, in some of my interpretations I seem to move beyond the textual evidence offered by the Treatise. But despite the fact that part of my interest lies in fathoming the potential of the Treatise to supply a helpful conceptual map for contemporary concerns, I believe that I never stray far off the course. Stressing the role of the comparative mode may seem to undermine the moral mission the principle of sympathy plays in Hume’s Treatise, for it is sympathy that “takes us so far out of ourselves, as to give us the same pleasure or uneasiness in the characters of others” (579), whereas comparative orientations provoke a certain fixation of the perceiving self on its relation to the observed other and does not invite transcendence of this self. However, this not only overlooks that it is the sympathy-generated uneasiness communicated by poverty that is likely (though not inevitably) to trigger a form of contempt and shame in the observer that may lead to removing “the poor as far from us as possible” (307), but it also forgets that even positive instances of sympathy have a comparative element in relying on perceptions of resemblance and similarity.¹⁰ According to Hume, the principles of sympathy and the principles of comparison closely interact and should not be starkly opposed as if the one always contravened the mechanisms and effects of the other.

Consequently, in the first section, I briefly introduce what I call the “conventional” view of relating Hume’s account of sympathy to his account of comparison. According to this view, sympathy and comparison are seen as opposed psychological principles governing the human mind. From a moral point of view, sympathy is often seen as the more natural attitude that is in constant danger of being “disrupted” by the comparative mode. In the second section, I present Hume’s concept of the “peculiar” self as intrinsically comparative; the complex interaction between the sympathetic and the comparative mode to be analyzed in the third section sets the stage for a close look at sympathy’s role in stabilizing social and economic inequalities. In the fourth and final section, the notion of relational proximities of power is introduced to better capture the various asymmetries involved in processes of social comparison. Since it is ultimately sympathy that is responsible for producing the general esteem for wealth and privilege, I conclude that it mirrors structures of inequality as much as it helps to establish emotionally backed judgments that help to strengthen these structures.

The Conventional View: Comparison as Disruptive of Sympathy

Why has Hume’s concept of comparison generated so little interest? With respect to his social and moral philosophy, the obvious answer is itself comparative: Hume’s account of sympathy appears to be much more relevant to his account of sociality than his account of comparison. As Christopher Finlay says, “the basis of Hume’s ‘social’ account of human nature and its conceptual linchpin is the idea of ‘sympathy’.”¹¹ Seen in this light, sympathy gives us imaginary access to the feelings of others and allows us to understand how they perceive us and what they feel in relation to a given situation and evaluative structure. It does so either spontaneously through processes of contagion that transport observed feelings to the observer and let her adopt the observed feeling—“a cheerful countenance infuses a sensible complacency and serenity into my mind” (317), or through slightly more complicated processes of inference requiring the conversion of ideas generated by “external signs in the countenance and conversation” into impressions that become “the very passion itself, and produce an equal emotion, as any original affection” (317). It is through sympathy that we become fully human and satisfy the ingrained desire to assess our various volitions and recognitional aspirations along the lines of more generally accepted standards and values. Interestingly, the basis for the ability to feel what others feel is itself comparative, though the comparison might not be fully conscious. As Hume says time and again in Book 2 of the Treatise, “all human creatures are related to us by resemblance” (369), which is the very reason why their pains and pleasures can strike us as much as our own pains and pleasures. Sympathy, then, is the psychological mechanism that relies on the general resemblance of all human creatures and, inasmuch as it makes this resemblance emotionally accessible to us, it is what binds us to other human beings and generates substantial similarities that we enjoy beyond the confines of more self-interested reasons for interacting with others (which are mostly treated in Book 3). It should be added, however, that the intensity and the exact character of our sympathetic responses to others is inflected by various variables such as spatial closeness or level of acquaintance (581). Consequently, it will be important to distinguish Hume’s general remarks about the functioning of sympathy from his application of the concept to concrete relations. In the latter sense, sympathy clearly comes in degrees and is embedded in structures of differential ranks that constitute an important variable determining who we sympathize with and what feelings are actually communicated between the one sympathizing and the one sympathized with.

If interpreters are correct, the effects of comparison oppose the effects of sympathy. Whereas sympathy relies on and produces similarity of feelings, comparison disrupts the sympathetic process and produces affective difference. This is, it appears, why the principle of comparison has drawn less attention in discussions of Hume’s social and moral philosophy than the principle of sympathy. Three overlapping interpretive strategies dominate the discussion of this principle: first, comparison is seen in strict opposition to sympathy (no common psychological ground is assumed); second, it is seen as morally inferior and less natural than sympathy; and, third, it is seen as local in its effect (and relevant only to a few emotional attitudes such as envy, contempt or respect). Thus, Páll Árdal, in an early study, argues that the pleasure of another “is immediately pleasing to us, but it pains us when we compare it with our own situation.”¹² It is the comparative mode, then, that prevents us from allowing sympathy to take hold and seems to draw us into the opposite mood.

Finlay, in a more recent study, distinguishes three different ways in which the indirect passions of the “other-regarding kind,” namely love, esteem, and envy or malice, mediate between individuals and help to shape social relations. Whereas love and esteem clearly have a socially integrative function, (comparative) malice’s and envy’s tendency “may be disintegrative rather than integrative.” As Finlay adds, “this occurs when we encounter someone whose possessions or qualities are likely to be compared with our own in such a way as to put us in unfavourable light.”¹³ Again, principles of comparison are relegated to a negative status and their effects are localized through association with specific indirect passions such as envy or malice. Susan James, in turn, acknowledges that the principle of comparison is not just a locally bound phenomenon attached to a few specific emotional stances. Rather, tendencies to sympathize and to compare are deeply ingrained psychological dispositions that closely interact in the manner of weights in a scale that rise or sink according to the relative influence and force of the other side. The significance of this is that the principle of comparison is seen as central to Hume’s account of human psychology and cannot easily be sidestepped, downgraded or localized. It is the complex interplay of the sympathetic and the comparative mode that determines much of our emotional set-up and thus shapes all of our social relations. However, James joins the camp of those castigating comparison for its “corrosive effects” and treats sympathy as the psychological force that can “balance and even outweigh comparison.”¹⁴ Gerald Postema, apart from introducing helpful terminology, is the first to suggest an inversion of one central piece of the conventional reading of Hume’s principle of comparison for he realizes that the drive to compare ourselves with others is much more potent than is often assumed. The question is not how comparison relates to the more natural or basic principle of sympathy but how the latter relates to the former. In Postema’s words, “if the self is always present to us, as Hume insists repeatedly, and it is precisely the presence of the self as a key term in the [comparative] contrast that generates ‘reversal’ of the sentiments experienced by other persons, how does sympathy ever get a chance to operate at full power?”¹⁵

This is the question I will further elaborate. What happens if we broaden the scope of comparison and treat it as a deeply ingrained psychological disposition (enhanced and stabilized in commercial societies with competition-bound markets) that is not as easily confined or outweighed by competing psychological mechanisms (such as sympathy), as some scholars assume? To broaden the scope of comparison, I begin with the relevance of comparison for Hume’s conception of the self.

Comparison and the Self

The self Hume sketches in Book 2 is characterized by a desire to be a distinct or, in Hume’s words, a “peculiar” self (291). It desires to own objects or be related to objects that are generally valued but can only be possessed by a few. What is important is that the comparisons at stake in Book 2 are mostly driven by the desire of this self to stand out or be recognized as a distinct and unique individual. Hume’s account of the self is eminently comparative. Thus, being healthy does not create a particular feeling of uniqueness or of being somehow distinguished “because ‘tis shared with such vast numbers,” that is, with too many other healthy human beings (292). In circumstances in which health is rare or a luxury, things are completely different, of course. Under these circumstances, what has been labeled the “rarity limitation” on pride is fulfilled.¹⁶

The desire to stand out has a further dimension. In interpersonal contexts it often implies aspiring to be better than others. It is important to mention this, for certain forms of distinctness may be due to natural differences that grant me qualities I share with no one or with only very few others. Thus, if the color of my hair is absolutely unique, I somehow stand out; but there is no basis for the claim that I am better than others. It is different with musical or mathematical talents; here my distinctness somehow implies being better than others. Yet having these talents does not necessarily imply that I, as bearer of these talents, actually care about being better than others. True, the worth of these talents does depend on how many others share them in my surroundings, and in that sense this worth is relative. But relativity need not be identified with a desire for superiority, it just hints at the sometimes quite contingent social conditions that establish what goods acquire what kind of value within a given society. If suddenly all newborns manifest outstanding musical talents, the general worth of these talents is likely to change accordingly. However, when I attribute to Hume a conception of the self that is strongly attached to a desire for superiority, this desire appeals to societal rules that are explicitly and non-contingently meant to produce uneven distributions allowing some to be in better positions than others.

In this aspect of his theory, then, Hume joins the ranks of those such as Hobbes, Mandeville, and Rousseau, who develop a relative account of self-love (or amour propre in Rousseau) in that the good the self seeks is a (zero-sum) positional good. Hume’s account of this desire for superior standing is, however, slightly more complicated than the accounts of Hobbes, Mandeville, and Rousseau, for it is not in any (even widened) sense natural. It is, rather, thoroughly mediated by socially established property rules.¹⁷ Under such a system, property is the good that allows us to non-contingently distinguish ourselves from others, for the property I count as my own cannot, by definition, be your property, unless I willingly transfer it to you. Seen in this light, doing well for oneself consists in doing better or having more than others. As can be imagined, motivated comparisons are intrinsic to any attempt to stand out and prove oneself better than others. Their purpose, in other words, is inextricably linked to the self engaged in situating itself in a social whole structured by more or less clearly demarcated ranks and positions mediated by wealth and property.

The important conclusion to be drawn from these remarks is that the peculiar self needs comparisons to distinguish itself from other selves, to set itself apart and be distinctive. According to this line of thought, it is a problem if, “upon comparing ourselves with others, as we are at every moment apt to do, we find we are not in the least dinstinguish’d” (292). Pride is what drives most interpersonal comparisons. Comparative processes gain the psychic force I attribute to them not all by themselves, but rather in response to deep recognitional desires of the comparing subject. These desires, however, are not egalitarian; rather, they reflect a competitive society in which positional goods are mostly zero-sum goods.¹⁸ This does not mean that sympathy is utterly absent when we compare ourselves to others. As mentioned, the peculiar self desires to own objects that are generally valued, that is, that generally elicit pleasure if reflected upon.¹⁹ Sympathy is what transports this pleasure to the self that then transforms this received pleasure into a proud self-related pleasure by focusing on the fact (the idea, in Hume’s terms) that the generally valued object is somehow connected to the self (say through ownership or kinship). At the same time, however, the self wants to be the exclusive owner of the object and not share it with too many others: it wants to be, as we now know, unique or peculiar.

This could introduce a tension into Hume’s account of the peculiar self that is familiar from Hegelian accounts of reciprocal recognition that assume recognition to be an equivalence relation. In the Hegelian model, I cannot recognize myself (in Hume’s parlance: develop self-esteem) “except in the context of a recognition structure that is reciprocal: insofar as I am recognized by those I recognize.”²⁰ But a close look at Book 2, Part 1, Section 11 (Of the love of fame) quickly reveals that Hume has various theoretical means at hand to defuse strict recognitional equivalence pressures. In fact, it is in this section that the sympathy mechanism is first mentioned at length. While Hume generally accepts that “virtue, beauty and riches” have little influence “when not seconded by the opinions and sentiments of others” (316), the fact that this external support is bound to the sympathy mechanism to reach the recognition-seeking subject introduces all the complexities associated with it into Hume’s account of the self and its relation to other selves. Thus, sympathy can transport only those emotions from subject a to subject b that subject b can somehow relate to itself. As Hume consistently says, the idea or impression of our self is “always intimately present with us,” and it is this presence that gives us a lively “conception of our own person” or a “partiality in our own favour” (321). Consequently, the seconding of others works best if we already have a “good opinion” (321) of ourselves and is not constitutive of this opinion as in most of the Hegelian models of reciprocal recognition. In most cases, it appears, the good opinion we have of our self is the stance entrusted to us by simply being a self-conscious and emotionally self-aware self. Second, “we receive a much greater satisfaction from the approbation of those, whom we ourselves esteem and approve of, than of those, whom we hate and despise” (321). While this introduces a more localized equivalence pressure, it indicates that we do not seek universal recognition by all others and clearly is compatible with a class- or rank-based structure of reciprocal recognition. It isn’t even clear whether the approval Hume mentions is strictly reciprocal in an egalitarian sense. If I approve of my servant as servant, would I accept being recognized by him as his master? I certainly do not hate or despise my servant (say), so there is much room for variations of non-egalitarian structures of reciprocity here. Also, despite the need for external approval, the evaluational primacy of self-esteem remains untouched. Once more, Hume adds that the “praises of others never give us much pleasure, unless they concur with our own opinion” (322). Third, saying that the peculiar self desires to own objects that are generally valued and generally elicit pleasure if reflected upon requires the sympathy mechanism to transport this general affirmation of certain goods and objects. But this affirmation is not yet attached to specific ownership structures, rather, it creates generally recognized values that can then be translated into concrete ownership structures allowing differentiations among haves and have-nots. As we will see, even those who do not own a beautiful house consider beautiful houses to be valuable goods to own and admire those who actually own them. And this is possible even though the owners will not be able to recognize them as owners themselves. Evaluational equivalences and property-related non-equivalences thus feed each other in complex ways.

These reflections are meant to remind commentators that Hume introduces important facets of his account of sympathy in a section on the love of fame that itself belongs to a more encompassing discussion of pride and love. It cannot be denied that Hume uses terms such as pride, humility, love and hatred in a very general way in Book 2. Donald Ainslie rightly claims that Hume makes no real attempt “to distinguish pride, for example, from vanity, self-esteem, self-satisfaction, or the other positive forms of self-evaluation.”²¹ But some things we do know. Pride’s object is the self. We also know that pride elates the idea we have of our self and is connected to all the objects (Hume calls them “causes”) that give us pleasant sensations and can be related to the self (288).²² Further, as noted, pride cannot thrive on its own, it gains part of its positive emotional valence through objects that enjoy independent (emotional) value. To repeat the example mentioned above: a beautiful house, owned by me, gives me pride and fulfills the “rarity limitation on pride” (Ainslie) if not everybody owns beautiful houses. It can only do so, however, if beautiful houses are generally recognized to be of great value, and in that sense, whatever gives me pride is related to wider circles of social evaluation.

In saying that those who do not actually own beautiful houses admire those who do, I point to an important function of sympathy in Hume’s picture of society. Sympathy enables us to partake in the pleasures of wealth and power even if the wealthy and the powerful “shew no inclination to serve us,” if no “expectation of advantage” is justified (358–59). Sympathy thus allows us to ignore ownership structures and class inequalities. Through sympathy we accept that others have what we cannot have and that they have it because we cannot have it. This sympathy, however, must be of a non-comparative kind: in fact, it must trump the otherwise powerful urge to compare.

Sympathy and Comparison

Since, as noted, we mostly compare for a purpose, in interpersonal comparisons, this purpose revolves around enhancing our sense of self or bolstering our pride. If we want to stand out and be distinctive, we need comparisons that allow us to perceive differences and distances. Comparisons, Hume assumes, intensify given differences and can, under appropriate circumstances, help to stabilize inequalities. (They can also disrupt inequalities, as I will later show). At this point, Hume goes so far as to suggest that social and economic ranks exist because we lump people together according to the “power or riches” they possess (293). Though pride in itself is self-referential, I am able to develop expectations concerning other people’s pride on the basis of more or less rare and widely valued objects associated with them (wealth, power, property). It does not even matter whether individuals considered to be highly ranked really enjoy their rank or the privileges associated with it, what matters is that we assume this to be the case (on the basis of experience-based general rules).

What other features of comparison (in relation to sympathy) does Hume discuss? Clearly, if comparisons intensify difference, they also emphasize difference. This is what, according to some commentators, makes them potentially corrosive.²³ But do they also produce difference? This seemingly more technical question needs to be discussed as it allows us to see that sympathy is not necessarily the natural stance adopted toward others. Postema distinguishes contextual and contrastive aspects of comparison and adds a category called reversal-comparison.²⁴ The contextual principle indicates Hume’s general conviction that we often judge objects more by comparison than “from their intrinsic worth and value” (372). The contrast principle indicates that objects judged in context appear greater or less great by a comparison with others. A great object appears greater if compared to a smaller object and vice versa. The principle of reversal-comparison is more difficult to assess. It is hinted at by Hume in the following quote: “When we compare the sentiments of others to our own, we feel a sensation directly opposite to the original one, viz. a joy from the grief of others, and a grief from their joy” (381). The suggestion is that comparing our feelings to another’s feelings will create a feeling in us that directly opposes the feelings of the other. It seems, then, that reversal-comparison does not intensify given levels of an emotion; rather, it creates a new emotion that is dependent for its generation on the emotion of the other. Feeling miserable I might compare myself to someone who is even more miserable to generate an immediate psychological uplift. I could also systematically avoid happy individuals to prevent feeling downcast.

As such, the principle of reversal-comparison is not convincing. If you are happy and I am sad, there is no reason to assume that comparing myself to you will automatically produce happiness in me. On the contrary, the contrastive principle suggests that your happiness would make me feel even worse. What’s more, if sympathy were to rule our relationship your happiness should make me happy as well, for sympathy, in Hume, communicates emotions and allows an observer to mirror or adopt the emotion observed.

Two remarks seem apt: first, comparison as such undermines sympathy; and second, Hume does not think that reversal-comparison literally implies having emotions that are the opposite of the emotions observed in the other. Rather, what reversal-comparison reverses is the sympathetic reaction that would govern our relation to others under non-comparative circumstances. Here is an example Hume himself offers: “The direct survey of another’s pleasure naturally gives us pleasure, and therefore produces pain when compar’d with our own” (376). Let me take a look at the first part of the sentence. What Hume describes is what would happen under non-comparative circumstances: Sympathy, as defined by Hume, allows us to receive by communication the inclinations and sentiments of others, “however different from, or even contrary to our own” (316). In other words, if sympathy is unobstructed your pleasure evokes pleasant feelings in me, even if my original emotional state was one of, say, sadness or misery. Sympathy thus assimilates our emotional states and transforms my original state. However, if I decide to compare my original emotional state (sadness or misery) to your present emotional state (happiness or pleasure), something decidedly different happens. Under these circumstances, surveying your pleasure “produces pain” when compared with my misery. Comparison thus reverses the (potentially) sympathetic response to the other’s perceived emotional state. But it does so on the basis of a given emotion that is already opposed to the emotional state of the other. It’s not that comparing our emotional states really creates a new feeling in me. Only sympathy can, ideally, do that. The contrastive principle still holds true, for comparison intensifies given differences. Thus, what is literally wrong in Postema’s explanation is that in reversal-comparison it is not the other’s sentiment that is “taken up” (as in sympathy), rather, a contrary emotion is intensified.²⁵ We tend to compare given contrary emotions and not similar emotions. Here is Hume again: “His pain, consider’d in itself [as in sympathy], is painful to us, but augments [if submitted to the comparative mode] the idea of our own [given] happiness, and gives us pleasure” (376). Happiness here is our default stance, as it were, and comparison intensifies it. No actual emotion is literally reversed, the only reversal that takes place is a counterfactual one: if our relationship were governed by sympathy your pleasure could be transformed into my pleasure, for this is what “naturally” (376) happens when my own self is subdued or does not impress itself on the process of emotional communication. As Hume says, “in sympathy our own person is not the object of any passion, nor is there any thing, that fixes our attention on ourselves” (340). Importantly, however, counterfactual statements should not be identified with any sort of “natural” stance adopted toward others. Much to the contrary, it seems that the comparative stance is the more natural of the two.

A model of counterfactual sympathy (sympathizing with the feelings the other person would have if she experienced her situation in the way we think we would) is usually attributed by commentators to Adam Smith and not to Hume, but I think that the possibility of considering pain “in itself,” that is, apart from the comparative mode, opens a space for counterfactual sympathy in Hume as well.²⁶ This is why it is important to take a closer look at the comparative mode and its complex interaction with the sympathetic mode. Under the comparative gaze, “natural” responses come under pressure, as it were, and the real feelings that ensue “reverse” this counterfactually stipulated natural response. The reversal at stake, then, is what one could call the reinterpretation of original emotional valences under comparative circumstances. The reversal does not create fully new emotions, it just affects the response that emotional states such as happiness or misery would have on us under non-comparative circumstances. If the other’s happiness negatively impacts my misery by increasing or intensifying it, this happiness can no longer resonate with me, it can no longer be communicated as happiness alone. Comparison, we might say, infects this happiness and transforms it into a source of intensified misery.

We should now be in a better position to discuss the complex relation between sympathy and comparison. The question we need to turn to next is under what circumstances can sympathy break the spell of the comparative mode and what are its effects on the sympathizing self. It has been suggested that sympathy outweighs the comparative mode under the influence of two related conditions: proximity and distance. As Susan James notes, “the suggestion that sympathy can balance and even outweigh comparison is … evident in Hume’s discussion of the relative scope of these two principles.”²⁷ I propose that proximity as such does not help to determine particular emotional responses. As is well-known, Hume’s account of sympathy hovers uneasily between two positions. On the one hand, sympathy’s reach is universal: as Hume says, “we have a lively idea of every thing related to us. All human creatures are related to us by resemblance” (369). This general humanistic resemblance serves, in principle, as the basis for universal sympathy. On the other hand, it is easier for us to sympathize, first, with resemblances that are somehow more substantial and particularistic and, second, with those individuals who are within spatial reach: “We sympathize more with persons contiguous to us, than with persons remote from us: With our acquaintance, than with strangers: With our countrymen, than with foreigners” (581).

The reason for this partiality is that sympathy converts the idea we have of another’s feelings into felt impressions if the person (or object) “is related to ourselves” (317). Hume’s original statement that by sympathy we receive the inclinations and sentiments of others “however different from, or even contrary to our own” (316) thus does not adequately capture the phenomenon. Whether we sympathize with others or not depends, obviously, on many factors, and in particular, on our precise relation to the persons involved in the sympathetic process. However, being close to others or being somehow related to them does not distinguish sympathy as such from the comparative mode. After all, the reason why the conversion of perception-generated ideas into felt impressions is easier if a relation can be established between the observing and the observed pole stems from the same preoccupation with ourselves that fuels all processes of comparison. Whatever is related to our self causes lively impressions—that is the structural baseline idea for both sympathy and comparison. In anticipation of the contemporary consensus on the topic, Hume claims that a “great disproportion” between our self and another makes comparison unlikely to occur; comparison, he adds, depends on proximity: “A common soldier bears no such envy to his general as to his sergeant or corporal” (377).²⁸ Comparison and partial sympathy, then, do not seem to be psychologically as far apart as many commentators take them to be.²⁹ As a consequence, being proximally related to someone does not answer various questions that could be raised. What, for example, if the sergeant is a fellow countryman? Let’s assume he suffers from an injury whereas I am doing well. Do I sympathize with him and share his suffering because I feel close to him as fellow countryman? Or does his suffering increase my (given) happiness? What if the reverse is true, what if I am injured and he is not? The text suggests that I might respond with envy to his happiness. I compare myself to him. But why? Why not let his happiness sympathetically infiltrate me? All we know is that relational proximity increases the likelihood of comparisons as much as it increases the likelihood of sympathy.³⁰ We are obviously missing a variable here that determines which turn our emotions take in situations like these.

Hume offers two variables at this point, the absence of rivalry and the psychological intensity of observed pain or suffering. It is not clear how these variables interact. As to the first, it seems obvious that non-rivaling relations such as friendships or other intimate relationships provide a fertile soil for sympathetic emotional exchanges. As Hume notes, in commercial societies largely motivated by self-interest, “I may still do services to such persons as I love, and am more particularly acquainted with, without any prospect of advantage” (521). In contrast, if others are rivals we take pleasure in their pain (384). Rivalry simply outweighs the potential sympathetic impact of communicated pain, and the fact that our rival speaks the same language as we do, will, in all likelihood, not change our attitude toward him. The absence of rivalry and competition, then, seems to be a necessary prerequisite for a more or less smooth flow of sympathetic emotions. It is important to add, however, that this does not mean that more general structures of sympathy cannot influence the relation-based sympathetic communication. It is often forgotten that sympathy, in Hume, is not itself an emotion but merely a psychic mechanism communicating emotions. Consequently, it can communicate negative and positive emotions. Consider once again Hume’s statement about poverty: “Nothing has a greater tendency to give us esteem for any person than his power and riches; or a contempt, than his poverty and meanness” (357). Poverty gives us a negative idea of a miserable life and we transform this idea into an impression of pain that we then experience accordingly. That’s what sympathy does, and the mirroring works well: we partake in the “uneasiness” of poverty (362). But in a further psychological twist, Hume assumes that we dislike what gives us uneasiness as emotions have what the current research terminology calls hedonic valences: it feels good to be happy and bad to be sad. We can respond to these emotional meta-evaluations and attribute their cause to external sources such as your poverty. And, importantly, we do so even if poverty strikes a close relative, for we are “asham’d of any one, that is mean or poor, among our friends and relations” and “remove the poor as far from us as possible” (307).

Put differently, even if it is correct to suggest that non-rivaling close relationships can potentially silence any comparative motives we might otherwise develop, this does not guarantee a positive sympathetic exchange. The second factor outweighing the comparative mode, the intensity of observed pain or suffering, is more difficult to grasp. At one point, Hume realizes how confusing his general statement concerning our contempt of poverty is and wonders, “why does sympathy in uneasiness ever produce any passion beside good-will and kindness?” (385). Indeed, this is a very good question.³¹ Rivalry and competition partially answer it. But what other variables influence the flow of sympathy? Hume gives some puzzling answers to this question and not all of his comments can be saved by principles of hermeneutic charity.³² Here is one of his statements: “I assert, that when a sympathy with uneasiness is weak, it produces hatred or contempt. … When strong, it produces love or tenderness” (385). Hume’s idea seems to be that strong sympathy allows us to extend our response to observed pain beyond the present instant. We do not just feel a momentary pain that we dislike; we imagine what a life in poverty must be like, we receive a “lively notion of all the circumstances of that person, whether past, present, or future.” Strong sympathy creates, as it were, a narrative interest in the person involved, so that we willingly see this person in all his complexity and refrain from being reduced to momentary impressions alone (386). If sympathy is weak, in contrast, contempt or disdain are more likely to occur. But what factors shape the strength or weakness of our sympathy? Hume’s answer is the degree of misery:

A certain degree of poverty produces contempt; but a degree beyond causes compassion and good-will. We may under-value a peasant or servant; but when the misery of a beggar appears very great, or is painted in very lively colours, we sympathize with him in his affliction, and feel in our heart evident touches of pity and benevolence. (387)

It should be noted that the sympathy described in this passage is explicitly geared toward strangers. I do not extend my sympathy to rivals. Outside rivalry, however, a certain degree of misery can induce what Smith later called fellow-feeling.

We found, then, two variables capable of producing a certain preponderance of the sympathetic over the comparative mode. Of the two, the absence of rivalry seems to carry more of the conceptual weight. If a form of non-comparative sympathy is to occur at all, the conditions triggering the comparative mode must be absent or silent.

With respect to partial sympathy and the comparative mode we now have most of the variables at hand that shape our responses to others. Let us stay with the example of poverty and enlist the variables. The variables influencing comparison are twofold: a self seeking to stand out and a competitive economic order based on private property. My response to poverty will be shaped by my own position and status. If I am poor, the wealth of others will intensify my feelings of unhappiness, and severe bouts of envy might follow. If I am rich, other people’s poverty will intensify my happiness. If the other is my rival or competitor, these effects might intensify. Interestingly, the rich or powerful can be envious of the poor or powerless if they “perceive their inferiors approaching or overtaking them in the pursuit of glory or happiness” (377). In the comparative mode, the privileged relish in distances and visible differentiations and fear all processes ending these. Further, comparison appears to follow the law of what later research has called the similarity condition. We do not compare with those who are very different from us. Comparison requires social or economic proximity to detect resemblances that are worthy of comparison. It shares the proximity condition with partial sympathy, that is, sympathy extended to others we closely relate to. Partial sympathy can only exert its influence if the comparative mode is subdued. This is most likely to be the case in friendships or in intimate relationships. Sympathy here amounts to a benevolent attitude, and there is no need to stipulate that sympathy “outweighs” the comparative mode. In friendships or intimate relationships, the comparative mode is just not at stake. Further, a very intense presentation of someone’s plight can trigger a positive sympathetic response such as compassion in the observer.

To turn to the distance condition: If the comparative mode is somehow tied to the proximity condition, sympathy’s effects might be in need of social distance to extend beyond close relationships, as seems to be the case. In particular, wealth and power are likely to spark esteem and love of the wealthy and powerful if the comparative mode is subdued. This can be done through massive differences in wealth, through large power differentials or, again, through the vividness with which wealth and power are depicted. Sympathy here “makes us partake of the satisfaction” (358) wealth and power bestow on rich and powerful subjects, by communicating the general judgment as to the many privileges these confer. In the same way, contempt for poverty communicates the misery generally associated with the state of lacking sizable means of social reproduction. Esteem for the rich and powerful is probably the most pristine case of a sympathy “outweighing” the comparative mode. However, large socioeconomic differences or power differentials “cut off” (377) the relation between the poles involved and thus make the comparative mode irrelevant. The common soldier does not compare himself with his general, in fact, he is not even tempted to do so. There is no need to outweigh the comparative mode, which is, as it were, psychologically ‘dead’ when differences are disproportionate. This means that cutting off relations by increasing inequalities is a means to fend off the threat of comparison. Hume leaves no doubt that a non-comparative sympathy, interpreted in this way, is what stabilizes social distances and pushes acceptance of economic inequalities. Our general sympathy with wealth and power coagulates into rules that allow us to “form a notion of different ranks of men, suitable to the power or riches they are possest of” (293).

This, I think, is where it is possible to give Hume’s general psychology a critical twist it may not carry on its sleeve.³³ The central claim is that sympathy relates individuals who are otherwise unrelated to each other due to massive differences and distances, and thus stabilizes social inequalities. Sympathy for the rich and contempt for the poor may be effects of sympathy proper but they relate individuals of highly unequal position. As I mentioned above, pure unmediated (humanistic) sympathy is mostly counterfactual, for sympathy is always mediated by specific types of relation involving the self. Hume says as much, when, in Book 3, he admits that the partialities of sympathy need to be corrected by a “judicious spectator” (581) who recommends an impartiality of judgment about moral matters near and distant. Sympathy itself, however, is not capable of ever overcoming its partialities, for it is “seldom that we can bring ourselves to it [impartial conduct]” (583). From the perspective of sympathy, then, a fully impartial sympathy is counterfactual, as only “experience” or “reflexion” (582) can bring about the necessary correction of otherwise ineluctable sympathetic biases.

What would comparison add to the picture? It would add positionality, an identifiable emotional default stance and a competitive outlook. Sympathy’s effects on us are always modulated by where we stand relative to others, how we feel, and how we relate to them. In fact, often how we feel is to a great extent determined by where we stand relative to others. Sympathy is never naked or pure; it always occurs within a concrete relationship that is socially inflected. What’s more, some of these relationships are competitive or serve to enhance our sense of self. We are rich or poor, powerful or lacking power, owners of property or propertyless, servants or masters, children or adults, men or women. We sympathize from within these relations. Though not all of these relations are inherently comparative, relations structured by poverty or power and property differentials are. In fact, a particular type of comparison, namely comparison from below, would disturb attachments as it presupposes closer connections and relations and allows the comparing individual to question his own position within the established hierarchy. Consequently, to discourage comparisons or to make them difficult can be in the interest of defending the status quo. As Hume says, a great disproportion between individuals “cuts off the relation, and either keeps us from comparing ourselves with what is remote from us, or diminishes the effects of the comparison” (377–78).

Masters and Servants

Hume’s comments on the soldier and the general, as noted earlier, anticipate what is presently often called the similarity hypothesis, that is, the idea that we don’t compare ourselves with others standing at too far a distance from our own position. But why not? Hume offers explanations that illuminate aspects of the comparative relation that are often overlooked in Hume and in general. After all, while it may not make any psychological sense to compare with the acclaimed masters of the game if one is just beginning to play chess, there may be reason to assume that in relations of social and economic inequality sympathy-strengthened differences successfully and systematically cover up real relations that could well be submitted to the comparative mode and, I claim, are actually submitted to it by one of the parties involved. The case for relationality is easily made. What if your wealth depends on my not being wealthy? What if you gain what I lose? What if I am the one who helped you in producing the wealth? These, clearly, are relations that might bring us closer together than measurable and publicly recognized differences suggest. Further, they might introduce dimensions of comparability not visible before. What this suggest is that we should be open to the possible existence of further mechanisms determining who we compare ourselves with if we compare ourselves at all.

We may begin with a simple question: Why do we sympathize with wealth even if we are poor and expect to gain nothing from the comparison except the vicarious pleasures alluded to by Hume? It is this general non-comparative sympathy that supplies the solution for the otherwise intractable zero-sum conflict of wanting to be recognized as peculiar by those not similarly recognizable as peculiar. Sympathy, it appears, overcomes potential zero-sum risks and generates acceptance of inequality. This cunning of sympathy may well be the object of wondrous admiration. But is it just a natural fact about our emotionally backed psyche to be taken as given?

A closer look reveals that the conditions generating sympathy have still a deeper foundation in Hume’s theory of associational relationality. Hume argues that “the great feel a double pleasure in authority from the comparison of their own condition with that of their slaves … because it [the comparison] is natural, and presented by the subject” (378).³⁴ At first sight, this seems strange. Master and slave cannot be but extremely distant in status and many of the other conditions of resemblance also appear to be absent. So why would the master compare himself at all with the slave? What proximity is at work in the master-slave relation? The answer is obvious: the master is master to a slave, the slave is slave to a master, both are defined in their status through the other. They are, as it were, related by definition. But the power the master has over his slave is not definitional, it is real and lies in his power to create associational relations in imagination that firmly tie him to his slave. The naturalness of the master-slave comparison indicates the ease with which people in hierarchical societies travel from the idea of the master to the idea of the slave, and this association of ideas is not at all arbitrary or deliberate. Earlier in the Treatise Hume argued that a master “is such-a-one as by his situation, arising either from force or agreement, has a power of directing in certain particulars the actions of another, whom we call servant” (12). By power Hume means not the actual exercise of one’s superior position (converting it into action) but the possible or probable exertion of the will. Since these cannot be perceived in any straightforward sense, their force is largely dependent on imagined relations, that is, on relations that bind the idea of the master to the idea of the slave or servant and conceive of this relation as one of superiority and inferiority. These relational proximities of power do not rest on closeness in position, occupation or status; nor on the actual exertion of the power a superior has acquired through coercion or agreement. Rather, they rest on the capacity of power to concentrate emotional and imaginary energies and spread them to those surrounding its orbit. Power creates proximities of its own through habitually established and emotionally backed associations of superiority and inferiority. In this way, it establishes relations between otherwise distant subjects and creates space for comparability. However, these spaces are not evenly distributed. While it is easy and psychologically necessary for the master to compare with his servant, it is not easy for the servant to compare with his master even though they are related through power. The servant’s sympathy for his superior obstructs, as it were, the comparative mode.

What do I mean by this?

To begin with, we need to ask: what resemblance allows the master to compare himself to the otherwise utterly dissimilar servant? Hume himself does not seem to notice that his remark on the master comparing himself to the slave does not accord with the similarity hypothesis. First, the resemblance must be of a rather abstract kind, for both master and slave stand somewhere in a social hierarchy, and that “standing somewhere” must be the resemblance allowing comparisons. Interestingly, this comparison is not obstructed by large hierarchical distances because the resemblance, abstract as it is, is based on a relation that defines one position through the other. I am here because you are there. If you wouldn’t be there, I wouldn’t be here. That clearly is a relation and one that is, as suggested, carried and upheld by emotional and imaginary forces linking one position to the other. The master needs the comparison to bolster his self-esteem, while the slave is held to sympathize with the master in order to provide the positive evaluation of the privileges his position confers on him. Thus the master gleefully compares downward and enjoys the naturalness of the imagination-based link between his superior position and the inferior position of the slave, while the slave sympathizes upward and reaps the vicarious joy of imagined wealth and power.

This explanation leads back to Hume’s discussion of envy in his example of the soldier and general. Envy is a comparative emotion, “excited,” as Hume says, “by some present enjoyment of another, which by comparison diminishes our idea of our own [enjoyment]” (377). However, it is clear that not every comparison is fueled by envy. That the common soldier does not envy the general but rather the nearby sergeant or corporal does not imply that he cannot compare himself to the general. After all, they are related through an asymmetric power relationship. If comparison’s central goal is to bolster one’s sense of self, upward comparison is not likely to occur, but there is no reason to assume that it is psychologically impossible.³⁵ Certainly, the general can compare himself to the soldier to bolster his sense of self as does the master when he compares himself to his slave. As we saw, envy is not only upward-oriented but also downward-oriented: it sets in once power differentials diminish and the positional disadvantage of the inferior improves and that of the superior seems threatened. Envy rides on the back of self-enhancing comparisons, as it were, and is a constant threat in competitively open societies. In this sense, relational proximities of power allow otherwise dissimilar individuals to be related and open up a space for comparisons at a distance. But since these are relational proximities of power, their potential to do so is not accessible to all. Being able to compare oneself to another is itself a privilege resting on an enhanced sense of self that is fully aware of its power to “remove the poor as far … as possible” (307). In this sense, power produces relations of its own and thereby guarantees that, in Hume’s words, the “fancy” passes easily “from the one object to the other” (378). Power thus naturalizes this relation and obstructs potentially disruptive comparisons from below, for, as Hume notes: “A man, who gives orders for his dinner, doubts not of the obedience of his servants” (405).

Conclusion

Much recent research on sympathy not only overlooks its intricate relation to the comparative mode but also ignores the manifold situatedness of sympathetic acts and attitudes. A close reading of Hume on comparison and sympathy, I suggest, helps to see the importance of this point. In fact part of the motivation to put the emphasis on principles of comparison was to suggest a default context that often structures the concrete workings of the principles of sympathy. If my reading is correct, sympathy, understood in Humean terms, is common in close relationships that manage to silence the comparative mode or simply make it appear irrelevant. Similarly, also highly charged and intense presentations of emotional predicaments may outweigh the comparative mode and induce processes of emotional mirroring, for there is “no sensible creature,” Hume says, “whose happiness or misery does not, in some measure, affect us, when brought near to us, and represented in lively colours” (481). However, the comparative mode and the psychological principles governing sympathy are both rooted in a sense of self that draws its self-esteem and self-enhancement from the objects or persons related to us. We sympathize with what is related to us as much as we compare ourselves to what is related to us. Commentators who claim that the only precondition for sympathy for governing our behavior is to stop seeing others “as rival or enemy” overlook the extent to which Hume’s concept of the self is inherently comparative and prone to distinguish itself from other selves through acquiring wealth- and property-based zero-sum privileges.³⁶ Consequently, I see Hume’s claim that in sympathy nothing “fixes our attention on ourselves” (340) as counterfactual, and as sometimes helping to clarify what emotions would be communicated if the sympathizing subjects were not overly self-preoccupied. Factually, we are always to some extent self-preoccupied and sympathize only with those we can somehow relate to. Humanistic sympathy is therefore not our psychological default mode.

It appears that the most influential means of attracting our sympathy are wealth and power or, as we might say, the power of wealth. In property-based competitive societies wealth represents full agency or the capacity of “directing in certain particulars the actions of another” (12). Hume’s concept of sympathy, I argue, supports wealth-based inequalities in supplying the sympathetic individual with the vicarious pleasures of agency-enhancing wealth. The sympathetic individual imagines the enjoyment of wealth to the same extent that the truly wealthy are taken to enjoy their wealth. The relation inherent to this kind of sympathy is not one of actual resemblance but one of imagined resemblance. Thus imagined resemblance allows the less privileged to accept real difference and to forgo the comparative mode. In imagined resemblance, the less privileged individual treats ownership of wealth as naturally conducive to joy and recognition and constructs a similarity of emotional response based on seemingly universal psychological traits of humans. This kind of sympathy is non-comparative if it makes the other person’s wealth appear to be unrelated in any meaningful way to one’s own position except as an imagined resemblance. The real distance between the sympathizing poor self and the privileged self is wiped out in imagination. The privileged self, on the other hand, relishes the real distance and compares itself downward to bolster its sense of self. Finally, the privileged self is in part privileged because it receives the sympathy of the less privileged, and it is this sympathy that is responsible for producing the general esteem for wealth and privilege. Sympathy, then, mirrors structures of inequality as much as it helps to establish emotionally backed judgments that help to strengthen these structures.

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Martin Hartmann

Martin Hartmann is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Lucerne, Switzerland. His publications include two monographs on trust in German (Die Praxis des Vertrauens, Suhrkamp, 2011; and Vertrauen. Die unsichtbare Macht, Fischer, 2020); How Inequality Feels (Oxford University Press, forthcoming); several peer-reviewed articles on Hume, Sartre, and Critical Theory, as well as various chapters in edited volumes.

Notes

1. But see James, “Sympathy and Comparison.” Apart from James, the best account I am aware of is Postema, “Cemented with Diseased Qualities.” See also Árdall, Passion and Value in Hume’s Treatise, chap. 3.

2. Hume, Treatise, 73. All page references to the Treatise are to the 1978 Selby-Bigge edition revised by Nidditch, and are hereafter cited in the text.

3. Rousseau, Second Discourse, 111–222.

4. For a much more recent attempt to situate sympathy in complex unequal social relations, see Kate Manne’s account of “himpathy” in Down Girl, 196–205.

5. Mills, “‘Ideal Theory’ as Ideology,” 82.

6. See Wallech, “Elements of Social Status in Hume’s Treatise,” 208, where Wallech suggests that Hume separates people “according to the emotions they feel in response to observations they make about themselves and other people.”

7. In Philosophy and Ideology in Hume’s Political Thought, 2, Miller attributes a “secular and skeptical conservative political theory” to Hume; see Stanley, How Propaganda Works, 183–84, for a recent attempt to put Hume’s epistemology to critical use.

8. Kemp Smith, The Philosophy of David Hume, V.

9. See Hartmann, “How a Critical Humean Naturalism is Possible,” for a similar argument.

10. The comparative element in sympathy is even more obvious in Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. See Raphael’s version of Smith’s notion of sympathy in his The Impartial Spectator, 14: “The spectator’s judgement arises from imaginging himself in the agent’s place and comparing the motivating feeling of the agent with the feeling that he himself would have in the imagined situation.”

11. Finlay, Hume’s Social Philosophy, 107.

12. Árdal, Passion and Value in Hume’s Treatise, 59.

13. Finlay, Hume’s Social Philosophy, 106–7.

14. James, “Sympathy and Comparison,” 120–21. See also Baier who calls sympathy the “natural response to knowing [about the other’s feelings] … unless we are so preoccupied with our own state that the principle of comparison kicks in.” In Baier and Waldow, “Conversation,” 66 (my emphasis). Finlay in Hume’s Social Philosophy, 107, treats love and esteem as “normal,” whereas malice and envy (as typically comparative) “occur only in special circumstances.” For various reasons, Finlay marginalizes the role of comparison (joining the camp of those commentators who think that Hume sees comparisons as mostly destructive). This is curious as Finlay is fully aware of the integrative force of upward-oriented sympathy with the rich.

15. Postema, “Cemented with Diseased Qualities,” 279 (my emphasis).

16. Ainslie, “Scepticism About Persons,” 472. See also Wallech, “Elements of Social Status in Hume’s Treatise,” 210.

17. Rousseau’s amour propre is often construed as a socially developed non-natural emotion. I follow Neuhouser, however, in treating Rousseau’s natural state as merely hypothetical. Real human beings are always driven by amour de soi and amour propre. See Neuhouser’s defense of an expanded conception of human nature in his Rousseau’s Critique of Inequality.

18. For Hume’s picture of society, see MacIntyre, Whose Justice? 243. Neuhouser, in Rousseau’s Critique of Inequality, 67, tries to show that Rousseau’s amour propre is comparative but not structurally, and necessarily, inegalitarian; the esteem or standing, he says, “that amour propre strives for is always a positional good, where doing well for myself … consists in doing well in relation to others.” My interpretation of Hume requires not a “doing well in relation to others” but a doing better in relation to others. Incidentally, I think that would also be the right reading of Rousseau’s Second Discourse, but I cannot prove the point here. But see Carnevali, Romantisme et Reconnaissance, 30.

19. As Finlay says: “It is only through sympathizing with common and particular perceptions of the world of goods that we come to understand their meaning and hence their value” (Hume’s Social Philosophy, 109). See also Wallech, “Elements of Social Status in Hume’s Treatise,” 211: “Agreeable expectations based on association with the rich affect too few people to explain the general esteem everyone feels for the wealthy” (my emphases).

20. Brandom, “Structure of Desire and Recognition,” 137. For an attempt to mold the Humean model into the (Hegelian) model of recognition theory, see Honneth, Anerkennung, chap. 3.

21. Ainslie, “Scepticism About Persons,” 472.

22. For more on Hume’s concept of pride, see Rorty, “‘Pride Produces the Idea of Self’,” 255–69. As Rorty says, “the idea of the self produced by pride is that of the self as an agent, with a concern for its future, an agent who has reasons to weight the motivational force of her passions, to give them a ranked priority beyond previously experienced pleasurable intensity and duration” (258). Rorty is also aware of the comparative dimension of Hume’s account of the self: “Whatever is regarded by a person as peculiar to herself or nearly so, can be a cause of pride. Here in its modest beginning is the source of the idea … that the idea of comparisons enters into the formation of the very content of the idea of self” (261, original emphasis).

23. James, “Sympathy and Comparison,” 120.

24. Postema, “Cemented With Diseased Qualities,” 263–65.

25. Ibid., 265.

26. For Hume and Smith, see Fleischacker, “Sympathy in Hume and Smith,” 292; for Smith alone, see Schliesser, Adam Smith, 118–21.

27. James, “Sympathy and Comparison,” 121.

28. See Festinger’s “Theory of Social Comparison Processes” for an early influential formulation of the contemporary consensus in social psychology.

29. This is seen by Árdall, Passion and Value in Hume’s Treatise, 60.

30. James (“Sympathy and Comparison,” 121) concentrates mostly on sympathy as a “more disinterested benevolence” that can, as such, outweigh comparison. While she is right about this, she should have said more about Hume’s frequent references to partial sympathy.

31. See Mercer, Sympathy and Ethics, 37.

32. In “Cemented With Diseased Qualities,” Postema calls Hume’s account “obscure” (270).

33. See Taylor, Reflecting Subjects, 91. Taylor attributes to Hume the “lack of a critical approach to certain power relations” but adds that “nevertheless, we should credit Hume’s interest in examining the effects that domination and subjection have on the passions, and especially on a person’s sense of himself and of his standing in relation to others.” Taylor applies this insight in her discussion of gender inequality (92–95).

34. See also Hume, Treatise, 315–16: “Comparison is in every case a sure method of augmenting our esteem of any thing. A rich man feels the felicity of his condition better by opposing it to that of a beggar.”

35. Contemporary research does indeed suggest that we sometimes actively seek upward comparisons; see Suls, Martin, and Wheeler, “Social Comparison,” 159–63. I discuss Hume’s naturalism in Hartmann “How a Critical Humean Naturalism is Possible.”

36. See Waldow in Baier and Waldow, “Conversation,” 69.