A Treatise on Human Nature, Vol. 2 of 2 (Classic Reprint): And Selections from the Treatise of the Passions (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Excerpt from Treatise of Morals: And Selections From the Treatise of the Passions

We must therefore make a distinction betwixt the cause and the object of these passions; betwixt that idea which excites them, and that to which they direct their view when excited. Pride and humility, being once raised, immediately turn our attention to ourself, and regard that as their ultimate and final object; but there is something further requisite in order to raise them: something, which is peculiar to one of the pas sions, and produces not both in the very same degree. The first idea that is presented to the mind is that of the cause or productive principle. This excites the pas sion connected with it and that passion, when excited, turns our view to another idea, which is that of self. Here then is a passion placed betwixt two ideas, of which the one produces it, and the other is produced by it. The first idea therefore represents the cause, the second the object of the passion.

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Hume smain philosophical interest was, as he tells us himself, in morals and politics. I cannot forbear, he says in the last section of the fourth part of Book I., having a curiosity to be acquainted with the principles of moral good and evil, the nature and foundation of government, and the cause of those several passions and inclinations which actuate and govern me. The discussion of logical and metaphysical principles in the first book is intended as an introduction to the moral and political subjects of the second and third. Yet the connection between Books II. and III. and Book I. is not strict. Hume smorals do not depend on his metaphysics.; rather the purpose of his metaphysical discussions is to show that reason is impotent both in science and in conduct, and therefore has no bearing at all on moral inquiries. The second part of the Treatise makes it clearer than ever that Hume sscepticism is a criticism of reason and not of life. The self whose existence he explained away in Book I. is taken for granted in Books II. and III.; and in his account of the will Hume insists emphatically on the reality of moral causation. For the first part of the Treatise has established the independence and self-sufficingness of the passions and of mans moral nature, and defended them against all dictation of reason. In these books therefore Hume leaves his scepticism behind him. He is no longer a revolutionary. His moral theory follows in its main outlines the sentimentalist school of the eighteenth century. In morals and politics he is on the side of the angels, and plays his part in making objections to the doctrines of Mandeville and Hobbes, who are the two Mephistopheles of the eighteenth century in morals and politics, as Hume himself was to be in metaphysics.
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