Hume Studies

Hume Studies Volume XXVI, Number 1, April 2000, pp. 77-86 Hume's Passions: Direct and Indirect JANE L. MCINTYRE I. Introduction Book II of the Treatise minutely anatomizes the passions Hume dubbed "indirect ." As the account of pride, humility, love, and hatred unfolds, principles are uncovered, causes are exhaustively examined, experiments carried out, difficulties presented and solved. The barrage of detailed description and theorizing threatens to overwhelm even the most devoted of readers. By contrast, Hume's explicit treatment of the direct passions appears perfunctory. Indeed, Hume states: "None of the direct affections seem to merit our particular attention except hope and fear."1 Desire and aversion, though usually mentioned first as examples of the direct passions, receive no separate analysis. This paper argues that, contrary to what Hume leads us to expect, Book II of the Treatise does entail significant conclusions about the direct passions. Further, this implicit theory is important to understanding Hume's account of the passions as a whole. I will begin with brief comments on the historical background to Hume's discussion. I will then analyze Hume's treatment of the direct passions, particularly in relation to the indirect. Finally, I will examine the implications of this analysis for a fuller understanding of the calm passions and the virtue Hume called "strength of mind." Jane L. Mclntyre is at the Department of Philosophy, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH 44115, USA. e-mail: j.mcintyre@csuohio.edu 78 Jane L. Mclntyre II. Background to Hume's Discussion Hume's relative inattention to the direct passions is partially understandable, yet still puzzling. To see why this is the case it is helpful to know two things about the relationship of Hume's work to earlier accounts of the passions. First, one feature of Hume's theory of the passions that is distinctively original is the categorization of the passions into the direct and the indirect: neither this terminology nor any equivalent classification occurs in earlier or contemporary works on the passions. Hume gives a succinct summary of the direct passions (desire, aversion, grief, joy, hope, and fear) in terms of their causes: they "arise immediately from good or evil, from pain or pleasure" (T 276). The indirect passions (pride, humility, love, hatred, and all their various compound and dependent forms) receive a less illuminating introduction: they "proceed from the same principles, but by the conjunction of other qualities" (T 276). Ultimately, the causes of indirect passions are explained through an amplification of Hume's principles of association and the introduction of other important principles, such as sympathy and comparison. This new classification therefore reflects what Hume took to be the discovery of an underlying distinction between the causes of the various passions. Hume's initial characterizations of the direct and the indirect passions presume that, however new the terminology, the causal mechanisms underlying the direct passions would be familiar, while the causes at work in the indirect passions would be unfamiliar. This presumption is supported by the second important fact to which I wish to call attention. The analysis of desire figured prominently in many earlier theories of the passions. Even when love was identified as the primary passion, which it often was, its different forms were accounted for by its direction toward different objects. Love, in this sense, was a generic form of desire, not the person-directed indirect passion we find in Hume. Related to this focus on desire is the fact that many earlier works addressed the topic of the government of the passions—that is, their control and direction. Although other passions, particularly anger, were discussed in this connection, unruly desires were the passions most often in need of control . While the main focus of this paper is not Hume's relationship to the history of theoretical work on the passions, it will be useful to have, as a point of reference, a differently organized account of the passions. For Hume scholars, Hutcheson's Essay on the Nature and the Conduct of the Passions provides one particularly interesting example of a work that takes the analysis of desire to be central, and that treats standard topics such as the government of the...