Hume Studies

It is a challenge to write a book on a topic that has received extensive treatment in philosophical discourse—especially when said treatment has been varied in purpose, angle, and aim. Hume’s work on the relationship between passion and action is one such topic. Scholarship on this theme has ranged from historically situated interpretive work, to theoretical work that assumes a Kantian foil, to the robust discourse of contemporary Humean views (which themselves vary widely in their resemblance to the historical Hume). In her book, Hume, Passion, and Action, Elizabeth Radcliffe has taken on the complex task of writing on motivation in Hume with many of these perspectives in her sights, and it has resulted in a book that clearly and helpfully walks us through the complexities and interrelations of these discourses, while simultaneously making a case for her own interpretive take on Hume’s theory of motivation. Such a labor is not for the faint of heart, and Radcliffe does an exceptional job of carefully and systematically presenting the various discussions. But the real pay-off comes as one engages Radcliffe’s own arguments. She provides the reader with several important innovations in approaching the topic of Humean motivation, including a new defense of Hume’s commitment to the motivational impotence of belief and a careful analysis of what Hume requires for the motivational efficacy of a passion. Radcliffe’s interpretive arguments will surely advance the discourse on Hume’s account of passion and action. Given their presentation alongside an incredibly helpful overview of the relevant debates, this text should be treated as essential reading to anyone looking to further contribute to these discussions.

Radcliffe positions herself as arguing for the “traditional reading” of Hume’s thesis concerning the impotence of reason to motivate: the assumption that neither reason considered as a process, nor its products, that is, beliefs, generate impulses to action. She starts by offering an analysis of which passions count as motives, and then offers an answer as to why only some passions motivate, arguing that a mental state that motivates must include a desire. This means, contrary to some interpretations, Hume finds his categories of direct and indirect passions to each include both motivating and non-motivating passions. She also emphasizes a third category of passion, “original” or natural instincts, which Hume identifies as kinds of general desires and “active principles.” Radcliffe describes these as dispositions “to acquire passions for particular objects” and “contribute to the formation of motivating passions” (55). [End Page 113]

She then moves to consider Hume’s arguments for the motivational impotence of reason, considering both a variety of recent interpretations and placing Hume’s arguments in their historical context. She concludes that this argument is meant to apply to both reason and belief. This conclusion is further supported by a close treatment of Hume’s account of belief, where she takes seriously Hume’s identification of belief as an idea set apart from non-believed ideas phenomenologically, but not itself an impression, and carrying no impulse. Passions, on the other hand, are non-representative “original existences,” and can generate impulses. She points to Hume’s emphasis on the inability of reason to provide a contrary impulse to the passions, meaning that (contrary to many early modern rationalist theorists) it is in no position to act as counsel to the will or moderator of the passions. She then uses Hume’s Book 3 argument against moral rationalism to further illustrate that Hume takes only passions to be potential motives. She makes the case that Hume must be read as a moral internalist, meaning that he finds “morality on its own motivates” (115). She argues that our passions-based moral distinctions can provide impulse for action even “when we lack the appropriate natural virtue” that would otherwise lead us to act morally (11). This treatment also includes an interesting argument for a Humean account in which it is possible for reason to help us form beliefs about the content of...