Book II.1 and II.2

Book II.1

In this part Hume defines the passions Pride and Humility, and explains the causes, objects, and these particular passions’ relation to pain and pleasure.

Pride, according to Hume, is caused by one’s particular possession, whether it be a material possession (such as a beautiful house or great personal wealth) or immaterial (such as virtue or knowledge), whose idea produces pleasure and the correlative idea of self and ownership, which in turn is productive of Pride. The same is true of Humility: the lack of a thing or its deficiency in comparison to one’s peers causes pain and the idea of lacking that thing, itself causing Humility.

The objects of these passions are always the self- though one may say that he/she is proud of some relative or friend who has some great quality or achieved some great act or accomplishment, the object of the pride is not the relative/friend, rather it is one’s possession of the relationship to this great person which is the source of the pride.

The passions’ relation to pain and pleasure are unclear to me. Do the passions cause these feelings? Or do they exist prior to and separately from the passions?

Book II.2

Hume begins this section by explaining that Love and Hatred are much the same as Pride and Humility, differing only in their objects, which for the former pair is someone else, and the latter pair the self. Hume also explains that you must first know a person before you can say that you love or hate them: a person must be intimately known before any accurate value judgment may be placed on his character, all else is conjecture. He uses the example of Oliver Cromwell, who was hated by the Scots but revered by the English: how can a man be both hated and loved by so many who never met him?

Hume goes on to explain the “love of relations”, which is to say one’s love of someone else who share some commonality, such as blood, profession, or nation. Hume says this arises (I think) from the characteristic of which we are proud of in our selves that we see manifested in another.

According to Hume, we have a great tendency to hold the rich and powerful in high esteem, not because we have something to gain from them or that their possessions are themselves pleasing to us, but because of our sympathy towards them; their happiness produces in us the same effect.

Of the compound passions, there are eight, though we only focus on five. Benevolence and Anger, the first two discussed, are, as the editors put it, “the desire of adding to the happiness [or misery] of a person loved [or hated]” (I60). Compassion (or Pity) is the concern for another’s happiness, while Malice is the feeling of pleasure one feels when observing the plight of others. Envy is the result of the pain caused by the knowledge of a specific deficiency compared to someone else, such as one mediocre dancer envious of a greater one.