3 the Role of the Indirect and the Direct Passions in the Treatise

The role of the indirect and the direct passions in the Treatise

The role of the indirect and the direct passions in the Treatise

Abstract

This paper is a trial for illustrating the different roles which Hume assigns to the indirect and to the direct passions in the Treatise. The main object of his treatment of the indirect passions is to establish the basis of the system of the passions through the illustration of “the situation of the mind”(TT396) which is constituted by the four indirect passions, “placed, as it were in a square”(T333). His primary concern in the discussion of the direct passions is, on the other hand, with “the situation of the object”(T419/438) which renders a passion either calm or violent. Hume’s intention in Book II lies in demonstrating the “statics and dynamics of the mind”(KS 161) in terms of the different roles of the two kinds of passions. In order to understand the structure of the system of the passions, we cannot overlook the importance of the distinction between the direct and the indirect passions.

The role of the indirect passions

Hume’s system of the passions depends on these three distinctions, original and secondary, calm and violent, and direct and indirect. The first distinction between original and secondary is nothing but the rephrase of his former division given between the impression of sensation and the impression of reflection. "Original impressions, or impressions of sensation, are such as, without any antecedent perception, arise in the soul, from the constitution of the body, from the animal spirits, or from the application of objects to the external organs"(T275), whereas "secondary, or reflective impressions, are such as proceed from some of these original ones, either immediately, or by the interposition of its idea"(ibid.). Since “the first kind arises in the soul originally, from unknown causes”(T7), it is the second kind, which arises either from the former original impressions or from their ideas, according to him, that is the subject of his investigation.

The reflective impressions or passions are divided either into the direct or the indirect, and are distinguished again into the calm and the violent. The former is a definite distinction which is derived from the difference of the origin of the passions, whereas the latter "is far from being exact"(T276), as it depends solely upon the violence with which passions appear in the mind. It is upon the former division that the whole system of the passions is founded, whereas the latter is intended to provide the basis of the discussion regarding the corroboration of the two aspects of our identity.

In order to avoid a possible confusion, it may be useful to mention here briefly Kemp Smith who maintains that ”Hume is prepared to recognise four distinct types [among passions]”(KS 164), and re-organises Hume’s distinctions in the following way:

What are recognised by Hume as the first type of passions are “the natural appetites, upon which so many of our pleasures depend”(T164): bodily appetites such as hunger and lust, love of life, private benevolence, resentment, and kindness to children”(KS 165). The first type of passions are thus “sheerly instinctive, i.e. not founded on any antecedent experience of pleasure or plain; and in this they differ from all desire and aversion”(KS 164). All these passions arise “from a natural impulse or instinct, which is perfectly unaccountable,” as they are “not founded on precedent perceptions (or enlivened ideas) of pleasure and pain”(KS 165).

The second type of passions are those affections, emotions, and sentiments, which have some antecedent perception of pleasure or pain: grief, joy, hope, fear, despair, volition, desire, and aversion. The third type is a special, additional group of secondary impressions, “which arise when previously experienced pleasure and pain are accompanied by certain ideas involving some kind of reference to a self”(KS 165): pride and humility, love and hatred. The fourth kind are those passions which belong to none of these three types: delight in the beautiful, revulsion from the ugly or disordered, sentiments of praise and blame in the presence of virtue and vice.

Kemp Smith thus classifies Hume’s direct passions into the second and the fourth type, the indirect into the third type, but neither of them into the first type. Hume’s division of the calm and the violent has almost no bearing in Kemp Smith’s classification, though he seems to assume that the fourth type composes the calm passions, as they involve “none of the violence of other passions”(KS 167).

Kemp Smith’s re-classification is plainly a misinterpretation of Hume’s intention. He fails to see that the whole structure of Hume’s system of passions depends on the basic division between the indirect and the direct, and that every passion must belong either to the direct or to the indirect. It is also a mistake to classify the calm passions into any fixed type or kind, as “a clam passion may easily be changed into a violent one”(T438) just as an idea changes into a belief when it is enlivened by some present impression.

Having introduced the three divisions for the system of the passions, Hume directly enters upon the discussion of a set of indirect passion, pride and humility, without giving any explanation why he begins with the indirect and not with the direct passions. A puzzle, not to say "bewilderment," might be our common reaction, as it seems a natural procedure to discuss the latter first: the direct passion arises "immediately from good or evil" whereas the indirect only "from the conjunction of other qualities"(T276). The “Dissertation on the Passions,” the later version of Book II, actually begins with the direct, but not with the indirect passions.

Annette Baier sounds quite plausible in observing that "to understand Book Two of the Treatise, and its place in the Treatise as a whole, we need to see why he there begins with pride, and why its "indirectness" is important"(Baier133). She calls our attention to that "the chosen opening of Book Two shows us something about its relation to the books that precede and follow it"(Baier 134). She thinks that Hume tries to show the connection with the preceding book by appealing to the “indirectness and contrariety” involved in this set of “opposite” passions, pride and humility, assuming that "reflectivity, indirectness, conflict are...themes that are carried over from Book One"(Baier134). She points out another sign of the connection, by observing that Book II is intended to "supplement Book One's incomplete account of self-awareness"(Baier133) as well as its lack of "our awareness of fellow persons"(ibid.). I agree with her opinion that the second book not only succeeds the same theme but also supplement the first. But, is it mainly the matter of Hume's "philosophical priorities" that made him select pride and humility as the opening topic of his new discussion?

In answering this question, I shall not here be concerned with the problem whether these themes of "reflectivity, indirectness, conflict" asserted by Baier are really “carried over from Book One"(Baier134), or whether he really had such "philosophical priorities" for the "indirectness" or "contrariety" as the main themes of his second book. What I try to show instead is that Hume had some serious systematic reason for choosing the two sets of indirect passions as the initial topic of his new discussion.

If Hume’s primary concern in selecting the opening subject of Book II ilies in showing the connection with the system of ideas he has established in Book I, the first subject of his discussion must be the indirect passions: the indirect passions are more like ideas in their nature whereas the direct more like sensations. The indirect passions are, though defined as "simple and uniform impressions"(T277), virtually complex or 'hybrid' impressions in the sense in which they are constituted of peculiar ideas as well as peculiar sensations, both "determined by an original and natural instinct"(T286). When a man is vain of his own beautiful house, “the object of the indirect passion is himself, and the cause is the beautiful house”(T279). The direct passions, on the other hand, are more or less like sensations, as they “frequently arise from a natural impulse or instinct”(T439) so that some of them, e.g. hunger, lust, a few other bodily appetites, produce good or evil rather than proceed from them. When I am angry, “I am actually possessed with the direct passion, and “in that emotion have no more reference to any other object, than when I am thirsty, or sick, or more than five feet high”(T415). The direct passions are therefore adequate for the discussion of the will and actions, which is delivered at the end of Book II.

Besides, if Hume really tries to show that his second book succeeds the preceding discussion in which he has just established the system of ideas in terms of the association of ideas, he has a good reason to introduce the principle of “the double association of ideas and impressions” before mentioning an entirely new principle which is irrelevant to the system of ideas, viz. “the association of impressions.” In other words, if any structural or systematic connection is contrived between the two treatments of ideas and of passions, the latter discussion must begin with such a subject which can be explained by the easy transition of the imagination along related perceptions. The indirect passion is adequate for this purpose, as the indirect passions are derived from the double relation of ideas and impressions: “it is by means of a transition arising from a double relation of impressions and ideas, pride and humility, love and hatred are produced”(T347).

In other words, if his basic strategy in the Treatise lies in holding the analogy between the two systems of ideas and of the passions, his primary concern in his discussion of the passions must lie in the demonstration how “those principles which forward the transition of ideas here concur with those which operate on the passions; and both uniting in one action, bestow on the mind a double impulse”(T284). The productive system of the double association of impressions and ideas then needs to be established first as the basis of his discussion of the passions. For, the new passions is for Hume a proof of “the great analogy betwixt that hypothesis [regarding the belief attending the judgments which we form from causation], and our present one of an impression and idea, that transfuse themselves into another impression and idea by means of their double relation”(T290). In short, in order to show the continuity of the theme which is carried over from the preceding discussion, the indirect passion is more convenient for Hume than the direct passion, because the former arises from the concurrence of both associations of impressions and of ideas whereas the latter arise frequently without being forwarded by the transition of ideas. Here seems the answer of Baier’s first question, why does Hume begin with the indirect, and not the direct passions?

This also solves Baier’s second puzzle, “why [does] Hume begin with pride rather than love”(Baier 133)? The opening subject must be pride rather than love, because the latter does not necessary follow the universal rule of the double association of impressions and ideas: "the passions of love may be excited by only one relation of different kind"(T351/2).

But, we may still wonder what made Hume select, among the variety of passions, the four particular ones, and spend so much space as the two third of Book II? Baier, by calling our attention to his “early concentration in Book Two on conflict and on emotional see-saws”(Baier 133), finds the answer of this question in that “they are also important topics for Hume’s later account of how morality depends on a calm steady sentiment, and of how its role is to prevent or end unwanted conflict, both within a person and between persons”(ibid.). The “literary as well as philosophical reasons” for his concentration on the two set of opposite or conflicting passions lies, according to her, not only in "the need to supplement Book One's incomplete account of self-awareness"(Baier133), but also in the need to supplement the lack of “our awareness of fellow persons”(ibid.). This is why, she suggests, Book I, at least in its first half, is "full of 'egotism'”(Baier 134) whereas Book II treats a person as an ordinary person “of flesh and blood"(Baier130) or "as a person among persons"(Baier133). She proceeds to argue that "in Book Two he seems to realize that the best picture of the human soul is the human body, so he can speak of 'qualities of our mind and body, that is self'"(Baier131). Baier’s view is not to be discussed here, though I have a different opinion from hers, as the answer of our present problem seems to lie elsewhere.

In order to explain Hume’s preoccupation with the origin and cause of these two sets of indirect passions, it must be insisted that these four affections “are determined to have self [or the other self] for their object, not only by a natural, but also by an original property”(T280), so that they are “placed as it were in a square”(T333): "pride is connected with humility, love with hatred, by their objects or ideas: pride with love, humility with hatred by their sensations or impressions"(ibid.). In other words, he is so exclusively concerned with the two sets of passions, precisely because he tries to demonstrate “the situation of the mind”(T396) in terms of the four indirect passions which are connected with each other by the double relation of impressions and ideas, and to establish it as the basis of the system of the passions. The production of the indirect passion depends on the transition of the imagination along the four sides of this square established by the similitude of sensation of pain or pleasure as well as by the similitude of ideas of self or of the other self. This “situation of the mind” is such a closed system that any foreign object, even "an ordinary stone," caught by this network system, would cause one of those four passions which, “being once raised, immediately turn our attention to ourselves"(T278) or to the others. For, “these passions are determined to have self [or the other self] for their object, not only by a natural, but also by an original property”(T280), so that “it is absolutely impossible, from the primary constitution of the mind, that these passions should ever look beyond self”(T286) or the other self, the latter of which eventually “turns our view to ourselves and makes think of our own qualities and circumstances” by “a greatest resemblance among all human creatures”(T318). He spends one full section of 14 pages for the eight “experiments” to show how the “easy or difficult transition of the imagination operates upon the passions, and facilitates or retards their transition”(T340), and to prove that, owing to this double-fold ties, none of these four passions can arise independently from the rest. To establish “the situation of the mind” as the basis of his system is a sufficient reason for Hume to spend more than a third of Book II, as it is “a clear proof that these two faculties of the passions and imagination are connected together, and that the relations of ideas have an influence upon the affections”(T340).

It may be probably worth adding that, when Hume mentions pride and humility, and love and hatred, they are meant to be "principal" passions which constitute families of similar variations. Love, for instance, is claimed to "show itself in the shape of tenderness, friendship, intimacy, esteem, good-will, and in many other appearances; which at the bottom are the same affections, and arise from the same causes, though with a small variation, which it is not necessary to give any particular account of"(T448). Hume confines himself to the "principal" passions "in their most simple and natural situation, without considering all the variations they may receive from the mixture of different views and reflections"(T447), because, he explains, "it is easy to imagine how a different situation of the object, or a different turn of thought, may change even the sensation of a passion"(T447/8).

The role of the direct passions

Hume's discussion of the passions is divided into three parts in which pride and humility, love and hatred, and the will and direct passions are discussed respectively. The first two parts are spent for the illustration of the cause and origin of the passions and to establish it as the universal rule that, “in order to make a perfect union among the passions, there is always required a double relation of impressions and ideas; nor is one relation sufficient for that purpose”(T419). This is because the production of a new but reflective impression is regarded by Hume as a proof of his hypothesis that "the transition of ideas must forward the transition of impressions"(T380). He has attained his desired result in the first and the second part of Book II, by having proved the exact correspondence between the two systems of the understanding and the passions through the demonstration that "it is by means of a transition arising from a double relation of impressions and ideas, pride and humility, love and hatred are produced"(T347).