The Will in Hume's Treatise

The Will in Hume's Treatise R. F. STALLEY NEAR THE BEGINNING of Treatise, Book II, Part III, Hume offers the following definition of the will: "I desire it may be observ'd, that by the will, I mean nothing but the internal impression we feel and are conscious of, when we knowingly give rise to any new motion of our body, or new perception of our mind. This impression, like the preceding ones of pride and humility, love and hatred, 'tis impossible to define, and needless to discuss any farther..."(T. 399)? Most commentators have either ignored this definition altogether or have, at most, touched on it only briefly.' This could be because they have taken at its face value Hume's assertion that the topic needs no further discussion but it could also be for more substantial reasons. At least one recent commentator has claimed that the definition is strictly superfluous to Hume's main purposes. It is obvious, of course, that Hume needs an account of the mental component in action--without it his theory of human nature would be seriously incomplete--but it does not follow that he needs to speak of acts of will or volitions as introspectible mental occurrences. He could, it has been suggested, have used the terms 'will' and 'volition' as general descriptive terms for the process by which passions lead to action--a process about which he has plenty to say.3 We may, therefore, prefer to think of the definition of the will quoted above as an excrescence, especially since the very notion of acts of will has been brought into question by philosophers like Ryle and Wittgenstein. Hume, one might say, has been misled, either by ' References to the Treatise (T.), including those to the Appendix and Abstract, are to David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge, revised by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford, 1978). References to the first Enquiry are to David Hume, Enquries concerning the Human Understanding and concerning O~ePrinciplesof Morals, edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge,revised by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford, a976). ' Among those commentators I have consulted T. Penelhum (Hurae)[London x975], xIIt 17),deals most fully with the passage quoted. Others who have touched on Hume's theory of the willinclude: J. Laird, Hume's Philosophyof Human Nature (London, a934), 1ol-4; N. KempSmith , The Philosophyof David Hume (London, 1940, 435-39; and P. S. Ardal, Passionand Value in Hume's Treatise (Edinburgh, 1966), 8o-85, 98, s This viewis taken explicitlyby Penelhum. [41] 42 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 24:1 JANUARY 1986 philosophical tradition or by a mistaken phenomenology, into thinking that he must say something about volitions, but this account plays no real part in his theory. All he needs is his doctrine of passions as the causes of action. I shall argue against this dismissive interpretation. In doing so I shall maintain firstly that Hume's account is distinctive in the sense that it differs radically from those offered by most of his predecessors and contemporaries , and secondly that it is a necessary consequence of the premises on which Hume seeks to found his science of human nature. It follows, of course, that the account of the will is not an isolated or dispensable feature of his thought. Indeed it plays a central role in his philosophical psychology. To reject it is thus to demand a radical revision of Hume's entire system. 1. As it stands, Hume's definition does not explain exactly how the impression of the will is related to the motions of the body or perceptions of the mind to which we 'knowingly give rise'. It could even be a by-product of the activity? However, a passage in III, i, 1, well known in another context, clearly treats the will as the cause of the movement. Hume is there arguing that morality does not consist in any kind of relation. He maintains first that, so far as relations are concerned, there is no difference between the case of a human being who murders his parent and that of a sapling which grows up and kills the parent...