Sympathy and Benevolence in Hume's Moral Psychology

L. A. Selby-Bigge suggests that there is a significant difference between the moral psychology of Hume's Treatise and that of his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. In particular, he claims that the psychology of sympathy, which plays such a central role in the second and third books of the Treatise, "is almost entirely ignored in the Enquiry."¹ He then notes, "How it is possible to find room for sympathy in so atomistic or individualistic a psychology as Hume's, is one of the most interesting questions which are raised by his system."² Part of the difficulty in interpreting Hume's work is due, according to Selby-Bigge, to his use of "words and formulae," which is frequently "slovenly and indifferent."³ Hume's readers might find such a description to be particularly apt for his use of the term 'sympathy.' In the Treatise, for example, he identifies sympathy as a principle by which most, if not all, of one's passions and sentiments are animated (T363, cf. T593).⁴ Elsewhere, he describes this principle as a cognitive mechanism by which people "enter into" the sentiments of others (see, e.g., T362, 385-86). In the Enquiry, however, he seems to write as if it is merely a sentiment and uses the term 'sympathy' as a synonym for the terms 'benevolence' and 'humanity.' For instance, he says of a virtuous person, "The ideas of happiness, joy, triumph, prosperity, are connected with every circumstance of his character, and diffuse over our minds a pleasing sentiment of sympathy and humanity" (E 234; cf. E276), and in the second appendix to the second Enquiry, he writes about the "sentiment . . . of general benevolence, or humanity, or sympathy" (E298).⁵ Hume's equivocal use of terms causes Terence Penelhum to note, "By the time we come to the second Enquiry . . . the mechanism of sympathy drops out of sight."⁶

What exactly became of the mechanism, or principle, of sympathy is an issue on which there is little agreement. Selby-Bigge contends that Hume may have been displeased with his account of sympathy in the Treatise and that in the Enquiry "sympathy is another name for social feeling, humanity, benevolence, natural philanthropy, rather than the name of the process by which the social feeling has been constructed out of non-social or individual feeling."⁷ John Laird agrees that the sympathy of which Hume speaks in the Treatise becomes "natural philanthropy or fellow-feeling" in the Enquiry, but he contends that Selby-Bigge's "suggestion that Hume became intentionally reticent concerning the 'machinery' of sympathy is difficult to sustain."⁸ Nicholas Capaldi asserts that Hume is not merely reticent about identifying sympathy as a principle in the Enquiry but that he rejects it as a psychological mechanism from which benevolence is derived.⁹ Penelhum is ambivalent about the accuracy of Capaldi's reading but contends that if it is not accurate, then Hume's reference to the sentiment of humanity in the Enquiry "has to be construed as a shorthand for the details of sympathy that are spelled out in the Treatise."¹⁰ Others either focus their analyses on the moral psychology of the Treatise¹¹ or do not address the issue.¹² Thus, there is significant disagreement on how to interpret Hume's account of sympathy and, consequently, how to interpret the relationship between sympathy and benevolence in his moral psychology.

I intend to clarify these difficulties and to provide the interpretive groundwork that is necessary to understand a significant aspect of Hume's account of moral motivation. In particular, I will attempt to clarify not only his account of sympathy but also his account of the relationship between sympathy and benevolence. In so doing, I hope to elucidate "one of the most interesting questions" in Hume's moral psychology.¹³

The structure of the paper is...