A Treatise of Human Nature · Chapter
Part III: Of the Will and Direct Passions explained
This chapter examines the nature of the will and the direct passions, exploring how they arise from pain and pleasure and are influenced by reason, custom, and the imagination.
What happens
This chapter examines the nature of the will and the direct passions, exploring how they arise from pain and pleasure and are influenced by reason, custom, and the imagination. It discusses the causes and effects of passions like desire, aversion, hope, fear, and the influence of probability and uncertainty on these emotions.
Themes in this chapter
Passions and the Self
The chapter directly investigates the nature of the will and direct passions, their causes, and their effects on human action.
Custom and General Rules
The discussion of how custom and habit influence belief and the passions, particularly in relation to probability and the influence of general rules on our emotions.
Characters to notice
- David Hume
The author and primary voice, presenting his philosophical arguments on the will and passions.
Key passages
“The will is a direct passion, and the direct passions are those which arise immediately from good or evil, from pain or pleasure.”
The will is a direct passion, and direct passions are those that arise immediately from good or evil, pain or pleasure.
Defines the will as a direct passion arising from pain and pleasure.
“Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”
Reason is, and should only be, the slave of the passions, and can never claim any other role than to serve and obey them.
A key statement on the relationship between reason and passion, asserting the primacy of passion in motivating action.
“A passion is an original existence, or, if you will, modification of the mind, and contains not any representative quality, which renders it a copy of any other existence or modification.”
A passion is an original existence, or modification of the mind, and does not contain any representative quality that makes it a copy of any other existence or modification.
Explains that passions are not representations of other things, but are original existences in the mind.