A Treatise of Human Nature · Chapter
Section VI: Of Benevolence and Anger explained
Hume explores the distinction between love and hatred on one hand, and benevolence and anger on the other.
What happens
Hume explores the distinction between love and hatred on one hand, and benevolence and anger on the other. He argues that while love and hatred are pure emotions, benevolence and anger are distinct desires that are conjoined with them by the original constitution of the mind, not by necessity.
Themes in this chapter
Passions and the Self
Hume examines the nature of love and hatred, and their connection to benevolence and anger, highlighting the complexity of the passions.
Custom and General Rules
The conjunction of benevolence and anger with love and hatred is attributed to the original constitution of the mind, not to rational necessity.
Characters to notice
- David Hume
Author of the Treatise, presenting his philosophical analysis of the passions.
Key passages
“Ideas may be compared to the extension and solidity of matter, and impressions, especially reflective ones, to colours, tastes, smells and other sensible qualities.”
Ideas are like the solid, impenetrable aspects of matter, while impressions, particularly reflective ones, are like sensory qualities that can blend together.
Hume uses an analogy to explain the difference between ideas and impressions.
“The passions of love and hatred are always followed by, or rather conjoined with benevolence and anger.”
Love and hatred are always accompanied by the desires of benevolence and anger, respectively.
This is the central observation of the section.
“But this is evidently contrary to experience. For though it is certain we never love any person without desiring his happiness, nor hate any without wishing his misery, yet these desires arise only upon the ideas of the happiness or misery of our friend or enemy being presented by the imagination, and are not absolutely essential to love and hatred.”
It is not true that love and hatred are the same as the desires for happiness or misery, because these desires only appear when we think about the person's well-being, and are not always present.
Hume argues against the hypothesis that love and hatred are identical to benevolence and anger.