A Treatise of Human Nature · Chapter
Section X: Of Property and Riches explained
Hume explores how property and riches produce pride through the double relation of impressions and ideas.
What happens
Hume explores how property and riches produce pride through the double relation of impressions and ideas. Property, as a close relation between person and object, transfers pleasure from the object to the self, generating pride. Riches, as the power to acquire property, similarly influence passions, even when not exercised, due to the idea of power and its probable exercise. The chapter also discusses how authority over others enhances pride through comparison, and how the uncertainty of another's power can cause uneasiness.
Themes in this chapter
Artificial Virtues and Justice
Hume references justice as potentially artificial, with property defined in relation to justice and moral equity.
Association of Ideas
Property creates a perfect relation of ideas between object and proprietor, facilitating the transition of affections.
Passions and the Self
Pride arises from property and riches through the double relation of impressions and ideas, with the self as object.
Characters to notice
- David Hume
Author and narrator, presenting the argument on property and riches.
Key passages
“property may be defined, such a relation betwixt a person and an object as permits him, but forbids any other, the free use and possession of it, without violating the laws of justice and moral equity.”
Property is a relationship between a person and an object that grants exclusive rights to use and possess it, consistent with justice and morality.
Defines property in relation to justice.
“riches are to be considered as the power of acquiring the property of what pleases; and it is only in this view they have any influence on the passions.”
Riches are the ability to obtain things that please us, and this power is what affects our passions.
Riches as power, not as intrinsic value.
“the distinction, which we sometimes make betwixt a power and the exercise of it, is entirely frivolous, and that neither man nor any other being ought ever to be thought possessed of any ability, unless it be exerted and put in action.”
The difference between having a power and using it is meaningless; a being only has an ability if it is actually exercised.
Philosophical view on power vs. exercise.
“But though this be strictly true in a just and philosophical way of thinking, it is certain it is not the philosophy of our passions; but that many things operate upon them by means of the idea and supposition of power, independent of its actual exercise.”
Even though this is philosophically correct, our passions are influenced by the mere idea of power, even if it is not used.
Passions respond to probable or possible power.