A Treatise of Human Nature · Chapter
Section XI: Of the Love of Fame explained
Hume explores the secondary causes of pride and humility, focusing on the influence of reputation and the opinions of others.
What happens
Hume explores the secondary causes of pride and humility, focusing on the influence of reputation and the opinions of others. He introduces sympathy as the mechanism by which we receive the sentiments of others, and explains how this sympathy, combined with relations of resemblance, contiguity, and causation, converts ideas of others' affections into our own impressions. He argues that our desire for fame and aversion to infamy are not original instincts but derive from sympathy, as evidenced by our greater concern for the judgments of those we esteem and the fact that praise only pleases when it aligns with our own self-opinion.
Themes in this chapter
Sympathy and Social Influence
Hume details the mechanism of sympathy, showing how we receive and internalize the sentiments of others, which is central to understanding the love of fame.
Passions and the Self
The chapter examines how pride and humility are influenced by the opinions of others, linking the passions to our sense of self and reputation.
Characters to notice
- David Hume
Author and narrator, presenting his philosophical analysis of sympathy and its role in pride and humility.
Key passages
“No quality of human nature is more remarkable, both in itself and in its consequences, than that propensity we have to sympathize with others, and to receive by communication their inclinations and sentiments, however different from, or even contrary to our own.”
The most striking feature of human nature is our tendency to absorb the feelings and attitudes of those around us, even when they clash with our own.
Introduces the core concept of sympathy.
“The praises of others never give us much pleasure, unless they concur with our own opinion, and extol us for those qualities, in which we chiefly excel.”
We only enjoy praise when it matches our own self-assessment and highlights our actual strengths.
Illustrates that sympathy with others' opinions is filtered through self-opinion.