Course Information

Philosophy. Study the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality and existence.

No aspect of life is more important to the quality and meaning of our existence than the passionate embrace of all things good and beautiful, making life worth living. But negative emotions can also make existence an intolerable burden. Many philosophers before and after David Hume opposed morality to the passions, understanding ‘reason’ as the appropriate foundation for choosing right from wrong and how to live a good live. Hume proposed that the true basis of all morality is emotion, and that reason is only in the service of those often unconscious, feelings. The course will begin with an in-depth analysis of Hume’s moral philosophy. We will then track his theory to the best secular ethicists of the 20th and 21st century.

Aims

The aim of the course is to engage students in a productive and enjoyable experience based on a reassessment of life and how best to live it. We will discuss new perspectives on the role of reason vs emotions as presented by the philosophy of David Hume and his 20th c followers. These perspectives can be used as tools to think through personal issues, social situations, and cultural/political issues. The class is itself a social think-tank and participants are encouraged to use their experiences as class material to examine our shared emotional states.

Outcomes

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

• understand key concepts in the philosophy of David Hume, Martha Nussbaum and others
• discuss insight into the workings of human emotion and how they are connected to morality, and secular ethics
• participate in shared discussions and analyses of what we, as human beings, think makes life worth living
• relate these ideas to your personal life, social and relationship situations and broad cultural issues.

Content

David Hume: Personal and historical context

David Hume’s (1711–1776) wide-ranging philosophical works discuss the emotions at length, most notably in his Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40), which devotes the second of its three books to the passions, as well as in the Dissertation on the Passions. Hume does not merely discuss the emotions theoretically; he narrates the philosophical experience of them in Book I of the Treatise. This section treats the narrator’s emotional landscape as a response to his skeptical conclusions about reason, sense-perception, and the self. During a depressive period in Hume’s youth, he feels himself “a strange, uncouth monster,” shunned by society and marooned in a skeptical isolation. Hume treats this unhappy, skeptical view as a kind of illness, which eventually receives a cure from “nature herself.”

Hume: Reason and passion

Hume holds that the passions are not themselves directly subject to rational evaluation. In fact, it seems something of a category error to think that they could be either rational or irrational. Reasoning is a matter of connecting various ideas in order to come to a belief; it may apply to, or even form, the circumstances under which passions arise. But reason can generate no impulse by itself. There are multiple puzzles here, one of which is the problem of abstract concepts such as justice: what moves humanity to develop the practices and conventions of justice or promise-keeping in the first place.

Martha Nussbaum

Martha Nussbaum (b.1947) is an American philosopher and the current Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, where she is jointly appointed in the law school and the philosophy department. Her 2001 book Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions engaged her in a dialogue with Hume on the role of emotions. Nussbaum’s treatise offers a lucid counterpoint to the old idea that our emotions are merely animal energies, or primal impulses wholly separate from our cognition. Instead, she argues that they are a centerpiece of thought, and that any substantive theory of ethics necessitates an understanding of the emotions. Nussbaum continued developing her theory of emotions in subsequent works: Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice (2013), Anger and Forgiveness (2016), The Cosmopolitan Tradition (2019).

Simon Blackburn and Peter Singer

We will then look at two other philosophers who have engaged with the issue of the role of emotions in ethics: The English philosopher Simon Blackburn and Australian ethicist Peter Singer. Both have made significant contributions to the field and their disagreements are an important aspect of the ongoing debate.

Elizabeth Readcliffe

Lastly, we will look at a new approach to Hume’s theses. In her book Hume, Passion, and Action (2018), Elizabeth Radcliffe argues that Hume’s famous statement that "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" has been much misunderstood in the history of ethical philosophy. This misunderstanding is based on a problematic representation of what Hume means by ‘reason’ and ‘passion’ and how they are connected.

Intended audience

Anyone with a general interest in philosophy and the course themes.

Prerequisites

None

Delivery style

Lecture/seminar

Materials

Course handouts and readings are distributed electronically using Dropbox.

Recommended reading

David Hume primary texts:

• A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-1740)
• An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)
• An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751)
• Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779)
• Oxford has recent scholarly editions of the Treatise (Norton & Norton, 2007), the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Beauchamp, 2000), and the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (Beauchamp, 1998)

Martha Nussbaum primary texts:

• Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (2001)
• Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law (2004)
• The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (2013)
• Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice (2013)
• “Transitional Anger” article, Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 2015, Vol. 1
• Anger and Forgiveness (2016)
• The Cosmopolitan Tradition (2019)

Simon Blackburn:

• Ruling Passions (2000)

Peter Singer:

• How Are We to Live? Ethics in an Age of Self-Interest (1995)

Elizabeth Readcliffe:

• Hume, Passion, and Action (2018)