The Myth of Original Existence

Hume Studies Volume 28, Number 2, November 2002, pp. 195-230 The Myth of Original Existence CASS WELLER The myth of original existence is a story told by many readers of Hume.1 According to it, the author of the Treatise argues that no passion is unreasonable or contrary to reason on the grounds that passions have no ingredient ideas, and, having no ingredient ideas, are in no position to disagree with or be contrary to the product of reason, belief. While Hume doesn't actually say that passions contain no ideas to provide them with their objects, he does say that "a passion is an original existence... and contains not any representative quality , which renders it a copy of any other existence" (T 2.3.3.5; SBN 415).21 shall refer to the uninterpreted argument in this passage as The Argument. My question is whether the originality of a passion at T 2.3.3.5 is its lack of intentional or representational content, as many authors, even those most sympathetic to Hume, suppose.3 Annette Barer concedes the standard reading of The Argument but dismisses it so read as silly because it is inconsistent with the explanatory role played by the intentional content of the passions in the rest of the Treatise. Moreover, since she regards the argument as dialectically inept, because question begging, and in any case not central to Hume's real concerns, she sees no great philosophical loss in removing it from play. Rachel Cohon,4 however, also representing the standard interpretative tradition, argues that the loss of the argument deprives Hume of his best argument against his rationalist opponents. She sums up the interpretative dilemma this way. (i) Read Hume as committed to The Argument on the standard interpretation and acquiesce in the traditional ascription to Hume of an atomist theory of the passions according to which, at best, the representational content of a passion is completely external to it and, at worst, is not representational content Cass Weiler is Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA. e-mail: cjwr@u.washington.edu 196 Cass Weller at all, passions being assimilated to tickles and itches.5 Or (ii) interpret passions6 or impressions of reflection, including pride, desire, and moral approval, as having full-blooded intentional content, and deprive Hume of his master argument against his rationalist opponents. I reject this dilemma and propose a way out. If the view I propose appears hopelessly quixotic, at the very least I hope to show that the standard interpretation of The Argument isn't obvious and inevitable. To these ends, I approach the notorious passage at T 2.3.3.5 by setting out the minimum required for the success of Hume's argument for the claim that passion doesn't oppose reason. I show how Hume's text can be read in line with the minimum requirement and that it is thus consistent with other Humean doctrines presupposing intentionality on the part of the passions. I then consider the similar argument at T 3.1.1.9 (SBN 458). Finally, I turn to a more general discussion of Hume's account of the relation of a passion and its object. Before beginning, I should say a word about intentionality. I understand it quite broadly. I assume that intentionality involves presentation of an object in some guise or other. I assume that an impression of red, understood as an act, is intentional because, for Hume, it is an act of visual awareness of something red in the character of a determinate shade of red.7 Accordingly, in speaking of the passions or impressions of reflection as intentional states, I understand them to be directed to objects in some guise or other. The intentionality of an episode of passion—anger, for example—would involve the presentation, in some guise or other, of the person at whom, under that guise, one is angry. The intentionality of an episode of moral approval would involve the presentation in some guise or other of the character of whom one approves under that guise.8 Below, I discuss the manner of integration of a passion and presentation of...

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