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Show Chapter XIV. Hume's Metaethics 586 between rational ends and rational motivation is surely not as intimate as Hume and Hutcheson appear to think. For even if we accept the necessary conjunction of a passion with its intentional object, this commits us to the necessary conjunction neither of the passion with its sufficient cause, nor of the passion with any particular end that passion may cause us to desire. Many things can cause us to feel, say, joy. Remembering something achieved or overcome may cause us to feel joyful. The thing achieved or overcome is then the intentional object of the passion, and also originally causes it. But it can also be the intentional object of the passion without being a sufficient cause of it, as would be the case if it were not the memory of our previous achievements, but rather someone's present praise of them, which causes us to feel joy in those past achievements. Similarly, the feeling of joy in our past achievements may extend into joyful anticipation of future ones. Here the object of the feeling of joy would be a desired end, i.e. anticipated future achievements, while its cause would be the remembered past ones. Thus an identifiable passion - joy in something - is logically independent of both its cause and the end it causes us to desire. Either can function as the intentional object of the passion. Although we require some such intentional object in order to be able to identify the passion, this object need be strictly identifiable with neither its cause nor its desired end. However, either its cause or its desired end may motivate an agent to action. Joy or pride in our past achievements may move us to take on some new challenge, independently of our enthusiasm for that new project in itself. Or, it may be just and only our enthusiasm for that new project which moves us to action, independently of the feelings of anxiety, fear, uncertainty, or selfdoubt it may simultaneously cause us to have. Since a passion can take either its cause or its end as its intentional object, the immunity to reason of its end does not necessarily imply the immunity to reason of that passion itself. Now suppose it true, as has already been argued, that a passion cannot be unreasonable or irrational, even if it must contain an intentional object. Does this imply that its ends also cannot be unreasonable or irrational? At first glance it would appear that this does not follow. For if the passion can be distinguished from its desired end (as, for example, in the case where the passion's intentional object is its cause but its cause is not its end: My joyful memory of past achievements causes me to take on a new challenge, even though I do not desire that challenge in its own right), then to show that a passion cannot be irrational proves nothing about its end. Apparently, the passion could be immune to rational criticism although its end were not. But within Hume's framework, this appearance is misleading. For although an end can be detached from some passions, such as joy, enthusiasm, grief, or reluctance, it cannot, for Hume, be detached from desire or aversion © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
