| OCR Text |
Show Chapter XIV. Hume's Metaethics 602 Hume argues, first, that the same objects - power, riches, beauty, personal merit - give rise to the same passions in all nations; and second, that new objects adapt themselves to an already existing passion by partaking of some general quality shared by its other objects, to which the mind is already disposed. Hence the rational principles describing the ways in which the passions typically operate provide an equally rational set of constraints on the ends or intentional objects those passions typically take. It would seem that the PIU principles of the passions do provide a positive set of constraints on the range of ends it is rational for a human agent to adopt. But this conclusion is mistaken. What is rational about the PIU principles of the passions, if anything, is the fact that they are, like other causal law, necessary, uniform, and general in their application. Moreover, like other causal law, they describe law-like and seemingly regular and predictable relations among given phenomena. It is the fact that they qualify as genuine principles which entitles us to think of them as rational. Similarly, for Hume, it is a certain kind of relation between abstract ideas that is rational, i.e. the inferentially correct and real one. In both cases, we are exercising our reason in so far as we investigate and determine the true - which is to say the uniform, universally valid, and "necessary" connections among given states of affairs. One may want to argue that Hume's principles of stability are rational in a further sense as well: As effective social rules and conventions, they are rational means to the achievement of individual ends, in that they are the most efficient ways of achieving various states of affairs desired by individuals, consistent with satisfying the common interest in social order. This argument can be illustrated by Hume's treatments of the origin of justice and private property discussed above (respectively, Sections 2 and 5). But in neither case can this be thought to imply that the states of affairs themselves to which the PIU principles apply are rational. That there is a logical and rational relation between the idea of being a bachelor and the idea of being an unmarried man does not suggest that either idea as such is rational. That there is a causal and probabilistically rational relation between the color of litmus paper and the acid solution in which it is dipped suggests the rationality neither of the color of the litmus paper nor of the relevant solution. And that there is a similar type of relation between the intensity of one's craving for a Black Forest Torte and its actual proximity, or between one's desire to retain one's own possessions and one's respect for those of others, suggests the rationality neither of the craving nor of the Torte nor of private property. The general point is clear: That there is a rationally discernible relation between the passions and the ends they try to achieve does not imply © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
