Charles Goldhaber (Haverford College), "Hume’s Skeptical Philosophy and the Moderation of Pride"
Forthcoming, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
Hume wanted his readers to appreciate “the imperfections and narrow limits of human understanding.”[1] But why? What good comes from seeing ourselves as ignorant?
Hume’s answer is: A whole lot!
First, it’s interesting theoretically. A great part of the appeal of philosophy is that it teaches us about ourselves. We can ask, for example, about how our minds work. And we might find it fascinating to learn that they don’t work as well as we thought.
While this discovery is an important part of Hume’s “science of man,”[2] Hume places greater emphasis on the practical effects of appreciating it. He tells us that a sense of our own ignorance can counteract dogmatism, make us better at reasoning, and even promote social cohesion.
How is that supposed to work? Hume isn’t very clear about this. Neither are his interpreters, despite their acknowledging Hume’s interest in these practical effects.
But that doesn’t mean Hume has no explanation. He repeats several times that skeptical philosophy—philosophy which draws attention to “the wretched condition, weakness, and disorder of [our] faculties”[3]—achieves its benefits by acting on the passions. In particular, skeptical philosophy moderates our pride. And it’s by moderating our pride that such philosophy makes us better believers and interlocutors.
For Hume, pride is a passion that comes in varying degrees of intensity. It only ever has one object: oneself. But it has many causes. When we take pleasure in anything we see as our own, like our courage, clothes, or cooking skills, we may feel pride. But we mostly feel pride only when we find that our nice things or abilities are much better, or rarer, than others’.
For example, “the Learned,” a “stubborn independent Race of Mortals” who have “chosen for their Portion the higher and more difficult Operations of the Mind”[4] (read: academics), feel pride when they take themselves to be much more intelligent than others. The feeling of pride then causes them to overestimate their abilities, making them cling to their own views, and numbing them to the insights of others. Removing some degree of pride would benefit them.
That’s just what Hume intends to offer when he prescribes “a small tincture of Pyrrhonism” to “any of the learned [who are] inclined…to haughtiness and obstinacy.” This dose of skeptical philosophy is to “abate their pride.” It does so “by shewing them, that the few advantages, which they may have attained over their fellows, are but inconsiderable, if compared with the universal perplexity and confusion, which is inherent in human nature.”[5] In other words, when skeptical philosophy teaches us how far we all fall below an imagined ideal of intelligence, any relatively higher intelligence no longer appears to be exceptionally so. We all seem to be on more or less the same level. So comparisons of intelligence no longer produce pride.
Diminishing pride has positive effects on our belief forming habits because pride often has adverse effects. For Hume, taking pride in our beliefs causes us to embrace them more strongly. Moreover, pride in one’s membership in a group of like-minded people encourages us to interact only with that group. Both mechanisms calcify our beliefs, apart from any evidence. Removing pride then removes these pride-mediated forms of dogmatism.
It also makes us get along better with one another. As Hume emphasizes, “the proud can never endure the proud.”[6] But most of us are excessively proud; “every one almost has a strong propensity to this vice.”[7] For this reason, nearly everyone with the patience to read skeptical philosophy would benefit from its moderation of our pride.
This is not to say that pride is always bad! Indeed, Hume takes “a due degree of pride” to be a virtue; pride is useful insofar as it “gives us a confidence and assurance in all our projects and enterprizes.”[8] For this reason, it’s important that we do not destroy all our pride.
Luckily, Hume thinks there is little danger that skeptical philosophy will do that. This is because skeptical arguments are difficult to keep in mind, and we tend to forget their lessons about human ignorance as soon as we turn our attention back to life’s practical affairs. As a result, skeptical philosophy’s effects on pride are short lasting, and unlikely to make us overly humble.
Hume’s discussion of the benefits of skeptical philosophy should interest us for several reasons. It teaches us about the value of skeptical philosophy for a broadly humanistic education. If Hume is right, inculcating a sense of human ignorance could combat dogmatic thinking in our peers, students, and selves. It would then have an important place in fostering a community of letters in which people, having been to some degree humbled by their experience of skepticism, become genuinely receptive to the ideas of others.
On top of this, Hume’s discussions give us a reason to include his own “very sceptical”[9] philosophy in curricula. I think this point will hold true even if his skeptical conclusions give us a reason to reject his British empiricist approach to the mind.
So, in short, Hume is here to stay, and in no small part because his philosophy does a great job at making us humble.
Link to paper: https://philpapers.org/rec/GOLHSP-3
DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.12997
[1] A 28, SBN 657. Citations styles follow the conventions of davidhume.org.
[2] T Intro.4, SBN xv.
[3] T 1.4.7.1, SBN 263.
[4] EW 6, Mil 535; EW 1, Mil 533.
[5] EHU 12.24, SBN 161
[6] T 3.3.2.7, SBN 596
[7] T 3.3.2.10, SBN 597–98
[8] T 3.3.2.8, SBN 596-7
[9] A 28, SBN 657.
I know quite a few contrarians that would let this fly right over their heads.