Hume clearly distinguishes between better and worse causal inferences, notably in his “Rules by which to judge of causes and effects” in Treatise 1.3.15. Although Hume describes these rules as “all the logic I think proper to employ” in his philosophy (Treatise 1.3.15.11), the literature has paid relatively little attention to it. This chapter will investigate these eight rules, as well as their basis in Hume’s discussion of general rules. The paper then examines two controversial causal inferences in light of these rules by which to judge of causes and effects: first, the postulation of the calm passions; second, the missing shade of blue. As Hume himself recognizes, the correct application of these rules can be an enigmatic affair. Nevertheless, I find that there is reason to think that while Hume abides by these rules in his postulation of the calm passions, the missing shade of blue constitutes a gross violation of these same rules.

The introduction to this Critical Guide offers some background to Hume’s classic A Treatise of Human Nature, originally published in three books in 1739 and 1740. The introduction then briefly broaches the debate whether Hume leaves the doctrines of the Treatise behind with his later works, and it defends the importance of the Treatise to Hume’s corpus and to subsequent and contemporary philosophical thought. It presents a summary of the fourteen critical essays contained in the volume, which include seven articles on Hume’s epistemology and philosophy of mind, six articles on the passions and ethics, and one essay on the early reception of the Treatise. Several of these essays highlight the unity of Hume’s approach in the Treatise, showing how the principles of Hume’s epistemology and psychology in Book 1 are foundational to his discussion of the passions and of morality in Books 2 and 3.

Hume writes that it is “no inconsiderable part of science barely to know the different operations of the mind, to separate them from each other, to class them under their proper heads, and to correct all that seeming disorder, in which they lie involved, when made the object of reflection and enquiry.” He describes this branch of knowledge as “mental geography.” Yet while his mental geography of thought is now well understood, his mental geography of feeling—specifically, of the non-sensory “secondary impressions” or “impressions of reflection” that he discusses in Books 2 and 3 of A Treatise of Human Nature—has not been. This essay seeks to clarify Hume’s doctrines in these two Books by explaining the nature and classification of the five kinds of secondary impressions that Hume distinguishes: (1) sensible agitations (i.e., “emotions” in one sense of that term); (2) feelings of or from mental operations; (3) volitions; (4) passions (both calm and violent); and (5) sentiments of taste.

For many readers, Hume’s lengthy analysis of the passions in Book 2 has questionable philosophical returns compared to the rest of the Treatise. This paper provides a guide to a philosophically rich reading of Book 2. Instead of a disconnected series of individual arguments, Book 2 is the second half of Hume’s theory of human cognition as started in Book 1. Guided by a comparison with Hume’s A Dissertation on the Passions, I argue that Hume is not merely applying Book 1 principles to the passions, but introducing new principles governing how feeling attends to and transfers between our perceptions. Employing his methodology of experimental reasoning, Hume identifies differences between ideas and impressions, and explores how their interactions impact the movement and quality of affectivity. This is a significant expansion on the associationism of Book 1 of the Treatise, providing more sophisticated explanations and predictions concerning mental life.

The essay offers a novel interpretation of Hume’s notoriously thorny “Conclusion” to Book 1 of the Treatise of Human Nature that aims at reconciling Hume’s positive experimental science with his skepticism. I argue that Hume’s initial doubts are far less serious than they appear. I distinguish between the motivating forces of curiosity and ambition and Hume’s commitment to philosophical principles. Hume reveals his commitment to these principles after his dramatic epistemological crisis when he characterizes his “blind submission” to the senses and the understanding as the most perfect display of his “sceptical disposition and principles.” Hume’s sceptical principles, I argue, are essentially the principles guiding his experimental science. I offer an interpretation of Hume’s so-called “Title Principle” and how it fits within Hume’s “true scepticism.”

In this chapter, I set the stage for understanding how the Shepherd conceptualizes God as an enslaver and the role of the holy spirit in the maintenance of the enslaved–enslaver relationship. I begin by demonstrating how the Shepherd portrays the holy spirit as a somatic entity sent by God that dwells within the bodies of God’s enslaved persons and is called “the enslaver who dwells within you,” who is capable of influencing behaviors, reporting back to God, and leaving the body if frustrated. The human body itself is imagined to be a porous entity in which various spirits, including the holy spirit and other passion-causing spirits, can dwell. I explore how the Shepherd portrays the body of God’s enslaved persons as a vessel with a limited amount of space, within which spirits compete for room and control and upon which God’s enslaved are encouraged to act obediently in order to remain under the purview of the enslaving holy spirit.

In this book, I have tried to make sense of legitimacy at the international level, especially in relation to international law. I have paid a lot of attention to international law, in particular aligned with the demands of legitimacy and justice. But international law is only one aspect of the forces and the ecosystem that shape international order. Therefore, alone it cannot engineer the change that the international system requires today. This change has to be part of a more comprehensive approach. Here is not the place to offer a full account of the areas on which research could concentrate in the future to further encourage justice and legitimacy at the international level. However, it is worthwhile to present a general overview of these areas. In particular, three domains offer a possible road map for facilitating a constructive path forward: globalization, emotions and passions in social life, and the geopolitics of tomorrow.

This chapter considers ascetic experience. It provides historical background for the ascetic movement in the early centuries of Christianity and highlights the texts that can serve as sources for the examination of this type of experience. It shows that ascetic experience is characterized by processes of withdrawal and repentance, both physical and emotional, which try to eliminate temptation, combat passions, and purify the heart. This is achieved through practices of vigilance and discernment that involve a close monitoring of emotions and patterns of thought and action. Such practices result in a purification and reorientation of the self that move through self-denial and self-control to transformation. Ascetic experience thus emerges as a way of grappling with the deeply experienced shortcomings of the human condition through processes of abnegation and a radical break with “ordinary” life.

The first movement, at least on the surface, is in the traditional form Berlioz knew well from Beethoven and others and that he had used in earlier overtures: a slow opening and a long faster movement. But the opening Largo is too long to be considered a mere ‘introduction’. Rather than beginning the Allegro with a sharply defined motive suitable for development, Berlioz presents a long melody, the idée fixe, and bases most of the movement on it, breaking it down and reassembling it in various forms, including a big climax and a wistful coda. The connection of the Allegro to sonata form has been an area of disagreement ever since, considered in more detail in Chapter 10. Major revisions undertaken after the first performance changed the movement’s proportions; the original version cannot be recovered.

This volume is intended to introduce students and general readers to the theory and practice of rhetoric. Part I offers classic statements of rhetoric in Plato (in the Gorgias), Aristotle (in the Art of Rhetoric) and other seminal thinkers—both what rhetoric is and what its potential virtues and vices, strengths and weaknesses, are. The rest of Part I is devoted to explaining Aristotle’s classic and influential account of rhetoric: its three main kinds (deliberative, epideictic, and judicial) and the three “modes of persuasion” or proofs characteristic of it (those that appeal to the speaker’s ethos or character, to the pathos or emotion of the audience, and to logos or the logic of the speech itself). Part II offers a broad range of exemplary speeches, ancient and modern, grouped thematically. There is a preference throughout for political speeches, as distinguished from essays, letters, and other forms of communication; and our collection boasts a diversity of speakers.

This section consists of excerpts from Aristotles Rhetoric in which Aristotle discusses the three modes of persuasion (ethos, pathos, and logos) and of speeches illustrating each mode. There are three speeches that illustrate how one may be persuasive by appealing to passions (pathos), three that appeal to the good character of the speaker (ethos), and two that appeal to rational arguments (logos). The speeches range from the fifth century BC to the twenty-first century of our era.

This chapter explores Evagrius of Pontus’ contribution to a uniquely Christian construction of the human being as knowing subject and known object. Evagrius includes distress (λύπη) among the ‘Eight Evil Thoughts’. Evagrius, following Paul, distinguishes between ‘worldly’ or ‘demonic’ λύπη and godly λύπη. This chapter probes this distinction in context of ancient passion-lists, which create affective lexica and cultural scripts for the articulation and management of emotions. In them λύπη is a deleterious emotion and an impediment to proper cognition. Evagrius emulates these lists but modifies their logic: he replaces classical with biblical exemplars, and he inserts the Pauline distinction between godly and worldly λύπη. Evagrius thus differentiates between positive and negative emotion on the basis of cause or intentional object. This results in λύπη becoming a valid dimension of human knowing, while creating a new need for a hermeneutic of λύπη and organisation of human emotion and knowledge.

This chapter turns to the emotional sources of Johnson’s poetical criticism. The chapter examines the contrast between Johnson’s response to the overblown dramas of Dryden and his enthusiasm for the power of Alexander’s Feast (1697). Attention then moves to Johnson’s taste for poetry deriving from genuine sorrow when this is compared with the confected grievings of Milton’s Lycidas. But Johnson’s emotional consciousness eschews excess. His neo-Latin verse, for example, seems to shield Johnson from memories that might be too painful to express in English. Reinforcing this vulnerability are Johnson’s emotional state on the death of his wife and his disordered feelings at the news of the widowed Mrs. Thrale’s marriage to Piozzi. Unbearable loss is then explored by reference to a scene from Rasselas and through a passage from the Preface to Shakespeare on tragedy. The deaths of Shakespeare’s heroines caused him intense pain; the combination of tragic with comic scenes as “mingled” drama supplied its own intensity, as Hamlet illustrates.

Plutarch the philosopher is present in all his texts. His allegiance is not in doubt: he is a follower of Plato, who is open-minded to other schools, as far as their views are reconcilable with Plato’s. He is above all committed to the dialogical spirit pervading Plato’s works. In several more technical treatises, he develops the core of his philosophical views. These have to do with the composition of the world-soul and its image, the human soul. From there, Plutarch develops his views on moral psychology: it is the task of reason, the divine presence in us, to control the irrational passions. This idea forms the basis of various texts in which the therapy of the soul and the development of character are the central goals. Plutarch’s concept of philosophy and his doctrinal stance are quite different from what we find in later Platonism. Later doxographical reports on Plutarch are not always reliable.

David Hume and Adam Smith were contemporaries, interlocutors, compatriots, and friends, who, along with Hutcheson, helped shape the remarkable period of intellectual activity in eighteenth-century Scotland known as the Scottish Enlightenment. They inherited Hutcheson’s sentimentalist approach: a form of moral empiricism that is opposed to ethical rationalism and that continues to find resonance today. Hume’s version has had the greatest influence, including in contemporary discussion.

For his part, Adam Smith is, of course, best known for his writings on economics. But Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments is arguably one of the greatest works on moral psychology ever written. Smith shows the ubiquity of imaginative perspective-taking in our mental moral lives, both in attributing mental states to others (and in everyday normative judgments of the fittingness, or “propriety” as Smith calls it, of attitudes to the objects they have in view). Moreover, Smith connects fellow-feeling with mutual respect and accountability. Our capacity to take on others’ perspectives and regulate our conduct toward them from an informed and impartial second-personal point of view figures centrally both in Smith’s account of justice.

The Coda reflects upon the central arguments of the book as a whole, via an exploration of Edward Reynolds’s A treatise of the passions and faculties of the soule of man (1640). The elaborate metaphors used in Reynolds’s treatise have been used by some critics to suggest that, as Gail Kern Paster puts it, the passions ‘act within the body just as the forces of wind and waves act in the natural world’. By contrast, I consider Reynolds’s treatise in relation to his printed sermons, and argue that his conception of sympathy and the passions was spiritual, intellectual, and rhetorical. The fact that Reynolds draws upon variety of classical texts – including works by Homer, Virgil, Horace, and Seneca – as well as scientific and religious concepts, reminds us of the plurality and complexity of early modern emotional experience. This final case study thus demonstrates how my revised history of sympathy speaks to wider critical and methodological debates about early modern passions – and the history of emotions more generally.

The Introduction interrogates the current critical view of early modern sympathy as a physical or occult process. It proposes that literary critics and historians have neglected the coexistence of the emotional and physical senses of the word sympathy in the early modern period. Exploring a broader range of intellectual frameworks – including religious culture, literary theories of imitation, and humanist pedagogy – complicates the idea that sympathy was primarily an automatic or a humoral phenomenon. The Introduction also argues that translations of European vernacular texts, including Du Bartas’s The Historie of Judith (1584) and Montaigne’s Essais (1603), played a significant role in introducing the affective meaning of sympathy to English readers. This expanding emotional vocabulary – along with other material and social changes in the period – led to an increased theorization of pity and compassion, whereby individuals came to be regarded as a connected network of distinct selves rather than a homogenous social group. In this way, the emergence of sympathy as a term and concept prompted a reconsideration of the nature and boundaries of early modern selfhood.