Calm Passions in Hume as Understood by Paxman and Ratcliffe’s concept of Existential Feeling: A Comparison
A significant portion of literature on Hume in recent years has focused on the nature of and importance of Hume’s distinction between calm and violent passions. This is for many reasons, but perhaps most prominently the fact that calm passions are a key part of Hume’s robust defense of his well known claim that “reason is, and ought only to be, a slave to the passions.” Hume’s argument relies on a crucial distinction between ideas and calm passions, despite being experienced very similarly. Using the arguments from various scholars regarding the nature and importance of calm passions in Hume’s work, I am going to attempt to introduce a novel framing of calm passions given modern work in phenomenology in an attempt to add to the conversation surrounding Hume’s ideas.
In his book Experiences of Depression: A study in Phenomenology, Matthew Ratcliffe argues that “most experiences of depression involve a change in the overall structure of experience” (15). He refers to this change as an ‘existential change’, writing that “Depression involves a disturbance of something fundamental to our lives, something that goes unnoticed when intact” and goes on to say that what is lost is a sort of ‘comfortable immersion’ in the world (15). Ratcliffe goes on to define particular cases of this comfortable immersion as ‘existential feelings’. My project in this paper will be to compare Hume’s theory of calm passions particularly as they are interpreted by Katharina Paxman in her paper “Imperceptible Impressions and Disorder in the Soul: A Characterization of the Distinction Between Calm and Violent Passions in Hume” to Ratcliffe’s theory of existential feeling. I focus on many attributes they share in human psychology, but given a possible key difference argue that they are nevertheless likely very different aspects of our experience. I then summarize my findings and recommend avenues for future research on the issue.
Existential Feeling
A brief summary of existential feelings is in order. As
previously mentioned, existential feelings as defined by Ratcliffe are about a
comfortable immersion in the world. They often are not associated with the high
emotional content Hume associates with violent passions, and even seem to be
more subtle sometimes than the low emotional content possessed by some calm
passions. Ratcliffe argues that part of why this is is that there is something
“pre-intentional” about them; they are not often not experienced as about
something in particular. Here is a list of examples: “feeling alive, dead,
distant, detached…disconnected, out of sorts, not oneself…in harmony with
things, at peace with things or part of things” (36). As we’ll see, calm
passions seem in line with the last few.
There are a few key features of existential feeling that will be important for this analysis. First, their variance in duration. Ratcliffe writes that “Some such experiences take the form of brief episodes, while others are more enduring. Indeed, they can persist for so long that they amount to character traits” (36). Given their pre-intentional nature, it would be unsurprising if there were cases where the duration of existential feelings seems ambiguous. Secondly, shifts in existential feeling do not have to be as clear and distinct as something like what may happen in a depressive episode. They can be more subtle. For example, one kind of existential feeling Ratcliffe identifies is what he refers to is “radical hope,” which he defines as “a context in which intentional states of the kind ‘I hope that p’ are possible” (108). In a major depressive episode, this context may be lost for a long time. But it is also possible to lose this context for a short period and/or in a less broad way. One example is not being able to imagine one particular aspect of moving forward as possible for a few minutes after hearing some shocking yet not particularly awful or life-changing news. “Pulling yourself together” plausibly often involves remembering and recapturing this context into your perspective. Lastly is Ratcliffe’s view that shifts in existential feeling are often felt as something having been lost: “the difference, the wrongness of it all, is very much present” (37).
Calm Passions in Hume
Now I will take a closer look at Hume’s theory of calm
passions, in spots particularly through the lens of Katharina Paxman’s paper.
Hume distinguishes between ideas and impressions (i.e.
sentiments, feelings). Ideas can be experienced as violent as the most intense
impressions, impressions can be experienced as calm as the tamest ideas. This
second phenomenon is how Hume believes we have mistaken calm passions for
reason. Crucially, when we say we feel we are reasoning calmly, that still
seems like a different category of experience than calm passions for Hume. This
is one reason why Paxman’s work on something other than intensity of feeling as
a characteristic of calm passion in Hume seems important to me.
Paxman argues that in addition to intensity of feeling, Hume also emphasizes the contrast of violence passions with ‘custom’. I found Paxman’s explanation of Hume’s description of custom in 2.3.5.1 to be quite clarifying: custom “refers both to the repetition of mental events in our lives, as well as to the effects these repetitions have on our tendencies towards association” (Paxman 272). Violence, then, involves contrast with these repetitions and thus disrupts one or more of our associative tendencies. In contrast, Hume has this to say about the calm passions: “that when a passion has once become a settled principle of action, and is the predominant inclination of the soul, it commonly produces no longer any sensible agitation” (2.3.4.1).
It is important to note that ‘any sensible agitation’ here, on Paxman’s reading, means more than just averse emotional reaction but also any sense of disorder. Additionally, Hume’s description of calm passions becoming “settled principles of action” and “predominant [inclinations] of the soul” is very interesting. These descriptors seem to go beyond the popular understanding of passions.
One last note. In 2.3.3.8 Hume describes at least some calm passions as “instincts originally planted in our natures.” He expands on this aspect of theirs in more detail in 2.2.5.3:
“We seldom reflect on what is beautiful or ugly, agreeable or disagreeable, without an emotion of pleasure or uneasiness; and tho’ these sensations appear not much in our common indolent way of thinking, ‘tis easy, either in reading or conversation, to discover them.”
pre-intentional yet still influence our experience in subtle but significant ways. I would like to emphasize that “pre-intentional” as an attribute of calm passions in Hume is not explicitly mentioned by Paxman.
Calm Passions Compared
with Existential Feeling
We are now in a position to compare Hume’s calm passions,
largely as understood by Paxman, with Ratcliffe’s concept of existential
feelings. In order to accomplish this, I will look at the attributes of calm
passions previously mentioned one at a time followed by a general
conclusion.
Hume, as mentioned, refers to the calm passions as ‘settled principles of action’ or ‘predominant inclinations of the soul.’ What precisely this entails seems hard to parse out. Are they something akin to an internal guide to living? Often times when we’re asked why we did something, our genuine answer is along the lines of “I’m not sure, it just felt like that’s what made sense.” This would not only account for their role as instincts but may reflect a little bit of the way they are “in a manner imperceptible” (2.1.1.3). Assuming this understanding, I think there is a case to be made that they share a similar role as existential feelings. Existential feelings are a general ‘way of being in the world’ that opens up certain kinds of specific perspectives and possibilities to us. Likewise, calm passions provide us with a set of perspectives of what can be done in our lives. Without appeal to reason, they are what make certain kinds of actions and paths seen as beneficial or right and others as harmful or wrong. And like existential feelings, the trick with them is that despite this, we do not often experience a strong or even weak emotional pull associated with them.
We can also compare the two by asking whether violent passions are similar to shifts in existential feeling. Like previously mentioned, violent passions on Paxman’s account are not exclusively strong emotions but rather any instance of contrast with our associative tendencies, the predominant inclinations of our soul. This seems in many ways parallel to what can happen in shifts in existential feeling. They’re not always experienced as heavy emotion, but are sometimes just as experienced as something being “not quite right” or “off.” I am not fully versed in Ratcliffe’s theory, but I would imagine he would agree that contrasting experience is one thing that can bring about small or large breaks in the generally ordered experience of existential feeling.
What I am more confident about is that he would agree with Hume that this kind contrast is a form of violence, but he would argue his theory helps account for another form: absence. Sometimes, a sense of order (particularly or generally) is just felt as lost. The contrast isn’t a new perspective lashing out against the instinctual one, but rather a loss of instinct. I actually think this is a case where overlap of, or at least a tight relation between, the two concepts makes sense. Hume lists “benevolence and resentment” and “the love of life” as two examples of calm passions (2.1.1.3). These things, at face value, seem so fundamental to our lives that any kind of violence to them shifts our perceptions of what ways of making sense of and participating in it are viable, almost logical. If we were to stop loving life, things may stop showing up as meaningful, valuable, or even possible. And as mentioned earlier, Ratcliffe defines one existential feeling, radical hope, as the ability to experience things as possible. If the relation to calm passions to our experience of possibility is as close as this analysis suggests it is, it may provide further explanation of why the calm passions are experienced as reason. We say an argument doesn’t make sense when it produces a contradiction: a nonsensical conclusion. Our experiences of calm passions seem to inform what appears to us as what is possible and what isn’t, which is commonly taken to be exactly the goal of reason.
We don’t normally speak of our calm passions or our existential feelings because they are such a fundamental part of our life that to try to articulate exactly how they work and how they are experienced by ourselves is actually quite difficult. Like existential feelings, it is often difficult to pinpoint the duration of any calm passion’s influence over us. We know a general “attitude” towards benevolence influences our lives and our choices, but it does so at a level where it can be difficult to put into words how. It does seem to be their pre-intentional nature that makes this particularly difficult, just like existential feelings. The last thing I will note is that Ratcliffe’s note that shifts in existential feelings are themselves felt as “present” may provide a valuable insight into describing the kind of “violence” against the calm passions that merely have to do with disorder. When something feels “off” yet we can’t attribute it to classical emotions, we tend to assume it’s us being reasonable; however, it might simply be the case that a violence to the calm passions is being experienced as “present.”
Perhaps the clearest contrast between calm passions in Hume on Paxman’s account and Ratcliffe’s account of existential feelings is that the calm passions primarily influence through their relation to custom. For Ratcliffe, existential feeling seems to be depicted as explanatorily prior to custom, or at least not as clearly related to it: “Her sense that she lacks grounding is itself an enduring feeling; her experience as a whole is characterized by some sense of instability, changeability, uncertainty, impermanence” (38). Where calm passions are influenced by custom, which is about particular repetitions of mental events in life, existential feeling seem to inform a (lack of) sense of custom themselves. In other words, calm passions rely on stability to be motivating while existential feelings are what provide a sense of stability.
Conclusion
In this paper, I introduced some contemplations of the relationship of Paxman’s interpretation of Hume’s theory of calm passions with Ratcliffe’s theory of existential feelings. They are both, as Hume describes, “in a manner imperceptible,” and I argued this is largely due to their shared feature of being pre-intentional. They both seem to subconsciously provide us with general attitudes and perspectives towards the world, both in terms of its possibilities and and its values. Additionally, violence to the calm passions appears to have important similarities to shifts in existential feeling, especially in the sense of experienced disorder contrasting with what the order that is usually experienced and “felt.” Ratcliffe’s theory may provide us with an important parallel to a particular kind of violence to calm passions: their absence. For example there seem to be cases where the calm passion of ‘love of life’ is not threatened by something contrasting like a hatred of life but rather is experienced as simply missing. Lastly and perhaps most importantly, I argued for why Ratcliffe’s theory of existential feeling can help us further understand why the calm passions are so easily mistaken for reason: they are a huge part of how we “make sense” of the world, and plausibly, avoid contradiction.
I think one clear area of further research is developing a more robust analysis of the relationship between existential feelings, calm passions, and customs. I think Hume is right that how our calm passions motivate is based largely off of our experience of repeated mental events. When we consider existential feelings, all sorts of questions begin to emerge. Do existential feelings shape how our associative tendencies operate, and consequently influence the motivational capabilities of the calm passions? Is absence of calm feeling a shift in existential feeling, or is it simply one more kind of violent passion? Given how fundamental both theories claim to be in our experience of our lives, there is a lot of complexity to consider in both their potential relations.
Works
Cited
1. Hume,
David. A Treatise of Human Nature. Edited by David Fate Norton and Mary
J Norton, Oxford University Press, 2000.
2. Paxman,
Katharina. “Imperceptible Impressions and Disorder in the Soul: A
Characterization of the Distinction Between Calm and Violent Passions in Hume.”
The Journal of Scottish Philosophy, vol. 13, no. 3, 2015, pp. 265–278.
3. Ratcliffe, Matthew. Experiences
of Depression: A Study in Phenomenology. Oxford
University
Press, 2015.
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