Hume on Sympathy, Humanity, and the Passions

Abstract David Hume describes sympathy as our capacity to communicate to one another our passions, opinions, and sentiments. Explaining how sympathy works and the various effects of sympathy comprises part of his ‘science of man’. Besides considering the force that sympathy has in deepening and expanding our passionate experience of ourselves and others, especially with regard to evaluative emotions such as pride or respect, the chapter also examines the principle of comparison, which highlights some of the vulnerabilities arising from our social interdependence. Its second aim is to examine critically sympathy as a source of the moral sentiments that reflect our approbation of virtue and blame of vice. Our dual role as moral spectators and moral agents, along with sympathy or our sense of humanity, allows us to establish a common point of view, with a shared moral discourse, that gives rise to our moral sentiments of praise and blame.