Mandeville, Hutcheson and Hume on Pride and Honor

Abstract

The thesis argues that Mandeville, Hutcheson, and Hume shared an original conceptionof pride as a useful passion in society. It also identifies the interplay of ideas that took partamongst these authors during the 1730s (via text and correspondence), concerning this verypassion and its manifestation, honour.The chapter entitled Genealogy of Pride is dedicated to tracking pride's problematic status amongst key authors before the XVIII.th century. Particularly noteworthy are theneo-Agustians, who would shape Mandeville's views; the Stoics, whom Hutcheson identifiedwith; and Malebranche, who would influence Hume. The chapter on Mandeville focuses on hislater work, Origin of Honour, in order to show his conjectural account of the evolution ofmorality: pride (later named self-liking) must be satiated in the context of social norms thatdirect moral ends. The chapter named Hutcheson and the Sense of Honour explains how Hutcheson developed a strategy to contain Mandeville's account. Hutcheson emphasised the need for the sense of honour to adhere to the moral sense, and corrected his earlier views on pride to accommodate for the marriage of the two senses. Last but not least, the chapter onHume sheds light on his less studied Book II "Of the Passions" from the Treatise. It does so by contextualising Hume's ideas and demonstrating that Mandeville and Hutcheson's argument served as a catalysis. Hume dedicated much attention to pride for it is social (the exemplary passion to illustrate the indirect passions, his novel classification). More over, Hume argued that honour and custom lead us toward our moral ends. On top of this, Hume found a middle ground between two divergent views on pride; he criticised Hutcheson's reliance on the moral sense and the sense of honour to allow for pride, and he corrected Mandeville's insistence on pride,and its external form, honour, being the vicious basis of morality. Hume bridged two rigid view son pride and in doing so, he sought to offer a more balanced view of human nature as a whole.