Synthese (2006) 152:371–391

DOI 10.1007/s11229-006-9004-5

O R I G I NA L PA P E R

Whence avidity? Hume’s psychology and the origins

of justice

Gerald J. Postema

Published online: 19 September 2006

© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2006

Abstract Hume’s account of the roots of justice focuses on the need to secure pos-
session against the corrosive effects of unrestrained avidity. The reasons for this focus
lie deep in his understanding of human psychology, especially, the mimetic passions
shaped by the principles of sympathy, social referencing, and reversal comparison.
The need for esteem drives human beings to attach their pride to those things they
think are especially valued by those whom they especially admire. Most predominant
among these goods are riches and possessions. Intense competition for these scarce
goods puts the material and psychological survival of all in jeopardy. Conventions
of justice are needed to civilize and channel avidity, transforming it from open and
deadly violence and secret envy and malice into productive and public emulation.

Keywords Emulation · Esteem · Greed · Mimetic passions · Sympathy

Brutes do not admire each other. A horse does not admire his companion. Not
that there is no rivalry between them in a race, but that is of no consequence; for,
when in the stable, the heaviest and most ill-formed does not give up his
oats to another, as men would have others do to them.

Pascal, Pensées (1958, §401)

Introduction

Justice, Hume tells us, is an artificial virtue, artificial, not because it is arbitrary, or
because it lacks roots in persisting human need, but rather because it depends for
its existence on human reflection, communication, and construction. Yet, although

G. J. Postema (B)
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599–3125, USA
e-mail: gpostema@email.unc.edu
372 Synthese (2006) 152:371–391

“justice be artificial, the sense of its morality is natural” (T 3.3.6.4, SBN 619).1 Hume’s
project in Book III of his Treatise was to understand justice in the manner of the “anat-
omist” (T 1.4.7.23 and 3.3.6.6, SBN 263, 620). He sought to explain it by tracing the
nature and operation of justice to fundamental principles of human nature. This is, at
bottom if not exclusively, a naturalistic project. Not only did he seek to explain how
it is that “we naturally approve of” justice, but he also undertook to explain how this
artificial virtue could arise naturally, by the operation of principles deep in human
nature, principles that give structure and direction to human passions.
In Hume’s story, our sense of justice has its roots in a natural convention. The
conventions of justice fix the basic terms of interaction and cooperation in human
communities in the face of persisting conflicts of interest and principle. The career
of justice begins within a group when there emerges among its members a common
sense of interest, a sense born in recognition of the convergence of individual inter-
ests, but which soon transcends and transforms this recognition.2 The conventions
of justice are invented by people who view their practical social problems from a
perspective defined by this common sense of interest. Of course, if we are familiar
with contemporary political philosophy, and its preference for naturalistic and espe-
cially evolutionary explanations, we will find congenial his focus on the “origin” of
justice in the emergence of cooperative conventions. Yet, Hume’s account of these
origins of justice is remarkable in many respects and not a little puzzling. Remarkably,
Hume anticipated the key question: what is it about human nature that not only pits
us against each other in deadly conflict, but also enables us to resolve, or at least
substantially mitigate, the conflict, and restrain our passions so as to make possible
decent, humane, and even fulfilling social life together? Hume splits this into two
questions. First, what is it in human nature that puts us into opposition such that we
need conventions of justice? Second, what is it in human nature that makes it possible
for us to overcome this opposition and collectively embrace these conventions? That
is, what in human nature makes justice both necessary and possible? Book II of the
Treatise is devoted to the task of answering this two-part question. In this essay, I will
focus on the first part of this question and the problems Hume’s answer throws up.
Famously, Hume locates the opposition necessitating the conventions of justice in
the instability of relations between human beings and their material goods. This inse-
curity is rooted, he argues, in the “interested passion” by which he means not generic
self-interest, but a very specific form of it, namely, “the avidity … of acquiring goods
and possessions for ourselves and our nearest friends” (T 3.2.2.12, SBN 491–492). This
narrow focus on conventions of property, however, is puzzling to 21st -century eyes.
Ordering property relations and distribution of wealth, admittedly, is a part of justice,
but it is only a part, and not obviously the most important part. Hume’s restriction is
even more surprising in light of the long tradition of reflections on the foundations
of natural law to which Hume’s theory belongs (perhaps obliquely). Epicurus, for
1 I will adhere to the following conventions when referring to Hume’s main texts. For A Treatise of
Human Nature, T (followed by the number of the book, part, section, and paragraph) = Hume (2000)
and SBN (followed by page number) = Hume (1978). For An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of
Morals, EPM (followed by section and paragraph) = Hume (1998) and SBN (followed by page num-
ber) = Hume (1975). For Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, E (followed by page number) = Hume
(1985). For The History of England, H (followed by volume and page numbers) = Hume (1983). For
A Dissertation on the Passions, D (followed by section, paragraph and page number) = Hume (1898).
2 This characterization rests on an interpretation of Hume’s account, which I find compelling, but I
leave to another occasion the task of defending it. Nothing in what follows depends on this interpre-
tation; I mention it only to set up the issues I will address in this essay.
Synthese (2006) 152:371–391 373

example, wrote, “Justice was never anything per se, but a contract regularly arising at
some place or other in people’s dealings with one another, over not harming or being
harmed …” (Long & Sedley 1987, p. 127). According to this source of the contract
tradition, justice was necessary to curb the universal inclination to violence, the ability
and inclination to inflict harm on others. In Hume’s day, this view tended to be associ-
ated with Hobbesian political theory. This association may not have been altogether
fair, since in Leviathan Hobbes makes clear that the three fundamental causes of the
“state of war” are glory, competition, and diffidence—violence being only their most
visible and virulent offspring (Hobbes 1996, chap. 13). Yet, in the widely read De
Cive, Hobbes seemed to encourage this reading. “The cause of men’s fear of each
other”, he wrote, “lies partly in their natural equality, partly in their willingness to
hurt each other… . In the state of nature there is in all men a will to do harm” (Hobbes
1998, I3 and 4). (Hobbes goes on to trace this willingness to do harm in motives of
vainglory (inanis gloria) and modesty.) Pufendorf, too, for all his insistence on human
sociality, embraced the Epicurean doctrine. The need for human sociality lay in the
brute fact that human beings “have a greater tendency to do harm than any of the
beasts” (Pufendorf 1991, I.3.4).
However, Hume insists that it is not competition over “the internal satisfaction of
our mind,” nor “the external advantages of our body,” for which the conventions of
justice are needed, but only insecurity over external goods, “such possessions as we
have acquired by our industry and good fortune.” His reasoning: the first sort of goods
are entirely secure without such conventions, being inaccessible to others; the second,
while they “may be ravish’d from us, but can be of no advantage to him who deprives
us of them” (T 3.2.2.7, SBN 487). This leaves only the third sort—property, riches,
and wealth. Hume’s argument is astonishingly brief and unpersuasive, especially to
readers who would have had, as Hume must have assumed, the Epicurean paradigm
in mind.
Thus, the questions cannot be escaped: Why property? Whence avidity? Answers
to these questions will decisively shape our understanding of Hume’s account of jus-
tice, and our assessment of its plausibility. I will address the preliminary questions in
this paper and leave for another occasion the task of drawing out their implications
for Hume’s theory of justice as a whole.

Propriety and the social constitution

Part of the explanation for Hume’s focus on property, no doubt, is historical. Rooted
in Roman Law, the traditional definition of justice—render to each his due (suum
cuique tribuere)—was broad and encompassing, but typically that which was “due”
was understood in terms of external goods, and even more specifically in terms of real
property. Philosophers in the modern era of no lesser stature than Hobbes and Kant
found the slide from suum cuique to proprietas difficult to resist (Waldron 1999, p. 47).
In his epistle dedicatory to De Cive Hobbes wrote, “when I turned my thoughts to
the inquiry about natural justice I was alerted by the very name of justice (by which is
meant a constant will to give every man his right) to ask first how it is that anyone ever
spoke of something as his own rather than another’s”, which prompted the further
question, “for whose benefit and under what necessity, when all things belonged to
all men, they preferred that each man should have things that belonged to himself
alone”? (Hobbes 1998, pp. 5–6). History can perhaps explain what might otherwise
appear to be an equivocation.
374 Synthese (2006) 152:371–391

The law of real property was the core of English Common Law, from its origins
and well into the 18th century, and neither Scots law nor the law on the European
continent differed markedly in this respect. What is more, this was not just a pre-
occupation of lawyers, for “[p]roperty is one of the central tropes of 18th century
discourse, crucial to debates in public law, political argument, and political, economic,
and moral philosophy”, according to one recent historian (Gordon 1995, p. 95). This
reflected the social fact that property determined not only economic position, but
also political power and personal status. As Thompson, the great historian of 18th
century Britain, writes, “In the first decades of the 18th century … Land remained
the index of influence, the plinth on which power was erected” (Thompson 1991, 16).
Moreover, property, while rooted in external goods and land, was viewed not merely
as wealth, but, following the Justinian formula, as “propriety”—that which is proper
or appropriate or due to a person, where “proper” was understood in terms of what
is necessary to keep good order. Property consisted in the resources that enabled
one to function in one’s role and to do one’s part in keeping good order (Rose 1991,
pp. 232–233). The institution of property was not simply about things, moveable or
immoveable, but about people and social relations. The law of property was the core
of the social constitution.
It should not be surprising, then, that, when Hume turned to the issue of the origins
and fundamental structure of social relations, he offered an account of the origins and
structure of relations of property. For Hume, the social fundament was material, that
is to say economic, a matter structured by property relations. Property was not all
there was to justice, but it was the core, and once this social fundament was secured,
he thought, the political superstructure could be erected. Indeed, he argued, it was
the very success of this foundation-securing project that gave rise to the need for
government and law. However, as keen an observer of society as he was, Hume was
an even keener observer of human psychology. He traced the importance of property
for the social constitution to sources in the human heart.
It was common in the eighteenth century political discourse to link property and
personality. For example, early in the century there was an important debate over
property qualifications for public office (Klein 1995, pp. 222–223). A distinction
between landed property and “moneyed” (i.e., commercial) property played a key
role in the debate, and these two forms of property were tied directly to distinct
bundles of psychological traits. Owners of landed property, the Tories argued, were
reliable, stable, committed to the nation, due to the permanence of land, its necessary
inclusion in the realm, and hence dependence on the protection and well-being of
the country. Dependability, patriotism, and civic-mindedness were their inevitable
characteristics. In contrast, owners of moveable wealth were unreliable, liable to run
to some other country at the first sign of distress at home. Partiality and narrow civic
vision throw the motivations of moneyed owners into a permanently cynical light. In
this common view, property shaped personality.
Hume also linked property and personality, the social and the psychological, but in
reverse direction. The Treatise seeks explanations in human psychology—in the pas-
sions—for social, moral, and political phenomena, even those widely taken to be basic.
In this, of course, Hobbes among others led the way. Indeed, in his epistle dedictory
to De Cive, Hobbes anticipated Hume’s focus on avidity (Hobbes called it “greed”).

I saw that war and every kind of calamity must necessarily follow from commu-
nity in things, as men came into violent conflict over their use: a thing all seek
Synthese (2006) 152:371–391 375

by nature to avoid. Thus I obtained two absolutely certain postulates of human

nature, one, the postulate of human greed by which each man insists upon his
own private use of common property; the other, the postulate of natural reason,
by which each man strives to avoid violent death as the supreme evil in nature.
(Hobbes 1998, p. 6)
The key difference between the strategies of these two British philosophers lies in
the fact that what Hobbes was willing to take as postulate, Hume took as hypothesis
needing a deeper explanation. He sought to trace avidity, like self-interest and sociality
generally, to deeper sources in human nature. In Hume’s theory of the passions are to
be found his view of the roots of avidity and an explanation of its special importance
for his account of the nature and origins of justice.

Avidity, avarice, and ambition

In De Officiis, Cicero traces unjust acts to fear and avarice, the latter being the more
common (Cicero 1991, I.24). People seek riches both to meet their basic needs for life
and to enjoy its pleasures; however, Cicero argues, “men of greater spirit” are driven
to acquire wealth in order to secure influence and pre-eminence in the republic. He
suggests that, while there are natural limits on desires of the first sort, the latter are
unlimited (Cicero 1991, I.25). Hume’s account of the psychological roots and social
manifestations of avidity sounds in a distinctively Ciceronian mode.
The Treatise speaks of “avidity … of acquiring goods and possessions for ourselves
and our nearest friends” (T 3.2.2.12, SBN 491–492). Here, and often elsewhere in
his writings, “avidity” carries the sense of extreme eagerness or ardent desire,3 but
this desire is focused on acquiring possessions—“external goods,” especially riches and
power.4 Avidity in this context is synonymous with grasping acquisitiveness, greed, and
avarice—it is, according to Cicero, “a violent opinion about money (or material goods),
as if it were vehemently to be desired and sought after” (Cicero 1877, IV.xi). Frequently
Hume uses “avarice” in the place of or alongside “avidity” (E 113, 370). Often in such
cases, avidity is associated with plunder, spoil, extortion, and rapine (H v. I, 6, 11, 62; v.
II, 69, 174). An interesting example of this can be found in Hume’s account of attacks
on Jews during the reigns of Henry III and Edward I. Of the former, Hume wrote,
Although these acts of violence (of Henry’s and his predecessors) against the
Jews proceeded much from bigotry, they were still more derived from avidity
and rapine. So far from desiring in that age to convert them, it was enacted by
law in France, that, if any Jew embraced Christianity, he forfeited all his goods,
without exception, to the king or his superior lord. These plunderers were care-
ful, lest the profits, accruing from their dominion over that unhappy race, should
be diminished by their conversion. (H v. II, 69)
Edward I, on the pretense that Jews had “adulterated the coin”, pursued an even
more determined and cruel program of confiscation and persecution. At one time
in London alone, 280 Jews were hanged for the crime and the houses, lands, and

3 The Oxford English Dictionary gives this as the first definition of the word. For Hume’s use of
“avidity” in this sense, see EPM 5.31, SBN 223; H v. III, 16; v. V, 149, 300, 380.
4 For examples, of this possession-specific form, see T 3.2.2.13, SBN 492. See also Hume, H v. I, 6, 17,
20, 53; v. II, 19, 28, 106; v. IV, 296, 298; v. VI, 195, 199, 243.
376 Synthese (2006) 152:371–391

goods of large numbers of Jews were confiscated by the crown. “[L]est it should be
suspected that the riches of the sufferers were the chief part of their guilt,” writes
Hume with obvious irony, Edward I, unlike the French of the time, “ordered a moiety
of the money, raised by these confiscations, to be set apart, and bestowed upon such
as were willing to be converted to Christianity.” But few took up the offer, so Edward
undertook to drive them from England.
Although the arbitrary talliages and exactions, levied upon them, had yielded
a constant and a considerable revenue to the crown; Edward, prompted by his
zeal and his rapacity, resolved some time after to purge the kingdom entirely
of that hated race, and to seize to himself at once their whole property as the
reward of his labour. He left them only money sufficient to bear their charges
into foreign countries, where new persecutions and extortions awaited them:
But the inhabitants of the cinque-ports, imitating the bigotry and avidity of their
sovereign, despoiled most of them of this small pittance, and even threw many
of them into the sea. (H v. II, 77)
Evidently, Hume recognized that unconstrained avidity and avarice will use what-
ever means are ready to hand, even extreme violence. Dispossession of “the external
advantages of our body” (T 3.2.2.7, SBN 487) may not be the ultimate threat in the
state of nature, but Hume did not deny that physical violence was a common and effec-
tive means of taking possession of the external goods of others. Baier is right to stress
that in Hume’s account of the pre-justice state—the environment of justice—parties
are prone to avidity and not to unrestrained blood-thirsty aggression (Baier 1991,
222–223). This marks an important difference between Hume’s account of the “state
of nature” and the familiar Hobbesian account (following the tradition established
by Epicurus). Yet, Hume was not so naïve to think that physical violence would not
be in the arsenal of means for pursuing avidity-driven objectives of the parties in the
pre-justice environment.
In his essay, “Of Avarice,” first appearing in 1741, shortly after publication of the
Treatise (and later withdrawn), Hume identifies avarice as the vice of old men or men
of “cold tempers, where all the other affections are extinct; and the mind being inca-
pable of remaining without some passion or pursuit, at last finds out this monstrously
absurd one” (E 571). This “frosty” and “spiritless” passion is the vice of misers, not
the hot, driving passion of greed and avidity that contemplates the use of violence
to pile up its booty. Avarice differs sharply from avidity in two respects. It is, first
of all, utterly single-minded: the miser is focused exclusively on his hoard; he seeks
to conceal, rather than display his treasure. “Damned to the mines, an equal fate
betides/the slave that digs it, and the slave that hides.”5 So absorbed in his treasure,
the miser is incapable of “regard to reputation, to friendship, or to pleasure”. The
avarice of the miser is not only single-minded, it is also solipsistic. Utterly indifferent
to the stranger’s gaze, the opinions and sentiments of others make no impression on
his soul and hence cannot rein in his greed. “Accordingly”, Hume concludes, “we
find no vice so irreclaimable as avarice”. In contrast, for the avidity-driven person
such single-minded solipsism is impossible. “When the temper is warm and full of
vigour,” Hume writes, “it naturally shoots out more ways than one” and produces
other, related passions that counter and constrain it. “’Tis impossible for a person of
that temper, however bent on any pursuit, to be deprived of all sense of shame, or all

5 Hume (E 572) quotes Alexander Pope’s, Epistle III, “Of the Use of Riches”.
Synthese (2006) 152:371–391 377

regard to the sentiments of mankind. His friends must have some influence over him”
(Essays, p. 571).
Thus, possession-focused avidity—“love of gain” (T 3.2.2.13, SBN 492)—is more
than an ardent desire for external goods; it is never simply focused on possessions. Like
Cicero, Hume traces its drive to a desire for pre-eminence. Hume, in his History, links
hot-blooded avarice to ambition: “avarice is commonly nothing but a species of ambi-
tion, and is chiefly incited by the prospect of regard, distinction, and consideration,
which attend on riches” (H v. III, 73). Avidity, the driving force behind the discovery
and formation of the conventions of justice, is an irreducibly social passion. A person
driven by avidity lives not by his own inner gyroscope, like Rousseau’s savage, but
rather is ever guided by radar, living solely “in the opinion of others”, as Hume’s erratic
Swiss friend put it (Rousseau 1973, 112).6 Like Rousseau, Hume believed that in the
essential social nature of this passion lies the root of its excesses, but, unlike Rousseau,
Hume found hope for its governance in this same social nature. Although the avarice
of the miser is irredeemable, avidity can be curbed, he thought, by the terrors of reli-
gion (H v. I, 6), by the informal bonds of affection in the family (T 3.2.2.4, SBN 486),
and ultimately even by itself (T 3.2.2.13, SBN 492). This understanding of avidity-ava-
rice runs through Hume’s later writings, especially his Essays and History, but it was
first articulated and defended in the Treatise, to which we can now turn our attention.

Sympathy, comparison, and the mimetic passions

Hume built his theory of the passions on the foundation of a small number of funda-
mental psychological principles that operate singly, in combination, and sometimes
in competition throughout human cognitive and affective experience. The most fun-
damental, perhaps, is the principle of association on which most of Treatise Book I is
constructed. Hume adds two more principles in Book II: sympathy and the contextual
principle (a special case of which is the social referencing principle). From these he
derives a third, his principle of comparison (more specifically, reversal-comparison).7 I
will sketch these principles briefly.8 They will enable us to explain why Hume thought
avidity was a driving force at the fictional dawn of the conventions of justice.

Sympathy and referencing

For Hume, sympathy is neither an emotion nor a motive, but rather, the fundamen-
tal human capacity of “easy communication of sentiments from one thinking being
to another” (T 2.2.5.15, SBN 363) which is responsible for the development, com-
bination, and transmission of all human sentiments, and for the development of a
secure and coherent sense of self. Although Hume’s account of the sympathy’s typical
mode of operation is complex, the core elements can be stated simply. First, through
observation (or an exercise of imagination) one encounters another “thinking being”

6 For the images of gyroscope and radar see Riesman (1950, 26).
7 I use the terms “contextual principle,” “social referencing principle,” “contrast principle,” and
“reversal-comparison” for the psychological phenomena Hume identifies. Hume tends to refer to
them indiscriminately with the term “comparison”, perhaps because, although they are different
phenomena, they are very closely related and their operation is often indistinguishable in experience.
8 This section draws on a longer study (Postema 2005) that extends and revises the account I defended
in Postema (2000).
378 Synthese (2006) 152:371–391

experiencing some sentiment or passion. This observation yields an idea of the other
party’s sentiment. When the idea is combined with recognition of its likeness to one-
self and of its sentiment to something in one’s own experience, it is transformed into
a passion—the idea is brought home and one experiences “the very passion itself”
(T 2.1.11.3–7, SBN 317–319). Hume adds, however, that, although a sense of resem-
blance to oneself and one’s experiences is operative, “our own person is not the object
of any passion; nor is that any thing, that fixes our attention on ourselves” (T 2.2.2.17,
SBN 340, emphasis added).
A second fundamental principle, the contextual principle, works often, but not
always, in tandem with sympathy. Frequently, and in a variety of different settings,
Hume observes that human beings “always judge more of objects by comparison than
from their intrinsic worth and value” (T 2.2.8.2, SBN 372; see also T 2.1.6.4, 2.2.8.8,
and 3.3.2.4, SBN 291, 375, 593). This principle is at work in our attempts to make
sense of our perceptual experience, in our emotional responses to objects around us,
in our evaluations of the actions of others, and even in our judgments of ourselves.
It shapes every aspect of human experience. When describing its operation, Hume
often says simply that our grasp, representation, or appreciation of the nature of
an object is greatly influenced by the objects in the context of our experience of it.
However, sometimes Hume identifies a key term in this context: the opinions and
judgments of others. “Our opinions of all kinds are strongly affected by society and
sympathy,” he maintains (D 152). Because the opinions and judgments of others are
highly salient in the context of human experience, the contextual principle involves
what contemporary developmental psychologists call “social referencing”—a kind of
double triangulation in which our cognitive, affective, or evaluative grasp of an object
of experience is shaped by comparison with other objects and with other people’s
opinions of or affective responses to those objects. Call this version of the contextual
principle, the social referencing principle. Sometimes, the opinions referenced belong
to people close to us, or to people with whom we directly interact, but the social refer-
ent may also be congealed in social customs or general rules. Our individual responses
to sensory input are shaped by patterns and customary rules that we learn early in our
lives in interaction with other human beings.

Contrast and comparison

Hume identifies two corollaries of the contextual principle: the contrast principle and
its offspring, the principle of reversal-comparison. Hume observes that objects of our
experience “appear greater or less by a comparison with others” (T 2.2.8.9, SBN 375).
This contrast principle is familiar: “What should I do to make myself look attractive
to women?” asks the little king in the Wizard of Id strip. “Hire Quasimodo as a
sidekick”, his fortune teller advises him. Contrast increases the magnitude of great
things in our perception and judgment when compared with lesser things, and, more
generally, features of one kind of thing are enhanced when contrasted with things
possessing opposite or sharply different properties. While this influence can lead us
astray, it is still indispensable for a just grasp of things because “where we cannot by
some contrast enhance their value, we are apt to overlook what is essentially good in
them” (T 2.1.6.4, SBN 291). Like the principle of association, this is a very general
feature of our receptive and perceptive system.
The contrast principle has especially important effects on our psychic life and
social interactions when it shapes our passions. Applying the contrast principle to
Synthese (2006) 152:371–391 379

situations in which individuals observe the good or bad fortunes of their fellows,
Hume concludes,
‘Tis evident we must receive a greater or less satisfaction or uneasiness from
reflecting on our own condition and circumstances, in proportion as they appear
more or less fortunate or unhappy, in proportion to the degrees of riches and
power, and merit, and reputation, which we think ourselves possest of. Now
as we seldom judge of objects from their intrinsic value, but from our notions
of them from a comparison with other objects; it follows, that according as we
observe a greater or less share of happiness or misery in others, we must make
an estimate of our own, and feel a consequent pain or pleasure. The misery of
another gives us a more lively idea of our happiness, and his happiness of our
misery. (T 2.2.8.8, SBN 375)
This account of the joint operation of the contrast and contextual referencing princi-
ples parallels Hume’s account of sympathy. It is another way in which human beings
communicate to each other “the actions of (their) mind[s]” (T 2.2.4.4, SBN 353). The
contrast principle is presented here to explain why “the action” communicated in some
cases is not the other person’s sentiment, but a sentiment of the opposite conative
valence. It explains why sometimes we experience envy or malice—“pity reverst”—
rather than compassion. Hume calls this the comparison principle, but to sharpen the
contrast between it and the contextual principle, I will call it reversal-comparison.
Reversal-comparison is active in the generation of many of our passions, Hume
observed. Sometimes sympathy and comparison combine to produce compound pas-
sions. Respect is a combination of sympathy-induced regard for the good qualities
of its object, and thus “love” or esteem for their possessor, and comparison-induced
“humility,” a kind of painful recognition of one’s own relative lack of such qualities. In
this mixture, love or esteem tends to be the more prominent. Similarly, contempt is a
mixture of comparison-induced pride in one’s own advantages and sympathy-induced
“hate” of the person for her mean condition; pride is in this case the stronger partner
(T 2.2.10.3–4, SBN 390; EPM 6.2.33 n, SBN 248 n).
Malice and envy involve additional psychic movements. These passions manifest
not only reversal-comparison, but also a depth of feeling and a second reversal that is
not present in some of reversal-comparison’s less virulent strains.9 Envy and malice
are both linked to “anger” which they resemble in their “whole bent or tendency”
(T 2.2.9.2–4, SBN 381–382). The pain I feel in my own condition moves me to actions
designed to bring pain to the persons I envy, in an attempt to relieve my pain and to
find pleasure in their misfortune. The malicious person torments and humiliates his
victim to boost his self-satisfaction (or to rebuild his shattered psychic foundations).
The envying person, as Bacon observed, thinks “other Mens Harmes, a Redemption
of their owne Sufferings” (Bacon 1985, p. 28).
The comparison principle yields envy and malice only in certain contexts, Hume
maintains. They occur only where there is a certain degree and kind of “resemblance
and proximity” between the envier and the envied, the malicious person and his vic-
tim. “A common soldier”, Hume observes, “bears no such envy to his general as to
his sergeant or corporal; nor does an eminent writer meet with so great jealousy in
common hackney scribblers, as in authors, that more nearly approach him.” Far from
the greater disproportion creating the greater uneasiness from the comparison, “great
9 For example, the feeling of contentment that, according to Lucretius, arises when one observes
shipwreck victims from the safety of the harbor (T 3.3.2.5, SBN 594).
380 Synthese (2006) 152:371–391

disproportion cuts off the relation, and either keeps us from comparing ourselves with
what is remote from us, or diminishes the effects of the comparison” (T 2.2.8.13; SBN
377).10 Perhaps the most prominent measure of distance Hume has in mind is social
rank, but he is aware that “resemblance” can be salient in many different dimensions.
Where envy takes hold, Hesiod wrote, “potter is furious with potter and craftsman
with craftsman”, singers envy singers, and even beggars are envious of beggars (Walcot
1978, p. 9).11 Similarly, Hume observes that poets envy other poets, adding, however,
that they do not envy philosophers or even poets of a different kind, of a different
nation, or of a different age. “All these differences”, he says, “prevent or weaken
the comparison, and consequently the passion” (T 2.2.8.15, SBN 378). The proximity,
ultimately, depends on a “bond or connecting quality join(ing) them in the imagina-
tion” (T 2.2.8.13, SBN 378). That is, the resemblance or difference depends on some
comparison class that is salient and especially important for the envier.
Why is proximity important? Students of these passions often locate the source
of envy and malice in rivalry. Hume agrees, although mere rivalry, in the sense of
opposed interests and competitive behavior, is not enough to generate envy or mal-
ice, he thinks. Rivalry amongst those in some proximity to each other, however, is
another matter. Social proximity, Aristotle explained, is important because the suc-
cess of kin, peers, or neighbors stands as a reproach to enviers; in Bacon’s words, it
“doth upbraid unto them their owne Fortunes; And pointeth at them, and commeth
oftner into their remembrance, and incurreth likewise more into the note of other”
(Bacon 1985, p. 28). Envy, grief at another’s success, reflects an unhappy admiration
of that person, admiration concealed from the envier and turned back on him as a
reproach (Aristotle 1968, II.10, 1388a17). For self-reproach to take hold there must
be some respect, important to the envier, in which the object of envy and he are
neighbors or peers. There must be some relevant and telling points of comparison
between them that serve as measures for the envier’s self-assessment. Paul Valéry,
echoing Hume, observed that we hate most “those who are what we would like to be
ourselves; a hatred all the keener because this state is so closely wrapped up with the
person whom we hate” (Epstein 2003, p. 65).

Mimetic passions, mirrored selves

The social referencing principle is strongest, in Hume’s view, when it comes to shaping
the life of the passions. Our passions would have no stable existence in our experience,
he maintains, if they were not “seconded by the opinions and sentiments of others”
(T 2.1.11.1, SBN 316); “we can form no wish, which has not a reference to society”, he
observes, for all our passions have their “animating principle” in the communicated
sentiments of others, “nor would they have any force, were we to abstract entirely from
the thoughts and sentiments of others” (T 2.2.5.15, SBN 363). Thus, “if a (newcomer
from a foreign world) full-grown, and of the same nature with ourselves, were on a
sudden transported into our world, he would be very much embarrassed with every

10 This theme is familiar to readers of classical literature and philosophy. Aristotle, for example,
writes that we “envy those near to [us] in time and place and age and reputation” but not “people ten
thousand years in the future … nor those [we] regard as inferior or much superior” (Aristotle 1991,
II.10, 1388a 4–11).
11 Aristotle quotes this passage from Hesiod (Works and Days, verses 25–26) in his discussion of
how friendship can turn to enmity under conditions of rivalry-generated envy (Aristotle 1991, II.4,
1381b15–20 and II.10, 1388a15–16).
Synthese (2006) 152:371–391 381

object, and would not readily find what degree of love or hatred, pride or humility, or
any other passion he ought to attribute to it” (T 2.1.6.9, SBN 293f). The visitor, despite
having “the same nature” as we have, would be unable to participate in our rituals
and practices, but even more he would be unable to respond coherently to his natural
and social environment. Others teach us concretely “what degree of love or hatred,
pride or humility, or any other passion [one] ought to attribute” to an object, relation,
or experience (ibid). The communicated experience and sentiments of others with
whom we interact enable us to discriminate objects of our indeterminate feelings and
give shape and significance to our emotional responses, thereby leading us to acquire
a sense of their proper objects and due limits. What we experience, not just how we
talk about that experience, is shaped through this referencing effort.
Our social dependence goes even deeper. In Hume’s view, a stable and secure sense
of self is possible only through such referencing. Few objects, “however related to us,
and whatever pleasure they produce, are able to excite a great degree of pride or
self-satisfaction”, Hume observes, “unless they be also obvious to others, and engage
the approbation of the spectators” (D 153). “Our reputation, our character, or name
are considerations of vast weight and importance; and even the other causes of pride;
virtue, beauty, and riches; have little influence, when not seconded by the opinions
and sentiments of others” (T 2.1.11.1, SBN 316). We always consider the sentiments
of others in forming judgments of ourselves (T 2.1.8.9, SBN 303). We are utterly at
a loss without this point of reference: “of all our opinions, those, which we form in
our own favour; however lofty or presuming; are, at bottom, the frailest, and the most
easily shaken by the contradiction and opposition of others” (D 152). One’s sense
of self depends for its development, and in a large measure for its persistence, on its
being “seconded” in the opinion and sentiments of others.
Human beings are constituted as thinking, feeling, and acting beings in and through
their interactions with other such beings. The mechanisms of sympathy and compar-
ison make this possible. Without other such beings and the mechanisms of communi-
cation they employ, human life would not be possible. This is the root of our sociality,
of course; but at the same time it is the source of the most serious problems we
face in trying to live together. Our desires have focus and direction only with help,
affirmation, and reinforcement from others, in particular from others whom we most
admire, but this very need for affirmation of our opinions, desires, and passions—of
our selves—drives us into conflict, competition, and rivalry. As Rousseau later put it,
it is “to this desire of being talked about, and this unremitting rage of distinguishing
ourselves, that we owe the best and the worst” in our natures (Rousseau 1973, p.
112). Herein lies the clue to the emergence and importance of avidity. To work out
the clue we must explore the social formation of pride and its characteristic modes
of expression.

Pride, humility, and property

Pride in possessions

Pride plays a crucial role in Hume’s account of the nature and roots of avidity. Accord-
ing to Hume, pride is not merely a matter of taking pleasure in something to which one
is connected. In addition, the “cause” of pride must be relatively constant, singular
and rare, or at least distinctive, within the context of one’s experience. Its quali-
382 Synthese (2006) 152:371–391

ties must judged worthy and thus proper causes of pleasure, and, as we have seen,
these features must be manifest, available for others to appreciate (T 2.1.6.3–9, SBN
291–294); indeed, they must be “magnificent” (T 2.2.10.7, SBN 391). They are the
kind of things that make one stand out—in one’s own eyes, of course, but especially
in the eyes of others—in virtue of their manifest magnificence.
Pride has many causes, Hume admits, but the most important cause is property
(T 2.1.10.1, SBN 309). Hume’s explanation of this fact is intriguing and puzzling. It
begins with an account of why we esteem riches and power in others. Recall that
for a coherent and stable sense of self, human beings need “seconding” by others.
But this self is not immediately accessible to others. Merely a bundle of desires and
passions, the self exists for others only when passions are given public expression.
Furthermore, since, “independent of the perception of every other object, [the self]
is in reality nothing… we must turn our view to external objects”; and it is “natural
for us to consider with most attention such as lie contiguous to us, or resemble us”
(T 2.2.2.17, SBN 340). Of course, our possessions do not usually resemble us, but
they do lie contiguous to us in a way that typically tends to make an impression on
people (T 3.2.3.4–6 and nn, SBN 503–505). They manifest our desires and are easily
grasped terms of the “triangulation” that is necessary for the seconding of our desires
by others. In addition, Hume observes that we tend to assume that such things give
their possessors pleasure and advantage. We “anticipate, by a true or false reasoning,
the real existence of the pleasure” experienced by them (T 2.1.10.10, SBN 315). Not
only pleasure, but power: “regard, distinction, and consideration … attend on riches”
(H v. III, 73). Riches provide their possessors a degree of power over the world around
them and especially over other people. Indeed, it is ultimately this power, rather than
the actual experience of pleasure, to which we are most attracted (T 2.1.10.11, T
2.2.5.7; SBN 315, 360; Baier 1982, 649–650). Hence, possessions, especially riches,
attract attention.
Surprisingly, riches first of all attract not envy, resentment, or hatred, according to
Hume, but esteem or “love.” Why? Hume considers, but sets aside, the Hobbesian
hypothesis that we esteem the rich and powerful for the benefit and advantage we hope
to gain for ourselves from their good favor (T 2.2.5.9–13; SBN 360–362; see Hobbes
1996, chap. 10). Rather, esteem, and our own desire for riches, is best explained by
considering the operation of sympathy (T 2.2.5.5–7, 14–21, SBN 359–360, 362–365).
The Hobbesian hypothesis fails to explain the fact that we often esteem people who
we clearly recognize will not or cannot benefit us, Hume argues. That esteem can be
entirely disinterested, because it arises from our sympathy with the possessors of the
wealth. Viewing them from some distance, we imagine that the goods, external advan-
tages, and power give their possessors pleasure; this imagining engages our sympathy,
and we vicariously experience a similar pleasure; and we experience the associated
passion of love for the “cause” of this pleasant experience, the possessors of the wealth
(T 2.2.5.14, SBN 362). In this way, observers come to feel admiration and esteem for
the wealthy.
The process does not stop there. It reverberates like images of an object placed
between facing mirrors. Because “the minds of men are mirrors to one another,” this
reverberation deepens and enriches the pride of the possessor, for now the possessor
experiences sympathetically the esteem of his admirers, which in turn causes him
pleasure and “a secondary satisfaction in riches arising from the love and esteem
he acquires from them” (T 2.2.5.21, SBN 365). It is this secondary, mirrored plea-
sure taken in the esteem of others that becomes “the principal recommendation of
Synthese (2006) 152:371–391 383

riches” for the wealthy man because he knows that the possessions themselves do
not really produce happiness as his admirers have imagined (E 54–55). “The rich
often are wretched, and the poor happy; yet it is a convention, a general belief, that
the rich are happy, and the poor miserable” (Stewart 1992, p. 191). The origin of
esteem, it appears, lies in unavoidable but largely false imagining (T 2.1.10.10, SBN
315). But that is no threat to the explanation (as it was to the Hobbesian hypothesis),
Hume claims, because sympathetic reverberation creates a virtuous circularity. The
“secondary satisfaction” in the esteem of others becomes “the chief reason we desire
(riches) for ourselves, or esteem them in others” (T 2.2.5.21, SBN 365). We esteem
riches, then, because they are the principal focus of esteem.

The dynamics of esteem

However, this account of the “mirroring” action of the esteem of the rich is incom-
plete, even on Hume’s own principles; for, as we have seen, esteem or respect is a
complex mixture of love and humility. Hume recognized that “the vanity of power,
or shame of slavery, are much augmented by the consideration of the persons, over
whom we exercise our authority, or who exercise it over us” (T 2.1.10.12, SBN 315).
Reversal-comparison is a vital reagent in this interpersonal sentiment-forming pro-
cess. Love is the product of sympathy one takes in the complex reverberated pleasures
of the wealthy, but humility is also the likely product of the inevitable comparison
one makes to one’s relatively mean condition. At the same time, the rich person, sym-
pathetically tuned to the esteem of his beholder, receives her love and her humility.
The love enhances his pride, and the humility, added to his awareness of the relative
meanness of her condition, stimulates and enhances his “hate” for her. The likely if
not inevitable result is enhanced pride and not a little contempt. And, given rever-
beration, this contempt, in turn, will likely be communicated to and sympathetically
received by the beholder. The effect is no less inevitable for being regrettable. “It
is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has pros-
pered”, Aeschylus once wrote, and, echoing the poet, Hume observed that “Very
often another’s advancement and prosperity produces envy” at the same time as it
produces respect (EPM 6.33 n, SBN 248 n).
These dynamics of sympathy and comparison, pride and humility, respect and con-
tempt are not limited to interactions among persons with respect to property and
riches, although they are elemental to that complex relationship. For example, Hume
sees them at work in our reactions to the prideful man. In his presence we cannot help
but sympathetically experience his pleasure in his supposed eminence, Hume says;
however, at the same time, we are likely to “sink very much in our own eyes … and
this humility makes a considerable ingredient in that respect” that we pay him, and
“[s]ometimes even envy and hatred arise from the comparison” (T 3.3.2.6, SBN 595).
Investigating further we may find his claim of eminence without foundation, but even
then, while no longer feeling love or admiration for him, we may be unable to shake
the pain of humiliation that his prideful and contemptuous behavior made us feel.12
Once we recognize the pattern, we can recognize the dynamics at work in a wide
range of interpersonal relations. Desire craves affirmation by others, especially from

12 Accordingly, Hume claims that the basis for our regarding this display of pride as a vice is the sym-
pathy that an uninvolved observer feels with the humiliation people experience in face of groundless,
over-weaning conceit (T 3.3.2.7, SBN 596).
384 Synthese (2006) 152:371–391

others to whom one is closely related in some respect. A person does not fully or
confidently desire something potentially important for her sense of self, a lover for
example, unless someone whom she admires or to whom she is very close affirms
(“seconds”) that desire. This is not a matter of mere conformism; it is essentially
interpersonal. It is not enough for the lover that she desires that which some other
person desires, i.e., it is not enough that she follows the example or model of another;
the other person must openly second her investment of desire in its object. At the
same time, merely verbal affirmation is usually insufficient. We are always on the
lookout for people saying what they think we want to hear. Proof of the desirability of
an object, we might say, lies in its being truly desired. This Humean fact about human
psychology drives people to make public their desires and to work hard to get those
who are closest to them to adopt the desires too.
This is an elemental component of friendship, binding people together. At the
same time, it is the seedbed of conflict and the most intense rivalry. For where the
objects of desire are scarce—where one desires a particular person, or rare accom-
plishments, or magnificent possessions—the attempt to secure genuine affirmation
inevitably puts friends into competition. Valentinus, in Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen
of Verona, learned this lesson the hard way. He worked so hard to convince Proteus
of the beauty and virtue of his Silvia, that his friend lost all interest in his own love,
Julia, and desired Silvia for himself with such avidity that he resorted to force when
she rejected his advances (Girard 1991). Necessity, insecurity, and scarcity can turn
social bonds into sources of the most intense conflict. This lesson is at the center of
Hume’s understanding of the psychological headwaters of avidity.

Avidity and emulation

We have now assembled enough clues to warrant hazarding an explanation of the

importance of avidity in Hume’s quasi state of nature. We have learned that the need
for the seconding of one’s passions in the passions of another, and in particular sec-
onding of one’s desires in the desires of another, under circumstances of scarcity and
insecurity, can lead to competition and conflict. The competition is even more vital,
of course, if the stakes are measured in survival and status; and, for Hume, status is
a matter of survival because it is a matter of the security and stability of a sense of
self. Possessions are especially important, in Hume’s view, precisely because of their
importance for survival and status. They provide not only the necessary resources for
living but also the focus of cycles of distinction and esteem. However, the esteem we
may feel for others is always and inevitably tinged with humility. Human beings can
deal with it in a number of different ways. Under favorable conditions, we can focus
on the fortunes of the other party and submerge our awareness of our own relative
misfortunes. Where the self is relatively secure, and survival is not a serious issue, the
tinge of humility in the presence of the eminence of another is not disheartening and
can even heighten our sense of awe and respect. However, in conditions of scarcity
and insecurity, humility is not only immediately painful, but is likely to be experienced
as a threat.
Hence, the eminence of others can bring out envy and even malice. Cicero thought
the link between competition over wealth and envy was reflected in etymology. Envy,
invidia, he thought, springs from in and video—“looking too closely into another’s for-
tune” (Cicero 1877, III.ix). However, Hume recognized that this response is not inev-
itable; rather, the prosperity of others can prompt instead the similar, but differently
Synthese (2006) 152:371–391 385

oriented passion of emulation. Hume seems to have had Alexander Pope’s dictum
in mind. “Envy, to which th’ignoble mind’s a slave”, wrote Pope, “Is emulation in
the learned or brave” (Potkay 2000, p. 106). This distinction was important for the
ancients. Aristotle, for example, recognized “a kind of distress at the apparent pres-
ence among others like him by nature, of things honored and possible for a person
to acquire”, but this distress has its source not in “the fact that another has them
but that [he] does not”. This sentiment, emulation, is thus a good thing, because it
is a spur to “effort[s] to attain good things for himself …[rather than, like envy, to
efforts to] prevent his neighbor from having them” (Aristotle 1991, II.11, 1388a30–36).
Joseph Epstein’s joke about the Englishwoman and the Russian illustrates nicely the
difference between these passions.
The Englishwoman says that a friend of hers has a charming cottage in the
Cotswolds, and that she would like a similar cottage, with the addition of two
extra bedrooms and a second bath and a brook running in front of it….The
Russian, when asked what he would like, tells of a neighbor who has a cow that
gives a vast quantity of the richest milk, which yields the heaviest cream and
the purest butter. “I vant dat cow”, the Russian tells the genie, “dead” (Epstein
2003, 21–22).
“Do not envy, compete,” an old proverb advises. Hume’s thought here is that rec-
ognition of the eminence of others can be channeled into competition rather than
envy—competition over the sources of the eminence, over the objects of the shared,
but now conflict-causing, desires.
Hobbes clearly identified the difference between envy and emulation. Both pas-
sions, he maintained, start from “grief for the successe of a Competitor in wealth
or honor” (Hobbes 1996, p. 44), but while emulation brings with it “hope to equal
or exceed him in time to come, by his own ability”, envy is “joined with pleasure
conceived in the imagination of some ill fortune that may befall him” (Hobbes 1889,
1.9.12). Moreover, the envier is disposed to assuage grief by trying to supplant or
hinder the competitor, to undermine or hurt him, while emulation responds to this
grief by seeking to increase one’s own abilities and thereby to equal or exceed those
of one’s competitor (Hobbes 1996, p. 44, 1889, 1.9.21). The response of “emulation”, it
would seem, is the response of a person with sufficient confidence in his abilities to rel-
ish engaging the other party in competition; the response of envy, by the same token,
would seem to be a response of impotence (Scheler 1972, 55–58). Hume employed
the same distinction.
Pace Pascal (1958, §401), Hume insisted that emulation is at work not only among
human beings, but even in the animal kingdom. Horses, hounds, birds, and bulls are
moved by vanity and pride to demonstrate their particular excellences through compe-
tition (T 2.1.12.4, SBN 326). One encounters this concept throughout Hume’s writings,
especially in his Essays and History. As Hume used the notion, emulation involves
more than mere imitation motivated by admiration for the excellence, accomplish-
ments, or possessions of others. It arises in contexts of intense rivalry and is manifested
in an essentially competitive drive to reach and surpass one’s perceived rivals (H v.
I, 383; v. II, 426; v. III, 163; v. IV, 216; v. VI, 149, 202). The prize typically is “glory,”
“renown,” esteem, and a boost to one’s pride (or vanity) (T 2.1.12.4, SBN 326; H v.
I, 15, 383; v. III, 38; v. VI, 202). Hence, the competitive drive of emulation is a social
passion, arising from the need of each human being for recognition (mirroring) by
others. Its roots and causes are the same as those of envy; it differs in the intentions
386 Synthese (2006) 152:371–391

and behaviors they generate. Emulation can often be benign and friendly (H v. I, 15),
but, like envy, it readily escalates rivalry into mutually destructive conflict, violence,
and even war.13
Thus, in the conditions of the Humean “state of nature,” competition for esteem
takes the elemental form of competition over possessions, the carrier of esteem as
well as the stuff of survival. This competition is in part a response of strength to
the claimed eminence of another, and the inevitable experience of humility resulting
from communication of this pride. Avidity—the love of gain and desire for goods and
possessions for themselves and for their circle felt by parties to the state of nature—is
the form taken by the struggle for survival and esteem. More and more goods are
needed to make secure that which is needed for survival; moreover, this competition
for goods is at the same time, and more fundamentally, a competition for distinc-
tion and esteem, and this spurs acquisitiveness even when parties might reasonably
conclude that physical survival is no longer in doubt. Envy is not entirely out of the
picture, of course, especially if one is a frequent loser in the unregulated competition.
Envy and its darker partner, malice, augment the movement already well under way
with avidity (T 2.1.10.12, SBN 315–316).

The paradox of avidity and its solution

This explanation of the nature and roots of avidity is only as good as its ability to illu-
minate the problem that parties face in the Humean state of nature, and the solution
they fashion for themselves according to Hume’s story. Let us see how far along this
path the above explanation takes us.

The paradox, its solution and two questions

To begin, if we take seriously this account of avidity, we can see that parties in Hume’s
state of nature face a paradox: the paradox of avidity. Under conditions of scarcity
and instability of possession, each party or small coalition of kin and friends seeks
to secure survival and status by acquiring more and more goods. The more insecure
they feel, the more ardently they seek more possessions. However, the result of this
escalating acquisitive competition is more intense competition for scarce and insecure
goods, increasingly hostile envy, and the destructive conflict that inevitably accompa-
nies them, which in turn creates greater insecurity. Thus, the very means adopted to
achieve security and status threaten utterly to destroy them.

13 In his History, Hume wrote “Francis and Charles made profession from the beginning of carry-
ing on this rivalship with emulation, but without enmity; and Francis in particular declared, that his
brother Charles and he were, fairly and openly, suitors to the same mistress: The more fortunate,
added he, will carry her; the other must rest contented. But all men apprehended, that this extreme
moderation, however reasonable, would not be of long duration; and that incidents would certainly
occur to sharpen the minds of the candidates against each other” (H, v. III, 126). Discussing the
struggle between the English and Dutch for supremacy over the sea in the mid-17th century, Hume
writes, “The two republics were not inflamed by any national antipathy, and their interests very little
interfered: Yet few battles have been disputed with more fierce and obstinate courage than were those
many naval combats, which were fought during this short, but violent war. The desire of remaining
sole lords of the ocean animated these states to an honourable emulation against each other” (H, v.
VI, 66) (see also E 334, 339, 404; H, v. I, 383; v. II, 426; v. III, 132).
Synthese (2006) 152:371–391 387

The solution to this paradoxical and potentially disastrous conflict, Hume argues,
lies not in some independent principle, but in the very interested passion itself. How-
ever, the solution is not to abandon the emulation race unilaterally, for that would
be suicidal. The only hope is mutual self-restraint, modeled on the kind of restraint
that parties learned in the family. Through mutual commitment to a convention to
respect the possessions of each, modeled on relations in the family, security of pos-
session can be achieved. Hence, Hume argues, the interested passion is corrected and
redirected by itself (T 3.2.2.13, SBN 492). The self-defeating cycle of acquisition lay
not in its basic motivation, but in the heedless and impetuous pursuit of the objective
(T 3.2.2.9, SBN 489).
Thus, Hume’s account of the psychic roots of avidity set out in Treatise, Book II
seem to fit nicely his characterization of the problematic of the account of justice in
Book III, but two questions threaten this conclusion. The first concerns whether the
paradox can get off the ground. The threat seems to lie in the apparently necessary
link between esteem and established possession. Recall, avidity is aimed at increasing
one’s possessions as the means of establishing that which is necessary for survival and
status. Esteem is the aim, but esteem is established only by close association to things
through stable possession over some substantial period of time. But in Hume’s state
of nature, the problem is the increasingly radical instability of possession. Thus, it
would seem that the less secure that possession turns out to be, the less avidity can get
going to provide the impetus for competition and conflict. If that is so, then avidity, at
least as I have explained it, cannot be the root cause of the conflict that calls for the
conventions of justice.
I believe, we can turn back this challenge if we keep in mind two features of
the problem facing parties in the Humean “state of nature.” First, the problem of
the insecurity of possession and the need for conventions of justice arise outside the
relations of family and close kin, which are constituted and maintained by natural sen-
timents of benevolence, love, and trust. The need for justice arises only when social
bonds are stretched beyond the family to include strangers. Second, for avidity and
the drive for esteem to take hold it is not necessary that people already have secure
long-term possession of material goods, but only a keen sense of the necessity of pos-
session for esteem and for that imagination is sufficient. Of course, it may be unlikely
that imagination will readily or reliably make this connection without some relevant
experience, but that experience is available in the family and kin-group, experience,
which would be sufficient to get the desire for esteem outside the family focused on
possession.
Hume’s proposed solution to the paradox faces a second challenge. If it is truly
the need for esteem and recognition of eminence that drives avidity, emulation, and
potentially deadly competition in Hume’s state of nature, then it would appear that
his proposed solution—conventions regarding the possession and transfer of external
goods—misses its target. For the conventions of property do not guarantee esteem or
eminence; at best they promise security of possession. Rousseau, faced with a similar
problem, toyed with the idea that only if esteem is available on an equal basis, is there
a solution to the problem (Rousseau 1973). If invidious comparison is the most serious
cause of conflict, then Rousseau’s proposal of equality of possession, or something
approximating it, and not Hume’s focus on security of possession, would appear to be
the only proposal with any hope of addressing the original problem. However, Hume
was never tempted to take this egalitarian route, for political reasons, no doubt, but
more fundamentally because it does not square with his understanding of human
388 Synthese (2006) 152:371–391

psychology. The contrast principle lies at the core of our psychology. By this principle,
we are able to grasp profiles of the objects of esteem, including self-esteem, only in
light that puts the objects in sharp contrast. If there is to be a satisfying Humean
answer to this challenge, it will have to come from some other quarter.

Emulation channeled

An understanding of the strategy of Hume’s account of the origins of justice yields

an answer to this challenge. Consider two key features of Hume’s strategy. First, in
Hume’s view, redirection of the passions is the key to solving the problems parties face
at the dawn of the conventions of justice. His approach in this context is typical of his
approach to several problems of moral philosophy. He analyzes the root causes of the
difficulty and seeks a solution to them not by abandoning, eliminating, or repressing
one or more of these causes, but by correcting, redirecting, or channeling them. For
example, he argues that sympathy lies at the foundations of moral judgments, but he
acknowledges that raw sympathy is as likely to generate conflict as consensus around
moral standards. Hume’s solution, however, is not to abandon sympathy, and look for
a source of judgment in some other quarter (reason, for example), but rather to find
some way to correct and redirect the energies of sympathy. Hence, he proposes to
regiment its deliverances to the discipline of a general point of view. In the same way,
his account of the origins of justice rests on a detailed analysis of the roots of socially
destructive conflict in fundamental features of human psychology. The solution to
the problems so analyzed, according to Hume, is not to repress these features—or to
deny their power—but to uncover ways to redirect them, to channel their energies,
and thereby to minimize their socially destructive potential.
This leads us to the second key feature of Hume’s strategy. His solution to the
socially destructive forces rooted in the need, and the competition, for esteem pro-
gresses through a series of stages, no one of which is meant to be sufficient to the task,
but each of which makes the next stage possible (and necessary). The first convention
secures possession, but it is followed by a second that makes possible the transfer of
property, followed again by practices enabling promises and contracts and the security
of non-simultaneous transfer of goods. These practices and institutions, once estab-
lished, make it possible and necessary for people who are bound to live together to
secure non-transferable goods of life and limb under a kind of criminal code, as well
as the coordination of larger public works projects, all of which require the resources
of government. In the Treatise, the story ends at this point, but in the Essays the plot
continues. There Hume explains the emergence and expansion of commercial society
and the cultivation of the arts and sciences.
This story is familiar. Its clear moral is that ambition and its companion passions are
not corrected or contained once and for all at any stage of this development. At the
initial stage, one form of the interested passion is corrected, the form of destructive
and potentially violent acquisitiveness. This competition was, of course, the means that
thinking social beings felt compelled by the circumstances of the state of nature to
adopt in response to their hunger for esteem. The radical instability caused by avidity is
answered by a convention for the security of possession. These conventions, in Hume’s
view, can only hope to solve in small part the problem of competition for esteem.
Rather than eliminate emulation, they only redirect it into somewhat less destructive,
but not necessarily less competitive, channels. The need for esteem, rooted in the need
for “seconding” in the opinions and sentiments of others one admires, remains.
Synthese (2006) 152:371–391 389

Each stage of Hume’s process refines the institutional devices for channeling and
civilizing these fundamental motivations. Never entirely eliminated, envy, emula-
tion, and ambition are progressively civilized. “The nobility, instead of vying with
each other, in the number and boldness of their retainers, acquired by degrees a
more civilized species of emulation, and endeavored to excel in the splendour and
elegance of their equipage, houses, and tables”, Hume wrote (H v. III, 76). While
emulation is a potential source of destructive conflict and even war, it is also, in
Hume’s view, one of the most important spurs to individual and social develop-
ment available to human beings.14 Emulation, he argues, is to a significant degree
responsible for the civilization and enlightenment of ancient Greece and modern
Europe. Like Samuel Johnson and many others in the 18th century, Hume main-
tained in “The Rise of Arts and Sciences” that “[a] noble emulation is the source
of every excellence” (E 135).15 He continues, “nothing is more favorable to the rise
of politeness and learning, than a number of neighboring and independent states,
connected together by commerce and policy. The emulation, which naturally arises
among those neighboring states, is one obvious source of improvement” (E 119). This
is also the main thesis of “Of the Jealousy of Trade” (E 327–331; see also H v. III, 328).
By the same token, the absence or ruthless suppression of opportunities and occa-
sions for emulation lead to personal and social stagnation and “a tedious uniformity”
(H v. II, 519; v. III, 229).
Thus Hume argues that, although we cannot expect that ambition and emulation
will ever be eliminated from the environment of human social relations, we can hope
that they become civilized and refined through artificial means. This refinement can
even reach the point that, for some of us at least, “the feverish, empty amusements
of luxury and expense” lose their charm, and are replaced by “the unbought sat-
isfaction of conversation, society, study, even health, and the common beauties of
nature” (EPM 9.25, SBN 283–284). Cicero, Hume’s guide in such matters, judged that
although “no vice … is more foul than avarice”; the great man still seeks glory, not
through accumulating wealth but through his justice, goodwill, fidelity, and generous
esteem of others (Cicero 1991, II.77, II.38). Hume brings this Ciceronian thought into
his reflections on modern commercial society.
In his attempt to reply to the “sensible knave,” he confesses that appeals to such
considerations will inevitably fall on some deaf ears. Yet, he also assumes that some of
us, presumably those who are better brought up, will find the same thoughts entirely
congenial. While the approval of justice and the requirements of social morality
is ultimately natural, the rules of justice, honesty, and social obligation, are artifi-
cial, as is the point of view, shared with others, from which we morally assess them
(T 3.3.3.4; SBN 619–620). We do not escape entirely the need for recognition even
in this refinement of our passions, but we may to some degree escape the tyranny
14 Regarding individual development, see Hv.I, 386 and v.III, 119, where Hume attributes to emula-
tion the power to stimulate acts of valor. Regarding social development, see E 119–21, 135, 327–31;
H v. II, 519; v. III, 229, 328; v. IV, 344; v. V, 182.
15 In his Adventurer, Samuel Johnson wrote, “An honest emulation [that inspires us] to think highly
about ourselves in comparison with others” is the source of all achievement (Potkay 2000, 106). Pot-
kay reminds us that this idea is common in the 18th century British social philosophy. One can find
it in Shaftsbury, Mandeville, and many others (Potkay 2000, 106 and references in footnote 5). But
the idea has classical roots. InWorks and Days, Hesiod distinguishes two forms of Eris (envy-driven
strife): bad Eris brings conflict and war, but good Eris prompts the slothful to plow, sow, and set his
household in order. “Work is no reproach … if you work, soon will the work-shy be jealous of your
wealth” (verses 311–313) (Walcot 1978, 9).
390 Synthese (2006) 152:371–391

of its hold on us. In our appreciation of the good and virtue of justice, as in the
enjoyment of conversation and society, it is still impossible to cut the tie that binds
us to others.
Hume actually suggests a further refinement. In the face of the sensible knave’s
persistent challenge, Hume invites us to affirm with him “the invaluable enjoyment
of a character” and the pleasure of “reflection on one’s own conduct” that is with-
out price because it is above price (EPM 9.25, SBN 283–284). Hume here consid-
ers a person who experiences “peace and inward satisfaction” upon “bear[ing] his
own survey” (T 3.3.3.6, SBN 620). It would appear that this person, at least, has
escaped Rousseau’s nightmare of “living solely in the opinion of others,” dependent
utterly for the stability and security of his sense of self on the stranger’s gaze (or
that of members of his circle). The ultimate court of self-evaluation, Hume seems
to suggest, is one’s own survey. And such reflection may provide for most of us the
ultimate fount of moral motivation. However, this philosophic perspective, and the
self-reflective person who takes it up, seem to be a world away from the people
of ambition, emulation, and avidity that interact at the dawn of the conventions of
justice—almost as distant from the character at the center of Hume’s theory of the
passions whose social radar is always turned on. Yet, it seems to me that the per-
son taking, and happily surviving, his own survey, taking deep and inward pleasure
in his own character, is not a different species from, but rather a refined limiting
case of, the fundamentally social creature of Hume’s story in Treatise, Book II and
early Book III. This kind of reflective independence may have been unthinkable, or
thinkable only in an imaginary savage, for someone like Rousseau, but for Hume
it is a possible (but by no means inevitable) product of a process of refinement of
the very dependent and morally ambiguous qualities and passions that drove Rous-
seau to despair. The self bearing its own survey can take a perspective on his action
and character and self-constituting relations with others around him just because
it has learned to make this survey by looking in the mirror of the sentiments of
others.
These reflections on Hume’s strategy answer, I believe, our concern that the conven-
tions of justice might be a wholly inadequate solution to the problem that, according
to Hume’s argument, calls for them. Clearly, Hume did not believe that the conven-
tions of justice in themselves answered the drive for “ambition,” that deeper need for
“regard, distinction, and consideration, which” in certain circumstances “attend on
riches” (H v. III, 73). Rather, like many of his proposals for philosophical, as well as
practical social and political problems, it redirected the deeper passions from socially
destructive to socially beneficial and productive channels. We also have an answer to
the puzzle about the focus of Hume’s theory of justice on property and external goods
with which this essay opened.

Acknowledgements The bulk of this essay was written during a stay at the Bellagio Study and
Conference Center, Bellagio, Italy. I am very grateful to the Rockefeller Foundation for giving
me the opportunity to prepare this work in surroundings of extraordinary beauty and grace and
to the Bellagio staff for making my stay especially enjoyable and productive. I am also grateful
for cordial and constructive discussions of earlier versions of this essay with audiences at the Uni-
versity of Rome, “La Sapienza,” and the University of Lund. The final version of this essay was
prepared for the Hester Seminar on Hume’s Naturalism sponsored by Wake Forest University. The
value of the helpful criticism of this essay I received at the Seminar was only outstripped by the
warm hospitality of Seminar organizers, Adrian Bardon in particular, and the warm collegiality of
participants.
Synthese (2006) 152:371–391 391

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