Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Sympathy and Other Selves

Sympathy and Other Selves , pp. 255-271 TONY PITSON Introduction Throughout Books II and III of the Treatise Hume makes considerable use of the notion of sympathy. For the most part this notion refers not to a feeling or passion as such, but rather to a kind of mechanism by which these and other mental states are communicated from one person to another. According to the way in which Hume describes this mechanismÂ--for example, when it is first introduced in Treatise II i 11Â--it appears to operate as follows: we become aware of the sentiments or inclinations of someone else through their effects in that person's appearance and behaviour and in this way acquire an idea of the person's state of mind; and the idea which is thus acquired is then converted into an impression, so that we come to experience something comparable to the other person's own state of mind, as a result of the enliv- ening effect of the ever-present impression of self. Discussion of sympathy so understood tends to focus on the process in which our idea of the other person's state of mind is converted into the corresponding impression and the role played in this by the impression http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Hume Studies Hume Society

Sympathy and Other Selves

Pitson, A. E.
Hume Studies , Volume 22 (2) – Jan 26, 1996
Download PDF
17 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/hume-society/sympathy-and-other-selves-64c2UGU1dM

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Hume Society
Copyright
Copyright © Hume Society
ISSN
1947-9921
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

, pp. 255-271 TONY PITSON Introduction Throughout Books II and III of the Treatise Hume makes considerable use of the notion of sympathy. For the most part this notion refers not to a feeling or passion as such, but rather to a kind of mechanism by which these and other mental states are communicated from one person to another. According to the way in which Hume describes this mechanismÂ--for example, when it is first introduced in Treatise II i 11Â--it appears to operate as follows: we become aware of the sentiments or inclinations of someone else through their effects in that person's appearance and behaviour and in this way acquire an idea of the person's state of mind; and the idea which is thus acquired is then converted into an impression, so that we come to experience something comparable to the other person's own state of mind, as a result of the enliv- ening effect of the ever-present impression of self. Discussion of sympathy so understood tends to focus on the process in which our idea of the other person's state of mind is converted into the corresponding impression and the role played in this by the impression

Journal

Hume Studies – Hume Society

Published: Jan 26, 1996

There are no references for this article.