Essay about On Emotion and Value in David Hume and Max...

On Emotion and Value in David Hume and Max Scheler ABSTRACT: While some philosophers tend to exclude any significance of emotion for the moral life, others place them in the center of both the moral life and the theory of value judgment. This paper presents a confrontation of two classic positions of the second type, namely the position of Hume and Scheler. The ultimate goal of this confrontation is metatheoretical — particularly as it concerns the analysis of the relations between the idea of emotion and the idea of value in this kind of theory of value judgment. In conclusion, I point to some important theoretical assumptions which underlie the positions of both thinkers despite all the other differences between them. In at least†¦show more content†¦Hume on Passion and Value The relation between passion and value in Humes philosophy has been repeatedly discussed. (3) In contrast to some contemporary writers, Hume devoted a lot of effort and space to the theory of passion before presenting his, based on emotion moral theory, in Book III of the Treatise. (4) However, as I believe, Humes philosophy on the whole, contains not one, but two theories of passion. One of them is a theory of the genesis of passions from pains and pleasures. The second theory, on the other hand, refers to the group of passions which are after N. Kemp Smith called primary passions; and I will call it the descriptive theory of passion. The Treatise is dominated almost exclusively by the theory of genesis but the role of the descriptive theory in Enquiries is more important, and particularly in those places where Hume argues against hedonism and egoism in his theory of motivation. On the theory of genesis, passions are produced from pains and pleasures either directly or indirectly which, as it is well known, leads to Humes distinction between direct and indirect passions. According to the descriptive theory, however, the situation is quite different. In their existence, the primary passions do not depend on pleasures and pains, on the contrary, pains and pleasures are produced by them. There is an interesting tension between these two theories in Humes philosophy but this problem cannot be discussed here.