Kawa Hassan

The Contradictions of David Hume’s Theories in Relation to Sympathy and Benevolence

By analyzing some ethical contexts related to human behavior, philosophers attempt to understand and illuminate social and ethical morals. The main focus for philosophers is questions about human interactions and the motive that forces or directs motives behind these interactions. According to David Hume that sympathy exists within us due to our passions toward each others as human beings. Without these passions, we mean nothing to one another. He also argues that benevolence or passion exist in us as a part of our good natures, because we feel good when we are kind to our fellows human beings. Therefore, we need to admit that sympathy and benevolence are necessary to interact with each others in a beneficial way or to give a better meaning to our existences as human beings. These two concepts, sympathy and benevolence guide our motives to act in certain ways; and they are seen as moral motives only if they produce pleasure, but not pain. However, while sympathy is the main motive behind human beings action, one can argues that benevolence could be influenced by both: passion and reason.

 Human beings have sympathy toward one another because they are inventive species. In order to reach a better understanding, one should define the philosophical meaning of “Sympathy” as a first step, and then analyzes its definition. Basically, according to the Oxford Dictionary, Sympathy means “showing that you understand and care about somebody’s problems, [but emotionally]”.[1] Sympathy exists in human beings because unlike animals all human beings think about what would be their impacts on all the aspects that they are surrounded by. A good example to examine the way “sympathy” works, it would be that; if someone lies on the floor and bleeding, one infers from the situation and he 'ought' to call the ambulance; first of all, he calls the ambulance because he has sympathy for the bleeding person’s situation. When one ought to call the ambulance, according to Hume, this call does not have anything to do with the reasons which made this person end up with bleeding. However, he calls because it is the right thing to do. He knows that by calling the ambulance, he will save somebody’s life. He calls the ambulance because it gives him a sense of pleasure that he has saved somebody’s life. Therefore, sympathy can be seen as a matter of the feeling or the impression that human beings share together. In addition, morality is about judgment of the motives behind a specific action. We have very few passions but are capable of generating millions of different actions through them. Human beings act in certain ways similarly; they have the same understanding to the elements which are relevant to their daily routines. Human beings have sense of passion through the idea that they, people, benefit each other’s existences. As clarified by David Hume:

There is no human, and indeed no sensible, creature, whose happiness or misery does not, in some measure, affect us, when brought to near us, and represented lively colours: But this proceeds merely from sympathy, and is no proof of such a universal affection to mankind, since this concern extends itself beyond our own species. And affection [between] the sexes is a passion evidently implanted in human nature.[2]

It is necessary to explain that human being’s sympathy works well because without having sympathy we, as human beings, lose senses of connections and interactions.  These relationships between human beings are relevant to human’s nature because they are beneficial to them. However, according to Hume, we cannot perceive sympathy as the only justice and natural motive due to its capability that makes human beings happy, he uses the term of natural to oppose the artificial justice in order to separate the types of sympathies that result good consequences.

Benevolence is another term that has been used by David Hume to analyze the willingness of the human beings to help others. Unlike sympathy, however, benevolence does not steam out of passion and people might benevolent others for reasons. Again it would be useful to define the term of “Benevolence”.  According to the Oxford Dictionary, benevolence means “kindness, helpfulness, and generous”. David Hume defines this term which comes from human being’s passion, and he argues that we are benevolent to people due to our passion toward them. He goes on further on this concept, and he divides benevolence into two parts: Public and private benevolences. Hume argues that private benevolence is weaker in some individuals; therefore, it can’t be counted as an original motive of justice or as a doable benevolence because pleasures can be counted when it is free of contradiction. However, he prefers public benevolence because it can be called as natural justice since it contributes universal pleasures. Hume “denies justice to be a natural virtue; he makes use of the word, natural, only as opposed to artificial…the rules of justice can be artificial, they are not arbitrary. Nor is the expression improper to call them Laws of Nature”. [3] And “if public benevolence or a regard to the interests of mankind cannot be the original motive to justice, much less can private benevolence, a regard to the interests of the party concerned, be this motive.[4]

According to these ideas by Hume, one can argue that morals and ethics are a constructed artificially with the sole intent to regulate society to provide for those unable to survive under their own means. Unlike sympathy, benevolence could work through reason and passion, for example, human being “offers assistance to those in needs because it makes the [contributor] to feel good to do so, and [he] is fair in his dealings with others because it would make [him] feel bad if [he] was not”.[5] One can stress on this point and argues with Hume that justice only arises in response to man's needs. This means that human beings could be benevolence due to the reason that, even though, a contributor has no passion to hunger people, he still helps. The reason he helps these starved people is that if these people are not assisted with food, they might die or they might be deprived from living. Therefore, whether he likes these hunger people or not, stopping the deaths of these people can be the only reason that makes him to think about assisting or be benevolent toward them.

            These two concepts, sympathy and benevolence, are explained by David Hume that the laws can be natural and the motives can be justice only if they produce pleasures, but not pain to human. Under these moral concepts fairly simple to satisfy the requirements of moral actions when the intents are all that matters, not the action itself.

While sympathy is based on passions among individuals, benevolence is considering itself as hopefulness and functional aspect between the human beings because it is depended on passion and reason, one might believe. However, both of these two concepts, sympathy and benevolence, do not consist of any particular types of actions, but the superior ones that produce universal pleasure.

                                                        December 17, 2007