The Passions

Abstract

Everyone who has heard of Hume knows that he says reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions. When this statement is so famous, it is a pity that so little attention is usually paid by Hume’s readers to his detailed account of the passions in the second Book of the Treatise. It is admittedly tedious reading after what has preceded it, mainly because of the prominence in it of his associationist mechanics. But their very prominence is a sign that their inventor thinks he is displaying the constructive power of his psychological system; and an understanding of his account of the passions is essential for a grasp of the moral theory of Book III.