The Philosophical Progress Of Humes Essays Margaret Watkins by Margaret Watkins 9781108653244, 9781108476270, 1108476279, 1108653243 instant download after payment.

Beauty and its appreciation are not merely pleasant for Hume; they are important. The connection between beauty and the emotions explains a large part of this importance, including Hume’s assessment that modern eloquence is “much inferior” to the ancients’. The Essays suggest the possibility of aesthetic therapy for the emotions, whether one suffers from the dangers of overly aggressive emotions or from the burden of melancholic emotions. I explain Hume’s own distinctions between calm and violent emotions, on the one hand, and weak and strong emotions, on the other. I then argue that we need one more distinction to capture the set of emotions Hume thinks most likely to promote happiness. The preponderance of those emotions should be warm, or likely to promote fellow-feeling and affection. Cold emotions, in contrast, increase distance between persons. Aesthetic pursuits cultivate what Hume calls “delicacy of taste,” which enables us to have more control over our emotional lives. Because of the public nature of art, the emotions that it cultivates are likely to be both strong and warm.