The Hume Emotional Theory

As one of the most prominent empiricists in the modern period of philosophy, Hume made meticulous investigation into human passions. He pointed out two basic principles in human passions---the effect of ideas to passions and the core function of "self" in passions, with which he unified rationalism and irrationalism integratively in his theory of human passions. He studied ideas for the intention to account for the mechanism of human passions, arguing that idea is the servant of passions and should serve passions. Hume thinks that idea is the fundamental element to cause human passions, which can never occur without idea; People's complicated idea system accounts for their complicated passions; The diversification of passions depends on the interaction of ideas; Meanwhile, he introduces a nucleus irrational conception "self", which penetrates the whole process of his investigation into human passions. Hume takes it for granted that "self" predominates human passions all the way. By means of careful study of human passions, Hume generalized some essential principles of human passions, such as "relation principle","pain and pleasure principle","space and time principle",etc.The irrational conception of"self",which acts as a red thread, transfixes all these principles thoroughly. The combination of "self" with idea engenders the passions of pride and humility, the love of fame, etc, while the principle of "self"-objectizing, the alienation of "self", accounts for the passion of "love", "malice", "sympathy", "benevolence", etc. All in a word, by introducing idea into passion, Hume unified rationalism and irrationalism integratively and thus surpassed the conflict between them in a certain extent. These are the brilliant thoughts expressed by Hume in his theory of passions. But, firstly, Hume didn't tell the relation between psychology and physiology, not knowing the physiological base of "self". He thus can't deal with the bilateral relation between psychological "self" and physiological "self", neither can he correctly expound the mechanism of "pain" and "pleasure". He didn't know that the essence of "pain" and "pleasure" is actually the psychological embodiment of the profit or loss of "self". Any that profits the "self" is sure to bring "pleasure", Any that causes loss to "self" is sure to bring "pain". Hume thus can't find the realistic essence of human passions, that is, human physical taste, or accounts for the other different kind of human passions, both of which are quite a pity in his investigation into human nature. Secondly, not only did Hume deplete the realistic base of his idea, the objective out-word, which he refused to answer the question weather exists or not, but he was also unable to base his ideas, such as "cause and effect", on the physical structure of human brain. He denied the objectivity of general conceptions like "cause and effect", etc. Thus he denied the objective reality of logic, unable to expound the bilateral relationships between logic and illogic,pre-logic and logic. So he cannot make further investigation into the bilateral relationships between ration and irration, and thus pushed idea into an extreme empirical dead end, ruining the opportunity to surpass both the rationalism and empirism successfully. This thesis tries to surmount these difficulties in Hume and makes further investigation into the bilateral relations between rationalism and irrationalism, substance and spirit, psychology and physiology, etc, and bases "idea" "self" on objective substance, developing the usefulness and discard the uselessness of the two major principles in Hume's theory of passions, "idea" and "self", with basic laws of Marx's bilateral materialism, and makes further investigation into the bilateral relationships between rationalism and irrationalism. According to the above thought, this thesis is divided into three parts. Part 1 mainly analyzes Hume's theory of passions from the stand of rationalism, indicating his thought...