Page 21 - GALIET THE HEROIC SPECTACLE OF MORALS: Hume IV

Galiet & Galiet
for he incurs the love, trust and affection of others. Motivated by self-interest and power, the tyrant appears to benefit, but truly he secretly incurs the hatred and resentment of others. Unconsciously, both seek apotheosis and immortality, but only one truly attains it.
Ì Aesthetics and/or Duty. What causes pleasure or displeasure? Why do things please or displease? Are they in any way related to deontology? Do things naturally please or do they please only when in relation to obedience of disobedience, let’s say, of a commandment? God, enraged by Adam and Eve’s disobedience, expulsed them from the Garden of Eden. This is the 2nd primordial moment when disapprobation is linked with sin; the first was Lucifer’s rebellion. This confirms master-slave morality. It is not only useful for Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge, but they also felt a mix of pleasure and guilt. Amidst denials and nakedness, they were expelled. In this instance, the presumed outcome of utility brings immediate grief rather than pleasure. No mirror between Adam and Eve, nor self and God, nor Cain and Abel. Only miasma and hubris. Hume’s theory needs the realism of hubris as first principle, not the principle of humanity or natural sympathy. Only a lack of hubris can be the mother of humanism. This would favor Aristotle’s golden mean: choosing the intermediate between passion and action or Kant’s three categorical imperatives.
Ì Sympathy. It is not clear whether in Hume’s theory human sympathy is a special faculty or simply the name of a general tendency to communicate our affections and inclinations. More than likely, it is the second.
ÌAeneas to Hume. Aeneas, Virgil’s hero driven by duty speaks to Dido: “If the fates were leaving me free to live my own life and settle all my cares according to my own wishes, my first concern would be to tend to the city of Troy, those of my dear people.”68 Aeneas’ duty drives him beyond considerations of approbation. He seeks only to maximize utility.
Ì Dido to Hume. How I loved him and now there is no sympathy in his heart! I did everything to please him, gave him my honor, my lands, and now, for him, it is Italy! Italy! O Aeneas! “You are a traitor. You are not the son of a goddess and Dardanus was not the first founder of your family. It was the Caucasus that fathered you on its hard rocks and Hycarnian tigers offered you their udders.”69
Ì Lord Byron to Hume.
“There is a very life in our despair, Vitality of poison, 3⁄4 a quick root
68 Virgil. The Aeneid. Trans. David West. Penguin Books. London, UK 1991. Book IV, 330-360. 79 69 Ibid., Book IV. 370-380. 79
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