[T]he mind of man is also subject to an unaccountable elevation and presumption, arising from prosperous success, from luxuriant health, from strong spirits, or from a bold and confident disposition. In such a state of mind, the imagination swells with great but confused conceptions, to which no sublunary beauties or enjoyments can correspond. Every thing mortal and perishable vanishes as unworthy of attention. And a full range is given to the fancy in the invisible regions or world of spirits, where the soul is at liberty to indulge itself in every imagination, which may best suit its present taste and disposition. Hence arise raptures, transports, and surprising flights of fancy; and confidence and presumption still encreasing, these raptures, being altogether unaccountable, and seeming quite beyond the reach of our ordinary faculties, are attributed to the immediate inspiration of that Divine Being, who is the object of devotion. In a little time, the inspired person comes to regard himself as a distinguished favourite of the Divinity; and when this frenzy once takes place, which is the summit of enthusiasm, every whimsy is consecrated: Human reason, and even morality are rejected as fallacious guides: And the fanatic madman delivers himself over, blindly, and without reserve, to the supposed illapses of the spirit, and to inspiration from above. Hope, pride, presumption, a warm imagination, together with ignorance, are, therefore, the true sources of ENTHUSIASM.--David Hume "Of Superstition and enthusiasm"
It is a bit odd that Hume's final summary of the sources of enthusiasm ("hope, pride, presumption, a warm imagination, together with ignorance") leaves out what is most surprising and distinctive about his approach (which he mentions first): that enthusiasm is a consequence of things we ordinarily take to be states of well-being (or welfare), success and health, or causes thereof: an energetic and confident disposition. To emphasize the point: it's those elements we tend to associate with the gospel of success that are the fertile grounds of enthusiasm, which, in Hume's hands, is relies a species of overconfidence. And since Hume is one of the best and first defenders of the merits of commercial life, this should give us pause.
Of course, Hume is not here, in the first instance, despite the presence of over-confidence, talking about excessive risk appetite. But there is a speculative quality that cannot be ignored: "reason" is "rejected" and, I would add, could not function properly because "the imagination swells with great but confused conceptions." Hume makes clear that in this world there is no possible referent that accords with these conceptions. That is to say, according to Hume (recall also this post), when somebody is in the grip of enthusiasm, she is thinking (we may say) the tremendously impossible (recall Grouchy).
Strikingly, an initial consequence of enthusiasm is something we may well find attractive: the liberty to indulge one's imagination. That there is something attractive here was picked up by Adam Smith, who made such free play (recall) constitutive of his account of liberty,+ and by Kant, who made the "free play of the imagination" a center piece of his aesthetics. To be sure, whatever Kant meant by the "free play" of the imagination it is clearly not, in the final analysis, Hume's notion of enthusiasm (even if one may well suspect that commentators are bit too quick to dispel the touch of enthusiasm lurking here). My point being that according to Hume, enthusiasm is a consequence not just of things we associate with (causes of) welfare, but also with ends we may value as ends, (e.g., freedom of thought).
I want to develop the point in the subsequent paragraph(s). But before I do that I should emphasize that for Hume the three-fold problem with enthusiasim is the trespassing beyond our cognitive limits such that one comes (i) to feel chosen by (ii) God, and, thereby, (iii) incapable of being constrained by reason or morality.* When one is in the grip of full enthusiasm one may be a danger to society.
Even so, as noted, the (Humean) enthusiast, possesses character traits that may well be the grounds of things we value. For example, Hume writes:
all enthusiasts have been free from the yoke of ecclesiastics, and have expressed great independence in their devotion; with a contempt of forms, ceremonies, and traditions....The fanatic consecrates himself, and bestows on his own person a sacred character, much superior to what forms and ceremonious institutions can confer on any other.
As is well known, Hume, too, wants to free people from the yoke of priestly power and its many of their ceremonies. But more important, the idea that we need to consecrate ourselves and, thereby, bestow a sacred character in ourselves is a key move in Smith's account to explain what motives could ground the desire to act in praiseworthy fashion (recall):
It is not the love of our neighbour, it is not the love of mankind, which upon many occasions prompts us to the practice of those divine virtues. It is a stronger love, a more powerful affection, which generally takes place upon such occasions; the love of what is honourable and noble, of the grandeur, and dignity, and superiority of our own characters.--The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
That is to say, from the perspective of Humean moral psychology, Smith grounds the pull of the praiseworthy in what we may call a tempered or (to use the Humean term) moderated species of enthusiasm.+
*That in Hume's account of reason can't do much constraining anyway is worth pondering.
+This may well have been partially inspired by Hume: "enthusiasm, being the infirmity of bold and ambitious tempers, is naturally accompanied with a spirit of liberty."
+It is worth quoting Hume's version of this: "On the other hand, our sectaries, who were formerly such dangerous bigots, are now become very free reasoners; and the quakers seem to approach nearly the only regular body of deists in the universe, the literati, or the disciples of Confucius in China." (I have (recall) commented on Hume's favorable interest in China before.) Hume's view of Confucius as a Deist is almost certainly inspired by Voltaire (see here for scholarship). [William Temple and Bayle have tendency to present Confucius as an atheist.]
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