The 195 Article. Of Indignation.
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The 198 Article. Of the use of it.
Furthermore, Indignation is observed to be more in those who would seem vertuous, than those who really are. For althought they who love vertue cannot without some Aversion look upon the vices of others, they are Passionate onely against the great and extraordinary ones. For it is to be nice, and squamish, to have much Indignation for things of little concernment; it is to be unjust to have any for those which are not blameworthy; and it is to be impertinent and absurd not to confine this Passion to the Actions of men, but extend them to the works of God or nature: as they do who being snever contented with their condition or fortune, dare controule the government of the world, and the secrets of providence.--Descartes, René, 1596-1650., 2013, The passions of the soule in three books the first, treating of the passions in generall, and occasionally of the whole nature of man. The second, of the number, and order of the passions, and the explication of the six primitive ones. The third, of particular passions. By R. des Cartes. And translated out of French into English., Oxford Text Archive, http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12024/A81352.
I was triggered to return to Descartes' Passions while preparing a review of Michelle Schwarze's wonderful book Recognizing Resentment: Sympathy, Injustice, and Liberal Political Thought (Cambridge: 2020). This book is primarily focused on Butler, Hume, and Adam Smith, but it has a preliminary chapter on seventeenth century ideas on resentment and indignation in which Descartes is omitted. This omission is no surprise because Schwarze is focused on recovering and articulating a distinctly liberal understanding of sympathetic resentment and Descartes is no precursor to liberalism or especially interested in promoting commerce and sociability. Even so, I think Descartes plays an important part of the story she wants to tell, so, here goes.
Early in Passions (article 65), Descartes define or characterizes indignation as follows "evil done by others, having no relation to us, breeds only in us Indignation against them." Indignation is, thus, an impartial response ("no relation to us") to the witnessing or experience of harms done to others by third parties. It has, thus, a kind of spectatorship and impartiality built into its very possibility. In addition, it presupposes that these harms are in some sense moralized and intentional ('evils'). This is nicely conveyed by the seventeenth century Dutch translation by Spinoza's acquaintance Jan Glazemaker, where Descartes' indignation is translated as 'euvelneming' literally the experience of evil.
As an aside, when we are harmed by others, according to Descartes, we feel something stronger than indignation: colere translated nicely as 'wrath'. This passion is very similar to indignation, but also includes the desire of revenge. So it is action-guiding (and can actuate bold and/or courageous actions (see sect 199 of the Passions). In fact, the somatic instantiation of wrath divers among people, and Descartes is careful to distinguish between a sudden wrath and a carefully nurtured wrath, which when it is joined with love for another may well be a kind of indignation on their behalf. ("interest themselves in the behalfe of those they love, as if it were for themselves;" sect 201).
If we now look at Descartes' treatment of indignation in sections 195-198, we see that he adds an important qualification, that is, that we only feel it when we judge the victim unworthy of the harm ("he carryes an Indignation onely against those who doe good or evil to persons unworthy of it"). It has, thus, an evaluative feature built into its very triggering conditions. So, to sum up the discussion so far, according to Descartes indignation is a moralized reactive attitude that presupposes considerable impartiality by an observer to intentional harm done to someone not deserving of it. That is to say, the spectator most share a moral universe with the perpetrator and victim. It's not especially action guiding, and seems to have more a role in what we might want to call moral score-keeping and, perhaps, recognition of harms done to other.
When we to turn to the section on the use of indignation (198), we see that Descartes de facto distinguishes two uses of it: first, it has a social role -- I will call it virtue-signaling -- to make us seem virtuous in the eyes of others. And we can infer from Descartes' terse analysis that in its signaling capacity, there is a tendency for an overuse of indignation. This clearly suggests that being thought virtuous creates what we might call social credit. And since indignation is not action guiding (and so has little consequences or negative feedback), there are incentives for being too oft indignant on behalf of others without qualification because there are no drawbacks.
It's worth noting that Descartes does not really spell out what's wrong with excessive virtue-signaling, except that he seems to rely on some kind of proportionality requirement that the passion needs to be commensurate with the triggering cause(s). I actually think this kind of principle plays a huge role in Hume's and Smith's moral psychology, and I am kind of sad I just noticed this feature in Descartes today. Of course, that causes and effects have to be proportional to each other is an important element in Descartes' physics (see, for example, his letter to Huygens, 5 October, 1637: “L’effet doit toujours être proportionné à l’action qui est nécessaire pour le produire.” [Quoted from S. Roux]), so it is not ad hoc. But it has moved from a natural principle to a normative one that can be violated (and again that's not untypical of Hume and Smith).
Be that as it may, presumably Descartes things that too-frequent indignation destroys the signaling quality of indignation when it is proper. (If X is a cheap source of social credit then X may well become inflationary.) So, second, there is a proper form of indignation of those who truly love virtue (and are not merely virtue signaling) at "great and extraordinary harms." Unlike, say, Hobbes (as described wonderfully by Theresa Bejan (recall)), Descartes really takes (to be anachronistic for a second) micro-aggressions for granted as not needing to be registered by bystanders and spectators. Perhaps this is due to the Stoic element in his thought.
It's not quite clear what the measure is that allows a spectator to distinguish between small-ish harms not deserving a passionate response and those so worthy. But indignation at the harms to others worthy of note is appropriate according to Descartes. Since it's not action guiding its primary function seems to be let victims (and their aggressors) know that evils done to them are recognized by outsiders. So I infer that its main role according to Descartes is as a kind of social score keeping that make victims of harms be seen by the community (and which establishes, thereby, to perpetrators that the have violated important social norms).
Interestingly enough, Descartes wants to rule out indignation at the greatest cause of all (and he puts this in surprisingly Spinozistic fashion) God or Nature [Dieu, ou de la Nature]. Again, we see a kind of appeal to a normative proportionality principle here. But lurking here is also an idea that we cannot make our indignation felt on God or Nature, and that in an important sense we are not fundamentally equal.
I think it's pretty clear that by Descartes' lights, wrath -- as action guiding and nurtured over time under the sway of, say, anger or revenge, -- is taken as potentially more destabilizing to society than indignation. For, wrath can undermine good judgment. And so wrath must be moderated according to Descartes by generosity (sect 203).
You haven't read Schwarze's book, but I hope you trust me when I say that Descartes's account of indignation has already a lot of the building blocks that will be deployed by Butler, Hume, and Smith and that she analyzes with great skill. From the eighteen century perspective, what's really lacking in Descartes is a proper analysis of the role of sympathy in calibrating indignation. (Descartes was famously averse to sympathy because he associates it with the kind of philosophy he thinks is baloney.) And Descartes does not spell out the normative features that enter into judgment of the impartial bystander. If I am right about this it does raise an interesting historical-sociological question why Descartes' view of indignation was only really developed and elaborated during the eighteenth century by folk commonly portrayed as his critics.
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