Sympathy, Sex, and Authority in Richardson and Hume

Sympathy, Sex, and Authority in Richardson and Hume CAROL KAY A great incentive to the rich development of philosophy and other lit­ erature devoted to exploring sympathy came from political philosophy and the political experience that nourished it. Hobbes's brilliant deduc­ tion of absolute sovereignty from sceptical reasoning about moral truth and from a psychology of restless, contentious power-seeking could be refuted or modified in a variety of important ways by those who empha­ sized sympathetic principles of social coherence. Even if we do not wish to picture a society of writers minutely and repeatedly scrutinizing Levia­ than, we have reason to believe that the reaction to civil war could lead anyone to share Hobbes's great goal, the foundation of social peace, and also to share his irrepressible anxiety about the many dangerous provoca­ tions to competition. Of course a river as broad as sympathy will wander considerably from its source, branch out in various directions, change complexion and composition. The discourse on sympathy comprehends a host of what are now separate disciplines of psychology, ethics, aesthet­ ics, physiology. However much we may gain by separate explorations, any decisive or unquestioning segregation of politics from them would distort the history of the authors we study when we study the history of sympathy. Keeping politics in the picture will be difficult, not simply be­ cause of our own institutional divisions but also because those who elabo­ rated the discussion of sympathy tended to turn their attention away from older political ideals and from specifically political institutions to social mechanisms. Though in some sense their move to social passions and social processes away from governmental authority is an antipolitical 77 78 / KAY strategy, I believe that it is helpful to see it as a certain kind of political thought rather than as antipolitical or apolitical. And I hope to show that an awareness of sex differences in the literature of sympathy reveals the essential connection of ethics and politics. Hume and Richardson may seem like an odd couple to join to this in­ quiry, even though both are psychologists and moralists of sorts. One is well known to have contributed to the development of political philoso­ phy; one is thought to have confined literature to the realm of the per­ sonal and private. One is a master of abstract analysis; the other is a dra­ matic novelist whose scenes of psychological complexity seem to defy his own powers of explicit analysis and generalization. One is a rare sceptic, the other a member of the Church of England. Finally one has rather little to say about the relationships of men and women, especially little to say about women, and the other seems to draw his most powerful inspiration from these subjects. Yet Richardson shares the fundamental strategy by which Hume answered Hobbes: the direction of attention to social rules rather than to the arbitrary imposition of political authority. Richardson's characters have the deep sensitivity to public opinion and the profound respect for social rules that Hume describes eloquently in the Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals: Another spring of our constitution, that brings a great addition of force to moral sentiment, is the love of fame; which rules, with such uncontrolled authority, in all generous minds, and is often the grand object of all their designs and undertakings. By our continual and ear­ nest pursuit of a character, a name, a reputation in the world, we bring our own deportment and conduct frequently in review, and consider how they appear in the eyes of those who approach and regard us. This constant habit of surveying ourselves, as it were, in reflection, keeps alive all the sentiments of right and wrong, and begets in noble natures, a certain reverence for themselves as well as others, which is the surest guardian of every virtue. The animal conveniencies and pleasures sink gradually in their value; while every beauty and moral grace is studiously acquired, and the mind is accomplished in every perfection, which can adorn or embellish a rational creature.1 Social authority appears in this passage to be a sort of sovereign authority without a sovereign, "uncontrolled" by rulers or subjects

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