The Social Aspects of Pride:Comments on Taylor's Reflecting Subjects Genevieve Lloyd (bio) My comments on Jacqueline Taylor's rich and interesting study1 will focus on a theme which I found particularly thought provoking: the discussion of Hume's treatment of pride. I think the topic of pride is central to the book's structure—closely integrated with the recurring consideration of what is distinctive in Hume's approach to the social significance of the passions. I am going to come at this theme indirectly—through consideration of the differences between Hume and Spinoza on the nature and significance of pride. Taylor shows that Hume has made it possible for pride to be considered as a positive trait, perhaps even as a virtue. Spinoza's attitude to pride in the Ethics is, in contrast, quite negative. The differences between Spinoza and Hume here are of more than incidental scholarly interest. They go to the heart of what this book brings out so well: Hume's capacity to engage both with the social effects of emotions and with the ways in which emotions are themselves shaped—and sometimes transformed—by their social contexts. One way of putting the point here is that the history of the emotions reflects their changing social conditions; and indeed, on my reading, that is one aspect of this book's engagement with the idea of reflection. Our understanding of an emotion is deepened by considering attitudes towards it which have prevailed in different places and times. In some cases, these variations can be seen as changes in attitude towards states which have remained fundamentally the same. Sometimes, too, an apparent change in attitude may in fact indicate a mere change in terminology, rather than a deep conceptual shift. However, in other cases, it can be argued that the emotion itself becomes something different from what it was. I want to suggest that Hume's treatment of pride—as it emerges in Taylor's discussion—involves that deeper kind [End Page 161] of change; and that in this respect, Reflecting Subjects offers, more generally, an important engagement with conceptual issues about the philosophical history of emotions. To clarify what is at stake here, let me refer briefly to a claim made by A. O. Hirschman in his book, The Passions and the Interests, published in 1977. Hirschman argued that there are conceptual shifts that happened throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in relation to attitudes to money-making pursuits. On his account, what happened was not just a matter of a change in attitudes towards the acquisition of wealth. Rather, there was an underlying realignment in a cluster of concepts, that helped make activities related to such acquisition come to be perceived as honourable, after having been previously regarded as enacting shameful vices of greed or avarice. Hirschman talked of a "marvellous metamorphosis" of destructive passions into virtues, via the intervening concept of "rational pursuit of interest," which brought together what had previously been seen as opposed categories of "reason" and "the passions."2 Has Hume brought a comparable conceptual shift in the understanding of pride? If he has, then what is it about his philosophy that makes that shift possible? In his discussion of pride in Book 2, section 5, of the Treatise, Hume reflects on the striking fact that pride not only presupposes the idea of the self, but also, in some ways, transforms and enriches it. Pleasure in a beautiful house, which one owns, passes into pleasure in oneself—as its owner. Pride changes us; and that productive process involves not just how we perceive ourselves, but how we are perceived by others—and, in turn, how we come to perceive ourselves differently. In her illuminating discussion—in Chapter 2 of Reflecting Subjects—of the central role of pride in Humean social theory, Taylor stresses the role of "mirroring" in those productive aspects of pride. Sustained pride, reflected back to us by the reactions of others, brings an enduring sense of self-worth. "Mirroring" is here conceived as "a social process occurring between human minds and in which passionate experiences are communicated, responded to, and sustained, and in some instances also created...