Hume on Shame

David Hume is famous for developing a ‘science of man’ based on a thorough investigation of passions and sentiments. What is most surprising is that, in his sentimental geography, shame appears to play a rather marginal role. In this essay, I shall maintain that it is nonetheless possible to find room for shame in Hume, and that the most promising way to do so is to consider it in the light of a different passion on which Hume dwells at length, the passion of humility. I shall thus examine where Hume explicitly refers to shame and how it relates to humility. By comparing Hume’s reflections with those of some more recent philosophers such as Gabriele Taylor, Bernard Williams, and Richard Wollheim, I shall argue that, as in the case of humility, so with shame Hume considers it to be a negative and vicious passion. That is because, like humility, shame as well produces a distorted and repressed conception of the self, with the consequence of leading to an oppressive and suffocating ethical perspective that is ultimately immoral. On the contrary, ‘a due degree of pride’ is the passion that, for Hume, allows us to give stability to our practical self, enabling us to establish ourselves as proper moral agents.