Enrico Galvagni

This paper identifies an overlooked puzzle in Hume’s moral philosophy. Given Hume’s account of moral evaluation and his description of envy, an absurd conclusion follows: we sometimes ought to evaluate virtuous agents as vicious. I substantiate the problem by reconstructing Hume’s account of moral evaluation based on sympathy with the agent’s narrow circle and his account of envy as a form of pain generated by comparison. I argue that Hume’s view is that envy spreads with special force in one’s narrow circle. This, in turn, poses a threat to sound moral evaluation. I propose a partial solution to this puzzle in Hume’s account of decency, the virtue that, by limiting one’s display of pride, undercuts the psychological mechanism of comparison that generates envy. The paper ends with some reflections on the potential of my discussion to advance the present-day debate about envy as a moral emotion.