Smooth Motions

I was perusing Hume this morning–what a morning!–and found an interesting reference to the Lucretius passage we were talking about yesterday. Hume cites L’s suggestion that we feel the happiness of our own situation upon viewing the situation of others at sea in a turbulent storm. Hume flatly disagrees with this suggestion that we feel some happiness–he writes, “No man has so savage a heart as to reap any pleasure from such a spectacle, or withstand the motions of the tenderest compassion and sympathy” (Treatise 3.3.2.5). It may be that Hume is just misreading the suggestion–he might be thinking that we feel pleasure at seeing these people in distress–but I don’t think that’s really all he’s up to in this passage. He is trying to show our innate human sympathy for other people, and our inability to avoid feeling sympathy if we are face to face with the pain of another person. I wonder too, though, if there is a point here about the individualism of the Epicurean position (and plenty of other positions) that Hume is denying. I think he’s making the claim that it’s absurd to think that when we see the situation of another person–especially a dangerous or troubling situation–that our natural thought is of ourselves and our own position. I’m interested in discussing the degree to which Epicureanism is problematically individually focused, if there is some argument for why it is our own situation that is of primary–or sole?–concern to us, and whether Lucretius (or others that use this illustration) are committed to either a denial of natural sympathy or a forced eschewing of any sympathetic responses to the pain of others. Perhaps the recognition of my own position as better off is not incompatible with feeling sympathy for the other people, but Hume is really suggesting that this feeling of sympathy encroaches on my situation to such a degree that I do feel some kind of pain. For Hume, this Lucretian recognition wouldn’t be of any comfort in such a situation. What picture of human psychology are we getting from Lucretius here? –Thoughts?