David Hume (1711 – 1776) - Scotsman “Treatise on Human Nature”; “An Inquiry into Human Knowledge”; Moral and Political Essays; "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion"
Subjective idealism: Epistemological version Since, according to the principles of empiricism, the only source of our knowledge is sensory sensations, the question about the causes of sensations does not make sense, since such causes must either be something felt (in other words, just another sensation; but in this case the question remains unanswered) , or some supersensible entities (which are not perceived by the senses and, therefore, remain unknown). In both cases, the subjective (ideal) world of sensory sensations remains the only reality accessible to us.
Two types of perceptions: impressions (obtained in the process of sensory perception, more vivid and strong, connected in experience), ideas (remain in the mind after the cessation of sensations or anticipate them, less vivid and strong, connected by the mind at its discretion). Principles of association of ideas: similarity, contiguity, causality. Subjectivity of causation: inference about the presence of a causal relationship based on sequence in time is the result of a logical fallacy. “After” does not mean “as a result.” (Post hoc non est propter hoc.)
D. Hume's skepticism. Skepticism (considering, exploring), a philosophical position based on doubt about the existence of any reliable criterion of truth. An extreme form of skepticism, based on the assertion that there is nothing in our knowledge that corresponds to reality and reliable knowledge is in principle unattainable, is agnosticism.
Hume formulated the basic principles of modern European agnosticism. Agnosticism was carried out most consistently in the history of philosophy in Hume's system. . Claiming that the only source of knowledge is experience. Experience was treated as the only source of knowledge. Representatives of idealistic empiricism (J. Berkeley, D. Hume) limited experience to the totality of sensations and perceptions, denying that experience is based on laws formulated with the help of knowledge. Hume proceeded from the impossibility of subjecting it to testing => the impossibility of establishing adequacy between the data of experience and the objective world. For example: the concept of causality arises as a result of repeated repetition of one phenomenon after another. Generalizing this repeatability, thinking concludes that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between the corresponding phenomena. However, in reality, Hume believed, such a conclusion is only a product of thinking. Likewise, all knowledge deals only with experience and in principle cannot go beyond its limits, and therefore cannot judge what the relationship between experience and reality is.
Yu's theory of knowledge was formed as a result of his processing of the subjective idealism of J. Berkeley in the spirit of agnosticism. Hume considered impressions of external experience (sensations) to be primary perceptions, and impressions of internal experience (affects, desires, passions) to be secondary. Considering the problem of the relationship between being and spirit to be theoretically unsolvable, Yuri replaced it with the problem of the dependence of simple ideas (i.e., sensory images) on external impressions. Rejecting the reflection in consciousness of the objective laws of existence, Yu interpreted the formation of complex ideas as psychological associations of simple ideas with each other. All simple ideas arise directly or indirectly from the impressions corresponding to them (removes the question of innate ideas). The task of knowledge is to be a guide for practical orientation. At the same time, the only considers the objects of mathematics to be the subject of reliable knowledge. All other objects of research concern only facts that cannot be proven logically, but are derived exclusively from experience.
Experience is understood idealistically. Reality- flow of impressions. The reasons that give rise to these impressions are unknowable. We cannot even know whether the external world exists. There are impressions of our feelings (sensations) and impressions of the internal activities of the soul (reflections). The ideas of memory and imagination depend on these 2 types of initial sensations. No idea can be formed without an impression preceding it.
The relation between cause and effect cannot be inferred either intuitively or by demonstration. Perhaps there is a causal relationship. It is possible that of 2 events following one after the other, the previous event is really the cause, and the subsequent one is the effect. People tend to draw conclusions from observations of actions in the past to similar actions of these objects in the future (spring is followed by summer). They act based on the confidence that the same sequence will occur in the future. Why do people act this way? habits. However, the action of habit can never transform our expectation of a certain order into the certainty of true knowledge - skepticism. The flow of impressions is still not chaotic. Impressions are not equal and this is quite enough for orientation in the world.
Hume himself considered himself a moderate skeptic, which usefully “confines our investigations only to such questions as are more suitable to the limited capabilities of the human mind.” All his skeptical conclusions can be reduced to a single basis, namely, the denial of the ontological significance of the principle of causality (the causes of impressions are objects, ideas are caused by the cause of impressions). How far Hume's empiricism has gone from Locke's is perfectly illustrated by the following two, truly symbolic, statements. If, according to Locke, “reason should be our final judge and guide in all things,” then Hume asserts the diametrically opposite: “reason is and should be a slave to the affects and cannot claim any other position except serving and obeying them.” "
David Hume raised empiricism to the level of, as they say, pillars of Hercules, having exhausted all possibilities for its development. Freed from the ontological premises that occupied an important place in Hobbes, from the noticeable influence of Cartesianism and rationalism in Locke, from the religious and apologetic interests that absorbed Berkeley’s thoughts and almost all the residual principles of the metaphysical tradition, Humean empiricism deprives philosophy of its specific content. Only the irresistible primeval force of nature can now save us from a skeptical way of reasoning. Hume frankly said that nature is stronger than reason; the philosopher-man must yield to the nature-man: “You are a philosopher, but beyond philosophy, you are always a man.” Taken to its logical extreme, empiricism will ultimately come to the negation of philosophy.
David Hume: briefly about the philosopher and philosophy
David Hume was born in 1711 into the family of a poor nobleman in Edinburgh. When he was two years old, his father died, and all the care for David and his brother and sister fell on the shoulders of his mother. At the age of 12, David was sent to Edinburgh University. There he truly fell in love with the classical sciences and for the next three years he studied philosophy and tried to create his own teaching.
Studying required serious effort from Hume, and this began to affect his psychological health. Hume worked for some time as a clerk for one of the sugar importers, and then, when his health improved a little, he moved to France, where he continued to work on the development of his philosophical direction. In 1734-1737, while living in La Flèche, France, Hume created one of his most important philosophical works - “A Treatise on Human Nature” [D. Hume. Treatise on Human Nature. - Mn.: Potpourri, 1998]. Later, in 1739-1740, it was published in England in three volumes, but Hume removed some parts from it that could then be regarded ambiguously (for example, reflections on miracles).
Hume hoped that he could work in the academic system of England. But his “Treatise” was not received very well, and although his next two-volume work “Moral and Political Essays” [D. Hume. Moral and Political Essays (1741-1742) // D. Hume. Works: in 4 volumes - M. , 2000-2006.] was received relatively favorably, Hume's reputation as an atheist and skeptic did not allow him to pursue an academic career.
"Treatise on Human Nature"
Hume's most significant work consists of three books and covers a wide range of philosophical topics.
Book I. On Human Knowledge
Hume adheres to the theory of empiricism: all knowledge is a consequence of sensory experience. He believes that ideas are not much different from sensory experience, since complex ideas are a consequence of simpler ones, which, in turn, are formed on the basis of impressions received by a person from the senses. In addition, Hume argues: if something is “self-evident,” it must be known by the senses and cannot be arrived at by logical conclusion.
From this position, Hume considers the issues of the existence of God, the soul and the divine creation of the world. Since humans cannot perceive God, a divine creature, or a soul directly through the senses, there is no reason to believe in their existence.
In his first book, Hume introduced the metaphor of three instruments to be used for philosophical inquiry: the microscope, the razor, and the fork.
. "Microscope". To understand an idea, it must first be broken down into smaller components.
. "Razor". If a concept cannot be derived from an idea that can be decomposed into simpler components, then this concept is meaningless. Hume uses the metaphor of a razor to cut off metaphysics and religion.
. "Fork". A metaphor for how truth can be divided into two types. One argues that once ideas (such as an axiom in mathematics) are proven, they always remain proven. The second relates to what happens in the real world.
Book II. The Doctrine of Affects
Hume devotes his second book to the study of human emotions and psychological states, which he calls affects (for example, love, hatred, grief, joy, etc.). Hume classifies affects in the same way as ideas and impressions. First, he divides impressions into primary - received through the senses - and secondary - which follow from the primary and the source of which is the person himself.
Primary impressions are internal, they have a physical source. They manifest themselves in the form of physical pleasure or displeasure and are new to a person, since they come from a physical source. According to Hume's teachings, affects are a consequence of secondary impressions. Hume distinguishes direct affects (grief, fear, desire, hope, joy and disgust) and indirect (love, hatred, pride and humility).
Hume argues that virtue is not based on reason, since moral decisions influence action, but purely rational decisions do not. Beliefs about cause and effect relate to the relationships between objects that a person perceives. A person's actions are governed by emotions only when the objects he perceives interest him. And he is interested in them if they are capable of causing suffering or giving pleasure.
Hume argues that pleasure and pain motivate humans and create affects. Affects are feelings that stimulate action, and the mind must obey them. The mind can influence human behavior in two ways: directing affects to focus on objects, and revealing relationships between events that affects will cause.
Book III. About morality
Based on the ideas presented in the first two books, Hume discusses the principles of morality. First, he makes a distinction between virtue and vice. Hume argues that these moral differences are impressions, not ideas. The impression from virtue is pleasure, the impression from vice is suffering. Moral impressions are a consequence of human actions and cannot be caused by inanimate objects or animals.
Hume argues that one can characterize a person's actions as moral or immoral only on the basis of how they affect others (and not on the person himself), purely from a social point of view. Based on this statement, Hume claims that the basis of a person's moral obligations is sympathy.
Virtue is not a default quality of a person that follows from his experience. Hume uses a murder situation as an example. If a man were to study murder, he would not feel displeasure; therefore it would not be a vice. He would simply reveal his aversion to killing. This shows that virtue does not belong to the category of reason, but to the category of affects.
Thanks to his criticism of philosophical theories, ideas and methodologies based on rationalism, David Hume became one of the most significant figures in the history of Western philosophical thought. He touched on many philosophical topics, including religion, metaphysics, human personality, virtue, and the concept of cause and effect.
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Ministry of Agriculture and Food of Russia
FSOU VPO DalGAU
Department of Philosophy
Test
Discipline: Philosophy
Topic: Philosophy of D. Hume
Completed by: student of the FPC “Electrification”
and automation of agriculture,
Guryev M.A., No. 291556
Checked by: Candidate of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy Koryakina E.V.
Blagoveshchensk 2009
PLAN
1. Basic provisions of the philosophical teachings of D. Hume 3
1.1 Description of the main phenomena. Impressions and ideas 3
1.2 Associations and abstractions 5
1.3 On the existence of substances 7
1.4 Problem of causality 8
2. The doctrine of knowledge. Position in the debate between empiricism and rationalism 9
3. Teachings about social relations 10
3.1 The doctrine of society, justice, property and morality 10
3.2 Hume's Ethics 12
3.3 Criticism of religion 14
References 16
1 BASIC PROVISIONS OF PHILOSOPHICAL TEACHING
D. YUMA
1.1 Description of the main phenomena. Impressions and ideas.
D. Hume puts the doctrine of man at the center of philosophizing. In his Treatise of Human Nature, or an Attempt to Apply the Method of Reasoning to Moral Subjects by Experience, Hume turns to a careful study of human knowledge, to the justification of experience, the probability and certainty of knowledge and knowledge (Book I of the Treatise), to the study of human affects (Book II), morality, virtue, problems of justice and property, state and law as the most important topics in the doctrine of human nature (Book III of the Treatise).
Hume includes the following main features of human nature: “Man is a rational being, and, as such, he finds his proper food in science...”; “Man is not only a rational being, but also a social being...”;
“Man, moreover, is an active being, and thanks to this inclination, as well as due to the various needs of human life, he must indulge in various affairs and activities...”
Nature, apparently, indicated to mankind a mixed way of life as the most suitable for it, secretly warning people against being too carried away by each individual inclination in order to avoid losing the ability for other activities and entertainments.
D. Hume believed that “people naturally, without thinking, approve of the character that is most similar to their own... One can consider it an infallible rule that if there is no relationship in life in which I would not like to be with some person , then the character of this person must be recognized as perfect within these limits.” But if most people do not entirely like their own character, they are unlikely to be approving of observing the same character in others. It is more natural to assume that we approve of a character that matches our ideal self-image. This means that in others we highly value those personal qualities that we would like to see in ourselves.
The starting point of Hume's reasoning is the belief that there is a fact of immediate given sensations to us, and hence our emotional experiences. Hume concluded that we, in principle, do not know and cannot know whether the material world exists or does not exist as an external source of sensations. "...Nature keeps us at a respectful distance from her secrets and provides us with only the knowledge of a few superficial qualities."
Almost all of Hume's subsequent philosophy is constructed by him as a theory of knowledge, describing the facts of consciousness. Transforming sensations into the absolute “beginning” of knowledge, he considers the structure of the subject in isolation from his objective and practical activity. This structure, in his opinion, consists of atomic impressions and those mental products that are derived from these impressions. Of all these derivative types of mental activity, Hume is interested in “ideas,” by which he does not mean sensations, but something else. Hume calls “impressions” and “ideas” collectively “perceptions.”
“Impressions” are those sensations that a particular subject receives from events and processes that take place in the field of action of his senses. This is the essence of the subject's sensation. Hume often understood “impressions” as perceptions in a sense that distinguishes them from sensations (individual properties of things are felt, but things are perceived in their integral form). Thus, Hume's “impressions” are not only simple sensory experiences, but also complex sensory formations.
“Ideas” in his theory of knowledge are figurative representations and sensory images of memory, products of the imagination, including distorted and fantastic products. Ideas in Hume's system of terminology represent an approximate, weaker or less vivid (not so “living”) reproduction of “impressions,” that is, their reflection within the sphere of consciousness. "...All ideas are copied from impressions." Depending on whether impressions are simple or complex, ideas are also correspondingly simple or complex.
“Perceptions” include “impressions” and “ideas.” For Hume, they are cognitive objects facing consciousness.
1.2 Associations and abstractions
A person cannot limit himself to mere impressions. For the success of his orientation in the environment, he must perceive complex, composite impressions, the structure and grouping of which depend on the structure of the external experience itself. But besides impressions, there are also ideas. They can also be complex. They are formed by associating simple impressions and ideas.
In associations, Hume sees the main, if not the only way of thinking through sensory images, and for him this is not only artistic, but all thinking in general. Associations are whimsical and are directed by random combinations of elements of experience, and therefore they themselves are random in content, although in form they are consistent with some permanent (and in this sense necessary) patterns.
Hume identified and distinguished the following three types of associative connections: by similarity, by contiguity in space and time, and by cause-and-effect dependence.
Within these three types, impressions, impressions and ideas can be associated, ideas with each other and with states of predisposition (attitudes) to continue previously experienced experiences.
According to the first type, associations occur by similarity, which can be not only positive, but also negative in nature. The latter means that instead of similarity, there is contrast: when experiencing emotions, a state of affect often appears that is opposite to the previous state. “...The secondary impulse,” writes Hume in his essay “On Tragedy,” “is transformed into a dominant one and gives it strength, although of a different and sometimes opposite nature.” However, most associations by similarity are positive.
According to the second type, association occurs by contiguity in space and by immediate sequence in time. This happens most of all with ideas of external impressions, that is, with memories of previous sensations ordered in a spatio-temporal manner. The most useful cases of association by contiguity, Hume believes, can be indicated from the field of empirical natural science. Thus, “the thought of an object easily transfers us to what is adjacent to it, but only the immediate presence of the object does this with the highest vividness.”
According to the third type, associations arise based on cause-and-effect relationships, which are most important in reasoning related to theoretical natural science. If we believe that A is the cause, and B is the effect, then later, when we receive an impression from B, the idea of A pops up in our minds, and it may also be that this association develops in the opposite direction: when When we experience an impression or idea A, we have the idea B.
Hume modified the theory that "some ideas are peculiar in their nature, but when represented they are general." Firstly, the initial class of things similar to each other, from which a representative is then extracted, is formed, according to Hume, spontaneously, under the influence of associations by similarity. Secondly, Hume believes that a sensory image takes on the role of representative (representative of all members of a given class of things) temporarily, and then transfers it to the word by which this image is designated.
The representative concept of abstraction comes into agreement with the facts of artistic thinking, in which a figurative example, if well chosen, replaces a lot of general descriptions and is even more effective.
Those ideas to which Hume gives the status of general ones turn out to be, as it were, truncated particular ideas, retaining among their characteristics only those that other particular ideas of a given class have. Such truncated private ideas represent a semi-generalized, vague image-concept, the clarity of which is given by the word connected to it, again by association.
1.3 On the existence of substances
Solving the general problem of substance, Hume took the following position: “it is impossible to prove either the existence or non-existence of matter,” that is, he took an agnostic position. A similar agnostic position could be expected from him regarding the existence of human souls, but on this issue Hume is more categorical and completely rejects Berkeley’s views. He is convinced that there are no souls - substances.
Hume denies the existence of the “I” as a substrate of acts of perception and argues that what is called the individual soul - substance, is “a bundle or bundle of various perceptions, following each other with incomprehensible speed and being in constant flux.
(May 7 (April 26 old style) 1711, Edinburgh, Scotland - August 25, 1776, ibid.)
en.wikipedia.org
Biography
Born in 1711 in Edinburgh (Scotland) in the family of a lawyer, the owner of a small estate. Hume received a good education at the University of Edinburgh. He worked in the diplomatic missions of England in Europe.
He began his philosophical career in 1739, publishing the first two parts of his Treatise on Human Nature. A year later, the second part of the treatise was published. The first part was devoted to human cognition. Then he finalized these ideas and published them in a separate book - “Essay on Human Cognition”.
He wrote a lot of works on various topics, including the history of England in eight volumes.
Philosophy
Historians of philosophy generally agree that Hume’s philosophy is in the nature of radical skepticism, but many researchers[who?] believe that the ideas of naturalism also play an extremely important role in Hume’s teaching[source not specified 307 days].
Hume was greatly influenced by the ideas of the empiricists John Locke and George Berkeley, as well as Pierre Bayle, Isaac Newton, Samuel Clarke, Francis Hutcheson and Joseph Butler.
Hume believed that our knowledge begins with experience and ends with experience, without innate knowledge (a priori). Therefore we do not know the reason for our experience. Since experience is always limited by the past, we cannot comprehend the future. For such judgments, Hume was considered a great skeptic in the possibility of knowing the world through experience.
Experience consists of perceptions, and perceptions are divided into impressions (sensations and emotions) and ideas (memories and imagination). After perceiving the material, the learner begins to process these ideas. Decomposition by similarity and difference, far from each other or near (space), and by cause and effect. Everything consists of impressions. What is the source of the sensation of perception? Hume answers that there are at least three hypotheses:
There are images of objective objects (reflection theory, materialism).
The world is a complex of perceptual sensations (subjective idealism).
The feeling of perception is caused in our mind by God, the highest spirit (objective idealism).
Hume asks which of these hypotheses is correct. To do this, we need to compare these types of perceptions. But we are chained to the boundaries of our perception and will never know what is beyond it. This means that the question of what the source of sensation is is a fundamentally insoluble question. Anything is possible, but we will never be able to verify it. There is no evidence of the existence of the world. It can neither be proven nor disproved.
In 1876, Thomas Henry Huxley coined the term agnosticism to describe this position. Sometimes the false impression is created that Hume asserts the absolute impossibility of knowledge, but this is not entirely true. We know the content of consciousness, which means the world in consciousness is known. That is, we know the world that appears in our consciousness, but we will never know the essence of the world, we can only know phenomena. This direction is called phenomenalism. On this basis, most of the theories of modern Western philosophy are built, asserting the unsolvability of the main question of philosophy. Cause-and-effect relationships in Hume's theory are the result of our habit. And a person is a bundle of perceptions.
Hume saw the basis of morality in moral feeling, but he denied free will, believing that all our actions are determined by affects.
Essays
Works in two volumes. Volume 1. - M., 1965, 847 pp. (Philosophical Heritage, Vol. 9)
Works in two volumes. Volume 2. - M., 1965, 927 pp. (Philosophical Heritage, T. 10).
"Treatise on Human Nature" (1739)
“On the Standard of Taste” (1739-1740)
"Moral and Political Essays" (1741-1742)
"On the Immortality of the Soul"
"An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding" (1748)
"Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion" (1751)
"History of Great Britain"
Literature
Batin V.N. The category of happiness in Hume’s ethics //XXV Herzen Readings. Scientific atheism, ethics, aesthetics. L., 1972.
Mikhalenko Yu. P. The philosophy of David Hume is the theoretical basis of English positivism of the 20th century. M., 1962.
Narsky I. S. Philosophy of David Hume. M., 1967.
Biography
(Hume, David) (1711-1776), Scottish philosopher, historian, economist and writer. Born in Edinburgh on May 7, 1711. His father, Joseph Hume, was a lawyer and belonged to the ancient house of Hume; The Ninewells estate, adjacent to the village of Chernside near Berwick-upon-Tweed, has belonged to the family since the early 16th century. Hume's mother Catherine, "a woman of rare merit" (all quotations in the biographical part of the article are given, unless specifically stated, from Hume's autobiographical work, The Life of David Hume, Esquire, Written by Himself, 1777), was the daughter of Sir David Falconer, head of the panel of judges. Although the family was more or less well off, David, as the youngest son, inherited less than £50 a year; Despite this, he was determined to defend independence, choosing the path of improving his “literary talent.”
After the death of her husband, Katherine “dedicated herself entirely to the upbringing and education of her children” - John, Katherine and David. Religion (Scottish Presbyterianism) occupied a large place in home education, and David later recalled that he believed in God when he was little. However, the Ninewell Humes, being a family of educated people with a legal orientation, had in their house books devoted not only to religion, but also to secular sciences. The boys entered the University of Edinburgh in 1723. Several university professors were followers of Newton and members of the so-called. "Ranken Club", where they discussed the principles of new science and philosophy; they also corresponded with J. Berkeley. In 1726, Hume, at the insistence of his family, who considered him called to lawyering, left the university. However, he continued his education in secret - "I felt a deep aversion to any other activity except the study of philosophy and general reading" - which laid the foundation for his rapid development as a philosopher.
Excessive diligence led Hume to a nervous breakdown in 1729. In 1734, he decided to “try his luck in another, more practical field” - as a clerk in the office of a certain Bristol merchant. However, nothing came of this, and Hume went to France, living in 1734-1737 in Reims and La Flèche (where the Jesuit college was located, where Descartes and Mersenne were educated). There he wrote A Treatise of Human Nature, the first two volumes of which were published in London in 1739, and the third in 1740. Hume’s work remained virtually unnoticed - the world was not yet ready to accept the ideas of this “Moral Newton.” philosophy." His work, An Abstract of a Book Lately Published: Entitled, A Treatise of Human Nature, etc., Wherein the Chief Argument of That Book Is Farther Illustrated and Explained, 1740, also did not arouse interest. Disappointed, but not losing hope, Hume returned to Ninevals and released two parts of his Essays, Moral and Political, 1741-1742, which were met with moderate interest. However, the Treatise's reputation as heretical and even atheistic prevented his election as professor of ethics at the University of Edinburgh in 1744-1745. In 1745 (the year of the failed rebellion), Hume served as a pupil of the feeble-minded Marquis of Annandale. In 1746, as secretary, he accompanied General James St. Clair (his distant relative) on a farcical raid on the shores of France, and then, in 1748-1749, as the general's aide-de-camp on a secret military mission to the courts of Vienna and Turin. Thanks to these trips, he secured his independence, becoming "the owner of about a thousand pounds."
In 1748, Hume began signing his works with his own name. Soon after this, his reputation began to grow rapidly. Hume reworks Treatise: Book I into Philosophical Essays concerning Human Understanding, later An Inquiry concerning Human Understanding (1748), which included the essay “On Miracles”; book II - in the Study of Affects (Of the Passions), included a little later in the Four Dissertations (Four Dissertations, 1757); Book III was rewritten as Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, 1751. Other publications include Moral and Political Essays (Three Essays, Moral and Political, 1748); Political Conversations (Political Discourses, 1752) and History of England (History of England, in 6 vols., 1754-1762). In 1753 Hume began publishing Essays and Treatises, a collection of his works not devoted to historical issues, with the exception of the Treatise; in 1762 the same fate befell works on history. His name began to attract attention. "Within a year two or three replies appeared from ecclesiastics, sometimes of very high rank, and Dr. Warburton's abuse showed me that my writings were beginning to be appreciated in good society." Young Edward Gibbon called him “the great David Hume,” young James Boswell called him “England’s greatest writer.” Montesquieu was the first thinker famous in Europe to recognize his genius; After the death of Montesquieu, Abbe Leblanc called Hume “the only one in Europe” who could replace the great Frenchman. Already in 1751, Hume's literary fame was recognized in Edinburgh. In 1752 the Law Society elected him Keeper of the Lawyers' Library (now the National Library of Scotland). There were also new disappointments - failure in elections to the University of Glasgow and an attempt at excommunication from the Church of Scotland.
The invitation in 1763 from the pious Lord Hertford to the post of acting secretary of the embassy in Paris turned out to be unexpectedly flattering and pleasant - “those who do not know the power of fashion and the variety of its manifestations can hardly imagine the reception given to me in Paris by men and women of every rank and provisions." What a relationship with Countess de Bouffler alone was worth! In 1766, Hume brought the persecuted Jean-Jacques Rousseau to England, to whom George III was ready to provide refuge and livelihood. Suffering from paranoia, Rousseau soon invented the story of a “conspiracy” between Hume and the Parisian philosophes who allegedly decided to dishonor him, and began sending letters with these accusations throughout Europe. Forced to defend himself, Hume published A Concise and Genuine Account of the Dispute between Mr. Hume and Mr. Rousseau (1766). The following year, Rousseau, overcome by a fit of madness, fled England. In 1767, Lord Hertford's brother General Conway appointed Hume Assistant Secretary of State for the Northern Territories, a post that Hume held for less than one year.
"In 1768 I returned to Edinburgh very rich (I had an annual income of 1000 pounds), healthy and, although somewhat burdened with years, but hoping for a long time to enjoy peace and witness the spread of my fame." This happy period of Hume's life ended when he was diagnosed with illnesses that took away his strength and were painful (dysentery and colitis). A trip to London and Bath to make a diagnosis and prescribe treatment yielded nothing, and Hume returned to Edinburgh. He died at his home in St David's Street, New Town, on 25 August 1776. One of his last wishes was to publish Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779). On his deathbed, he argued against the immortality of the soul, which shocked Boswell; read and spoke favorably of Gibbon's Decline and Fall and Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. In 1777, Smith published Hume's autobiography, along with his letter to the publisher, in which he wrote about his close friend: “On the whole, I have always considered him, while he lived and after death, a man close to the ideal of a wise and virtuous man - so much so that as far as is possible for mortal human nature."
In the philosophical masterpiece A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects, the thesis is advanced that "almost all science covered by and dependent on the science of human nature." This science borrows its method from the new science of Newton, who formulated it in Optics (1704): “If natural philosophy is destined to be improved through the application of the inductive method, then the boundaries of moral philosophy will also be expanded.” Hume names Locke, Shaftesbury, Mandeville, Hutcheson and Butler as his predecessors in the study of human nature. If we exclude from consideration the a priori sciences that deal only with the relations of ideas (i.e. logic and pure mathematics), then we will see that true knowledge, in other words, knowledge that is absolutely and irrefutably reliable, is impossible. What kind of reliability can we talk about when the negation of a judgment does not lead to a contradiction? But there is no contradiction in denying the existence of any state of affairs, for “everything that exists may also not exist.” Therefore, from facts we come not to certainty, but at best to probability, not to knowledge, but to faith. Faith is “a new question that philosophers have not yet thought about”; it is a living idea, correlated or associated with a present impression. Faith cannot be a subject of proof; it arises when we perceive in experience the process of formation of cause-and-effect relationships.
According to Hume, there is no logical connection between cause and effect; a causal connection is found only in experience. Before experience, everything can be the cause of everything, but experience reveals three circumstances that invariably connect a given cause with a given effect: contiguity in time and space, primacy in time, constancy of connection. Belief in the uniform order of nature, the cause-and-effect process, cannot be proven, but thanks to it rational thinking itself becomes possible. Thus, it is not reason, but habit that becomes our guide in life: “Reason is the slave of the affects and must be so, and it cannot lay claim to any other position than to be in the service and subordination of the affects.” Despite this conscious anti-rationalist reversal of the Platonic tradition, Hume recognizes the necessary role of reason in the formulation of tentative hypotheses, without which the scientific method is impossible. Systematically applying this method to the study of human nature, Hume proceeds to questions of religion, morality, aesthetics, history, political science, economics, and literary criticism. Hume's approach is skeptical because it moves these questions from the sphere of the absolute to the sphere of experience, from the sphere of knowledge to the sphere of faith. All of them receive a common standard in the form of evidence confirming them, and the evidence itself must be assessed in accordance with certain rules. And no authority can avoid the procedure of such verification. However, Hume's skepticism does not mean proof that all human efforts are meaningless. Nature always takes over: “I feel an absolute and necessary desire to live, to speak out and act like all other people in the daily affairs of life.”
Hume's skepticism has both destructive and constructive features. In fact, it is creative in nature. Hume's brave new world is closer to nature than to the supernatural realm; it is the world of an empiricist, not a rationalist. The existence of the Divine, like all other factual states of affairs, is unprovable. Supranaturalism (“religious hypothesis”) must be studied empirically, from the point of view of the structure of the Universe or the structure of man. A miracle, or "violation of the laws of nature," although theoretically possible, has never been so convincingly attested in history as to be the basis of a religious system. Miraculous phenomena are always associated with human evidence, and people, as we know, are more prone to gullibility and prejudice than to skepticism and impartiality (section “On Miracles” of the Study). The natural and moral attributes of God, inferred by analogy, are not obvious enough to be used in religious practice. “From a religious hypothesis it is impossible to extract a single new fact, not a single foresight or prediction, not a single expected reward or feared punishment that is not already known to us in practice and through observation” (section “On Providence and the Future Life” Research; Dialogues on Natural Religion). Because of the fundamental irrationality of human nature, religion is born not from philosophy, but from human hope and human fear. Polytheism precedes monotheism and is still alive in the popular consciousness (Natural History of Religion). Having deprived religion of its metaphysical and even rational basis, Hume - whatever his motives - was the progenitor of the modern "philosophy of religion."
Since man is a feeling rather than a reasoning being, his value judgments are irrational. In ethics, Hume recognizes the primacy of self-love, but emphasizes the natural origin of the feeling of affection for other people. This sympathy (or benevolence) is for morality what faith is for knowledge. Although the distinction between good and evil is established through emotions, reason in its role as the servant of affects and instincts is necessary to determine the measure of social utility - the source of legal sanctions. Natural law, in the sense of a binding ethical code that exists outside of experience, cannot claim scientific truth; the related concepts of the state of nature, the original contract and the social contract are fictions, sometimes useful, but often of a purely “poetic” nature. Hume's aesthetics, although not systematically expressed, influenced subsequent thinkers. Classical (and neoclassical) rationalistic universalism is replaced by taste or emotion included in the internal structure of the soul. There is a tendency towards romantic individualism (or pluralism), but Hume does not reach the idea of personal autonomy (essay “On the Standard of Taste”).
Hume always remained a writer who dreamed of the widest fame. "I always thought, when publishing A Treatise on Human Nature, that success depended on style and not on content." His History of England was the first truly national history and remained a model of historical research throughout the next century. Describing not only political, but also cultural processes, Hume shares with Voltaire the honor of being the “father of new historiography.” In the essay "On National Characters" he explains national differences in terms of moral (or institutional) rather than physical causes. In the essay “On the Numerous Nations of Antiquity” he proves that the population in the modern world is higher than in the ancient one. In the field of political theory, Hume's creative skepticism left no stone unturned from the central dogmas of both the Whig Party (On the Original Treaty) and the Tory Party (On Passive Obedience), and assessed the method of government solely from the point of view of the benefits it brought. In economics, Hume was considered the most competent and influential English thinker until the appearance of the works of A. Smith. He discussed the ideas of the physiocrats even before the emergence of the school itself; his concepts anticipated the ideas of D. Ricardo. Hume was the first to systematically develop theories of labor, money, profit, taxation, international trade and the balance of trade.
Hume's letters are excellent. The cold, insightful reasoning of the philosopher is interspersed in them with cordial, good-natured friendly chatter; Everywhere we find abundant manifestations of irony and humor. In literary critical works, Hume remained in traditional classical positions and wanted the flourishing of national Scottish literature. At the same time, his list of slang expressions that should be excluded from Scottish speech was a step towards a simpler and clearer style of English prose language, modeled on la clart francaise. However, Hume was later accused of writing too simply and clearly and therefore could not be considered a serious philosopher.
For David Hume, philosophy was his life's work. This can be verified by comparing two sections of the Treatise (“On the love of good fame” and “On curiosity, or love of truth”) with an autobiography or any complete biography of a thinker.
HUM, DAVID(Hume, David) (1711–1776), Scottish philosopher, historian, economist and writer. Born in Edinburgh on May 7, 1711. His father, Joseph Hume, was a lawyer and belonged to the ancient house of Hume; The Ninewells estate, adjacent to the village of Chernside near Berwick-upon-Tweed, has belonged to the family since the early 16th century. Hume's mother Catherine, “a woman of rare merit” (all quotes in the biographical part of the article are given, unless specifically stated, from Hume’s autobiographical work My life – The Life of David Hume, Esquire, Written by Himself, 1777), was the daughter of Sir David Falconer, head of the bench. Although the family was more or less well off, David, as the youngest son, inherited less than £50 a year; Despite this, he was determined to defend independence, choosing the path of improving his “literary talent.”
After the death of her husband, Katherine “devoted herself entirely to the upbringing and education of her children” - John, Katherine and David. Religion (Scottish Presbyterianism) occupied a large place in home education, and David later recalled that he believed in God when he was little. However, the Ninewell Humes, being a family of educated people with a legal orientation, had in their house books devoted not only to religion, but also to secular sciences. The boys entered the University of Edinburgh in 1723. Several university professors were followers of Newton and members of the so-called. the Ranken Club, where they discussed the principles of new science and philosophy; they also corresponded with J. Berkeley. In 1726, Hume, at the insistence of his family, who considered him called to lawyering, left the university. However, he continued his education in secret - "I felt a deep aversion to any other activity except the study of philosophy and general reading" - which laid the foundation for his rapid development as a philosopher.
Excessive diligence led Hume to a nervous breakdown in 1729. In 1734, he decided to “try his luck in another, more practical field” - as a clerk in the office of a certain Bristol merchant. However, nothing came of this, and Hume went to France, living in 1734–1737 in Reims and La Flèche (where the Jesuit college where Descartes and Mersenne were educated) was located. There he wrote (A Treatise of Human Nature), the first two volumes of which were published in London in 1739, and the third in 1740. Hume’s work remained virtually unnoticed - the world was not yet ready to perceive the ideas of this “Newton of moral philosophy.” His work did not arouse interest either. Abridged summary of the Treatise on Human Nature (An Abstract of a Book Lately Published: Entitled, A Treatise of Human Nature, etc., Wherein the Chief Argument of That Book Is Farther Illustrated and Explained, 1740). Disappointed, but not losing hope, Hume returned to Ninewells and released two parts of his Experiences, moral and political (Essays, Moral and Political, 1741–1742). However, reputation Treatise as heretical and even atheistic prevented his election as professor of ethics at the University of Edinburgh in 1744–1745. In 1745 (the year of the failed rebellion), Hume served as a pupil of the feeble-minded Marquis of Annandale. In 1746, as secretary, he accompanied General James St. Clair (his distant relative) on a farcical raid on the shores of France, and then, in 1748–1749, as the general's aide-de-camp on a secret military mission to the courts of Vienna and Turin. Through these trips he secured his independence, becoming "the owner of about a thousand pounds."
In 1748, Hume began signing his works with his own name. Soon after this, his reputation began to grow rapidly. Hume reworks Treatise: turns book I into Philosophical experiments on human cognition (Philosophical Essays concerning Human Understanding, later An Inquiry concerning Human Understanding) (1748), which included the essay “On Miracles”; book II - in Research on Affect(Of the Passions), included a little later in Four studies (Four Dissertations, 1757); Book III has been rewritten into A Study on Moral Principles (Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, 1751). Other publications include: Moral and Political Essays (Three Essays, Moral and Political, 1748); Political conversations (Political Discourses, 1752) and History of England (History of England, in 6 vols., 1754–1762). In 1753 Hume began publishing Experiments and treatises(Essays and Treatises), a collection of his works not devoted to historical issues, with the exception of Treatise; in 1762 the same fate befell works on history. His name began to attract attention. “Within a year two or three replies appeared from ecclesiastics, sometimes of very high rank, and Dr. Warburton’s abuse showed me that my writings were beginning to be appreciated in good society.” Young Edward Gibbon called him “the great David Hume,” young James Boswell called him “England’s greatest writer.” Montesquieu was the first thinker famous in Europe to recognize his genius; after Montesquieu's death, Abbe Leblanc called Hume “the only one in Europe” who could replace the great Frenchman. Already in 1751, Hume's literary fame was recognized in Edinburgh. In 1752 the Law Society elected him Keeper of the Lawyers' Library (now the National Library of Scotland). There were also new disappointments - failure in elections to the University of Glasgow and an attempt to excommunicate from the Church of Scotland.
The invitation in 1763 from the pious Lord Hertford to the post of acting secretary of the embassy in Paris turned out to be unexpectedly flattering and pleasant - “those who do not know the power of fashion and the variety of its manifestations can hardly imagine the reception given to me in Paris by men and women of every rank and provisions." What a relationship with Countess de Bouffler alone was worth! In 1766, Hume brought the persecuted Jean-Jacques Rousseau to England, to whom George III was ready to provide refuge and livelihood. Suffering from paranoia, Rousseau soon invented the story of the “conspiracy” of Hume and the Parisian philosophes, who allegedly decided to disgrace him, and began sending letters with these accusations throughout Europe. Forced to defend himself, Hume published A Brief and True Explanation of the Controversy between Mr. Hume and Mr. Rousseau (A Concise and Genuine Account of the Dispute between Mr. Hume and Mr. Rousseau, 1766). The following year, Rousseau, overcome by a fit of madness, fled England. In 1767, Lord Hertford's brother General Conway appointed Hume Assistant Secretary of State for the Northern Territories, a post that Hume held for less than one year.
“In 1768 I returned to Edinburgh very rich (I had an annual income of 1000 pounds), healthy and, although somewhat burdened with years, but hoping for a long time to enjoy peace and witness the spread of my fame.” This happy period of Hume's life ended when he was diagnosed with illnesses that took away his strength and were painful (dysentery and colitis). A trip to London and Bath to make a diagnosis and prescribe treatment yielded nothing, and Hume returned to Edinburgh. He died at his home in St David's Street, New Town, on 25 August 1776. One of his last wishes was to publish Dialogues on Natural Religion (Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, 1779). On his deathbed, he argued against the immortality of the soul, which shocked Boswell; read and spoke approvingly of Decline and destruction Gibbon and about The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith. In 1777, Smith published Hume's autobiography, along with his letter to the editor, in which he wrote about his close friend: “On the whole, I have always considered him, while he lived and after death, a man close to the ideal of a wise and virtuous man - so much so that as far as this is possible for mortal human nature.”
In a philosophical masterpiece A Treatise on Human Nature, or an Attempt to Apply the Method of Reasoning Based on Experience to Moral Subjects (A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects) the thesis is put forward that “almost all sciences are covered by the science of human nature and depend on it.” This science borrows its method from the new science of Newton, who formulated it in Optics(1704): “If natural philosophy, through the application of the inductive method, is destined to be improved, then the boundaries of moral philosophy will also be expanded.” Hume names Locke, Shaftesbury, Mandeville, Hutcheson and Butler as his predecessors in the study of human nature. If we exclude from consideration the a priori sciences that deal only with the relations of ideas (i.e. logic and pure mathematics), then we will see that true knowledge, in other words, knowledge that is absolutely and irrefutably reliable, is impossible. What kind of reliability can we talk about when the negation of a judgment does not lead to a contradiction? But there is no contradiction in denying the existence of any state of affairs, for “everything that exists may not exist.” Therefore, from facts we come not to certainty, but at best to probability, not to knowledge, but to faith. Faith is “a new question that philosophers have not yet thought about”; it is a living idea, correlated or associated with a present impression. Faith cannot be a subject of proof; it arises when we perceive in experience the process of formation of cause-and-effect relationships.
According to Hume, there is no logical connection between cause and effect; a causal connection is found only in experience. Before experience, everything can be the cause of everything, but experience reveals three circumstances that invariably connect a given cause with a given effect: contiguity in time and space, primacy in time, constancy of connection. Belief in the uniform order of nature, the cause-and-effect process, cannot be proven, but thanks to it rational thinking itself becomes possible. Thus, it is not reason, but habit that becomes our guide in life: “Reason is the slave of the affects and must be so, and it cannot claim any other position than to be in the service and subordination of the affects.” Despite this conscious anti-rationalist reversal of the Platonic tradition, Hume recognizes the necessary role of reason in the formulation of tentative hypotheses, without which the scientific method is impossible. Systematically applying this method to the study of human nature, Hume proceeds to questions of religion, morality, aesthetics, history, political science, economics, and literary criticism. Hume's approach is skeptical because it moves these questions from the sphere of the absolute to the sphere of experience, from the sphere of knowledge to the sphere of faith. All of them receive a common standard in the form of evidence confirming them, and the evidence itself must be assessed in accordance with certain rules. And no authority can avoid the procedure of such verification. However, Hume's skepticism does not mean proof that all human efforts are meaningless. Nature always takes over: “I feel an absolute and necessary desire to live, to speak out and act like all other people in the daily affairs of life.”
Hume's skepticism has both destructive and constructive features. In fact, it is creative in nature. Hume's brave new world is closer to nature than to the supernatural realm; it is the world of an empiricist, not a rationalist. The existence of the Divine, like all other factual states of affairs, is unprovable. Supranaturalism (“religious hypothesis”) must be studied empirically, from the point of view of the structure of the Universe or the structure of man. A miracle, or "violation of the laws of nature," although theoretically possible, has never in history been so convincingly attested as to be the basis of a religious system. Miraculous phenomena are always associated with human evidence, and people, as we know, are more prone to gullibility and prejudice than to skepticism and impartiality (section “About miracles” Research). The natural and moral attributes of God, inferred by analogy, are not obvious enough to be used in religious practice. “From a religious hypothesis it is impossible to extract a single new fact, not a single foresight or prediction, not a single expected reward or feared punishment that is not already known to us in practice and through observation” (section “On Providence and the Future Life” Research; Dialogues on Natural Religion). Because of the fundamental irrationality of human nature, religion is born not from philosophy, but from human hope and human fear. Polytheism precedes monotheism and is still alive in the popular consciousness ( Natural history of religion). Having stripped religion of its metaphysical and even rational basis, Hume - whatever his motives - was the progenitor of the modern "philosophy of religion."
Since man is a feeling rather than a reasoning being, his value judgments are irrational. In ethics, Hume recognizes the primacy of self-love, but emphasizes the natural origin of the feeling of affection for other people. This sympathy (or benevolence) is for morality what faith is for knowledge. Although the distinction between good and evil is established through emotions, reason in its role as the servant of affects and instincts is necessary to determine the measure of social utility - the source of legal sanctions. Natural law, in the sense of a binding ethical code that exists outside of experience, cannot claim scientific truth; the related concepts of the state of nature, the original contract and the social contract are fictions, sometimes useful, but often of a purely “poetic” nature. Hume's aesthetics, although not systematically expressed, influenced subsequent thinkers. Classical (and neoclassical) rationalistic universalism is replaced by taste or emotion included in the internal structure of the soul. There is a tendency towards romantic individualism (or pluralism), but Hume does not reach the idea of personal autonomy (essay “On the Standard of Taste”).
Hume always remained a writer who dreamed of the widest fame. “I always thought when publishing Treatise on Human Nature that success depends on style and not on content." His History of England was the first truly national history and remained a model of historical research throughout the next century. Describing not only political, but also cultural processes, Hume shares with Voltaire the honor of being the “father of new historiography.” In his essay "On National Characters," he explains national differences in terms of moral (or institutional) rather than physical causes. In the essay “On the Numerous Nations of Antiquity” he proves that the population in the modern world is higher than in the ancient one. In the field of political theory, Hume's creative skepticism left no stone unturned in the central dogmas of both the Whig Party (On the Original Treaty) and the Tory Party (On Passive Obedience), and assessed the method of government solely from the point of view of the benefits it brought. In economics, Hume was considered the most competent and influential English thinker until the appearance of the works of A. Smith. He discussed the ideas of the physiocrats even before the emergence of the school itself; his concepts anticipated the ideas of D. Ricardo. Hume was the first to systematically develop theories of labor, money, profit, taxation, international trade and the balance of trade.
Hume's letters are excellent. The cold, insightful reasoning of the philosopher is interspersed in them with cordial, good-natured friendly chatter; Everywhere we find abundant manifestations of irony and humor. In literary critical works, Hume remained in traditional classical positions and wanted the flourishing of national Scottish literature. At the same time, his list of slang expressions that should be excluded from Scottish speech was a step towards a simpler and clearer style of English prose language, modeled on la clarté francaise. However, Hume was later accused of writing too simply and clearly and therefore could not be considered a serious philosopher.
For David Hume, philosophy was his life's work. You can verify this by comparing the two sections Treatise(“On the love of good fame” and “On curiosity, or love of truth”) with an autobiography or any full biography of the thinker.
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