Works:
A Treatise
of Human Nature 1739--1740
Essays
Moral and Political, first volume 1742, later Essays Moral, Political and Literary
An Enquiry
concerning Human Understanding 1748
An Enquiry
concerning the Principles of Morals 1751
Political
Discourses 1752
Four
Dissertations: The Natural History of Religion, Of the
Passions, Of Tragedy, Of the Standard of Taste 1757
The History
of England, in 6 volumes, 1752--1761
Dialogues concerning Natural Religion 1779 (posthumously).
A Scotsman, family from Ninewells in Berwickshire, in Border country, born and died in Edinburgh, Hume was an Historian and also something of an early economist, but is noted mostly nowadays as a philosopher. What kind of Philosopher? A moralist and embryonic scientist of human nature. Also a sceptic: the great sceptic in modern philosophy, who cut the ground from under the rationalists and then did the same to the empiricists, who awoke Kant from his dogmatic slumbers as Kant himself put it.
Hume
is one of the few philosophers who took care of the literary qualities of his
writing --cf. Plato, also Descartes. As with Plato and Descartes, there is a
studied correspondence particularly in his later mature writing between
philosophical content, method and manner of delivery including features of
literary form and style. To understand
him properly you have also to take account of the literary features of his
writing.
(A) The nature of Hume's philosophical project:
This
is something of a mystery and an object of dispute among Historians and Hume
scholars. His philosophical project
would seem to have a number of sides to it, not always easy to reconcile with
each other. A brief look at each of
these aspects will give us a way of getting an overall view of Hume's
philosophizing in its various parts.
1) The
scientific side:
philosophy as science of human nature:
(a) Hume makes it quite clear that he would like
to be, in effect, the 'Newton' of the human sciences: moral philosophy, not
just ethics but also politics, economics, aesthetics, psychology, sociology,
the study of the human understanding, and complementary to this to do some work
in History. To do this he would work
according to the same method that
(b) This science of human beings consists in the
establishment of what he calls 'principles of human nature' and the explanation
of moral phenomena in terms of such principles. The principles of human nature are kinds of
causal connection or laws determining the order of happening in the mind of
perceptions, or impressions and ideas.
The moral phenomena include: reasoning and belief, passions such as
pride and love, moral evaluation, aesthetic evaluation, religion, life in
society, allegiance to government and economics -- human behaviour
generally in so far as it is initiated by an input of impressions. The Hume of the Treatise is convinced that
there are principles, indeed fairly simple laws relating perceptions, according
to which all such phenomena might be explained, all moral phenomena, all
phenomena which have to do with an input into the system of impressions and
ideas which we call the human mind. Hume
thinks that if he can construct such an empirical science as this, he will add
enormously to our knowledge of ourselves and of how we behave individually and
in our relations with each other and in society.
(c) Philosophers are more interested in some of
the things that happen along the way than in the project itself of a unified
science of human beings --which project Hume himself soon gave up as about us
at this point in history. E.g. his analysis of causal reasoning, or personal identity, or
moral evaluation, or freedom and determinism. Bits of Hume are frequently used particularly
in Anglo-Saxon philosophy to set the questions for discussion on such
areas.
One
of the things which makes Hume interesting even to
continental philosophers has to do with what Hume means by 'perceptions'. This is really quite interesting in so far as
'perceptions' would seem to be prior to the distinction between subject and
object, like the mind of a child, doesn't know itself, doesn't know bodies,
bodies and I come later, the product of a construction which is the combined work
of an input of impressions and a particular cause and effect determined system
called the human mind or human nature.
The project of the Treatise in this respect is something truly radical
and paradigmatically philosophical, comparable to the work of Kant soon after
or to Husserl and the phenomenologists
this century with their notion of 'constitution. If this interpretation is correct, Hume
rather than Kant can be credited with discovering the constructive character of
the human mind: reality is a construct, both external world and personal
identity.
2) The
critical side: philosophy as criticism.
This also is a pervasive
feature of Hume's philosophical writing, including claims along the following
lines:
·
that certain beliefs and modes of inference
are not after all derived from reason, e.g. belief in the existence of body,
e.g. causal reasoning and the principle of causality;
·
that certain supposed ideas are not good
ideas, that the terms corresponding to them are without clear meaning, e.g. the
Medieval and Lockean notions of substance, e.g.
necessary connection in nature;
·
that some disputes
are merely verbal, e.g. freedom and determinism, the fact of personal identity,
whether the cause or causes of order in the universe deserve to be called a
mind or intelligence.
This feature of Hume's philosophizing is not per
se hostile to the science, but in combination with the science can lead to
certain sceptical results. The problem is whether these sceptical results have the effect of undermining the
science itself. Does Hume perhaps even
mean to be finally a sceptic, or does he mean himself
to be some kind of combination of the two and if so how is this possible?
3) The sceptical aspect:
philosophy as the inducing
of scepticism: this includes a number of aspects:
(a) the purposeful?? inducing of a a deep mood of
melancholy and despair, including a temporary breakdown of our natural
confidence in ourselves, which puts the very doing of science/philosophy in
danger.
(b) this comes about typically as a result of a
complex of science and criticism: causal inference doesn't derive from reason,
what does it derive from, its nothing but an animal like instinct, but why
should we trust an animal like instinct to lead us to truth... This revelation of why we do believe the
things we believe e.g. the existence of body, and do the things we do e.g.
causal reasoning, throws us into a mood of melancholy and despair.
(c) the point of it: why
indulge such a mood?
1/ to some extent it just happens, overflowing any
therapeutic effect. You do science and
criticism about human understanding and it makes you deeply sceptical.
2/ the undergoing of such an experience can
however have long term therapeutic effects, and to some extent Hume is after
achieving such effects both in himself and in his
readers. It shows us what kinds of
beings we are and the importance for us of 'nature' and the passions and
sentiments.
To
this extent, it is part of Hume's endeavour to
explain us to ourselves. And in respect
of philosophy itself it causes us to philosophize realistically, from within
this human condition, with its limitations but also with its potential. It puts rationality in its place, which is
very important for Hume: reason is but part of human nature, moral sentiment
and the passions are just as important and when it comes to action even more
important. We should think of ourselves
as a little more than the animals, rather than a little less than the
angels. But it also gives reason a limited
but within its limits genuinely useful and even necessary place in the new
scheme of things in respect of human life; even though reason itself is not
capable of founding itself and cannot do without support from the other parts
of our nature, e.g. instinct, the 'weak' side of our nature, various
passions. So we continue to act and to
reason and believe, and we continue to philosophize and philosophize as well as
we can, but now realizing what we are doing.
He continue on our way, as our mood directs us, still endeavouring
to instruct and convince, endeavouring moreover to
methodize and correct a little our common ways of proceeding in the reasonings of common life and in science, in our judgement
of moral characters and in our political behaviour, and
endeavouring also to cater in our writings for the
aesthetic sentiment within ourselves and our readers, not only to instruct but
to please and to entertain.
_