Workshop as Assignment on

David Hume

SUBMITTED BY: SUBMITTED TO:

Name: Sourav Islam Chowdhury MD. Saidur Rahman

Batch: 44(B) Lecturer, Department of English

Roll: 1405 World University of Bangladesh

Reg: WUB 05/19/44/1405

David Hume
Generally regarded as one of the most important philosophers to write in English, David Hume
(1711–1776) was also well known in his own time as an historian and essayist. A master stylist
in any genre, his major philosophical works—A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–1740),
the Enquiries concerning Human Understanding (1748) and concerning the Principles of
Morals (1751), as well as his posthumously published Dialogues concerning Natural
Religion (1779)—remain widely and deeply influential.

Although Hume’s more conservative contemporaries denounced his writings as works of

scepticism and atheism, his influence is evident in the moral philosophy and economic writings
of his close friend Adam Smith. Kant reported that Hume’s work woke him from his “dogmatic
slumbers” and Jeremy Bentham remarked that reading Hume “caused the scales to fall” from his
eyes. Charles Darwin regarded his work as a central influence on the theory of evolution. The
diverse directions in which these writers took what they gleaned from reading him reflect both
the richness of their sources and the wide range of his empiricism. Today, philosophers
recognize Hume as a thoroughgoing exponent of philosophical naturalism, as a precursor of
contemporary cognitive science, and as the inspiration for several of the most significant types of
ethical theory developed in contemporary moral philosophy.
“Hume is our Politics, Hume is our Trade, Hume is our Philosophy, Hume is our Religion.” This
statement by nineteenth century philosopher James Hutchison Stirling reflects the unique
position in intellectual thought held by Scottish philosopher David Hume. Part of Hume’s fame
and importance owes to his boldly skeptical approach to a range of philosophical subjects. In
epistemology, he questioned common notions of personal identity, and argued that there is no
permanent “self” that continues over time. He dismissed standard accounts of causality and
argued that our conceptions of cause-effect relations are grounded in habits of thinking, rather
than in the perception of causal forces in the external world itself. He defended the skeptical
position that human reason is inherently contradictory, and it is only through naturally-instilled
beliefs that we can navigate our way through common life. In the philosophy of religion, he
argued that it is unreasonable to believe testimonies of alleged miraculous events, and he hints,
accordingly, that we should reject religions that are founded on miracle testimonies. Against the
common belief of the time that God’s existence could be proven through a design or causal
argument, Hume offered compelling criticisms of standard theistic proofs. He also advanced
theories on the origin of popular religious beliefs, grounding such notions in human psychology
rather than in rational argument or divine revelation. The larger aim of his critique was to
disentangle philosophy from religion and thus allow philosophy to pursue its own ends without
rational over-extension or psychological corruption. In moral theory, against the common view
that God plays an important role in the creation and reinforcement of moral values, he offered
one of the first purely secular moral theories, which grounded morality in the pleasing and useful
consequences that result from our actions. He introduced the term “utility” into our moral
vocabulary, and his theory is the immediate forerunner to the classic utilitarian views of Jeremy
Bentham and John Stuart Mill. He is famous for the position that we cannot derive ought from is,
the view that statements of moral obligation cannot simply be deduced from statements of fact.
Some see Hume as an early proponent of the emotivist metaethical view that moral judgments
principally express our feelings. He also made important contributions to aesthetic theory with
his view that there is a uniform standard of taste within human nature, in political theory with his
critique of social contractarianism, and economic theory with his anti-mercantilist views. As a
philosophical historian, he defended the conservative view that British governments are best run
through a strong monarchy.

Philosophical Project
Hume’s early studies of philosophical “systems” convinced him that philosophy was in a sorry
state and in dire need of reform. When he was only 18 years old, he complained in a letter that
anyone familiar with philosophy realizes that it is embroiled in “endless Disputes” (HL 3.2). The
ancient philosophers, on whom he had been concentrating, replicated the errors their natural
philosophers made. They advanced theories that were “entirely Hypothetical”, depending “more
upon Invention than Experience”. He objects that they consulted their imagination in
constructing their views about virtue and happiness, “without regarding human Nature, upon
which every moral Conclusion must depend”. The youthful Hume resolved to avoid these
mistakes in his own work, by making human nature his “principal Study, & the Source from
which I would derive every Truth” (HL 3.6).

Hume is Newtonian in much more than method. He sees that Newton is significantly different
from John Locke (1632–1704) and the other Royal Society natural philosophers, because he
rejects their mechanist picture of the world. Newton’s greatest discovery, the Law of Gravitation,
is not a mechanical law. Hume explicitly models his account of the fundamental principles of the
mind’s operations—the principles of association—on the idea of gravitational attraction. By
appealing to these same principles throughout, Hume gives an explanation of these diverse
phenomena that enable him to provide a unified and economical account of the mind.

The relation between the Treatise and the Enquiries

In 1775, as he was readying a revised edition of his Essays and Treatises for the press, Hume
sent his publisher an “Advertisement”, asking that it be included in this and any subsequent
edition of his works. In it, he complains that his critics focused “all their batteries” on the
Treatise, “that juvenile work”, which he published anonymously and never acknowledged. He
urges his readers to regard the Enquiries “as containing his philosophical sentiments and
principles”, assuring his publisher that they provide “a compleat answer” to his critics.

Hume’s apparent disavowal of the Treatise and his regard for the Enquiries raise a question
about how we should read his work. Should we take his statements literally and let the Enquiries
represent his considered view, or should we ignore his “Advertisement” and take the Treatise as
the best statement of his position?

Both options presuppose that the differences between the Treatise and the Enquiries are
substantial enough to warrant taking one or the other as best representing Hume’s views, but
there are good reasons for doubting this. Even in the “Advertisement”, Hume says, “Most of the
principles, and reasonings, contained in this volume, were published” in the Treatise. He repeats
his conviction that he was guilty of “going to press too early”, and that his aim in the Enquiries
was to “cast the whole anew … where some negligences in his former reasoning and more in the
expression, are … corrected”.

Hume’s description of his aims suggests another option. Rather than repudiating the Treatise,
perhaps his recasting of it represents a shift in the way he presents his “principles and reasoning”
rather than a substantive change in what he has to say. He reinforces this option when he says of
the first Enquiry that the “philosophical Principles are the same in both” and that “By shortening
& simplifying the Questions, I really render them much more complete” (HL 73.2). He also
comments in “My Own Life” that the Treatise’s lack of success “proceeded more from the
manner than the matter”—more from its structure than its content (MOL 8). It is not
unreasonable to conclude that Hume’s recasting of the Treatise was designed to address this
issue, which suggests that we might understand him best by reading both works, despite their
differences, together.

Moral Philosophy
Hume’s explanation of morality is an important part of his efforts to reform philosophy. He takes
his primary task to be an investigation into the origin of the basic moral ideas, which he assumes
are the ideas of moral goodness and badness. As with the idea of cause and necessary
connection, he wants to explain moral ideas as economically as possible in terms of their
“simplest and fewest causes”. Determining their causes will determine what their content is—
what we mean by them. His secondary concern is to establish what character traits and motives
are morally good and bad.

Hume follows his sentimentalist predecessor, Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746), in building his
moral theory around the idea of a spectator who approves or disapproves of people’s character
traits and motives. The sentiments of approval and disapproval are the source of our moral ideas
of goodness and badness. To evaluate a character trait as morally good is to evaluate it as
virtuous; to evaluate it as morally bad is to evaluate it as vicious.

As he did in the causation debate, Hume steps into an ongoing debate about ethics, often called
the British Moralists debate, which began in the mid-seventeenth century and continued until the
end of the eighteenth. He uses the same method here as he did in the causation debate: there is a
critical phase in which he argues against his opponents, and a constructive phase in which he
develops his version of sentimentalism. Hume has two sets of opponents: the self-love theorists
and the moral rationalists. He became the most famous proponent of sentimentalism.

Thomas Hobbes’ (1588–1679) brilliant but shocking attempt to derive moral and political
obligation from motives of self-interest initiated the British Moralists debate. Hobbes, as his
contemporaries understood him, characterizes us as naturally self-centered and power-hungry,
concerned above all with our own preservation. In the state of nature, a pre-moral and pre-legal
condition, we seek to preserve ourselves by trying to dominate others. Since we are equally
powerful, this results in a state of “war of all against all” in which life is “nasty, brutish, and
short”. The way out is to make a compact with one another. We agree to hand over our power
and freedom to a sovereign, who makes the laws necessary for us to live together peacefully and
has the power to enforce them. While acting morally requires that we comply with the laws the
sovereign establishes, the basis of morality is self-interest.

Bernard Mandeville’s (1670–1733) The Fable of the Bees served to reinforce this reading of
Hobbes during the early 18th century. According to Mandeville, human beings are naturally
selfish, headstrong, and unruly. Some clever politicians, recognizing that we would be better off
living together in a civilized society, took up the task of domesticating us. Realizing that we are
proud creatures, highly susceptible to flattery, they were able to dupe many of us to live up to the
ideal of virtue—conquering our selfish passions and helping others—by dispensing praise and
blame. Moral concepts are just tools clever politicians used to tame us.

Two kinds of moral theories developed in reaction first to Hobbes and then to Mandeville—
rationalism and sentimentalism. The rationalists oppose Hobbes’ claim that there is no right or
wrong in the state of nature, that rightness or wrongness is determined by the sovereign’s will,
and that morality requires sanctions to motivate us. The sentimentalists object to Hobbes’ and
Mandeville’s “selfish” conceptions of human nature and morality. By the mid–eighteenth
century, rationalists and sentimentalists were arguing not only against Hobbes and Mandeville,
but also with each other.

Hume opposes both selfish and rationalist accounts of morality, but he criticizes them in
different works. In the Treatise, Hume assumes that Hobbes’ theory is no longer a viable option,
so that there are only two possibilities to consider. Either moral concepts spring from reason, in
which case rationalism is correct, or from sentiment, in which case sentimentalism is correct. If
one falls, the other stands. In the second Enquiry, Hume continues to oppose moral rationalism,
but his arguments against them appear in an appendix. More importantly, he drops the
assumption he made in the Treatise and takes the selfish theories of Hobbes and Mandeville as
his primary target. Once again, he thinks there are only two possibilities. Either our approval is
based in self-interest or it has a disinterested basis. The refutation of one is proof of the other.

Conclusion
Hume concludes that a priori reasoning can't be the source of the connection between our ideas
of a cause and its effect. Contrary to what the majority of his contemporaries and immediate
predecessors thought, causal inferences do not concern relations of ideas.