David (David) Hume (May 7 (April 26, old style), 1711 Edinburgh - August 25, 1776, ibid.) - Scottish philosopher, representative of empiricism and agnosticism, predecessor of the second positivism (empirio-criticism, Machism), economist and historian, publicist, one of the leading figures of the Scottish Enlightenment.
David Hume was born in 1711 into the family of a poor nobleman who practiced law and owned a small estate. Hume attended Edinburgh University, where he received a good legal education. He worked in the diplomatic missions of England in Europe. Already in his youth he showed a special interest in philosophy and literature. After visiting Bristol for commercial purposes, feeling unsuccessful, he went to France in 1734.
Hume began his philosophical career in 1738, publishing the first two parts of A Treatise of Human Nature, in which he attempted to define the basic principles of human knowledge.
A year later, the third part of the treatise was published. The first part was devoted to human cognition. He then refined these ideas and published them in a separate work, Inquiries Concerning Human Cognition.
In 1763, after the end of the war between England and France, Hume, as secretary of the British embassy at the court of Versailles, was invited to the capital of France, where he received recognition for his work on the history of England. Hume's criticism of religious fanatics was approved by Voltaire and Helvetius. However, praise from other philosophers was due to their intensive correspondence with Hume, for their interests and views converged in many respects. Helvetius, Turgot and other educators were especially impressed by “The Natural History of Religion,” published in 1757 in the collection “Four Dissertations.”
In 1769, Hume created the Philosophical Society in Edinburgh, where he acted as secretary. This circle included: Adam Ferguson, Adam Smith, Alexander Monroe, William Cullen, Joseph Black, Huge Blair and others.
Shortly before his death, Hume wrote his Autobiography. In it, he described himself as a meek, open, sociable and cheerful person who had a weakness for literary fame, which, however, “never hardened my character, despite all the frequent failures.”
Hume died in August 1776 at the age of 65.
Books (3)
A Study on Human Understanding
But, seeing the failure of the named work, the author realized his mistake, which was to appear in print prematurely, and reworked everything anew in the following works, where, as he hopes, some negligence in his previous reasoning, or, rather, expressions, was corrected.
However, some writers, who honored the author's philosophy with analysis, tried to direct the fire of all their batteries against this youthful work, which was never recognized by the author, and laid claim to the victory that they imagined they were able to gain over it.
This is a course of action that is very contrary to all the rules of sincerity and straightforwardness in actions and is a striking example of those polemical tricks to which fanatics consider themselves entitled to resort in their zeal. From now on, the author wishes that only the following works be considered as an exposition of his philosophical views and principles.
Works in two volumes. Volume 1
The first volume contains Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, or an Attempt to Apply an Experienced Method of Reasoning to Moral Subjects, and is supplemented by the first translation into Russian of Letters from a Gentleman to his Friend at Edinburgh.
The volume is equipped with scientific apparatus, including a new introductory article by A.F. Gryaznova.
Works in two volumes. Volume 2
Most of the principles and arguments contained in this volume were made public in a three-volume work entitled A Treatise of Human Nature, a work which was conceived by the author before leaving college, and written and published soon after.
But, seeing the failure of this work, the author realized his mistake, which consisted in prematurely appearing in print, and reworked everything anew in the following works, where, as he hopes, some negligence in his previous reasoning, or, rather, expressions, was corrected.
However, some writers, who honored the author's philosophy with analysis, tried to direct the fire of all their batteries against this youthful work, which was never recognized by the author, and laid claim to the victory that they imagined they were able to gain over it. This is a course of action that is very contrary to all the rules of sincerity and straightforwardness in actions and is a striking example of those polemical tricks to which the zeal of fanatics considers itself entitled to resort. From now on, the author wishes that only the following works be considered as an exposition of his philosophical views and principles.
David Hume is an English philosopher of Scottish origin, a prominent figure in the Scottish Enlightenment, economist, publicist, and historian. Born in Edinburgh on May 7, 1711 into a not very wealthy noble family. After receiving a law degree from a local university, he worked for some time as a clerk in a trading company. As part of the diplomatic mission of England, he visited a number of European countries.
Being in 1734-1736. in France, he wrote a work that he considered the main one in his life - “Treatise on Human Nature.” Two books were published in 1739, the third in 1740. However, the work with which D. Hume’s philosophical activity began was not particularly successful. The part of the treatise devoted to the possibilities of human cognition was subsequently developed and published as a separate book, An Inquiry into Human Cognition.
His system of views on knowledge arose as a result of rethinking the ideas of subjective idealism of J. Berkeley. The philosopher denied the fundamental possibility of knowability of the world, said that human nature is unchangeable, and education becomes for people a source not of knowledge, but of habits, and moral assessments of certain phenomena are based on personal feelings of pleasure. Hume argued for the incomprehensibility of the causes of that flow of impressions, which is the sensory experience (as well as the source of knowledge) of a person, and called the problem of the relationship between spirit and being insoluble. At the suggestion of T.G. Huxley in 1876, a similar position was designated by the term “agnosticism.”
Kant once noted that Hume's ideas were not adequately understood. Nevertheless, he nevertheless became famous thanks to the “Essays” published in 1841, devoted to economic, socio-political, moral and ethical issues. Hume intended to make an academic career, but he did not succeed in building his biography according to this scenario, since he encountered powerful resistance in the person of the Scottish Church, which considered him an unreliable skeptic.
During 1753-1652. David Hume worked as a librarian at the Edinburgh Law Society and, largely thanks to this circumstance, based on extensive material, created the 8-volume History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688. In 1757, his work “The Natural History of Religion” was published. In 1763, he departed as part of a diplomatic mission to Paris, working as the ambassador's personal secretary. In this country he met the figures of the Enlightenment, who greeted him with great reverence. Some saw him as an atheist, although this was not true. Having stayed in France until 1766, during 1767-1768. Hume served as assistant secretary of state, and after his resignation he took the place of secretary of the Edinburgh Philosophical Society, under whose auspices representatives of Scottish science and culture gathered. David Hume died there, in Edinburgh, on August 25, 1776. His teaching influenced the development of a large number of positivist teachings that arose throughout the 19th-20th centuries.
David Hume was born David Home on 7 May 1711 in Edinburgh. His parents, Joseph Home and Catherine Falconer, rented land there. His father was a lawyer.
Because many English people had trouble understanding his surname when pronounced in a Scottish accent, David changed his surname from Home to Hume in 1734. At the age of 12 he began his studies at the University of Edinburgh. At first he wanted to connect his life with law, but then he turned his attention to philosophy. Hume never took his teachers seriously, because he believed that teachers could teach him little. He opened a new page in philosophy, because of which he decided to devote his entire life to philosophy. Because of this, Hume became a hermit and spent 10 years in solitude, reading and writing. He was so passionate about his work that he practically had a nervous breakdown, after which he decided to devote more time to an active life, which, in his opinion, should have a good effect on his further education.
Career
Hume could choose one of two ways to develop his career - either become a mentor to people or go into business. After being a merchant, he moved to La Flèche, Anjou, France. There he had numerous clashes with the Jesuits from the College of La Flèche. There he spent most of his savings while writing his Treatise on Human Nature.
Hume finished writing it when he was 26 years old. Although his book is now highly regarded and considered one of his most influential works, some British critics of the time did not view the treatise favorably.
In 1744, Hume published his Moral and Political Essays. After publication, Hume applied for a position in the chair of the doctrine of gaseous bodies and moral philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. But because he was considered an atheist, the seat went to William Cleghorn.
In 1745, when the Jacobite Rebellion broke out, Hume was the teacher of the Marquess of Anandale, whose official name was "madman", but he soon resigned from this post due to the conflict that occurred between them. After the incident, Hume began work on his famous work entitled “The History of England.” It took 15 years to write the work, and the work itself contained about a million words. The work was published in six volumes from 1754 to 1762. The work was related to the Canongate Theatre, as well as to Lord Monboddo and other representatives of the Scottish enlightenment of Edinburgh.
Hume worked as secretary to Lieutenant General St. Clair for three years beginning in 1746. During these three years, he wrote philosophical essays on the understanding of man, which were subsequently published with the title “An Inquiry into the Understanding of Man.”
This publication became much more famous than his treatise and brought Hume rave reviews.
Hume was accused of heresy, but received protection from his young cleric friend. His friend argued that, being an atheist, Hume was not influenced by the church. But despite these arguments, he was never able to take a place in the philosophy department at the University of Glasgow. In 1752, after returning from Edinburgh, he wrote My Own Life, which served as the impetus for his continued work on the History of England. In literature, Hume is recognized as an outstanding historian; his book History of England covers events from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the revolution of 1688. At that time, this book became the best-selling book.
End of life and death
Hume was Lord Hertford's secretary in Paris from 1763 to 1765.
Hume knew, although he did not get along with, Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
In 1767, he was appointed Deputy Secretary of State for the Northern Department for a period of only one year. After which, in 1768, he returned to the city where he was born and lived there until his death.
On 25 August 1776, David Hume died of either bowel or liver cancer on the south-west corner of St Andrew's Square, Edinburgh's New Town. This place now has the address "21 Saint David Street".
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David Hume, the son of a Scottish landowner, was born in Edinburgh in 1711, died in 1776. Having been educated at the University of Edinburgh, he, at the request of his family and due to poor health, wanted to devote himself to trading. But he soon got tired of such activity, he went to finish his education in France and after a four-year stay abroad returned to England with the manuscript of his subsequently famous “Treatise on Human Nature,” which was published in two volumes in 1738 - 1740, but was rejected. England was a complete failure, as a result of which Hume failed to obtain a chair at the University of Edinburgh. But “Moral, Political and Literary Essays” (1741) brought Hume the fame of an elegant and witty writer. Having accepted a private position, David Hume traveled extensively throughout Europe and prepared for publication a new edition of his first work entitled: “Inquiries Concerning Human Knowledge” (1748), after which he managed to get a position as a librarian at the University of Edinburgh. Having at his disposal a wealth of book material, David Hume wrote his famous “History of England before the Revolution of 1688”, published in 6 volumes in 1763, and also published “The natural history of religion” in 1755 . In 1763, appointed secretary of the embassy to France, he received a brilliant ovation from the educated French, and when he returned to England in 1767, as secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, his fame as an outstanding writer and thinker was finally consolidated at home. Hume spent the last two years of his life in retirement in Edinburgh.
Portrait of David Hume. Artist A. Ramsey, 1766
Teachings of David Hume represents a direct continuation of the development of critical philosophy in the spirit of Locke and Berkeley. The historian of philosophy Windelband calls Hume "the clearest, most consistent, broad and deep thinker that England has ever produced." David Hume continues development empirical theory of knowledge and summarizes in one general result all the main ideas of the theory of knowledge of Bacon, Locke and Berkeley. This result is partly skeptical , negative, and in this sense Windelband is right when he says that “in the person of Hume, empiricism rejected and condemned itself.” But Hume's merit is great simply because he summed up the metaphysical results the doctrine of empiricism and tried to finally make ends meet in the theory of experience as the only instrument of knowledge. In relation to English philosophy of the 18th century. Hume occupies the same place that belonged to Locke in English philosophy of the 17th century, and John Stuart Mill in English philosophy of the 19th century.
Hume's ethical doctrine, theory of sympathy and social origin of morality, developed Adam Smith in his “Theory of Moral Sentiments” (1759) and in his book “On the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” (1766).
After Hume, who constituted the highest point in the development of English philosophy of the 18th century, a noticeable diminishment of the critical spirit in the works of Great British thinkers began, and the further development of the great and complex problems of knowledge that D. Hume explored moved to Germany, where Kant made a brilliant and thoughtful an attempt to defeat Hume's skepticism, to find in the innermost mechanism of knowledge a criterion for justifying the objective lawfulness of the ideas of substance, causality and a number of other subjective categories of perception and thinking.
David Hume Quotes :
In pity there is always an admixture of love and tenderness, and in gloating there is always an admixture of hatred or anger.
Friendship is a calm and quiet affection, directed and strengthened by habit, arising from long association and mutual obligations.
If the only motive for our actions is the desire to show our freedom, then we cannot free ourselves from the bonds of necessity.
Schadenfreude is an unprovoked desire to cause harm to another person in order to experience pleasure through comparison with one’s own situation.
When religiosity is combined with a passion for the miraculous, then all common sense ends, and the testimony of people loses all authority.
When the world condemns us, slanderes us, we should not get angry, but rather consider whether there is some basis in these condemnations.
Love is nothing more than the desire for happiness for another person.
Nothing is free like a person's thought.
Self-love gives rise to the rules of justice and is the first motive for observing the latter.
An inclination towards joy and hope is true happiness; a tendency toward apprehension and melancholy is a real misfortune.
Chance and fate are just empty words: persistent prudence is the fate of man.
He is happy who lives in conditions that suit his temperament, but he is more perfect who knows how to adapt his temperament to any conditions.
It is difficult for a person who talks about himself for a long time to avoid vanity.
The more a person’s lifestyle depends on chance, the more he indulges in superstition.
(David Hume, David Hume, English David Hume; April 26, 1711, Edinburgh, Scotland - August 25, 1776, ibid.) - Scottish philosopher, representative of empiricism and agnosticism, one of the largest figures of the Scottish Enlightenment. Historians of philosophy generally agree that Hume’s philosophy has the character of radical skepticism, but many researchers believe that the ideas of naturalism also play an extremely important role in Hume’s teaching.
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. All our ideas go back to experience and impressions. However, Hume did not deny the possibility of a priori knowledge, an example of which, from his point of view, is mathematics. Experience consists of perceptions, and perceptions are divided into impressions (sensations and emotions) and ideas (memories and images of the 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. 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. Immanuel Kant wrote that Hume was not understood. There is a point of view that his ideas in the field of legal philosophy are only beginning to be fully realized in the 21st century.
Life and works
He studied at the University of Edinburgh, then worked as a clerk in a trading company. In 1734–36 he was in France, where he prepared his main work, “Treatise on Human Nature” (the first two books were published in 1739, the third in 1740). Contrary to the author's expectations, the Treatise did not arouse interest among the general public, but essays on various topics published in 1741-42 were already successful. Attempts to make an academic career ended in failure due to opposition from representatives of the Church of Scotland, who saw him as a dangerous skeptic and even an atheist. In 1748, “A Study on Human Knowledge” was published, in 1751 “A Study on the Principles of Morals” - revised and shortened versions of the first and third books of the “Treatise”. Around the same time, “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion” were written, published posthumously in 1779; in 1752 Hume published essays on economic topics.
Working as librarian of the Edinburgh Bar Society gave Hume the opportunity to collect rich factual material for the eight-volume History of England (1754–62). The Natural History of Religion was published in 1757. Participation in the diplomatic mission in Paris in 1763-66 as the personal secretary of the British ambassador allowed Hume to meet French educators, from whom he received a warm welcome (some of them mistakenly took him for an atheist). In 1767–68 Hume was assistant secretary of state. Hume's autobiographical essay "My Life" was published a year after his death by his friend Adam Smith. (cm. SMITH Adam).
The Doctrine of Experience
In the Treatise and the Investigations, Hume talks about the need to improve “moral philosophy” as a universal science about man, which, unlike “natural philosophy” (natural science), has yet to become a truly empirical science.
In the spirit of sensationalism (cm. SENSATIONALISM) Hume considers the source of knowledge to be experience, which consists of “perceptions,” which Hume divides into “impressions” and “ideas.” Impressions are distinguished by brightness and liveliness, they are the initial elements of sensory experience; Hume divides them into impressions of sensation and impressions of reflection. Ideas are copies of impressions, inferior to them in the degree of brightness and liveliness. Ideas are divided into simple ones, originating from specific impressions and corresponding to them, and complex ones (modes, substances and relations). Hume sees the psychological mechanism for the connection of perceptions in the principle of association (essentially unknowable), thanks to which complex ideas are formed from simple ideas. Hume analyzes in detail three types of association of ideas: by similarity, by contiguity in space and time, and, finally, the most common type - by causality.
Hume proposed abandoning the idea of substance, considering it a fiction of the imagination. Taking up George Berkeley's argument against material substance, Hume went further to criticize the concept of spiritual substance as well. The same fiction appears for Hume in the identity of personality created by the imagination, which he understands as “a bundle or bundle... of different perceptions.”
Following Berkeley, he replaces abstract concepts with concrete ideas-representations copied from vivid sensory impressions, and at the same time emphasizes the signaling role of language, which can evoke the desired idea. Accepted since John Locke (cm. LOCKE John) separation of primary and secondary qualities (cm. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY QUALITIES) Hume considers it devoid of meaning, believing that all qualities are of a sensory-subjective nature.
The idea of causality
At the center of Hume's theoretical philosophy is an analysis of the problem of causality, i.e., the necessary connection between two events, which Hume considers unprovable: causal and logical connections do not coincide, the action is not contained in the cause, is not similar to it, and cannot be derived from it. Experience cannot be the basis of causation, since we do not observe the connection between cause and action, but only have impressions of the joint occurrence of two events. The expectation that a future sequence of events will be similar to the past (for example, the sun will rise tomorrow) is based solely on belief, the source of which is habit. The habitual combination of impressions and ideas, accompanied by a special sense of obligation, creates, according to Hume, the idea of a necessary connection between cause and action. Thus, “necessity is something that exists in the mind and not in objects...”. Hume's analysis of the problem of causality influenced the emergence of Kant's "critical philosophy" (cm. KANT Immanuel).
Affects. "Sympathy"
The will of a person, according to Hume, is governed by affects, and not by reason. Reason itself is not capable of neutralizing the effect of any affect; only another affect can do this. Hume divides all affects into calm (for example, a feeling of beauty) and stormy (for example, love or hatred). A special place among the affects he describes is occupied by the affect of sympathy, which animates all other affects. It arises as a result of imaginary transference of oneself to the place of another person experiencing certain mental experiences.
Ethics
Emphasizing the most important role of sensuality in morality, Hume took the position of ethical anti-intellectualism; he was also characterized by rejection of the religious justification of morality. He emphasized that many moral philosophers do not explain the transition in reasoning from what is to what should be. In general, according to Hume, ethics deals with the motives of actions, which are ultimately determined by the psychological characteristics of people. His teaching combines utilitarianism with altruism.
Philosophy of religion
In “The Natural History of Religion,” Hume showed the rootedness of religious ideas in the peculiarities of “human nature.” He believed that monotheism was not the early religion of mankind. Concerns about everyday affairs, hopes and fears, and not a simple and disinterested contemplation of nature were, according to Hume, the source of religious ideas. He also had a positive attitude towards the well-known hypothesis that the prototypes of the gods of ancient religions were real people who, thanks to their special merits, became the subject of admiration of the people. In the famous chapter “On Miracles,” included in “An Inquiry Concerning Human Knowledge,” he argued that the descriptions of all kinds of miracles contradict the evidence of the senses and common sense. Hume's critical argument was intended to show not the impossibility of miracles as such, but the impossibility of rational belief in miracles that represent violations of the laws of nature. He, like the deists, called his position “natural religion,” which is based on the assumption of an unknowable higher cause.
Encyclopedic Dictionary. 2009 .