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The Philosophy of David Hume
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.Introductory by
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Carl Baydala
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David Hume is one of my favourite philosophers. Actually, I am attracted to the thoughts of numerous philosophers and many are my friends and my heroes. That is because these individuals are on the outside looking in. They are trying to understand the world and explain it to themselves and to others. David Hume strikes my fancy most of all, I suppose, because he bucked the system to a degree; he denied the existence of God. And, he was also a life long bachelor. Another similar feature that we both enjoy. Knowing these things about the man immediately draws me to him and I am even more curious as to the formation of his philosophy as a result. I guess I am just looking for some backing for my world view as well when I do things like that, considering his non-belief in the Entity, that is. Some critics think he was an atheist, while others think he was an agnostic. At any rate, he had to be constantly on guard against the religionists and he had to mold his language carefully lest they could find reason to cause him great harm and even death. His religious views did in fact cause him to never gain a university post in Scotland. The religious elite spoke out and acted against him. Just before he was born, a young man, only 18 years old named Thomas Aikenhead was hung in Edinburgh for denying the existence of God. Hume was even charged with heresy at one point in his life, but he got off. .
So, religion was a very real concern for Hume as you can see. Has much changed do you think in our society ( especially the American society ) when one has to at least acknowledge the presence of the religionists who can use their power against you? Consider, for example, that in the United States today one does not become President unless he exhibits some form of faith and belief in the Deity or simply, a belief in God. And, if he is does not naturally subscribe to a belief in God he must go out of his way to convince the electorate that he does in fact embrace the idea of a God. In short, he may have to lie and pretend to be a believer if that is what it takes to be elected. And, although not strictly a religious concern in America is the power of the Zionists and their Christian allies. Consider, for example, the intense power of this group ( Zionists ) and their influence on politicians and society generally. Any writer, thinker, politician or philosopher must constantly be on guard as to how they approach the topic of the Zionist influence in America. Just as Hume had to structure his words and his thoughts so must modern day thinkers be wary of those with real power in the society.
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I have included a couple of short audio files below, where it will be shown that one speaker considers Hume an atheist, while the other does not. The point was: he criticized the establishment and looked for other ways to explain reality. Morality, for example, was not something that emanated from God. For Hume, all knowledge was based on sense impressions or experiences. Ideas, for example are based on one's impressions and are simply lesser versions of those things . These ideas did not emanate from a God but from man's interaction with his environment and the events contained within it. Hume also believed that man's ability to reason and to rationalize are not inborn things, but are in fact, based on the impressions and consequent ideas that he creates out of experiences. You can learn about these things by reading: A Treatise of Human Nature and An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Many modern philosophers point to this man and consider his thoughts, so he must have had something important to say. David Hume is also considered to be a model of secular humanism. . .
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To get you acquainted with Hume here is a video series that I recently uncovered ( added on May 11, 2009 )
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Please keep in mind that the professor below is a Christian
and he is not going to be kind to the likes of a man such
as David Hume
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The thing that you have to remember about Hume is the fact that he was an empiricist. For him all knowledge is gained from sense experiences and it is not an innate thing. It is the rationalist philosophers who believed that knowledge can be found in the brain and uncovered by the reasoning powers of the mind. Think of Rene Descartes for example. Well, Hume represents the opposing view. Hume is a natural enemy of the rationalists and also of the religionists. Why? Because religious people believe in a God and this God can only be believed in if you believe in the very notion of ideas. God has to exist as a matter of reason; He is an ideal Being which has existed for all time. You will not discover God by any empirical method and that is why the religionists fall back on the rational approach to philosophy and admire men such as Descartes or even Plato, who was an idealist philosopher.
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The following encyclopaedia article is well-written and contains the basics of the important thoughts of David Hume and his contribution to knowledge and to philosophy. Read, for example, his thesis on the origin of ideas and matters related to causation. There are many quotes here from the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding:
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The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
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Quotation here:
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" The most important philosopher ever to write in English, David Hume (1711-1776) — the last of the great triumvirate of “British empiricists” — was also well-known in his own time as an historian and essayist. A master stylist in any genre, Hume's 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 the posthumously published Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779) — remain widely and deeply influential. Although many of Hume's 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. Hume also awakened Immanuel Kant from his “dogmatic slumbers” and “caused the scales to fall” from Jeremy Bentham's eyes. Charles Darwin counted Hume as a central influence, as did “Darwin's bulldog,” Thomas Henry Huxley. The diverse directions in which these writers took what they gleaned from reading Hume reflect not only the richness of their sources but also the wide range of his empiricism. Today, philosophers recognize Hume as a precursor of contemporary cognitive science, as well as one of the most thoroughgoing exponents of philosophical naturalism. "
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End quote from the above-noted source.
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Further Reading
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The History of Economic Thought
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You can learn about how Hume treated the subject of religion by listening to the audio file below. On this site you will also be able to hear An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
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Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
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Please be patient. The files may take time to load. Click David Hume below.
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In Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, philosopher David Hume examines whether belief in God can be rational. The work takes the form of a debate between three characters: Cleanthes, who argues that the existence and nature of God can be empirically verified; Demea, who argues that God is completely beyond human knowledge; and Philo, a philosophical skeptic widely thought to represent Hume’s own beliefs.
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Much of the debate centers around Cleanthes’ presentation of the analogical argument from design. According to this argument, the complexity and beauty of the universe can only be explained by inferring an intelligent designer, in the same way that one would infer a designer if one came across an intricately complicated machine. Philo presents several objections to this argument, with rejoinders by Cleanthes and occasional interjections by Demea.
(Summary by Leon Mire)
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You can read the Dialogues at the same time by clicking below:
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A good source of reading information about Hume is found on this website below. It is a comprehensive philosophy site loaded with worthwhile articles.
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Follow the links on this site and you can locate a David Hume page and read some related articles:
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Here are the links to the audio files that I mentioned:
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and this title is found on a site called:
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See also this site:
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You can also listen to an hour long discussion of Hume here on
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Picture of David Hume taken from Wikipedia::
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Happy Bastille Day 2008
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