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. Remember, it was David Hume that woke up the Great Man himself, Emmanuel Kant, from his dogmatic slumbers. 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:
" 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. "
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.
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.
. 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:
To get at the root of the personality of Arthur Schopenhauer all you have to do is listen to the following audio files concerning his views on pessimism. He covers all the bases and, upon listening to these files, one becomes immediately associated with the philosopher's general mental condition.
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I would describe that condition as one of pragmatism and a genuine criticism of the system. He does not mince words and his views on the world rather match my own. The world is a cruel place and man is a creature that was planted upon this earth ( or developed as a function of nature ) and his business is to survive and not much more. Man is a never-satisfied creature and is constantly trying to serve his will or his inner being. And, the point of the whole exercise is that this will is never satisfied and that is because of the general make up of man himself. Man does not know who he is or where he is going and he is constantly on the hunt for meaning. There is no god and man has no god; he is left alone to survive and when he dies there is nothing more. Maybe this feature of life explains the actions of man and his behavior and outlook on life. And, not so indirectly, it explains the behavior of Schopenhauer as well.
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Schopenhauer takes time out to criticize the attitudes of his fellows and always finds time to put women in their place; he was not an admirer of women and their place in society after all. Misogyny and Arthur Schopenhauer go hand in hand and the man is never afraid to criticize women and explain for us what he thinks their role in society is and should be. More on women below.
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For me, Schopenhauer is a man worth listening to. His pessimism is a breath of fresh air because because he characterizes life as it is, and is crtitical of its pretensions; what it is pretended to be or how it is organized. He is rational and he is critical all in the same breath. I find nothing in his words that offend me greatly, except perhaps his rather hard description of women. Schopenhauer was a bachelor with a chip on his shoulder ( or so it would seem ) but, that should not give him license to criticize women the way he does. I think he could have taken time out to be a little more diplomatic in this regard. Women, after all are part of the human race. I do not think we should be in the business of subjugating them or exploiting them, but appreciating them instead. I am a bachelor myself, and I find nothing offensive about women at all. In fact, as a group, I rather like them. And, if the right one came along, i.e., that one special female who actually understands me and appreciates me, well, I might even get married to that person. But, these kinds of things are the business of the gods and not us mere mortals. I hope Mr. Schopenhauer is not offended by these remarks and will not hold them against me as form of blasphemy or the like. But, at any rate, any man who played the flute everyday and kept a couple of puppies as friends can't be all that bad.
Rene Descartes had been called The Father of Modern Philosophy. He got this term by breaking with the old methods as developed by the Scholastics and Aristotle. That may be so, but, he was still a bachelor philosopher. And, this fact qualifies him as a special interest philosopher for me.
Descartes was quite the lady’s man as well and he even fathered a child, a little girl who dies young. But, he never married and that is why I am highlighting Rene is this spot right now. I am including Rene Descartes as one of my personal philosophical friends because he never married. Here is a portrayal of the man here as concerns women:
" He was too wise a man to encumber himself with a wife; but as he was a man, he had the desires and appetites of a man; he therefore kept a good conditioned handsome woman that he liked, and by whom he had some children (I think two or three). 'Tis a pity, but coming from the brain of such a father, they should be well cultivated. ..."
Maybe I should be satisfied that I never married and take Descarte’s advice. Maybe it is simple better to deal with women from a distance and be satisfied with the status quo. Perhaps women really do get in the way of proper thinking and cannot allow that all important solitude and freedom to occur. But, then why did God create women in the first place? There must be a reason for their existence.
There were a couple of famous women in his life as well. One he communicate with professionally was a princess Elizabeth of Bohemia and the other was Queen Christina of Sweden. So, his was not without his chances as concerns the business of women. One wonders why the queen of Sweden had to get Rene up every day at 5:00AM in the chilly Swedish weather. This finally took a toll on him and he died as a result of the cold northern weather.
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His most famous phrase was: Cogito Ergo Sum. Which means: I think therefore I am. You will only be able to understand what he meant by this statement once you examine his methods for arriving at his ideas about the source of knowledge. His epistemology in other words. Descartes was a life-long Catholic and hence believed in God He believed that God was pure and could not deceive. . This fact will form part of his philosophy as well as we will see.
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Descartes wanted to introduce something new to philosophy in the early 1600's. He wanted to be skeptical about all knowledge; he wanted to doubt in order to prove that something existed. Nothing was to be taken for granted in his eyes. His thoughts that he developed are found in his major work: The Meditations.
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Descartes wanted to develop a systematic approach to knowledge. He wanted his method to be mechanistic like the sciences and like geometry. He wanted to be sure about his methods and to remove the possibility of doubt. The old school of thought relied on the senses, and according to Rene the senses were not reliable. You have to think of Descartes as a thinker, or a rationalist. He wants to reason his way to the truth and that he why he developed his system the way he did.
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The Internet Encyclopedia above provides an excellent summation of Descartes and of the Meditations.
When you start reading the Meditations you will find out in part two what the meaning of Cogito Ergo Sum means.
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After a successful foray into the life of Rene Descartes you should come away with the phrase Cogito Ergo Sum dancing in your brain. If you do not, then I suggest that you have not done enough reading on the man.
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The idea of thinking and what it means to be able to think should be the highlight of one’s knowledge as it relates to his work. He was a brilliant mathematician, natural philosopher, and metaphysician as well. He also seems to be quite the lady’s man as well. The wealthy and famous women were attracted to him. So, I say let this be a lesson to us bachelors: Women love power, and so it would seem a man with a brain that can produce powerful ideas. I suppose it always has, and will be like that. So, there is hope for all of us. Just keep thinking, and thinking hard, and the women will eventually find you. But, that does not necessarily mean that you should get married of course. Perhaps just surround yourself with beautiful women of means. That is what it looks like Rene did to keep his mind in shape.
Remember the television commercial from back in the sixties, you know, the Certs commercial? One girl is saying that Certs is a breath mint and the other is saying that Certs is a candy mint. And, the announcer says: " stop you're both right. " Well, that is what Kant said to the Rationalists and the Empiricists. But, in this case he would say that they were both wrong and both right. Each brand of philosophy had something to contribute of course to the understanding of knowledge and reality. But, both methods fell short according to Kant, and he supplied the missing ingredient; the make-up of the mind and how it perceives reality or its objects.
.HeHere is a fine written introduction to one of the most famous and important philosophers of all time: Immanuel Kant. And, of course, he is a bachelor philosopher.
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Immanuel Kant: a snapshot
Peter Herrisone-Kelly
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Immanuel Kant is widely acknowledged by philosophers of all persuasions to have been one of the greatest thinkers of all time. He is also notorious for being one of the most difficult to understand. The complexity of his prose, however, is due not to any wilful obscurantism. In reading Kant, one is aware of a thinker struggling to clothe in language ideas of the very highest level of complexity and profundity.
Born in 1724, Kant lived his entire life in the East Prussian town of Königsberg. He never married, though was a popular man who by all accounts led a life of the utmost order and regularity. His unique contribution to Western thought is his 'Critical Philosophy': a devastating and ingenious critique of both speculative rationalistic metaphysics and unfettered empiricism. And yet this monumental system of thought, as set out in the Critique of Pure Reason, stems from just one seemingly humble question: how are synthetic a priori truths possible?
Kant introduced the distinction between 'analytic' and 'synthetic' judgements. He characterises an analytic judgement as one in which 'the predicate B belongs to the subject A, as something which is (covertly) contained in this concept A'. The favourite example of philosophers is 'All bachelors are unmarried'. Here, the predicate ('are unmarried') simply 'unpacks' the conceptual content of the subject ('bachelors'). A distinguishing feature of such propositions is that they they tell us nothing about the way the world is, but simply clarify what is involved in our concepts.
In the case of synthetic judgements, by contrast, Kant tells us that the predicate 'lies outside the [subject] concept'. An example might be 'All humans are under twenty feet tall'. Whilst this proposition is no doubt true, it is nonetheless certainly not a feature of the concept 'human' that anything falling under it is under twenty feet tall. Thus, 'All humans are under twenty feet tall' gives us a substantial piece of information about the world rather than our concepts.
It should be easy to see that analytic truths are a priori: that is, knowable independently of any particular experience. I do not have to carry out a survey of bachelors to find out that they are all unmarried. But how could any synthetic truth - one which gives us real information about the world - be a priori?
Kant was of course aware that the vast majority of synthetic truths are knowable only a posteriori - that they require verification through experience. 'All humans are under twenty feet tall' could never be known a priori. He held, however, that there exists a special class of propositions that are both informative and knowable independently of this or that experience. The truths of mathematics (perhaps most significantly those of geometry), he maintained, fall into this class, as do certain other propositions, such as 'Every event has a cause'.
There is nothing about the concept of 7+5 that dictates that it should be equal to 12, nor about the concept of a straight line that it should be the shortest distance between two points. And yet the propositions '7+5=12' and 'A straight line is the shortest distance between two points' are both knowable a priori. Similarly, it is not part of the concept of an event that it should have a cause, and yet we can know with absolute certainty, thinks Kant, that any event will be caused. But how can we know such truths a priori?
Kant's answer to this question is both radical and astonishing. Let us start with the case of geometry. There can only, thinks Kant, be one explanation of our a priori knowledge of the properties of space: the spatial properties of the world must be contributed by the knowing subject. That is, the world as it is in itself is not made up of objects arranged in space. Only the world as it appears to us is spatial, and this is precisely because space is nothing more than our way of representing the world to ourselves. In Kant's own terminology, space is nothing more than a 'form of intuition [i.e., perception]'. Kant employs a similar argument to conclude that time, too, is a mere form of intuition. Space and time are features of the phenomenal world - the world as it appears to us - only. The noumenal world - the world of things as they are in themselves - is aspatial and atemporal.
Similarly, causal relations have a subjective origin, being, as it were, 'projected' into the world by the experiencing consciousness. Consequently causation too is a feature only of the world of appearances, and not of the world independent of our cognitive faculties. However, whereas the forms of intuition are features of our faculty of sensibility (the passive faculty that receives sense-impressions), causation is one of twelve 'categories', or 'a priori concepts' imposed on sense impressions by the understanding (the active faculty of reason).
Kant's epistemology stands as a critique of both empiricism and rationalism. The empiricist view is wrong, since the mind is not a mere tabula rasa which passively receives knowledge of the world through the senses. The rationalist model of knowledge is just as mistaken, as reason alone can never give rise to knowledge, since knowledge demands both concepts and the raw data supplied by the senses. Thus speculative metaphysics - the attempt to achieve theoretical knowledge of non-empirical subjects such as the existence of God, freedom and immortality - inevitably falls into illusion. It aims to gain knowledge of the world as it is in itself, but theoretical knowledge can only be of the world as it appears.
But whilst Kant held that we have no theoretical knowledge of such things, he maintained that we can have a practical knowledge of them. Consider free will. When I consider my actions as constituents of the phenomenal world, I am obliged to regard them as produced by rigid deterministic laws, but when I consider those same actions as they are in the noumenal world I am not so obliged. I can have practical knowledge of that freedom, which I am required to postulate in order to account for my inescapable sense of myself as a responsible moral agent.
It seems to many that a choice has to be made between two apparently incompatible ways of looking at the world: the spiritual and ethical on the one hand, and the scientific on the other. If Kant is right, the dichotomy between these two ways of looking at the world is purely illusory. There is room in the world for both determinism and freedom, spirituality and science.
narrated by Charleton Heston. It is easy to listen to, entertaining, and informative. You will learn the basics of Kant's ideas and what the conflict and resolution was between the Rationalists and the Empiricists.
..was Kant's most important project. Certain commentators have categorized Kant as a poor writer as compared to other philosophers, and also hard to understand and to grasp. Well, thatmay be so, but if you listen to the following audio files, the man is not that difficult to understand; his thoughts do get exposed in a painless sort of way. The thing about Kant of course is the fact that most people are not going to read his Critique in its entirety or even listen to it. It is the same thing with the Bible and other writings such as Karl Marx's Das Kapital. Everyone has heard of these things, but hardly anyone takes the time to actually finish these works in their entirety. It is just the nature of the human animal I suppose, that we cannot find the time or the energy to complete such a project. Maybe that is why some of us become priests and professors, while the rest of us can only dream of acquiring the much sought after knowledge. But, I think you will find that if man has a will or other reason to complete something then he will find the time to do it. Here is the Critique in listening form via the Librivox site: ( commentary by Carl Baydala )
The following commentary is found on the Librivox website.
by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).Translated by John Miller Dow Meiklejohn (1830-1902).
The Critique of Pure Reason, first published in 1781 with a second edition in 1787, has been called the most influential and important philosophical text of the modern age.
Kant saw the Critique of Pure Reason as an attempt to bridge the gap between rationalism (there are significant ways in which our concepts and knowledge are gained independently of sense experience) and empiricism (sense experience is the ultimate source of all our concepts and knowledge) and, in particular, to counter the radical empiricism of David Hume (our beliefs are purely the result of accumulated habits, developed in response to accumulated sense experiences). Using the methods of science, Kant demonstrates that though each mind may, indeed, create its own universe, those universes are guided by certain common laws, which are rationally discernable. (Summary by M.L. Cohen)
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