On the importance and legacy of David Hume
David Hume, Scottish philosopher, historian, and essayist exerted immense influence on many fields of learning.
Eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume made numerous contributions to philosophy and other fields of knowledge. Many of his works, and much of his thought, remain relevant to modern philosophers. Hume is especially known for his empiricism, naturalism, and skepticism. These three aspects of his philosophy are consistently evident in his varied works, whether they focus on metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, or other matters. Hume’s skill as a writer is evident in his works and his prose has received much praise for its clarity and quality, both in his own day and after.
Among Hume’s most influential philosophical works are A Treatise of Human Nature, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morales, and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Starting in 1741, Hume also began to write a series of informal essays covering moral, political, literary, economic, and other topics. The essays, the Essays: Moral, Political, Literary, were collected and published in multiple editions.
David Hume also took on the role of historian for a time. The six volumes of Hume’s History of England were published between 1754 and 1762 and went through over one hundred editions. Several of David Hume’s essays also dealt with economic issues and he was a friend of Adam Smith, the economist and social philosopher. In his essays, Hume generally favored a capitalist and market based economic system. Hume argued persuasively against mercantilism and noted that the prices of goods are affected by the money supply. He argued that a mercantilist trade policy designed to increase both exports and the accumulation of bullion, especially gold and silver, would lead to a rise in the price of goods and would not guarantee an increase in a country's wealth. Another salient aspect of Hume’s economic thought is his view that economic liberty tended to promote political freedom.
The third of a trio of British empiricist philosophers
David Hume was the third in a series of distinguished British empiricists that began with John Locke and continued with George Berkeley. The epistemologies of these three British philosophers shared a common empirical basis, but they differed significantly in certain aspects of their theories of knowledge. John Locke’s theory of knowledge includes a form of representational realism, and his philosophy is, more broadly, dualist in nature. On the other hand, George Berkeley was a major pioneer of subjective idealism or immaterialism which holds that all existence is composed of either mind or spirit and their perceptions, thoughts, and ideas. David Hume, a skeptic about metaphysical claims made about reality, considered the question of the external world’s substance to be an uncertain matter. Instead, Hume proposed a “bundle theory” in which a collection or bundle of sensory perceptions and experiences formed the basis of that which humans perceive as objects. To Hume, the thing or object itself arises purely from the sensory bundles and lacks an independent existence.
A Treatise of Human Nature
Hume’s earliest published work, “A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects, examines human nature through an empirical and experimental lens. This text was published in 1740, and Hume was disappointed by the initial reaction. Subsequently, Hume downplayed the importance of the Treatise calling it a “juvenile work” and stated that his later writings better reflected his views and ideas. Nonetheless, despite Hume’s qualms, A Treatise of Human Nature proved to be massively influential and widely read in the long-term. The Treatise became a crucial milestone within philosophy. In this text, David Hume sets out a philosophy based upon empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism. With its emphasis on studying human nature through empirical investigation, A Treatise of Human Nature is a key foundational text of cognitive science. The Treatise is comprised of three books with the first dedicated to examining human understanding and knowledge. In Book II, Hume devotes his efforts to understanding and explaining the passions while Book III focuses on the nature of morals, virtue, and vice.
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
This work exhibits Hume’s empirical epistemology and his view that knowledge is derived from observation and experience. In this treatise, Hume argued that the key to finding answers for any question of importance resides within the “science of man.” Thus, one should first seek to understand human nature and the human mind. In this work, Hume maintains that there are “four sciences,” namely Logic, Morals, Criticism, and Politics through which “is comprehended almost everything” of significance to human knowledge and also nearly all that could bring about the improvement of the human mind or ornament it.
The problem of induction
Despite the importance of empiricism to David Hume’s philosophy, he nonetheless was skeptical, in some ways, about the reliability of sense data and empirically gleaned knowledge to provide a certain basis for claims about the nature of the world. This is particularly evident with Hume’s views on human efforts to understand cause and effect and “the problem of induction.” Hume’s discussion of the problem of induction in book 1 part 3 section 6 of A Treatise of Human Nature presented an immediate and powerful challenge to widely held assumptions and beliefs about cause and effect and their future predictive value. In particular, Hume denied that there are reason-based justifications to make claims about the world on the basis of observations regarding cause and effect. Book 1 part 3 section 6 of A Treatise is titled, “Of the Inference from the Impression to the Idea.” Hume returned to this issue in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.
The problem of induction became a major issue within philosophical discourse and point of contention among philosophers following Hume’s presentation of it. Hume argued that attempts to provide a rational basis to justify inductive inferences from observed phenomenon to the unobserved prove to be unsuccessful. In his view, inferences drawn from observations about specific phenomenon that were then applied to establish expectations or make predictions regarding unobserved phenomenon could not be justified through reason. Nor could other claims that exceeded the scope of the observations themselves avoid this problem. Attempts to justify inductive inferences that rely on the uniformity of nature and the belief that the future will resemble the past depend upon circular reasoning. This effort to answer the problem of induction relies on the assumption that the future must resemble the past. Instead, according to Hume, all human ideas regarding cause and effect are founded upon experience and “constant conjunction.”
The influence of David Hume upon Immanuel Kant
Notably, David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and other works greatly influenced Immanuel Kant, who in turn forever changed philosophy. Kant credited Hume from awakening him from his “dogmatic slumber” and in precipitating a major change in the direction of his philosophy. Kant was impressed by Hume’s arguments, although he did not agree with certain aspects of Hume’s radical skepticism towards metaphysics and rationalism. The German philosopher endeavored to create a new foundation for metaphysics and recover its position within philosophy. Kant also sought to create a fusion of reason and empiricism and the best parts of the rationalist and empiricist traditions. As part of this quest, Kant set out to demonstrate that ideas could prove facts about the world, which Hume had previously denied. Hume argued that purely conceptual knowledge, including certain parts of mathematics, and propositions made by rationalists were true based upon definition and could not by themselves yield knowledge about the world. Hume maintained that such types of statements were about the “relations of ideas,” which he distinguished from “matters of fact.” Hume considered the latter category to encompass information obtained via experience.
Statements regarding the “relations of ideas” were a priori in nature whereas declarations made about “matters of fact” were a posteriori. Kant would later refer to the former types of statements as analytic and the latter as synthetic. These two categories can be envisioned as belonging to two separate prongs on a fork. This concept is often referred to as “Hume’s fork,” although Kant himself never used that term. A key innovation of Immanuel Kant, the concept of synthetic a priori judgements, provided a method to link the two prongs of this “fork.” Kant’s synthetic a priori judgment provides new information about a concept rather than merely stating or analyzing a necessary and self-evident a priori truth as was the case with analytic statements. In the case of analytic judgements, the subjects contain the entirety of the predicate and are therefore explicative. However, the predicates of synthetic a priori judgements fully differed from their subjects, and thus they provide new information. Synthetic a priori judgements differed from the synthetic, contingent, and a posteriori “statements of fact,” in that they can be verified independently of experience.
David Hume on government and the social contract theory
David Hume shared John Locke’s empiricist epistemology and agreed with him on several political questions. Hume agreed with Locke in his belief that a government should focus its efforts on the preservation of the liberty and property of individuals and on the maintenance of order and tranquility. Both men rejected the concept of absolute monarchy and instead championed a mixed form of government in which a representative legislative body wielded strong power in its own right.
One notable point of disagreement between Hume and Locke involved the idea of a social contract. The two men held differing views on the origin of governments and the philosophical views underpinning their existence. Hume rejected the idea espoused by both Locke and Hobbes that the acceptance of a government by its population depends upon its adherence to a social contract.
Instead, Hume posited that custom, tradition, and habit are far more important in shaping the popular views of governance and the practice of governing. Hume’s views on this topic were informed by his experience in 18th century Britain and from his knowledge of political history. Practical utility and convention, were, according to Hume, paramount in the toleration and acceptance of governments by the populations over which they rule.
David Hume did, strongly in fact, approve of founding governments on “the consent of the people.” Hume considered the consent of the people to be “surely the best and most sacred of any” foundations of government. However, he maintained that it only “very seldom has place in any degree” and “never almost in its full extent.”
According to several 17th and 18th century philosophers of politics, all legitimate forms of government were underpinned by a social contract or a compact agreed upon by humans who previously lived in a state of nature and possessing a natural state. According to this thesis, the first societies to form during the era of prehistory were created when humans agreed to band together in political associations and erect governing institutions. These societies and governments were designed to protect the exercise and enjoyment of certain key rights and for the wellbeing of those who formed them. Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau all expounded upon their own specific views of the social contract. David Hume also discussed the social contract in several of his works, especially Of the Original Contract.
Individual philosophers differed over the extent to which this process occurred in history as a concrete phenomenon or was rather more of an ahistorical ideal and an abstract foundation for government. Proponents of the social contract, regardless of their views on its origin, usually agreed that such a compact was among the best and soundest basis for government.
In his essay Of the Original Contract, published in 1748, David Hume describes the existence of two schools of thought or parties, as Hume refers to them, within Britain on the topic of the source from which a legitimate government draws its authority. In Hume’s words, one party traced government up “to the Deity” while the “other party, by founding government altogether on the consent of the People, suppose that there is a kind of original contract, by which the subjects have tacitly reserved the power of resisting their sovereign, whenever they find themselves aggrieved by that authority, with which they have, for certain purposes, voluntarily entrusted him.” The latter group included the philosophers who espoused various forms of social contract theory.
In Hume’s estimation, there are positive reasons to supposed that that in prehistory, there was a type of “original contract” when humans agreed to accept the authority of, in Hume’s words, a “chieftain.” As a prehistorical event, there can be no records of such a contract, however. According to Hume, the original contract “preceded the use of writing and all the other civilized arts of life.”
David Hume maintains that the earliest of governments established in human societies usually required some form of consent as a prerequisite for their creation and continuance. However, Hume argues that the vast majority of subsequent governments came into being through means that bypassed the consent of those that they governed. He maintained that the social contract, “has very seldom had place in any degree, and never almost in its full extent” been in operational force. Instead, the vast majority of governments rely upon the passive acceptance on the part of their subjects. This acceptance usually derived from a combination of custom, habit, and tradition.
David Hume’s sentimentalist moral philosophy
David Hume’s moral philosophy is rooted in his empirical theory of the mind. Hume rejected rationalist conceptions of moral philosophy, which held that moral evaluations are based in reason, and instead outlined a sentimentalist moral theory. In his view, concepts of that which is morally good and virtuous and that which is morally bad are derived from sentiment or what Hume called taste. To gauge moral sentiments, one may observe how spectators react to specific traits or actions after contemplation of them. Feelings of approval signify the morally positive nature of the trait or action and hence its status as virtuous. On the other hand, disapproval indicates that specific actions or traits are morally bad and thus fall within the category of vice. Hume denied that reason is the basis for the moral evaluations and also claimed that it is not reason, but passions that guide the will. Hume wrote that morals “have an influence on the actions and affections” and thus “it follows, that they cannot be derived from reason; and that because reason alone, as we have already proved, can never have any such influence.” In Hume’s view, if one agrees that “reason has no influence on our passions and action” then it follows that morality is not a “deduction of reason.”
In Book III part I section I of A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume famously examined the “is-ought problem,” which is sometimes referred to as “Hume’s Law” or “Hume’s Guillotine.” Hume observed that one may not logically derive ought, or prescriptive statements about what should happen, from is, or descriptive statements describing that which is extant. Describing objective facts does not provide a logical basis for concluding that certain things should or should not be deemed morally acceptable or appropriate.
David Hume recasts much of Book III of A Treatise of Human Nature, in his book An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. Hume considered this text to be a refinement over the Treatise. Despite Hume’s own misgivings about A Treatise of Human Nature, it is that work which proved to be the most influential in the long term and the one by which Hume himself is best known.
David Hume’s enduring legacy
David Hume’s legacy is observable within many fields of knowledge. His naturalistic philosophy anticipated and presaged modern cognitive science. The problem of induction, which Hume posed and examined in A Treatise of Human Nature, is among the most significant of philosophical questions and remains the subject of ongoing debates and contention. Immanuel Kant developed his transcendental idealism and concept of synthetic a priori judgements after reading David Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Hume’s ideas on causality, epistemology, and his radical skepticism greatly affected Kant, who resolved himself to find an adequate response to Hume’s skepticism and several other challenges raised by the Scottish philosopher.
David Hume’s sentimentalist moral views provided a model to study human morality through experience an observation. Jeremy Bentham, the founder of classical utilitarianism, drew inspiration from A Treatise of Human Nature. In particular, Bentham’s view that the morality of actions should be judged based on the principle of utility took inspiration from Hume’s argument that virtues obtain their moral status due to their agreeableness or because of their utility.
Hume’s many other writings, including his historical work, History of England, and his essays on a variety of topics, which included economics, politics, and aesthetics, exerted substantial influence on his contemporaries and continued to influence readers after.