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Biography

The philosopher wrote a short autobiographical note little before his death.

Born with Edinburgh from a family from the minor nobility from the Borders, Hume is the junior by a phratry of three. His/her father dies whereas it is in low age. Its family pushes it to make career in the Droit, but it is taken of a “insurmountable aversion for all things, except the studies of philosophy and the general knowledge”. It gains Bristol in 1734 and is tested in the trade, without passion. He travels in France during nearly 3 years, while remaining in particular with Rheims and the Arrow (in the the current Sarthe). 26 years old it completes to write its Traité human nature , published with London in 1737. This work is a failure near the public, the book “fall still-born child from the press”. She is regarded today as one of the most important works of Western philosophy.

It joined its family, in Scotland, in 1738 and makes publish the first part of its Essais in 1742 in Edinburgh. In 1745, he becomes the tutor of the marquis d' Annandale, then in 1746, the secretary of the general Saint-Clearly and joined Vienna and Turin. It then publishes its Recherches on the human understanding which hardly meets success.

It returns to Scotland in 1749, writes its Political discourses and its Recherches on the principles of morals , the latter being a partial remelting of sound Traité human nature and that Hume regards as its masterpiece. Its reputation of philosopher then starts to germinate. In 1751, it joined Edinburgh and publishes in 1752 its Political discourses , work accommodated well. The London exit of its Recherches on the principles of morals is done however in a certain indifference.

In 1752, it takes the function of librarian of the body of lawyers of Edinburgh. This situation inspires the project of a to him Histoire of England . The first volume, devoted to the Stuart, is however highly and unanimously criticized. In 1757 it publishes in London its Natural history of the religion . The second volume of sound Histoire of England leaves in 1756, devoted to the period going from died from Charles Ier of England until the revolution, then in 1759, that devoted to the Tudors. The series is completed in 1761 by the last two volumes, the whole meeting a mitigated success. It is withdrawn then in the countryside, thinking of a peaceful retirement.

It however accepts a post of secretary to the embassy of France which is proposed to him in 1763 by the count de Hertford and it joined Paris thus. In 1767 he becomes person in charge. He leaves this function in 1766 to be appointed under-secretary of state in London. He regains England in company of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, with which he will scramble himself. This quarrel défraie the chronicle in all enlightened Europe. He turns over to Edinburgh in 1769.

Starting from 1775, it starts to feel the effects of an intestinal tumor which will carry it later one year, at the age of sixty-five years.

In an anecdotic way, its autobiography is truffée details on the progressive increase in its inheritance, passing from a relative poverty to a certain opulence. It ends in an analysis of its character: “soft, Master of myself, of a merry and social mood, capable of friendship but far from likely of hatred, and very moderate in all my passions”.

Theory of knowledge

The method humienne

Hume is influenced by Locke, Newton and Berkeley and by the French philosophers. As the subtitle of its principal work indicates it ( Essai to introduce the experimental method into the moral subjects ), its method of analysis, inspired of Newton, consists of the psychological examination of our ideas, and to make experiment the only source of our knowledge. For him, as for Newton, science is inductive, and must be limited to discovered laws, constant relationships whose our reason cannot penetrate nature.

Continuing the work of Berkeley (which had made the criticism of the abstract ideas and the matter idea), the study of Hume thus consists in examining what we have in the spirit when we think of certain concepts (causality for example). It is a question of knowing what we really think, and to discover which significant impression each one of our ideas reproduced, because any idea is only the recall of an old feeling. These are the impressions which constitute for us the given absolute one without one being able to discover the origin of it. Hume studies primarily the ideas of relation, and supports that put aside the space and the time which are given to us, the relations do not have anything objective, but rest on the cognitive provisions of a knowing subject, provisions which must be the subject of a psychological examination. The relations are thus the result of the movements of the Esprit.

Empiricism

The relation of causality

When an event causes some another, one very often thinks of knowing what it of it is connection between the two terms of causality, supposed connection to make follow the first term of the second. However, notices Hume, we anything else perceive in a series of events only the events which constitute it; in other words, our Connaissance of a connection necessary is not empirical. But from where, except Perception, let us can be held this knowledge? Hume denies that we can have a Idée differently causality than by the fact that two events always followed one another: we then form a kind of anticipation, which represents us that the second term must occur, when the first occurs. This constant conjunction of two events and waiting or anticipation which results from it for us is all that we can know of causality, i.e our ideas cannot penetrate front any more in the Nature of the relation of the cause for purpose.

The difficulty presented by Hume is such as “humiens” as Bertrand Russell entirely rejected the idea of causality, this idea concerned with a kind of superstition popular. But, at all events, the problem remains of knowing what justifies our Croyance in the causal nexus and of what this connection consists. For Hume, this belief is a kind of Instinct, founded on the development of our Habitude S and our nervous system. This belief is thus inéliminable, but can be proven by no kind of argument (deductive or inductive).

Kant will give a solution transcendantale to this problem.

Induction

We think that the past is a reliable guide compared to the future. For example, the laws of the orbits make it possible to describe the behaviors last of the Planet S, and from there we suppose as these laws function as well for the future behaviors. But how can this principle of induction that we suppose be justified? Hume evokes two possibilities but rejects them both.

Initially, the future must resemble the past, and that would rise from a need Logique. But Hume notices that we can conceive a world irregular and chaotic where the future would not have any point of comparison with the past, or more simply, a world like ours, regular until today, but which would change then completely. There is thus no logical need in the principle of induction.
the second justification calls only upon the last reliability of induction: that always functioned front, therefore that will function certainly thereafter. But this justification is a petition of principle, because it calls upon induction to justify it.

For Hume, it seems that we have an instinct which carries us to believe that the future will be similar to the past, instinct founded on the practice, exactly as for causality.

According to Karl Popper, Hume would have been first has to have clarified the problem of induction well, that Popper names “the problem of Hume”. But according to Popper the solution brought by Hume to this problem would be unsatisfactory, because Hume would come to an irrational design of the constitution of knowledge.

Morals

The problem of the identity of ego

We tend to think that we are always same the Nobody, that our me current is the same one as five years ago, in spite of the changes which affect many aspects of our Personnalité. We could from seeking one there oneself subjacent, which remains the same one under the other changes, and to ask us which is his Nature and what distinguishes it from the Accident S which affect to us.

But Hume denies that we can make the least difference between such me mysterious and the changes which one claims that they belong to him or who result from this. Therefore, when we examine ourselves, we will be able only to perceive only whole of Idée S and Sentiment. Therefore, since the heart is something of too subjective, introspection never makes it possible to perceive a Substance which we could call “ME”. Ego is anything else only one aggregate of bound perceptions, and, according to Hume, these perceptions do not belong to nothing. The heart is thus a community which has a certain identity, not under the terms of its gasoline, but by the composition of elements changing continuously. The problem of the identity of ego is then for Hume the problem of the cohesion of the individual experiment. However, it will point out in the appendix of the Traité that this explanation of ego does not satisfy it, but it was never explained any! The Humienne thought on ego is strong génante because it even gives in doubt its reality. According to him the personal identity could be only one simple philosophical fiction well.

Morals and motivation

But against these attacks against the role of the Raison in the appreciation of the behavior, Hume argues that immoral control is not such while being opposed to the reason. It supports that the beliefs morals are intrinsically justified, since to believe that to kill is a crime, it is of this fact being moved by a moral principle interns not to kill and blame this crime. He notices whereas the reason alone can nothing justify, she discovers only truths in fact and Logique, and that depends only on our Désir S and preferences to know if these Vérité S will be able to encourage us with the action. The reason alone thus does not produce a moral Croyance. For Hume, morals rests ultimement on the feeling, the reason not making that to prepare the way with our significant judgments by the analysis of the moral problems. These arguments against the rational bases of morals became anti-realistic arguments: for a moral fact, being an existing actual fact in the world and being an intrinsic source of motivation are two entirely different things. There is thus no reason to believe in the reality of the moral facts.

The free will

The free will describes the property which would have the human will to be freely determined - even arbitrarily - to act and think, in opposition to the determinism or with the fatalism, which affirm that the will is given in each one of its acts by forces which require it there. To be determined with or be given by: such is all the stake of the discrepancy of the destiny and the free will.

Critical of the religion

Miracles

The topic of the miracles is studied by Hume in section X of sound Enquête into the human understanding. It is an occasion for him to apply its vision Empiriste operation of the human intelligence with an aim of proving the impossibility of the miracle.

According to Hume, if the experiment carry us to believe naturally that a cause will always produce the same effect, and that the future will resemble the past, it is because we consider that the phenomena occur according to a probability: It is rare, but possible, that a tetraplegic classified patient recovers to walk, because that was already observed. A contrario if I release a stone which I held in my hand, it is certain that it will fall, because with each time I did it fell, and just as observed it all the men since the beginning of humanity. It is by this model which we draw what one calls the natural laws.

A miracle being something which goes against these laws (like, for example, the resurrection of a man), Hume explains us why it is already, in this definition even, impossible to believe in it. The natural laws are indeed of a so strong probability (observed by all, in all times and all places) which they constitute a final uniform proof against the miracles.

Moreover, it would be necessary, to attest existence of the miracle, a proof contrary and higher than that of the natural law, which requires a testimony of a miracle whose falseness would be more miraculous than the fact in question.

“ When a man says to me that he saw a death recalled to the life, I immediately consider in myself if it is more probable than this man misleads me or than it is mistaken, or than the fact it is really produced. I weigh, one compared to the other, the two miracles ''. If the falseness of its testimony were even more miraculous than the event than it pays, then, and then only, it can claim to control my belief and my opinion. ”

However, No human testimony could meet this condition, because a miracle is never attested per enough men of a knowledge, a good sense and an education worthy of an absolute confidence, and these events are never completely public. Moreover, the accounts concerning the miracle are found especially at nations ignorant and cruel, which forms an argument moreover against those.

Finally Hume watch that the astonishment and the natural belief of the man towards the marvellous one, when it mix with the religious feeling, announce the end of the “good sense”. In this case there, the testimony of the man is not worth anything any more.

Hume thus concluded logically that one cannot reasonably accept the miracle, and that a religion founded and affirmed by its miracles is an ineptitude (but it saves vis-a-vis the Christian religion, that he known as only founded by the personal faith).

Critical of finalism

Works

Traité human nature ( has Treatise Human Nature off: Being year Attempt to introduce the experimental Method off Reasoning into Moral Subjects , 1739-1740)
Investigation into the human understanding ( Year Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding]] , 1748)
Investigation into the principles of morals ( Year Enquiry Concerning the Principles off Morals , 1751)
( Moral Essays and Political , 1741-1742)
Political discourses (" Political Discourses" , 1752-1758), integral edition (16 tests), preceded by My life (" My own life" , 1776) and followed Of the writing by tests (" Off Essay writing, 1742). Transl. of English by Fabien Grandjean - Mauvezin, Trans-Europ-Repress, 1993,22 cm, V-260 p. Notes bibliogr. Index.
Of the trade and the luxury , which belongs to its political Essais ( Political Discourses , 1752), editions Thousand and One Nights, 2006
Histoire of England ( The History off England , 1754-1762)
brief Exposé of the dispute which rose between Mr. Hume and Mr. Rousseau: with the supporting documents. (1767) It acts of the translation of the correspondence maintained with Jean-Jacques Rousseau after this last, then in exile, had required assistance of David Hume
the Life of David Hume written by itself ( The Life off David Hume, Esq., written by himself. , whose My Own Life , 1776)
Dialogs on the natural religion ( Dialogs Concerning Natural Religion , published on a purely posthumous basis 1779, but whose first pages goes back to 1751. The first translation in French goes back to 1779)
Two tests on the suicide and immortality ( Essays one Commits suicide and the Immortality off the Soul , 1783)

moral, political and literary Tests and other tests . Transl., intro, ED. Gilles Robel. Paris: University presses of France, 2001. The entirety of the tests in a modern translation and a highly reliable edition contains.

" Writings on the theory économique" (" Writtings one Economics" , University off Wisconsin Near, Madison, 1955)

Wikisource

Hume

Notes of references

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