David Hume and his philosophical contributions

David Hume

Philosopher, historian, and economist David Hume (April 26, 1711 - August 25, 1776) was born in Scotland (Penelhum, 1993). He was seen to be a very prominent figure in history both in the Scottish enlightenment and in Western philosophy. The interest in Hume's work in recent years has become more centered on the philosophical writing that he did, but it was for being a historian that he originally gained some notoriety. His book History of Great Britain was considered to be the standard on English history for over sixty years until T.B. Macaulay published History of England (Norton, 1993).

Historians today predominantly see the Humean philosophy as being a form of very deep skepticism, but there are others that argue that the idea of naturalism is just as important in Hume's thoughts. Humean scholarship, therefore, has tended to go back and forth between individuals that emphasize a more skeptical component and individuals who emphasize a more naturalistic component (Penelhum, 1993). Hume in his early years was very heavily influenced by individuals that dealt with empiricism such as John Locke and George Berkeley, among others (Norton, 1993).

Throughout much of his life Hume, who was never married, spent some time at his family home in Berwickshire. At 12 years old, he was sent to the University of Edinburgh. Usually, students were not sent there until they were at least 14 (Norton, 1993). Originally, he considered working toward a career in law, but he soon came to have, in his own words, "an insurmountable aversion to everything but the pursuits of Philosophy and general Learning; and while [my family] fancied I was poring over Voet and Vinnius, Cicero and Vergil were the Authors which I was secretly devouring" (Norton, 1993) He had very little respect for his professors, and in 1735 told a friend that "there is nothing to be learned from a Professor, which is not to be met with in Books" (Norton, 1993)

At eighteen Hume made an important philosophical discovery which opened up for him "a new Scene of Thought" (Penelhum, 1993). This then inspired him "to throw up every other Pleasure or Business to apply entirely to it" (Penelhum, 1993).

Despite his excitement with this, however, he never did say what the discovery was. It would seem likely, though, that it was his theory of causality, which was that people's beliefs about the cause and effect in life largely depend upon their sentiment, their custom and their habits, instead of depending upon reason, or upon abstract, timeless, and general Laws of Nature (Penelhum, 1993).

The careers that were open for a poor Scottish man in those days were not many. His only two options were work as a traveling tutor or work sitting on a stool in the office of a merchant, and he chose the latter. In 1734, after he had worked for a few months in Bristol, he went to Anjou, France (Graham, 2004). In that country he enjoyed frequent discourse with Jesuits at the college where Descartes had gained his education. In the four years that he spent there, he laid out a plan for his life and resolved "to make a very rigid frugality supply my deficiency of fortune, to maintain unimpaired my independency, and to regard every object as contemptible except the improvements of my talents in literature" (Graham, 2004)

While he was there, he also completed a Treatise of Human Nature at the young age of twenty-six (Graham, 2004). Many scholars of today believe the Treatise to be the most important work that Hume created and also one of the most significant books within the history of philosophy, but the public throughout Great Britain originally did not agree. Hume described the public reaction to the publication of his Treatise in 1739-40 by stating that it "fell dead-born from the press, without reaching such distinction as even to excite a murmur among the zealots. But being naturally of a cheerful and sanguine temper, I soon recovered from the blow and prosecuted with great ardor my studies in the country" (Graham, 2004).

After that, he wrote the Abstract.

He decided not to reveal his authorship, and he tried to make this large work become more intelligible by a shortening of it. Even doing this failed to create more interest in the Treatise (Phillipson, 1989). The supreme effort that he undertook in writing the Treatise drove Hume, generally youthful, nearly to insanity. To restore the perspective that he had previously enjoyed, he decided to escape for a while to a more common life (Phillipson, 1989).

After Hume published Essays Moral and Political in 1744, he then applied to be Chair of Ethics and pneumatic philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. His application was rejected. During the Jacobite Rebellion, which took place in 1745, he worked to tutor the Marquise of Annandale (1720-92) who had been officially described as being a "lunatic" (Phillipson, 1989). This arrangement ended in problems after a year. It was at that time that Hume started working on his great historical work the History of Great Britain. It would take him fifteen years to complete it and it ran to over one million words, which were published in six volumes between 1754 and 1762 (Phillipson, 1989).

During that time period Hume was also involved in the Canongate Theatre and associated with Lord Monboddo and others from the Scottish Enlightenment. In 1748 Hume served for three years as the Secretary to General St. Clair, and wrote his Philosophical Essays concerning Human Understanding during that time. It was later published as an Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Phillipson, 1989).

Hume was later charged with being a heretic, but he was defended by many of his young clerical friends, as they argued that Hume was an atheist and therefore was outside of the Church's jurisdiction (Phillipson, 1989). Despite the fact that he was acquitted, and possibly due to opposition that he faced from Thomas Reid, Hume did not win the Chair of Philosophy at Glasgow. It was only after he returned to Edinburgh in 1752, which he wrote about in My Own Life, that "the Faculty of Advocates chose me their Librarian, an office from which I received little or no emolument, but which gave me the command of a large library" (Phillipson, 1989). It was the having of this library resource that allowed Hume to continue working on his historical research for History.

Although David Hume wrote all of his works in the 18th century, the work that he did remains extremely and surprisingly relevant with respect to philosophical disputes that are addressed today when he is compared to his contemporaries (Penelhum, 1993). A summary and discussion of some of the more influential works of Hume and how he has been influenced by and also influenced other philosophers and their views could include addressing some of the following concerns and issues, generally regarding empiricism.

In David Hume's article on empiricism, he attempts to show how some things that people believe to be real are the product of false knowledge, and there is a difference between things that people perceive to be true and things that actually are true. Hume's theory is that only things that can be proven, such as mathematics, are absolutely true. Other things may seem to be true because something usually happens related to something else, but even though this seems to always be the case there is room for argument in that it does not have to be the case every time, simply because it has happened that way in the past. Hume believes that the only truth is mathematical truth, and that there are many other things in the world that people falsely perceive to be true because they have not subjected those things to an examination that is serious enough to show otherwise (Bongie, 1998).

Hume bases this opinion on the fact that mathematical issues can be proven beyond doubt, but other things are left up to cause and effect. He argues that, while it does seem that there is a relationship between cause and effect, that relationship could change, and the effect would be different in different circumstances. Mathematical things, which Hume believes to be the only things involved in true knowledge, would never change their relationship to something else. It is not in their nature to be able to do this.

They are what they are, and they will stay that way for all time. Hume's theory is a solid one. Mathematics and numbers do not change. They are always the same, and something proven mathematically cannot be wrong. As for cause and effect, Hume is also correct in that respect (Bongie, 1998). There are many cause and effect relationships wherein the effect was somewhat of a surprise, and didn't happen just the way it had in the past, or the way people assumed that it would. There is no way to prove things that are not mathematically based, and therefore Hume's theory holds up to even the closest scrutiny, even if it is written in archaic language which makes it somewhat difficult to follow at first. Once the reader gets past the language and time issues that have passed since Hume's lifetime, the ideas he presents become clear and make a great deal of sense.

Hume uses several main arguments and conclusions in his writing. The first two are the most important, as they seem to set the groundwork for the others. The first is that everyone has impression and ideas about things but that these must be examined closely because they are often false. This seems logical because many things that people do, when looked back on, are found to be not really the best or most logical choice after all.

The second thing that Hume points out is that there are two different kinds of reasoning. One deals with fact and the other with ideas. Facts deal with mathematically-based issues that can be proven, and the other deals with understandings that have been passed down. They appear to be true, but there is no mathematical way to prove why they are true. This is like people who believe, for example, that fruits and vegetables are good for health. This appears to be the case, but there is no mathematical formula that can be used to prove that this belief is true for all people all of the time.

Hume also points out other, smaller bit of information, such as that causation has a great deal to do with his understanding of things (Bongie, 1998). In order to reason, one has to understand why they are reasoning on something. What kind of causation is used relates to the necessity of finding the information. Other points deal with past and future and their resemblance to each other, external objects, the idea of self, and the limits of enquiry. All of these things are important, but not as important as the first two points that Hume makes. This is why the others are not discussed in detail here. Without the first two points and an understanding of them, the other points Hume makes become meaningless.

One individual that should be compared with Hume is Friedrich Nietzsche. The Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was born in Germany in the latter part of the 19th century. He was interested in Christianity and traditional morality, and often challenged the foundations of these issues. He was not that concerned about what the world beyond would be like, but rather had interest in the reality that people live in now, and involved himself in creativity, health, and life. Life-affirmation was a central theme in his philosophy, which will be more thoroughly discussed momentarily.

Nietzsche was born in Rocken bei Lutzen, which is southwest of Leipzig and dominated by farmlands, on the 15th of October of 1844. His grandfathers were ministers in the Lutheran Church, and his father was Rocken's town minister. When Nietzsche was very young, his father passed away from an ailment of the brain, and his younger brother died only six months after that. After this took place, he moved away to another town, Naumburg an der Saale, where he lived for the next eight years, sharing space with not only his mother but his grandmother, his younger sister, and two aunts.

He went on to boarding school after that, and then on to the University of Bonn, where he studied both biblical and classical texts and found himself very interested in what they had to say. At 23 he entered military service, which was required. He was injured, put on sick leave, and eventually went back to the University after the wound he had suffered did not heal properly. He took a job with the faculty of a Swiss University at the age of 24, and from there he worked for some time before eventually leaving the University due to sickness. He collapsed in 1889 and died later that same year.

One of Nietzsche's greatest works was a book entitled Beyond Good and Evil. His concept of what he calls a "will to power" is one of the central themes in his philosophical beliefs, and therefore it is also a recurring theme in the book. When Nietzsche was young and only a budding philosopher, he often admired and was highly influenced by the writings of other philosophers, most notably Arthur Schopenhauer. However, Schopenhauer, like most scientists and philosophers of that day, attributed a "will to live" as being the highest motivational life force that could be found anywhere in nature. Nietzsche also observed that having a "will to live" was not really life affirming enough for him to be comfortable with and that humankind actually needed a higher power than that to rely on.

Because of that, he theorized that human beings were not actually motivated solely by a survival instinct. He understood something beyond that, which was that humans had a much higher need than that, which he then termed the "will to power." One can very easily interpret his "will to power" as the method which people use in order to grow and nurture the creative energy that they have, and what they use to interact with their world. Nietzsche believed that the "will to power" was then coupled with the desire of a human being's innate nature and passion for creativity.

Nietzsche thought that this "will to power" was actually the driving force of humanity. "A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength -- life itself is will to power, self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results" (Nietzsche, 2005). This "will to power" then causes human beings to want to dominate people and to impose their specific will onto others. For Nietzsche, then, humanity's "will to power" meant that life is essentially the exploitation of other people, and that it has been so since the beginning of time (Nietzsche, 2005). In addition to this, Nietzsche also believed that an individual could take the concept of a "will to power" one further step, and it could be used in order to explain motivations behind whole societies and nation states, instead of seeing it as only being behind the motivations of an individual (Nietzsche, 2005).

Nietzsche appears to be also extremely passionate and very specific in the aphorisms that he has stated. He wrote so many things that it is relatively easy to locate instances in some of his works where he actually contradicts himself. Nietzsche's concept of a "will to power" is simply a philosophic thought, and it has led to many different interpretations. Many people that read the work of Nietzsche assume that he thought the primary instincts of humans came down to violence and that there was very little else, which amounts to a serious underestimation of the views that he held on humanity. However, most of the writings that he created on the concept of "will to power," if they are interpreted as being very violent, need to be understood more in how he saw a constant struggle within people to overcome their individual weaknesses (Nietzsche 2005).

Nietzsche saw this "will to power" along the lines of being able to apply one's will in overcoming problems of the self. His writings about violence, therefore, are usually meant as violence against the idea of giving in to "the herd" or a slave mentality. The herd, as Nietzsche calls it, is the large majority of human beings who, throughout world history, have simply obeyed and blindly followed the status quo. The herd has slowed the development of humanity with the slave mentality that they have shown (Nietzsche, 2005). The slave mentality, therefore, invented a dichotomy between good and evil.

Moral judgments and condemnations constitute the favorite revenge of the spiritually limited against those less limited" (Nietzsche, 2005). In addition, the herd mentality can also cause people to hide or quash the creative drive that they have. Because of this, Nietzsche is imploring a few noble humans -- the few geniuses that he believes still exist -- to struggle against following the herd and to show where the mentality of humanity should really lie. Nietzsche wanted noble people to create their own mentality and morality and the values that they need to have in order to live their lives properly. If they did this, Nietzsche thought, they would fulfill their own "will to power" and not try to indulge in efforts that would attract other individuals to their values (Nietzsche, 2005).

Emile Durkheim is another individual with close ties to much of what Hume had to say, as were Comte and Spencer, who Durkheim draws much from. He placed great emphasis on the division of labor (DOL) in society. He wondered about what it was, and how it applied to everything that society encompassed, such as individual people, animals, and plants. He was not the first to ponder these things and try to come up with an explanation that made sense of them.

Durkheim drew extensively from the works of Comte and Spencer in theorizing about society and social interaction. As society continues to change and grow there are some aspects of it that stay the same. Rebellion, the attempt to find individuality among the masses, and the independence of the people as being separate from the whole of the group are some of the things that have remained static for decades (Ashley & Orenstein, 2000).

Durkheim, Comte, and Spencer all shared in common the view that sociology is an "instrumental science" and that is helps to provide knowledge about the relationship between cause and effect. This understanding of cause and effect can help people to adapt to and understand a social system "that is external and coercive for individuals" (Ashley & Orenstein, 2000).

What is meant by this is that people see things that happen in the society and they react to them. This causes other people to react, and so on. Eventually, everyone will have been affected by something that might really not have much significance for most people. Other people have been 'coerced' into taking a stand or forming an opinion when the issue at hand really doesn't have anything to do with them.

There is belief among the three sociologists that disputes can be settled by the scientific method and that people are able to restructure their social relationships if they have the right knowledge. This 'right' knowledge is what Durkheim, Comte, and Spencer feel they are providing by writing on the subject. Durkheim draws more from the other two than just the 'instrumental science' belief, however (Ashley & Orenstein, 2000).

Most of what Durkheim writes about the nature of society and the way it changes comes from his analysis of the works of Comte and Spencer. One of the things Durkheim is most concerned with is solidarity. He talks about both organic and contractual solidarity and much of what he feels to be accurate on these matters comes from either Comte or Spencer. To help explain the feeling of solidarity and the DOL Durkheim uses an analogy about a married couple.

He states that the DOL goes beyond economic interests and is in fact the establishment of both moral and social order. The married couple analogy doesn't go far enough to explain the DOL for large societies, though. In fact, Durkheim draws here from Comte, who said that the DOL was "the continuous distribution of different human tasks which constitutes the principal element in social solidarity" (Durkheim, 1997). By which he means that all of the people in society doing their jobs is what makes the society work. This is the essence of the solidarity that arises from the DOL. Durkheim calls this 'organic solidarity.'

Contractual solidarity is more tied into the laws of the land. According to Durkheim (1997) contracts involve "reciprocal obligations that involve co-operation." Because of these obligations and the willingness of society to co-operate with them and operate within their boundaries, contractual solidarity is formed on top of the organic solidarity that was already present in the society. Both of these are needed to make up social solidarity and have a society that functions well and properly.