Seminar paper notes on Hume

David Hume was born in 1711 in Scotland and is regarded as one of the most important philosophers as well as being considered one of the key figures in the founding of the enlightenment period. Hume's greatest work was the 'Treatise of Human Nature' which due to its sceptical nature wasn't received as he had expected and he himself admitted 'it fell dead born from the press'. After this knock he took time out of the profession to write essays and after an unsuccessful attempt at a professorship he re-released his book this time slightly dulled down and called it the 'inquiry into human understanding' this version was more successful. In his lifetime his other works of note include the 'essay on miracles' which concludes that there can be no evidence to support such an event ever having taken place and finally the 'History of England' which devotes itself to showing how The Scottish are superior to the English. Thomas Jefferson was not a fan of this book and labelled it as 'poison' as it also promoted toryness and even banned it from the libraries of the University of Virginia.

Hume's Treatise is separated into three books;

• The Understanding
• The passions
• The Morals

The Understanding section has a large focus on the differentiation between impressions and idea's. Hume goes on to say that all of our simple ideas are derived from simple impressions which resemble the resulting idea. Yet complexed ideas aren't formed by complexed impressions but in fact can be formed by our imaginations. Hume uses the image of a winged horse, although we have never seen such a spectacle we can still picture one using our imaginations

Hume's general approach to philosophy is regarded as radical empiricism and he is regarded of one of the founders of the empiricist views that swept through Britain in the 17^th century. Hume is often likened to Hobbes, Locke and Berkely as they are fellow empiricists. Hume's rational approach to thinking however annoying to read is difficult to dispute as he argues his points very well.

Hume's ideas on causation are particularly difficult to get your head around as he is defying common beliefs of what we feel should happen. 'You cannot derive an ought from an is' is the leading line of this theory meaning that just because something should happen doesn't mean that it will. An example of this could be when playing Pool just because you hit the white ball into the black the fact that the black then moves is not necessarily down to the fact that it was struck by the white as Hume believed things could be probable but nothing is definite.

Another of Hume's important theories is labelled the 'Fork' this term is used to distinguish between relations of ideas and matters of fact. Hume believes that are actions are either predetermined or our caused by random events therefore we can't be held accountable form them. The only thing Hume said was totally factual were the rules of geometry.