Philosophy
Widely considered to be the most important philosopher ever to write in the English language, the Scottish philosopher David Hume's ideas are as profound, subtle and revolutionary as they are playful, ironic and elusive. Brave and daring to the end, and way ahead of his time, Hume's positions on various philosophical issues, paradoxical as they may seem sometimes, were based on the great power of his reasoning and the evidence he obtained from his acute observations of his own mind and the world at large.
Hume's empiricism is a devastating response to the rationalism of philosophers like Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, but his philosophical virtue, courage and honesty also led him to take the very same empiricism he endorsed to its true logical conclusion, demonstrating in the process the limits of reason and human knowledge... oh, and your non-existence too :)
The following clip is a nice excerpt of some of Hume's most important ideas (as articulated in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding), starting with his distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact:
Here is a short, but very good analysis of Hume's ideas by Peter Millican in a Philosophy Bites interview:
And here is a sample (again from Philosophy Bites) of the work philosophers have been doing on the idea of "laws of nature" after Hume's powerful challenge to such a notion:
Check out more fascinating entries on The Masters of Philosophy.
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- John Locke
(1632-1704) One of the common things among Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz is that they are all rationalists. Rationalism is the system of thought, which believes in reason as a primary source of knowledge. A rationalist may also believe that man has certain...
- David Hume
(1711-1776) The Scottish philosopher David Hume is one of the most brilliant and skeptical of philosophers. Our ideas of epistemology would have been very different had Hume not been born. He developed empiricist philosophy to its logical zenith and challenged...
- Geoffrey Warnock On Kant
Imagine if the conceptual basis of just about every single belief you ever had, not just as a layman but as a professional and conscientious intellectual, were suddenly shattered by the writings of a single man? That's exactly what happened to Immanuel...
- Lecture 6 - Primary And Secondary Qualities
No introductory philosophy course is complete without at least touching on the famous distinction between primary and secondary qualities originally proposed by Descartes, but explored in more detail by Locke, Berkeley and Hume. If you don't...
- Happy Birthday, David Hume!
Today marks the 300th birthday of David Hume, almost universally agreed to have been the most important philosopher ever to write in English, and certainly one of my favorites. It's rather strange (and disheartening, really) that his name hasn't...
Philosophy
David Hume - Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Hume's empiricism is a devastating response to the rationalism of philosophers like Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, but his philosophical virtue, courage and honesty also led him to take the very same empiricism he endorsed to its true logical conclusion, demonstrating in the process the limits of reason and human knowledge... oh, and your non-existence too :)
The following clip is a nice excerpt of some of Hume's most important ideas (as articulated in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding), starting with his distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact:
Here is a short, but very good analysis of Hume's ideas by Peter Millican in a Philosophy Bites interview:
And here is a sample (again from Philosophy Bites) of the work philosophers have been doing on the idea of "laws of nature" after Hume's powerful challenge to such a notion:
Check out more fascinating entries on The Masters of Philosophy.
.
- John Locke
(1632-1704) One of the common things among Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz is that they are all rationalists. Rationalism is the system of thought, which believes in reason as a primary source of knowledge. A rationalist may also believe that man has certain...
- David Hume
(1711-1776) The Scottish philosopher David Hume is one of the most brilliant and skeptical of philosophers. Our ideas of epistemology would have been very different had Hume not been born. He developed empiricist philosophy to its logical zenith and challenged...
- Geoffrey Warnock On Kant
Imagine if the conceptual basis of just about every single belief you ever had, not just as a layman but as a professional and conscientious intellectual, were suddenly shattered by the writings of a single man? That's exactly what happened to Immanuel...
- Lecture 6 - Primary And Secondary Qualities
No introductory philosophy course is complete without at least touching on the famous distinction between primary and secondary qualities originally proposed by Descartes, but explored in more detail by Locke, Berkeley and Hume. If you don't...
- Happy Birthday, David Hume!
Today marks the 300th birthday of David Hume, almost universally agreed to have been the most important philosopher ever to write in English, and certainly one of my favorites. It's rather strange (and disheartening, really) that his name hasn't...