David Hume

David Hume vuonna 1766
maalaus Allan Ramsay
kuva wikimedia

Kuten niin monen barokin ja valistuksen ajan monipuolisen neron kohdalla käy, on mahdotonta muutamalla sanalla profiloida David Humea.

Osoittaakseni tämän poimin tähän (hieman muokaten) wikipedian artikkelin johdannosta avainkohtia. Tämä ei ole riittävää Humen ymmärtämiseksi, koska jokaisesta lausumasta avautuu länsimaisen sivilisaation, uskonnon ja tieteen kannalta olennaisia aatevirtauksia ja näkemyksiä, kulttuurimme ja maailmankatsomuksemme peruspylväitä.

Älykkäästä suunnittelusta ja luomisesta keskustelevan kristityn on hyödyllistä ja tarpeellista oppia tuntemaan David Hume edes jonkin verran, sillä nimi epäilemättä nousee esiin jossain vaiheessa keskustelujen siirtyessä aikamme skeptikkojen ja ateistien areenoille.

David Hume (1711 – 1776) was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment. Hume is often grouped with John Locke, George Berkeley, and a handful of others as a British Empiricist.

Beginning with his A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), Hume strove to create a total naturalistic "science of man" that examined the psychological basis of human nature. In stark opposition to the rationalists who preceded him, most notably Descartes, he concluded that desire rather than reason governed human behaviour, saying: "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions".

A prominent figure in the sceptical philosophical tradition and a strong empiricist, he argued against the existence of innate ideas, concluding instead that humans have knowledge only of things they directly experience.

He developed the position that mental behaviour is governed by "custom", that is acquired ability; our use of induction, for example, is justified only by our idea of the "constant conjunction" of causes and effects. Without direct impressions of a metaphysical "self", he concluded that humans have no actual conception of the self, only of a bundle of sensations associated with the self.

Hume advocated a compatibilist theory of free will that proved extremely influential on subsequent moral philosophy.

He was also a sentimentalist who held that ethics are based on feelings rather than abstract moral principles.

Hume also examined the normative is–ought problem.

He held notoriously ambiguous views of Christianity, but famously challenged the argument from design in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1777).

Immanuel Kant credited Hume with waking him up from his "dogmatic slumbers"

Hume has proved extremely influential on subsequent philosophy, especially on
utilitarianism,
logical positivism,
William James,
philosophy of science,
early analytic philosophy,
cognitive philosophy,
and other movements and thinkers.

The philosopher Jerry Fodor proclaimed Hume's Treatise "the founding document of cognitive science".

Also famous as a prose stylist, Hume pioneered the essay as a literary genre and engaged with contemporary intellectual luminaries such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith (who acknowledged Hume's influence on his economics and political philosophy), James Boswell, Joseph Butler, and Thomas Reid.
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