David Hume was born in 1711 in Edinburgh to a family of impoverished Scottish landowners. Having lost his father early, he was left in the care of his mother, who devoted herself entirely to her children. Hume was destined to become a lawyer, but from a young age he was drawn to literary activity and philosophy. He was fond of reading moralistic works. While paying tribute to the wit of classical authors, Hume at the same time drew attention to the arbitrariness and hypothetical nature of their systems. And he became confident that he would be able to change the situation and say a new word in “moral philosophy”.
As Hume recounts in his “Letter to a Physician” (March 1734)
[22] , after a long search for “a new method by which truth might be ascertained,” he “at the age of about 18 years … discovered a new source of thought” (4: 1, 13). He realized that the origins of moral and aesthetic differences must be discovered through a direct, i.e., experimental (and not hypothetical) study of “human nature,” which he decided to make the main object of his research (4: 1, 16). Hume’s study of human nature, in which he combined the sentimentalism of F. Hutcheson with the empiricist methodology of I. Newton, culminated in the publication in 1739–40 of the three-volume “Treatise on Human Nature,” written mostly in France in 1734–37.
The first part of the Treatise contains the doctrine of human knowledge, the second – about affects, i.e. about the inclinations initially inherent in man, either generating the idea of this or that good, or, conversely, being reactions to goods or their opposites. The third book of the Treatise, published a year after the first two, is devoted to the study of the essence of morality. Hume initially wanted to assign an introductory role to the doctrine of knowledge, paying primary attention to the theory of affects, which was to become the foundation for the study of morality, as well as for the criticism of aesthetic taste and the philosophy of politics. However, as he studied the mechanisms of human knowledge, he discovered more and more paradoxes and inexplicable phenomena. As a result, it was the first book that occupied the central place in the composition of the Treatise. The difficulties which Hume encountered in investigating the conditions and laws of human knowledge were the source of his sceptical sentiments, which prevail in the first book of the Treatise and obscure the positive program of creating an exact “science of human nature” which he originally pursued.
It is not surprising that many of Hume’s readers did not notice this positive program and considered the Treatise to be an example of purely skeptical philosophy, destroying the foundations of science, religion and morality. However, at first, almost no attention was paid to Hume’s fundamental work. “Hardly any literary debut was less fortunate,” Hume wrote in his autobiography, “than my Treatise of Human Nature. It came off the press stillborn, without even the honor of exciting a murmur among fanatics” (1: 1, 45). Hume planned to publish two more books of the Treatise, on aesthetics (“criticism”) and politics, but after the failure of the first parts, this plan had to be adjusted. In 1741-1742, he published a collection of popular Moral and Political Essays, which brought him success, forcing him “totally to forget his previous failure” (1: 1, 45). Hume subsequently republished his collections of essays several times, adding new texts to them.
Meanwhile, Hume did not abandon hope of attracting attention to his ideas not only from the general public, but also from academic circles. In 1744-1745, he tried to occupy the chair of ethics and pneumatic philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, but encountered resistance from the clergy (his attempt to get a position at the University of Glasgow in 1751 also ended in failure), and in 1748 he published Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding (later Hume changed its title to An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding). In this work, he not only briefly summarized the main ideas of the first book of the Treatise, but also showed a desire to soften skepticism and shift from an empiricist to a rationalist methodology in the study of human nature. Instead of the inner “experience” he wrote about in the Treatise, in the Inquiry he appeals to “higher penetration” into the operations of consciousness and strict deductions (1:2, 11).
In 1751, Hume published An Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, which he considered his best work. That same year, he moved from his estate to Edinburgh, and in 1752, he was elected librarian of the Edinburgh Law Society and decided to write a History of England. The implementation of this grandiose project, of course, distracted Hume from philosophical problems. However, it cannot be said that he completely abandoned them. Thus, in 1757, Hume published The Natural History of Religion, saturated with philosophical and religious studies ideas, and until the end of his life he worked on the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, which provided a thorough critical analysis of the evidence for the existence of God.
Hume’s fame grew steadily. In the mid-1760s, he found himself in a high diplomatic position in Paris, where he became an idol of the salon public. In 1767-1768, he worked in London as an assistant secretary of state. After returning to Edinburgh in 1769, Hume became the leader of local intellectuals, whose circle included A. Smith and A. Ferguson. Hume died in 1776. Shortly before his death, he wrote a short autobiographical essay in which he called his “ruling passion” “the love of literary fame”, adding immediately that even this “never embittered my character, notwithstanding frequent failures” (1: 1, 50).
The Science of Human Nature. The 18th century is called the “century of man,” and Hume was undoubtedly a son of his era. He declared the science of human nature to be the “capital” of all human knowledge. Even such disciplines as mathematics or natural theology, which seem independent of the doctrine of man, depend on its state. Hume conceived the science of human nature as a study of the general structures of human consciousness. He almost never referred to the data of physiology and other natural sciences about man. The study of human consciousness occurs in two stages. The first is called by Hume “mental geography.” The goal of mental geography is to systematize mental acts and abilities. At the second stage, an attempt should be made to reduce disparate acts of consciousness to their common sources. It is important to note that Hume is not interested in the abstract schematism of human mental acts and their subordination, but in their manifestation in everyday life. It is this that should become the only area of philosophy. One of its main tasks is to clarify everyday experience: “Philosophical conclusions are nothing other than systematized and corrected reflections of everyday life” (1:2, 141).
Hume’s reorientation of philosophy toward everyday experience makes it clear that he was skeptical about the prospects of traditional metaphysics. A rigorous analysis of human faculties does indeed deal a serious blow to speculative philosophy, which was concerned with things beyond human experience. Hume, however, does not reject metaphysics in principle. The science of human nature, he argues, is “true metaphysics.” Metaphysics is the opposite of “easy philosophy.” The latter appeals to the senses rather than to reason, and it aims to solve practical problems. But they cannot be solved without a reliable theoretical foundation, which is precisely what metaphysics provides. Hume said that he was trying to find a middle way between metaphysics and easy philosophy and to reason popularly on difficult topics.
Skepticism. One of the important elements of this synthetic line was Hume’s peculiar terminological policy, which consisted in refusing to use special expressions to designate the mental phenomena he discovered. Instead, Hume used words of everyday language – “impression”, “habit”, “belief”, “livelyness”, etc. He apparently believed that such a practice would make his reasoning more understandable to the inexperienced reader. In fact, by generating ambiguities, it created additional interpretational difficulties. And perhaps the greatest problems were caused to Hume by the term “skepticism”. He called his philosophy skeptical and many really saw in him a destroyer of the foundations of knowledge. Meanwhile, Hume distinguished several types of skepticism – “Cartesian”, “academic”, “Pyrrhonism”, etc. Of the above, only Pyrrhonism is skepticism in the generally accepted sense, the doctrine of total doubt. But it was precisely from this that Hume distanced himself. The Cartesian and academic skepticism that he accepted only calls for caution in judgments, but does not deny the knowability of the world
[23] .
However, Hume’s attitude to Pyrrhonism was ambiguous. The source of Pyrrhonism is the internal contradictions in which the human mind becomes entangled, and in the “Treatise on Human Nature”, unlike the “Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding”, there are statements about the inevitability of such contradictions. One can get out of them only by forgetting about them, and human nature itself makes us forget about them, pushing us to action even when we cannot justify them.
The main contradiction in knowledge, according to Hume, is the discrepancy that arises between the belief in the existence of physical objects independent of man and the conviction of the mind that such objects cannot exist independently of perception. Hume proved the latter assertion with arguments about the subjectivity of “primary qualities” borrowed from Berkeley and, as noted in the previous chapter, are not logically flawless. From Berkeley and Locke, Hume also adopted the idea of human knowledge being composed of special elements, “ideas”. However, he was not satisfied with the established practice of calling “ideas” not only thoughts, memories and images, but also sensations. He decided to emphasize their difference and renamed ideas of sensation “impressions”. Hume declared impressions and ideas to be varieties of “perceptions”, i.e. mental states as such. Mental geography actually begins with these distinctions.
Impressions and ideas. Thus, Hume calls impressions immediate sensory data, and ideas or thoughts are images of impressions retained in the mind. For example, when we see a book, we have an impression of this object, and when we think about it or remember how we read it, we have an idea. Ideas, Hume argues, differ from impressions in a lesser degree of “vividness” or brightness. Of course, this does not mean physical brightness (a dull day as a mental given remains an impression, and the idea of a bright object does not turn into an impression, i.e., into the object itself), but mental. And although Hume admits that he simply does not have enough words to characterize it and refers to the personal phenomenological experience of each, he nevertheless makes it clear that it is an essential parameter of the “acts” of the mind during perception (1:1, 155, 162). Hume calls another important feature of ideas their secondary nature. They are, as a rule, copied from impressions. True, this thesis is true only for “simple ideas”, although even here there are exceptions. Nevertheless, this feature of ideas allows Hume to formulate an important methodological technique that had a great influence on the subsequent analytical tradition: if we find any ambiguities in our ideas, we must try to establish from what impressions they are obtained – this helps to clarify them. Impressions are divided into “primary” and “secondary”, or “impressions of sensation” and “impressions of reflection”. The general mechanism of the change of perceptions, according to Hume, is as follows: first, “from unknown causes” an impression of sensation arises in the soul, then the idea of this impression remains in the memory and can, for example, give rise to a desire to again experience the corresponding sensation. Desire is an example of secondary impressions and affects.
The order of the change of perceptions serves for Hume as the basis for compositional decisions regarding the science of human nature. He believes that there is no need to analyze impressions of sensation at all. This should be dealt with by “natural philosophy.” And if impressions of sensation do not interest the science of man, then it is necessary to begin with an analysis of ideas and the laws of their combination, i.e., with the ability to know, and then move on to the study of impressions of reflection, i.e., affects, as well as will.
Hume distinguishes two types of ideas: ideas of memory and imagination. In fact, he also considers another type of ideas that arise when expecting some events. Such ideas are accompanied by faith. However, in a broader sense, faith (belief), according to Hume, also extends to impressions of the senses, as well as to ideas of memory, being nothing more than the liveliness of representations. The most “lively” of all types of ideas are ideas of memory. They carry the residual force of impressions. Hume even speaks of them as “something between an impression and an idea” (1: 1, 69).
Ideas, according to Hume, are not immutable entities. A person is able to separate them into their component parts (if such parts exist), combine them, and compare them. The isolation of ideas is abstraction. Hume supports Berkeley’s representative theory of abstraction, according to which not every idea can be isolated from others. In particular, he denies the existence of abstract general ideas, believing that general terms are always associated with ideas of individual things that are representatives of a whole class of similar individuals
[24] . Therefore, he does not contrast abstract thinking or reason with imagination.
The combination of ideas occurs according to the laws of association, which Hume compared to physical gravitation. He mentioned three types of association: by resemblance (when we imagine a portrait, we remember the person depicted), by contiguity (when we think of a place, we easily move on to thoughts of the people living there), and by causality (from the idea of a son, it is natural to move on to the thought of a father). Resemblance, spatio-temporal contiguity, and causality thus act as associating principles of ideas. Hume calls such relations “natural.” But they can also be used to compare ideas. Then they are “philosophical relations.” The range of philosophical relations covers not only causality, contiguity, and resemblance. It also includes relations of quantity, degree of quality, opposition, and identity (1: 1, 126). Some of these relations—namely, quantity, degree of quality, and resemblance, as well as opposition—can be established without recourse to impressions. In the last three cases we grasp them intuitively, but in the first we can mediate the judgment by demonstrative conclusions, an example of which are mathematical proofs.
The doctrine of causality. The situation is different with the relations of time and place, identity and causality. Here, a mere comparison of ideas is not enough to know about the spatio-temporal proximity of their objects and their possible causal dependence. The idea of identical objects is also not enough to speak of their numerical identity, i.e. that we are talking about one and the same object. To establish such relations, it is necessary to turn to impressions, to facts
[25] . In this case, we either directly state the existing impressions, or go beyond them. Hume asserts that the only relation that allows us to reliably go beyond the boundaries of existing experience when reasoning about facts is the relation of causality. Causal connections that presuppose the presence of correlative impressions allow us to predict possible future events on the basis of data present in immediate experience. The contiguity of things as such cannot be used for these purposes – this is possible only in the case of constant contiguity, and this already indicates causality, since the cause is “an object that precedes another object and is contiguous with it, and all objects similar to the first are in the same relations of precedence and contiguity with those objects that are similar to the second” (1:1, 222). Judgments about the identity of an object during a break in its perception, on the contrary, depend on the clarification of causal connections. Since most of the ordinary and scientific reasoning of people presupposes going beyond the limits of their immediate sensory data, then inferences from cause to effect form the basis of human knowledge of facts.
It is not surprising that Hume devotes the greatest attention to the analysis of the causal relationship. First of all, he destroys the Cartesian myth of the intuitive truth of the law of causality, i.e. the proposition “everything that begins to exist must have a cause of existence” (1: 1, 135). The intuitive truth of any thesis presupposes the impossibility of conceiving the opposite, as in the case of mathematical axioms. But there is nothing impossible, Hume proves, in the distinct representation of an uncaused event. Cause and effect are thought of by us as separate events, and therefore we can separate them in representation.
If the conviction that the law of causality is true, which is common to all men, does not spring from intuition (or from demonstration as a chain of intuitions), then it must have some other source, and Hume tried to establish it. This feature of his approach remained unclear to many of Hume’s contemporaries, who believed that he was undermining the law of causality. In fact, he transferred its discussion to the phenomenological plane. Denying the possibility of verifying that every event has a cause, he at the same time considers the answer to the question of why people believe in causality to be real. To do this, one does not need to go beyond consciousness. Similar questions can be asked about other convictions, such as the belief in the existence of the physical world independent of perception, etc. In essence, Hume opened up a whole class of philosophical problems and thereby protected philosophy from possible attacks by allocating a very specific subject area to it, rather than destroying it. In discussing the origins of causal inferences, Hume came to the conclusion that experience plays a decisive role in them. It is experience that shows the correlative connections of events. But experience alone is not enough. Causal inferences made in everyday life and science are oriented toward future events, while experience always concerns what was in the past. This means that empirical data must be transferred from the past to the future, which presupposes confidence in the identity of the past and the future. This confidence cannot be based on intuition or demonstrative proof – we can imagine that the course of nature will change and that in the future the connections of events will become different, which would be impossible with intuitive or demonstrative knowledge of the said identity. We also do not derive the thesis on the identity of the past and the future from experience, since all conclusions from experience are based on this identity.
This means that the transfer of past experience to the future occurs without any rational justification, instinctively. The ability responsible for this transfer is called by Hume “custom”, and he classifies habit as a universal and necessary property of the human imagination, the elimination of which would lead to the complete destruction of human nature itself. The term “habit” for the ability to transfer past experience to the future may not seem very appropriate. Habit is generally considered “second nature”, but in Hume it turns out to be not the “second”, but rather the “first” nature of man. After all, strictly speaking, it does not arise from experience, but only utilizes it. It can even be called an a priori principle of knowledge, due to the “pre-established harmony” (see 1: 2, 47) directing our ideas parallel to impressions, the change of which, according to Hume, is determined by forces unknown to us.
Thus, people’s belief in the truth of the law of causality is ultimately rooted in their conviction of the identity of past and future, imposed on the regularity of experience. However, this conclusion is not proclaimed by Hume with all certainty. He also interprets the connection between habit and the conviction of the existence of physical objects independent of consciousness. On the one hand, Hume recognizes it. He asserts that belief in the existence of bodies independent of consciousness (precisely the belief, to prove such an existence, he believes, is impossible) presupposes confidence in their continuous existence, i.e., in numerical identity, which, as already noted, depends on causal conclusions (impossible without the transfer of past experience to the future, i.e., without habit), since belief in the identity of a thing observed after a break in its perception is possible only under the condition of conviction in the absence of causes that destroy this thing and replace it with another similar thing. On the other hand, he does not limit himself to this explanation and brings to the forefront other mechanisms. The belief in the continuous existence of bodies is generated, according to Hume, mainly by an implicit confusion of resemblance with identity. If I look at a table, then close my eyes for a second and then look at it again, then in my consciousness I find two perceptions, separated in time but similar. I confuse this resemblance with identity, which presupposes the continuous existence of the thing, and when I remember that I did not actually perceive its continuous existence, I fill the gap with the idea of such an existence, which continued even at the moment of my absence of its perception. It is precisely this procedure, based, according to Hume, on a “crude illusion”, that produces confidence in the consciousness-independent existence of the bodies that together constitute the physical world.
Theory of the Self. Similar mechanisms, Hume argued, generate the illusion of personal identity and the existence of a single Self in general. In fact, as he tried to prove in the Treatise on Human Nature, our states have no real carrier. Substance, Hume believes, is always imagined by us. So the human spirit is really nothing more than a “heap of perceptions” (1:1, 257). According to another formulation, the Self is “a bundle or collection of different perceptions” (1:1, 298). Another Hume comparison is no less well known: the mind is like a state of perceptions living according to certain laws (1:1, 306). And another Humeian image of mental life: it is similar to a theatrical production, where the place of actors is taken by perceptions. However, this “theater” has no stage. The action takes place as if in a void: “We must not be misled by the comparison with the theatre: the mind consists only of perceptions following one another, and we have no idea of the place in which these scenes are played, as well as of what it consists” (1:1, 299). It is interesting, however, that already in the appendix to the third volume of the “Treatise”, published a year after the first two, Hume, in fact, rejected this theory of the Self, declaring that he found contradictions in it. He understood that he could not reconcile the thesis about the discreteness of human consciousness, composed of self-sufficient perceptions, and the obvious presence of associative connections between them. These positions can be reconciled either by recognizing the presence of a single substantial carrier of perceptions, which will act as a connecting link between them, or by admitting the presence of internal connections between perceptions. The latter is incompatible with the fact that every perception can be mentally separated from other perceptions, and the former returns to the Cartesian doctrine of the “thinking thing.” Both options were unacceptable to Hume, and he preferred to refrain from judgment altogether.
The doctrine of affects. Despite the criticism of the metaphysical concept of the Self, Hume used the term “I” in his doctrine of affects. Some authors saw signs of an internal contradiction in this. However, these concerns are exaggerated, since Hume in any case does not deny the existence in human consciousness of a “fictitious” I as a kind of center of all perceptual life. And it is this I that can be present in affects. I can also be identified with the totality of perceptions that form an individual stream of consciousness. Hume studies affects from the point of view of discovering specific causal dependencies between primary impressions and mental reactions to them. Such constructions are always inductive, and it is quite natural that Hume himself correlated the doctrine of affects with “natural philosophy”. This doctrine is set out by Hume in most detail in the second book of his “Treatise”.
According to Hume, the usual mechanism for triggering affects as secondary impressions is a sensation or, more often, an idea of some pleasure or displeasure. However, the pleasure and displeasure that Hume classifies as primary impressions cannot be called the source of all affects in general. Some affects, for example, “the desire for our friends’ happiness,” lust, hunger, etc., Hume notes, arise directly from “natural impulses or instincts” and rather generate good or evil than are generated by them (1:1, 480). This circumstance complicates Gamov’s scheme, since the affects listed lack the property of secondary nature that is essential for them. In general, however, Hume understands affects as reactions of the I to pleasure and displeasure. Although imperceptible, the reaction of the I to sensations and ideas, according to Hume, always takes place. In other words, some pleasure or displeasure is associated with all sensations. Hume also claims that the criterion for distinguishing between good and evil is precisely the modified feeling of pleasure and displeasure, but not reason. Reason, as the ability to compare ideas and establish their relationships, generally plays an auxiliary role in practical life, confirming or not confirming the existence of this or that good, and also indicating the most effective means of achieving it. In other words, it only corrects our desires and aspirations, but cannot generate them. Desires themselves are precisely the original, “direct” reactions of the Self to good and evil.
Other fundamental “direct” affects besides desire, according to Hume, are joy and sorrow. But unlike desire, they are not active, but rather passive. The experience of joy arises when the good is certain, and sorrow when the evil is certain. And if, say, the good is not certain, then joy can turn into hope or fear. Hope and similar affects, therefore, represent emotions of a second order, “mixed affects.” Hume also distinguishes between “calm” and “stormy” affects, and does not identify them with weak and strong. Calm affects, associated with moral and aesthetic feelings, can overpower stormy ones, for example, the same joy or sorrow.
The affective life of the soul is not limited, however, to direct reactions. It constantly experiences a kind of reflection. Hume really tried to consider affects by analogy with the doctrine of the laws of reflection and refraction of light. However, sometimes he introduced other metaphors, comparing, for example, the spirit with an orchestra consisting of string instruments. He needed this comparison in order to show the possibility of merging affects: they do not stop immediately, but continue to sound for some time, like strings, and are layered on new experiences. But if we return to optical analogies, then affects, according to Hume, can be reflected in other people. Hume calls this mirroring of human nature “sympathy.” The effect of sympathy is not that we simply imagine the emotional state of another person, but in the transformation of ideas about his affects into real experiences, internal impressions. This is how, for example, the affect of compassion arises.
However, in affective life there are reflections of another kind. They cause what Hume calls “indirect affects.” It is to indirect affects that Hume devotes the most attention in the Treatise, and also in the Dissertation on the Passions (1757). He uses the phenomenon of pride and humiliation as a model for analysis. For a feeling of pride to arise, several conditions must be met. First, an object is needed, i.e., what this affect is directed at. The object of pride and humiliation is the Self. Second, an object that causes pride is needed. This object must 1) be related to the Self, 2) have some pleasant or unpleasant quality. In the first case (subject to a number of additional conditions – rarity of quality, constancy of the connection of the Self with the object, etc.), a feeling of pride arises, in the second – humiliation. If we change the object, transferring it from the Self to another person, then pride turns into love, humiliation into hatred. The indirectness of all these affects consists in their peculiar reflexivity or, as Hume says, in the presence of a “double relation” of impressions and ideas in them. Thus, in the case of pride, on the one hand, there is a similarity between the pleasant sensation caused by the cause of this affect and the experience of pride itself, on the other hand, there is a relation between the idea of the object of pride and the idea of the Self. For example, we are proud of our country. The presence of this emotion presupposes that the country is beautiful, rich, etc. All these qualities in themselves cause pleasure. But in order to turn pure pleasure into pride, it is necessary to correlate the idea of the country with the idea of the Self, i.e., to think of it as one’s country. In other words, only a thinking being, capable of discerning relations between things, can be proud. This, however, does not mean that Hume denies animals the feeling of pride. He is sure that they are not alien to ero.
A special place among the impressions of reflection is occupied by the will. Hume refuses to call it an affect in the strict sense of the word. The will, according to him, is “an internal impression which we experience and are conscious of when we consciously give rise to some new motion of our body, or some new perception of our mind” (1:1, 443). An affect is, first of all, some emotion or desire that arises when contemplating good or evil. From this definition it is clear that the will does not really fully fit the definition of an affect. The desire for good is an affect, but the will is only an accompanying internal impression that arises in us in the process of realizing the desire. Accordingly, it is hardly possible to call the will the productive cause of this or that action. The cause is rather motives, and the will is nothing more than an epiphenomenon. It is not surprising that Hume did not attach much importance to free will. Human actions are as necessary as physical processes (although the very idea of necessity is largely subjective and stems from an internal impression caused by the action of habit). At the same time, Hume did not deny that each person is endowed with an internal consciousness of the freedom of his will.
Ethics. The problem of will is connected in one way or another with the doctrine of morality. When speaking about Gamov’s ethics, today it is not his systematic constructions that are most often recalled, but a marginal remark that in ethical contexts the conjunction “is” in judgments is replaced by “must”. Meanwhile, Hume’s doctrine of morality occupies an important place in the history of British ethics. In general, he continues the sentimentalist tradition of E. Shaftesbury and F. Hutcheson, which is characterized by the recognition of the fundamental role of moral feeling as the ability to evaluate the moral significance of actions and approve of noble characters. Hume, however, more systematically than the aforementioned authors, defines the content of moral feeling, i.e., he finds out what actions and qualities of people cause moral approval. According to Hume, good is considered to be 1) useful, 2) pleasant. Both can be considered in two ways: useful and pleasant for oneself or for others. As a result, we have four qualities that evoke approval from the moral sense. It is important to emphasize that this is a disinterested reaction. The moral sense must not be confused with egoistic interests. It is disinterested. Whenever we consider certain qualities of a person, we approve of them if we notice that they can bring benefit or pleasure either to their bearer or to other people, and it does not matter whether we can take advantage of the benefits they promise. This does not affect our assessment in any way.
In his discussion of moral feeling, Hume does not, however, exaggerate its importance. On the contrary, he tries to supplement this feeling with rational sanctions, showing that some virtues (for example, justice or fidelity to one’s word) have a purely social character. Hume calls them “artificial” and distinguishes them from “natural” virtues, such as the affect of benevolence, which is aimed directly at the benefit of other people. The connection between artificial virtues and benefit is indirect. Outside of society, they have no meaning. As Hume specified in “A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh” (1745), he did not mean to say that existence outside of society allows people to abandon any notions of justice or obligations to follow agreements reached and fulfill promises. He was only talking about the fact that “without society they would never make agreements, nor even understand their meaning” (1: 1, 691).
Social Philosophy. Understanding these provisions requires an understanding of the principles of Hume’s social philosophy. He proceeds from the fact that society benefits individuals. Social organization increases the “strength, skill, and safety” of people (see 1:1, 526). It is important, however, for people to understand the benefits of society. And reflection alone might not be enough here, especially when it comes to the immature minds of primitive peoples. But reason is aided by the natural attraction of people of the opposite sex to each other, which “may rightly be considered the fundamental and primary principle of human society” (1:1, 527). Thus, social existence begins with the family. The expansion of the family leads to the emergence of larger social formations. At a certain stage, unity is lost and conflicts of interest arise, mainly over property issues, the severity of which is due to the lack of resources to meet the needs of everyone. To resolve these disputes, members of society enter into a tacit agreement, arising from a “sense of public interest,” not to encroach on each other’s property. With this agreement, Hume argues, come the ideas of justice, property, right, and obligation (1:1, 531).
But although people feel the benefits of social existence and approve of justice in the abstract, it is a peculiarity of human nature that people prefer a near good to a more distant benefit, even if it significantly exceeds the former. This is not a matter of a confrontation between egoistic and social interests, since the latter are also based on egoistic aspirations, but of a peculiar shortsightedness of man, which threatens the very possibility of social life. To neutralize it, people invent state power, i.e., they put forward from among themselves people whom they directly interest in the implementation of justice (see 1:1, 576).
Forms of government can, of course, be very different. But they cannot be considered equal. The best ones should be recognized as those that minimize the dependence of the state of affairs in the state on the personal qualities of the rulers: “A hereditary monarch, an aristocracy without vassals, and the people voting by their representatives, make the best monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy” (1:2, 494). Hume was not alien to utopian sentiments and in the essay “The Idea of a Perfect State” (1752) proposed a version of the optimal state structure – a republic with a property qualification, a multi-level system of government bodies and a well-developed system of checks and balances. At the same time, Hume admitted that in compact communities people can do without a state or resort to its creation only when necessary in the face of an external threat. But sociality itself was declared by him to be an essential property of man. He considers the so-called “natural state” of war of all against all, or, conversely, the idea of a golden age, to be fictions, which, however, can be useful for clarifying the nature of artificial virtues and the benefits of social order.
Religion. One of the main dangers for society is war, many of which are unleashed for senseless reasons. Hume includes, for example, religious disagreements among them. Religion in general has a strong influence on social life. It can also be positive. Thus, religions of “frenzy”, whose adherents reject any church leadership (which turns people into slaves) and strive for direct contact with God, can prepare the ground for freethinking and create favorable conditions for the development of civil rights.
But Hume was interested, of course, not only in the influence of religions on public life. In his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, published in 1779, he subjected to a thorough analysis all possible arguments of reason that could testify to the existence of God. He disputed the cosmological and ontological proofs of the existence of God, but did not reject the argument from the purposefulness of the world, although he reduced its conclusion to the thesis that “the cause or causes of the order of the universe probably have some remote analogy with the human mind” (1: 2, 481)
[26] . In his work “The Natural History of Religion,” however, he argued that this and other arguments of reason were not decisive in the emergence of religious ideas among ancient peoples. He believed that the source of the latter was not the contemplation of natural harmony or a special religious feeling that would stem from human nature, but people’s concern about life’s problems, the solution to which is often beyond their control. Unknown causes of everyday events, which sometimes seem to violate the natural course of things, are endowed with anthropomorphic qualities and become objects of worship and fear. Initial polytheism is replaced over time by monotheistic ideas, which, however, are too abstract for most believers and tend to roll back to more subtle forms of polytheism.
Religions usually attract people not for their own sake, but for the eternal bliss they promise, and the existence of God is often seen as a guarantee of the immortality of the human soul. Hume devoted a special essay to this topic, written for a collection in 1757 but published much later. In this work, he distinguishes three types of possible arguments for the immortality of the soul: metaphysical, moral, and physical.
Moral proofs are primarily theological in nature. They are “inferred from the justice of God, who is supposed to be interested in the future punishment of those who are wicked, and the reward of those who are virtuous” (1: 2, 691). The immortality of the soul is required in order to receive what is deserved in this life. In the Treatise, Hume wrote that despite the weakness of metaphysical proofs, moral arguments retain their force. In the essay on the immortality of the soul, he criticizes them as well. In concluding from the world to God, we can only attribute to God those properties that are found in the world. But justice is precisely what is not found in it, otherwise there would be no need to admit posthumous retribution. In addition, human qualities cannot be attributed to God, even such as justice. Metaphysical and physical proofs are equally ineffective. The former proceed from the immateriality of the soul and conclude that the destruction of the body does not lead to its death – but the immateriality of the soul cannot be proven. The situation is even worse with physical arguments based on the “analogy of nature”. They rather testify to the opposite. Soul and body are connected with each other. A change in the body leads to a corresponding change in the soul. For example, when the body weakens, the soul also loses activity, etc. By analogy, we can conclude that the destruction of the body must lead to the destruction of the soul. And although Hume does not exclude the possibility of immortality in principle, it seems extremely unlikely to him. A person must seek the meaning of existence and his ideals in this world. And Hume believes that nature itself indicates to man and humanity his ideal – “a mixed way of life”, and warns people against “excessive passion for each separate inclination, lest they lose the ability to engage in other occupations and amusements”. This fully applies to the inclination to philosophy: “Be a philosopher,” writes Hume, “but, in devoting yourself to philosophy, remain a man” (1: 2, 8).
Hume’s philosophy exerted a tremendous influence on subsequent thought. In the 18th century, he enjoyed great authority among the French Enlightenment. In Germany, his ideas influenced such dissimilar philosophers as I. Kant, J. G. Hamann, I. N. Tetens, and G. E. Schulze. Kant even said that Hume awakened him from his “dogmatic sleep.” In Scotland, Hume turned to the philosophy of
Thomas Reid (1710-1796), the founder of the “common sense” school, who, in essence, developed Hume’s positive program of human science, but emphasized the criticism of his skeptical ideas based on the theory of “immediate perception,” which assumed the possibility of contact between the soul and things without the mediation of subjective “ideas” or impressions, the recognition of which, according to Reid, closes access to objective reality. However, the appeal of Reid and his followers to common sense as the highest criterion of truth did not contribute to the depth of the analysis of human nature. In the 19th century, Hume’s influence was felt by A. Schopenhauer, who saw in him a kindred free mind, as well as by various philosophers of the positivist persuasion. In the 20th century, the significance of Hume’s ideas became even more obvious. After the appearance of the works of N.K. Smith, he ceased to be perceived only as a “virtuoso of doubts”. The positive influence of Hume was noted by the founder of phenomenology E. Husserl and various representatives of the analytical tradition. In particular, many of them recognized and recognize Hume’s analysis of the concept of causality as the standard of philosophical argumentation. At the turn of the 21st century, Hume’s philosophy became one of the important sources of the “philosophy of consciousness”, which arouses great interest throughout the world.
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