Philosopher David Hume: Life and Philosophy. David Hume - biography, information, personal life Hume's biography

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DAVID HUME
(1711-1776)

English historian, philosopher, economist. In his Treatise on Human Nature (1748), he developed the doctrine of sensory experience (the source of knowledge) as a stream of “impressions”, the causes of which are incomprehensible. He considered the problem of the relationship between being and spirit insoluble. He denied the objective nature of causality and the concept of substance. Developed a theory of association of ideas. Hume's teaching is one of the sources of the philosophy of I. Kant, positivism and neopositivism.

David Hume was born in 1711 in the capital of Scotland, Edinburgh, into the family of a poor nobleman who practiced law. Little David’s relatives hoped that he would become a lawyer, but while still a teenager, he told them that he had the deepest aversion to any occupation other than philosophy and literature. However, Yuma's father did not have the opportunity to give his son a higher education. And although David began to attend Edinburgh University, he soon had to go to Bristol to try his hand at commerce. But he failed in this field, and Hume’s mother, who after the death of her husband took on all the worries about her son, did not interfere with his trip to France, where he went in 1734 to get an education.

David lived there for three years, a significant part of which he spent at the Jesuit College of La Flèche, where Descartes had once studied. It is curious that both of these students of the Jesuits became the main exponents of the principle of doubt in the new philosophy. In France, Hume wrote a Treatise of Human Nature, which consisted of three books, which was then published in London in 1738-1740. The first book examined issues of the theory of knowledge, the second - the psychology of human affects, and the third - problems of moral theory.

Hume came to the main conclusions of his philosophy relatively early - at the age of 25. In general, all actual philosophical works, with the exception of popular essays, were written by him before the age of 40, after which he devoted himself to history and educational activities. The treatise contains almost no precise references to domestic authors, since it was written away from large British libraries, although the Latin library at the Jesuit college in La Flèche was quite large. The works of Cicero, Bayle, Montaigne, Bacon, Locke, Newton and Berkeley, as well as Shaftesbury, Hutcheson and other English moralists, which Hume studied in his youth, greatly influenced him. But Hume became a completely original philosopher.

Hume's philosophy, which matured amazingly early and seemed strange in many ways to his contemporaries, is today recognized as an integral link in the development of English empiricism (a direction that considers sensory experience to be the only source of knowledge) from F. Bacon to the positivists who consider knowledge to be only the cumulative result of special sciences, and the study of ideological problems , in their opinion, is not necessary at all.

Hume, having attached decisive importance to these sense organs in the knowledge of reality, stopped in doubt before the question of the existence of reality, since he did not believe in their meaningful nature. “Our thought...” Hume wrote, “is limited to very narrow limits, and all the creative power of the mind comes down to only the ability to connect, move, increase or decrease the material supplied to us by feeling and experience.” This testifies to the empirical nature of his philosophy.

Hume, like the empiricists who preceded him, argued that the principles from which knowledge is built are not innate, but empirical in nature, because they are obtained from experience. However, he not only opposes a priori assumptions and innate ideas, but also does not believe in the senses. In other words, Hume first reduces all knowledge about the world to experimental knowledge, and then psychologizes it, doubting the objectivity of the content of sensory impressions. In his Treatise of Human Nature, Hume writes that “the skeptic continues to reason and believe, although he claims that he cannot defend his reason with the help of reason; for the same reasons he must recognize the principle of the existence of bodies, although he cannot claim to prove its truth with the help of any arguments..."

The reading public did not understand the originality of Hume's work and did not accept it. In his autobiography, written by him six months before his death, Hume spoke about it this way: “Hardly anyone’s literary debut was less successful than my Treatise on Human Nature.” It came out of print stillborn, without even the honor of arousing murmurs. among fanatics. But, differing by nature in my cheerful and ardent temperament, I very soon recovered from this blow and continued my studies in the village with great zeal."

Hume's main philosophical work was written, perhaps, in a language that was not so difficult to understand, but it was not easy to understand the general structure of the work. The Treatise consisted of separate essays vaguely related to each other, and reading it required a certain amount of mental effort. In addition, rumors spread that the author of these illegible tomes was an atheist. The latter circumstance subsequently more than once prevented Hume from obtaining a teaching position at the university - both in his native Edinburgh, where in 1744 he vainly hoped to occupy the department of ethics and pneumatic philosophy, and in Glasgow, where Hutcheson taught.

In the early 1740s, Hume tried to popularize the ideas of his main work. He compiled his “Abridged Summary...”, but this publication did not arouse the interest of the reading public. But at this time Hume established contacts with the most significant representatives of Scottish spiritual culture. Of particular importance for the future were his correspondence with the moralist F. Hutcheson and his close friendship with the future famous economist A. Smith, who met Hume while still a 17-year-old student.

In 1741-1742, Hume published a book entitled Moral and Political Essays. It was a collection of thoughts on a wide range of socio-political problems and finally brought Hume fame and success.

Hume has established himself as a writer who can analyze complex but pressing problems in an accessible form. In total, during his life he wrote 49 essays, which, in various combinations, went through nine editions during the lifetime of their author. They also included essays on economic issues and philosophical essays proper, including “On Suicide” and “On the Immortality of the Soul,” and partly moral and psychological experiments “Epicurean,” “Stoic,” “Platonist,” “Skeptic.” ".

In the mid-1740s, Hume, in order to improve his financial situation, had to first act as a companion to the mentally ill Marquis Anendal, and then become the secretary of General Saint-Clair, who went on a military expedition against French Canada. So Hume ended up as part of the military missions in Vienna and Turin.

While in Italy, Hume rewrote the first book of his Treatise of Human Nature into an Inquiry Concerning Human Knowledge. This abridged and simplified account of Hume's theory of knowledge is perhaps his most popular work among students of the history of philosophy. In 1748, this work was published in England, but it did not attract public attention. The abbreviated presentation of the third book of the “Treatise...”, which was published in 1751 under the title “A Study on the Principles of Morals,” did not arouse much interest among readers.

The unrecognized philosopher returned to his homeland in Scotland. “It is now seven months since I started my own hearth and organized a family consisting of its head, that is, me, and two subordinate members - a maid and a cat. My sister joined me, and now we live together. Being a moderate, I I can enjoy cleanliness, warmth and light, prosperity and pleasure. What more do you want? Independence? I possess it to the highest degree. Fame? But it is not at all desirable. A good reception? It will come with time. Wives? This is not a necessary need of life. Books? They are really necessary; but I have more of them than I can read.”

In his autobiography, Hume says the following: “In 1752, the Law Society elected me as their librarian; this position did not bring me almost any income, but gave me the opportunity to use an extensive library. At this time I decided to write a History of England, but, not feeling I had enough courage to depict a historical period lasting seventeen centuries, began with the accession of the house of Stuart, for it seemed to me that it was from this era that the spirit of parties most distorted the coverage of historical facts. I confess that I was almost confident in the success of this work. It seemed to me that I will be the only historian who has despised at the same time power, advantage, authority, and the voice of popular prejudice; and I expected applause corresponding to my efforts. But what a terrible disappointment! I was met with a cry of displeasure, indignation, almost hatred: the English, the Scots and Irish, the Whigs and Tories, churchmen and sectarians, freethinkers and bigots, patriots and courtiers, all united in a fit of rage against the man who dared to generously lament the fate of Charles I and the Earl of Strafford; and, what’s most offensive of all, after the first outbreak of rabies, the book seemed to be completely forgotten.”

Hume began publishing the History of England with volumes devoted to the history of the House of Stuart in the 17th century, and in full accordance with his ethics could not entirely take one side. Sympathizing with Parliament, he did not approve of the brutal reprisal of Lord Strafford and Charles I in the 1640s. Hume views history as a kind of applied psychology, explaining events by the interweaving of individual characters, will and feelings, and, in his opinion, stability in the course of events is given by habit. The very emergence of the state is the result of the strengthening of the institution of military leaders, whom the people “get used to” obeying.

Hume's psychological approach was unusual for English historiography of the 18th century, which was limited to a party-biased assessment of facts. His approach fit better into the Scottish historiographical tradition, in which he anticipated the later romantic-psychological historicism of Walter Scott and other historians and writers. (By the way, Hume always emphasized his belonging to the Scottish nation and never sought to get rid of a noticeable Scottish accent). As already mentioned, the first volumes of the History of England were met with restraint by the English public and the Whig party that ruled in the 1750s. Hume's skepticism about religion also played a certain role in this.

This skepticism, although directed only against pre-Christian religions, is clearly visible in Hume’s Natural History of Religion, published in 1757. There he proceeds from the fact that “the mother of piety is ignorance,” and ends with the fact that “a people without religion, if one exists, stands only slightly above animals.” Religious “truths” can never be known, they can only be believed, but they arise with psychological necessity from the needs of the senses. In England, which by then had become a largely Protestant country, Hume's objective approach to the role of Catholics in the events of the 17th century was viewed with suspicion.

Hume listed by name all the major figures of the Catholic and royalist side, without omitting their merits, as well as their sins. This was contrary to the conventional wisdom of Whig historiography, which portrayed the opponents as a largely inert and largely nameless mass. In total, Hume wrote six volumes, two of which were republished by him. Already the second volume of the History of England (1756) met with a more favorable reception, and when its subsequent volumes were published, the publication found quite a lot of readers, including on the continent. The circulation of all books was completely sold out, this work was republished in France.

Hume wrote “I became not only a wealthy, but also a rich man. I returned to my homeland, Scotland, with the firm intention of never leaving it again and the pleasant knowledge that I had never resorted to the help of the powers that be and did not even seek their friendship "Since I was already over fifty, I hoped to maintain this philosophical freedom until the end of my life."

Hume firmly established himself in Edinburgh, turning his home into a kind of philosophical and literary salon. If at an earlier stage of his activity he strongly emphasized the role of freedom as the highest and absolute value, now in the essays he published on history, morality, and art (Hume is one of the founders of the free essay genre in English literature), the idea of ​​greater significance increasingly creeps in. legality in comparison even with freedom and that it is better to restrict freedom than to deviate from the established order.

Thus, Hume's writings provided a platform for national reconciliation between liberals and monarchists, Whigs and Tories. Hume's books were translated into German, French and other European languages, and he became the most famous British author of the time outside England. However, with the accession of George III to the English throne in 1760, the situation changed.

In 1762, the 70-year period of Whig rule ended, and Hume, with his objective and sometimes skeptical position, began to be perceived as a “prophet of counter-revolution.” In 1763, the war between England and France over the colonies ended, and Hume was invited to the post of secretary of the British embassy at the Court of Versailles. For two and a half years, until the beginning of 1766, he was on diplomatic service in the French capital, and in recent months he acted as British chargé d'affaires.

In Paris, Hume was rewarded a hundredfold for his past literary failures - he was surrounded by everyone's attention and even admiration, and the philosopher even thought about later staying here forever, which Adam Smith dissuaded him from. A peculiar socio-psychological paradox arose and the French materialist enlighteners and their ideological antipodes from the courtly aristocratic clique warmly welcomed Hume’s work on the history of Great Britain. The royal court was favorable to Hume because he partially rehabilitated the Stuarts in his works, and this favor is not surprising later, during the years of the French restoration, it will appear again.

Louis Bonald warmly recommended that the French read Hume's historical works, and in 1819, under Louis XVIII, a new translation of the History of England was published in Paris. Voltaire, Helvetius, Holbach perceived Hume's skepticism as a revolutionary teaching, as deism (the doctrine of God who created the world and no longer interferes in its affairs) or even atheism. Holbach called Hume the greatest philosopher of all ages and the best friend of mankind. Diderot and de Brosses wrote about their love for Hume and their veneration for him. Helvetius and Voltaire extolled Hume, attributing to him in advance more merit than he actually had; they hoped that he would move from skepticism and agnosticism in matters of religion to atheism, and encouraged him to take this radical step.

Hume established the most friendly relations with J. J. Rousseau, and Hume, returning to England, invited him to visit. However, upon his arrival in London and then at Hume’s estate (1766), Rousseau could not come to terms with the prim British morals; he began to suspect Hume of arrogance, of disdain for his writings, and then (and this was already a painful suspiciousness) of spying on him for the sake of Holbach and other - again imaginary - his enemies, in an attempt to steal and appropriate his manuscripts and even in a desire to hold him against his will as a prisoner in England.

Hume, who was impressed by Rousseau's freethinking, was now frightened by the harshness of his denial of civilization, science, even art, and his willingness to replace the monarchy (so convenient, from Hume's point of view, for achieving an inter-class compromise) with a republic in the spirit of the later Jacobin one. Hume never became a materialist. In a letter to E. Millyar, his publisher, the philosopher admitted that he preferred to make peace with the churchmen than, following Helvetius, to get involved in a dangerous skirmish with them. In April 1759, Hume wrote to Adam Smith that Helvetius's On Mind was worth reading, but "not for its philosophy." Hume’s ironic statements about Voltaire’s deism and his even more critical remarks about the “dogmatism” of Holbach’s “System of Nature” are known.

As for Hume’s friendly ties with the plebeian ideologist J. J. Rousseau, the history of their relationship is extremely characteristic: former friends turned into enemies. In 1766, upon returning to the British Isles, Hume received the post of Assistant Secretary of State. The bright pages of Hume's friendship with the French enlighteners quickly faded in his memory, but he soon revived his official connections with English diplomats, which helped him achieve such a high position.

In 1769, Hume resigns and returns to his hometown. Now he was finally able to fulfill his long-standing dream - to gather around himself a group of talented philosophers, writers and connoisseurs of the arts, and lovers of the natural sciences. Hume became secretary of the Philosophical Society established in Edinburgh and began educational activities. The scientists and artists who rallied around Hume during these years were the glory of Scotland. This circle included professor of moral philosophy Adam Ferguson, economist Adam Smith, anatomist Alexander Monroe, surgeon William Cullen, chemist Joseph Black, professor of rhetoric and literature Huge Blair and some other cultural figures famous at that time, including on the continent.

The cultural flourishing of Edinburgh in the second half of the 18th century was largely due to the activities of this circle of outstanding scientists, which served as the basis for the creation in 1783 of Adam Smith and the historian William of the Royal Scientific Society in Scotland.

In the early 70s of the 18th century, Hume repeatedly returned to work on his last major work, “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion,” the first draft of which dates back to 1751. The predecessor of these “dialogues” was, apparently, a pamphlet on religious issues published by Hume anonymously in 1745. This brochure has not yet been found. Hume did not dare to publish the Dialogues during his lifetime, not without reason fearing persecution from church circles. In addition, these persecutions were already making themselves felt: starting in 1770, Aberdeen professor James Beatty published the anti-Humean pamphlet “An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth: Against Sophistry and Skepticism” five times.

In the spring of 1775, Hume showed signs of a serious liver disease (which ultimately led to his death). The philosopher decided to take care of the posthumous publication of his last work and included a special clause about this in his will. But for a long time his executors avoided fulfilling his will, because they feared trouble for themselves.

Hume died in August 1776 at the age of 65. Adam Smith, a few days before the death of the philosopher, promised to publish his Autobiography, adding to it a message about how Hume spent his last days. According to Smith, the philosopher remained true to himself and in the last hours of his life he divided them between reading Lucian and playing whist, sneered at tales of afterlife retribution and joked about the naivety of his own hopes for the quick disappearance of religious prejudices among the people.

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David Hume, the son of a Scottish landowner, was born in Edinburgh in 1711, died in 1776. Having been educated at the University of Edinburgh, he, at the request of his family and due to poor health, wanted to devote himself to trading. But he soon got tired of such activity, he went to finish his education in France and after a four-year stay abroad returned to England with the manuscript of his subsequently famous “Treatise on Human Nature,” which was published in two volumes in 1738 - 1740, but was rejected. England was a complete failure, as a result of which Hume failed to obtain a chair at the University of Edinburgh. But “Moral, Political and Literary Essays” (1741) brought Hume the fame of an elegant and witty writer. Having accepted a private position, David Hume traveled extensively throughout Europe and prepared for publication a new edition of his first work entitled: “Inquiries Concerning Human Knowledge” (1748), after which he managed to get a position as a librarian at the University of Edinburgh. Having a wealth of book material at his disposal, David Hume wrote his famous “History of England before the Revolution of 1688,” published in 6 volumes in 1763, and also published “The Natural History of Religion” in 1755. . In 1763, appointed secretary of the embassy to France, he received a brilliant ovation from the educated French, and when he returned to England in 1767, as secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, his fame as an outstanding writer and thinker was finally consolidated at home. Hume spent the last two years of his life in retirement in Edinburgh.

Portrait of David Hume. Artist A. Ramsey, 1766

Teachings of David Hume represents a direct continuation of the development of critical philosophy in the spirit of Locke and Berkeley. The historian of philosophy Windelband calls Hume "the clearest, most consistent, broad and deep thinker that England has ever produced." David Hume continues development empirical theory of knowledge and summarizes in one general result all the main ideas of the theory of knowledge of Bacon, Locke and Berkeley. This result is partly skeptical , negative, and in this sense Windelband is right when he says that “in the person of Hume, empiricism rejected and condemned itself.” But Hume's merit is great simply because he summed up the metaphysical results the doctrine of empiricism and tried to finally make ends meet in the theory of experience as the only instrument of knowledge. In relation to English philosophy of the 18th century. Hume occupies the same place that belonged to Locke in English philosophy of the 17th century, and John Stuart Mill in English philosophy of the 19th century.

Hume's ethical doctrine, theory of sympathy and social origin of morality, developed Adam Smith in his “Theory of Moral Sentiments” (1759) and in his book “On the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” (1766).

After Hume, who constituted the highest point in the development of English philosophy of the 18th century, a noticeable diminishment of the critical spirit in the works of British thinkers began, and the further development of the great and complex problems of knowledge that D. Hume explored moved to Germany, where Kant made a brilliant and thoughtful an attempt to defeat Hume's skepticism, to find in the innermost mechanism of knowledge a criterion for justifying the objective lawfulness of the ideas of substance, causality and a number of other subjective categories of perception and thinking.

Hume began his philosophical career in 1738, publishing the first two parts "Treatise on Human Nature" where he tried to define the basic principles of human knowledge. Hume considers questions about determining the reliability of any knowledge and belief in it. Hume believed that knowledge is based on experience, which consists of perceptions (impression, that is, human sensations, affects, emotions ) . Under ideas This refers to weak images of these impressions in thinking and reasoning.

A year later, the third part of the treatise was published. The first part was devoted to human cognition. Then he refined these ideas and published them in a separate publication. "Studies in Human Cognition".

Hume believed that our knowledge begins with experience. However, Hume did not deny the possibility of a priori (here - non-experimental) knowledge, an example of which, from his point of view, is mathematics, despite the fact that all ideas, in his opinion, have an experimental origin - from impressions. The experience consists of impressions, impressions are divided into internal (affects or emotions) and external (perceptions or sensations). Ideas (memories memory and images imagination) are “pale copies” of impressions. Everything consists of impressions - that is, impressions (and ideas as their derivatives) are what constitutes the content of our inner world, if you like - the soul or consciousness (within the framework of his original theory of knowledge, Hume will question the existence of the latter two in the substantial plane). After perceiving the material, the learner begins to process these ideas. Decomposition by similarity and difference, far from each other or near (space), and by cause and effect. What is the source of the sensation of perception? Hume answers that there are at least three hypotheses:

1. There are images of objective objects.
2. The world is a complex of perceptual sensations.
3. The sensation of perception is caused in our mind by God, the supreme spirit.

Hume asks which of these hypotheses is correct. To do this, we need to compare these types of perceptions. But we are chained to the line of our perception and will never know what is beyond it. This means that the question of what the source of sensation is is a fundamentally insoluble question.. Anything is possible, but we will never be able to verify it. There is no evidence of the existence of the world. It can neither be proven nor disproved.

Essays.

Hume monument in Edinburgh

• Works in two volumes. Volume 1. - M., 1965, 847 pp. (Philosophical Heritage, T. 9)
• Works in two volumes. Volume 2. - M., 1965, 927 pp. (Philosophical Heritage, T. 10).
  • “Treatise on Human Nature” (1739) “On the Standard of Taste” (1739-1740) “Moral and Political Essays” (1741-1742) “On the Immortality of the Soul” “An Inquiry Concerning Human Knowledge” (1748) “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion” (1751)
• "History of Great Britain"

Literature.

In Russian:

• Batin V. N. Category of happiness in Hume’s ethics // XXV Herzen Readings. Scientific atheism, ethics, aesthetics. - L., 1972.
• Blaug M. Hume, David // 100 great economists before Keynes = Great Economists before Keynes: An introduction to the lives & works of one handred great economists of the past. - St. Petersburg. : Economicus, 2008. - pp. 343-345. - 352 s. - (Library of the “Economic School”, issue 42). - 1,500 copies. - ISBN 978-5-903816-01-9.
• Vasiliev V.V. Hume's methodology and his science of human nature, published in: Historical and Philosophical Yearbook 2012. M., 2013.
• Karinsky V. M.// Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: In 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional ones). - St. Petersburg. , 1890-1907.
• Mikhalenko Yu. P. The philosophy of David Hume is the theoretical basis of English positivism of the 20th century. - M., 1962.
• Narsky I. S. David Hume . - M.: Mysl, 1973. - 180 p. - (: In 6 volumes / Chief editor. V. N. Cherkovets. - // Great Soviet Encyclopedia: in 30 volumes / Chief editor. A. M. Prokhorov. - 3rd ed. - M. : Soviet Encyclopedia, 1978. - T. 30: Bookplate - Yaya. - 632 s.

In English:

• Anderson, R. F. Hume's First Principles. - Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966.
• Ayer, A.J. Language, Truth and Logic. - London, 1936.
• Bongie, L. L. David Hume - Prophet of the Counter-Revolution. - Liberty Fund: Indianapolis, 1998.
• Broackes, Justin. Hume, David // Ted Honderich (ed.) The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, N.Y., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
• Daiches D., Jones P., Jones J.(eds.). The Scottish Enlightenment: 1730 - 1790. A Hotbed of Genius. - Edinburgh: The University of Edinburgh, 1986.
• Einstein, A. Letter to Moritz Schlick // The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, vol. 8A, R. Schulmann, A. J. Fox, J. Illy, (eds.) - Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998. - P. 220.
• Flew, A. David Hume: Philosopher of Moral Science. - Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986.
• Fogelin, R.J. Hume’s skepticism // The Cambridge Companion to Hume / D. F. Norton (ed.) - Cambridge University Press, 1993 - Pp. 90-116.
• Garfield, Jay L. The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way. - Oxford University Press, 1995.
• Graham, R. The Great Infidel - A Life of David Hume. - Edinburgh: John Donald, 2004.
• Harwood, Sterling. Moral Sensibility Theories / The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Supplement). - N.Y.: Macmillan Publishing Co, 1996.
• Husserl, E. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. - Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970.
• Kolakowski, L. The Alienation of Reason: A History of Positivist Thought. - Garden City: Doubleday, 1968.
• Morris, W. E. David Hume // The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2001 Edition) / Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
• Norton, D. F. Introduction to Hume’s thought // The Cambridge Companion to Hume / D. F. Norton (ed.) - Cambridge University Press, 1993. - Pp. 1-32.
• Penelhum, T. Hume’s moral // The Cambridge Companion to Hume / D. F. Norton (ed.) - Cambridge University Press, 1993. - Pp. 117-147.
• Phillipson, N. Hume. - L.: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989.
• Robinson, Dave, Groves, Judy. Introducing Political Philosophy. - Icon Books, 2003. ISBN 1-84046-450-X
• Spiegel, H.W. The Growth of Economic Thought. - Durham: Duke University Press, third edition, 1991.
• Stroud, B. Hume. - L., N.Y.: Routledge, 1977.

(May 7 (April 26 old style) 1711, Edinburgh, Scotland - August 25, 1776, ibid.)

en.wikipedia.org

Biography

Born in 1711 in Edinburgh (Scotland) in the family of a lawyer, the owner of a small estate. Hume received a good education at the University of Edinburgh. He worked in the diplomatic missions of England in Europe.

He began his philosophical career in 1739, publishing the first two parts of his Treatise on Human Nature. A year later, the second part of the treatise was published. The first part was devoted to human cognition. Then he finalized these ideas and published them in a separate book - “Essay on Human Cognition”.

He wrote a lot of works on various topics, including the history of England in eight volumes.

Philosophy

Historians of philosophy generally agree that Hume’s philosophy has the character of radical skepticism, however, many researchers[who?] believe that the ideas of naturalism also play an extremely important role in Hume’s teaching[source not specified 307 days].

Hume was greatly influenced by the ideas of the empiricists John Locke and George Berkeley, as well as Pierre Bayle, Isaac Newton, Samuel Clarke, Francis Hutcheson and Joseph Butler.

Hume believed that our knowledge begins with experience and ends with experience, without innate knowledge (a priori). Therefore we do not know the reason for our experience. Since experience is always limited by the past, we cannot comprehend the future. For such judgments, Hume was considered a great skeptic in the possibility of knowing the world through experience.

Experience consists of perceptions, and perceptions are divided into impressions (sensations and emotions) and ideas (memories and imagination). After perceiving the material, the learner begins to process these ideas. Decomposition by similarity and difference, far from each other or near (space), and by cause and effect. Everything consists of impressions. What is the source of the sensation of perception? Hume answers that there are at least three hypotheses:
There are images of objective objects (reflection theory, materialism).
The world is a complex of perceptual sensations (subjective idealism).
The feeling of perception is caused in our mind by God, the highest spirit (objective idealism).

Hume asks which of these hypotheses is correct. To do this, we need to compare these types of perceptions. But we are chained to the boundaries of our perception and will never know what is beyond it. This means that the question of what the source of sensation is is a fundamentally insoluble question. Anything is possible, but we will never be able to verify it. There is no evidence of the existence of the world. It can neither be proven nor disproved.

In 1876, Thomas Henry Huxley coined the term agnosticism to describe this position. Sometimes the false impression is created that Hume asserts the absolute impossibility of knowledge, but this is not entirely true. We know the content of consciousness, which means the world in consciousness is known. That is, we know the world that appears in our consciousness, but we will never know the essence of the world, we can only know phenomena. This direction is called phenomenalism. On this basis, most of the theories of modern Western philosophy are built, asserting the unsolvability of the main question of philosophy. Cause-and-effect relationships in Hume's theory are the result of our habit. And a person is a bundle of perceptions.

Hume saw the basis of morality in moral feeling, but he denied free will, believing that all our actions are determined by affects.

Essays

Works in two volumes. Volume 1. - M., 1965, 847 pp. (Philosophical Heritage, Vol. 9)
Works in two volumes. Volume 2. - M., 1965, 927 pp. (Philosophical Heritage, T. 10).
"Treatise on Human Nature" (1739)
“On the Standard of Taste” (1739-1740)
"Moral and Political Essays" (1741-1742)
"On the Immortality of the Soul"
"An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding" (1748)
"Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion" (1751)
"History of Great Britain"

Literature

Batin V.N. The category of happiness in Hume’s ethics //XXV Herzen Readings. Scientific atheism, ethics, aesthetics. L., 1972.
Mikhalenko Yu. P. The philosophy of David Hume is the theoretical basis of English positivism of the 20th century. M., 1962.
Narsky I. S. Philosophy of David Hume. M., 1967.

Biography

(Hume, David) (1711-1776), Scottish philosopher, historian, economist and writer. Born in Edinburgh on May 7, 1711. His father, Joseph Hume, was a lawyer and belonged to the ancient house of Hume; The Ninewells estate, adjacent to the village of Chernside near Berwick-upon-Tweed, has belonged to the family since the early 16th century. Hume's mother Catherine, "a woman of rare merit" (all quotations in the biographical part of the article are given, unless specifically stated, from Hume's autobiographical work, The Life of David Hume, Esquire, Written by Himself, 1777), was the daughter of Sir David Falconer, head of the panel of judges. Although the family was more or less well off, David, as the youngest son, inherited less than £50 a year; Despite this, he was determined to defend independence, choosing the path of improving his “literary talent.”

After the death of her husband, Katherine “dedicated herself entirely to the upbringing and education of her children” - John, Katherine and David. Religion (Scottish Presbyterianism) occupied a large place in home education, and David later recalled that he believed in God when he was little. However, the Ninewell Humes, being a family of educated people with a legal orientation, had in their house books devoted not only to religion, but also to secular sciences. The boys entered the University of Edinburgh in 1723. Several university professors were followers of Newton and members of the so-called. "Ranken Club", where they discussed the principles of new science and philosophy; they also corresponded with J. Berkeley. In 1726, Hume, at the insistence of his family, who considered him called to lawyering, left the university. However, he continued his education in secret - "I felt a deep aversion to any other activity except the study of philosophy and general reading" - which laid the foundation for his rapid development as a philosopher.

Excessive diligence led Hume to a nervous breakdown in 1729. In 1734, he decided to “try his luck in another, more practical field” - as a clerk in the office of a certain Bristol merchant. However, nothing came of this, and Hume went to France, living in 1734-1737 in Reims and La Flèche (where the Jesuit college was located, where Descartes and Mersenne were educated). There he wrote A Treatise of Human Nature, the first two volumes of which were published in London in 1739, and the third in 1740. Hume’s work remained virtually unnoticed - the world was not yet ready to accept the ideas of this “Moral Newton.” philosophy." His work, An Abstract of a Book Lately Published: Entitled, A Treatise of Human Nature, etc., Wherein the Chief Argument of That Book Is Farther Illustrated and Explained, 1740, also did not arouse interest. Disappointed, but not losing hope, Hume returned to Ninewells and released two parts of his Essays, Moral and Political, 1741-1742, which were met with moderate interest. However, the Treatise's reputation as heretical and even atheistic prevented his election as professor of ethics at the University of Edinburgh in 1744-1745. In 1745 (the year of the failed rebellion), Hume served as a pupil of the feeble-minded Marquis of Annandale. In 1746, as secretary, he accompanied General James St. Clair (his distant relative) on a farcical raid on the shores of France, and then, in 1748-1749, as the general's aide-de-camp on a secret military mission to the courts of Vienna and Turin. Thanks to these trips, he secured his independence, becoming "the owner of about a thousand pounds."

In 1748, Hume began signing his works with his own name. Soon after this, his reputation began to grow rapidly. Hume reworks Treatise: Book I into Philosophical Essays concerning Human Understanding, later An Inquiry concerning Human Understanding (1748), which included the essay “On Miracles”; book II - in the Study of Affects (Of the Passions), included a little later in the Four Dissertations (Four Dissertations, 1757); Book III was rewritten as Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, 1751. Other publications include Moral and Political Essays (Three Essays, Moral and Political, 1748); Political Conversations (Political Discourses, 1752) and History of England (History of England, in 6 vols., 1754-1762). In 1753 Hume began publishing Essays and Treatises, a collection of his works not devoted to historical issues, with the exception of the Treatise; in 1762 the same fate befell works on history. His name began to attract attention. "Within a year two or three replies appeared from ecclesiastics, sometimes of very high rank, and Dr. Warburton's abuse showed me that my writings were beginning to be appreciated in good society." Young Edward Gibbon called him “the great David Hume,” young James Boswell called him “England’s greatest writer.” Montesquieu was the first thinker famous in Europe to recognize his genius; After the death of Montesquieu, Abbe Leblanc called Hume “the only one in Europe” who could replace the great Frenchman. Already in 1751, Hume's literary fame was recognized in Edinburgh. In 1752 the Law Society elected him Keeper of the Lawyers' Library (now the National Library of Scotland). There were also new disappointments - failure in elections to the University of Glasgow and an attempt at excommunication from the Church of Scotland.

The invitation in 1763 from the pious Lord Hertford to the post of acting secretary of the embassy in Paris turned out to be unexpectedly flattering and pleasant - “those who do not know the power of fashion and the variety of its manifestations can hardly imagine the reception given to me in Paris by men and women of every rank and provisions." What a relationship with Countess de Bouffler alone was worth! In 1766, Hume brought the persecuted Jean-Jacques Rousseau to England, to whom George III was ready to provide refuge and livelihood. Suffering from paranoia, Rousseau soon invented the story of a “conspiracy” between Hume and the Parisian philosophes who allegedly decided to dishonor him, and began sending letters with these accusations throughout Europe. Forced to defend himself, Hume published A Concise and Genuine Account of the Dispute between Mr. Hume and Mr. Rousseau (1766). The following year, Rousseau, overcome by a fit of madness, fled England. In 1767, Lord Hertford's brother General Conway appointed Hume Assistant Secretary of State for the Northern Territories, a post that Hume held for less than one year.

“In 1768 I returned to Edinburgh very rich (I had an annual income of 1000 pounds), healthy and, although somewhat burdened with years, but hoping for a long time to enjoy peace and witness the spread of my fame.” This happy period of Hume's life ended when he was diagnosed with illnesses that took away his strength and were painful (dysentery and colitis). A trip to London and Bath to make a diagnosis and prescribe treatment yielded nothing, and Hume returned to Edinburgh. He died at his home in St David's Street, New Town, on 25 August 1776. One of his last wishes was to publish Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779). On his deathbed, he argued against the immortality of the soul, which shocked Boswell; read and spoke favorably of Gibbon's Decline and Fall and Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. In 1777, Smith published Hume's autobiography, along with his letter to the publisher, in which he wrote about his close friend: “On the whole, I have always considered him, while he lived and after death, a man close to the ideal of a wise and virtuous man - so much so that as far as is possible for mortal human nature."

In the philosophical masterpiece A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects, the thesis is advanced that "almost all science covered by and dependent on the science of human nature." This science borrows its method from the new science of Newton, who formulated it in Optics (1704): “If natural philosophy is destined to be improved through the application of the inductive method, then the boundaries of moral philosophy will also be expanded.” Hume names Locke, Shaftesbury, Mandeville, Hutcheson and Butler as his predecessors in the study of human nature. If we exclude from consideration the a priori sciences that deal only with the relations of ideas (i.e. logic and pure mathematics), then we will see that true knowledge, in other words, knowledge that is absolutely and irrefutably reliable, is impossible. What kind of reliability can we talk about when the negation of a judgment does not lead to a contradiction? But there is no contradiction in denying the existence of any state of affairs, for “everything that exists may also not exist.” Therefore, from facts we come not to certainty, but at best to probability, not to knowledge, but to faith. Faith is “a new question that philosophers have not yet thought about”; it is a living idea, correlated or associated with a present impression. Faith cannot be a subject of proof; it arises when we perceive in experience the process of formation of cause-and-effect relationships.

According to Hume, there is no logical connection between cause and effect; a causal connection is found only in experience. Before experience, everything can be the cause of everything, but experience reveals three circumstances that invariably connect a given cause with a given effect: contiguity in time and space, primacy in time, constancy of connection. Belief in the uniform order of nature, the cause-and-effect process, cannot be proven, but thanks to it rational thinking itself becomes possible. Thus, it is not reason, but habit that becomes our guide in life: “Reason is the slave of the affects and must be so, and it cannot lay claim to any other position than to be in the service and subordination of the affects.” Despite this conscious anti-rationalist reversal of the Platonic tradition, Hume recognizes the necessary role of reason in the formulation of tentative hypotheses, without which the scientific method is impossible. Systematically applying this method to the study of human nature, Hume proceeds to questions of religion, morality, aesthetics, history, political science, economics, and literary criticism. Hume's approach is skeptical because it moves these questions from the sphere of the absolute to the sphere of experience, from the sphere of knowledge to the sphere of faith. All of them receive a common standard in the form of evidence confirming them, and the evidence itself must be evaluated in accordance with certain rules. And no authority can avoid the procedure of such verification. However, Hume's skepticism does not mean proof that all human efforts are meaningless. Nature always takes over: “I feel an absolute and necessary desire to live, to speak out and act like all other people in the daily affairs of life.”

Hume's skepticism has both destructive and constructive features. In fact, it is creative in nature. Hume's brave new world is closer to nature than to the supernatural realm; it is the world of an empiricist, not a rationalist. The existence of the Divine, like all other factual states of affairs, is unprovable. Supranaturalism (“religious hypothesis”) must be studied empirically, from the point of view of the structure of the Universe or the structure of man. A miracle, or "violation of the laws of nature," although theoretically possible, has never been so convincingly attested in history as to be the basis of a religious system. Miraculous phenomena are always associated with human evidence, and people, as is known, are more prone to gullibility and prejudice than to skepticism and impartiality (section “On Miracles” of the Study). The natural and moral attributes of God, inferred by analogy, are not obvious enough to be used in religious practice. “From a religious hypothesis it is impossible to extract a single new fact, not a single foresight or prediction, not a single expected reward or feared punishment that is not already known to us in practice and through observation” (section “On Providence and the Future Life” Research; Dialogues on Natural Religion). Because of the fundamental irrationality of human nature, religion is born not from philosophy, but from human hope and human fear. Polytheism precedes monotheism and is still alive in the popular consciousness (Natural History of Religion). Having deprived religion of its metaphysical and even rational basis, Hume - whatever his motives - was the progenitor of the modern "philosophy of religion."

Since man is a feeling rather than a reasoning being, his value judgments are irrational. In ethics, Hume recognizes the primacy of self-love, but emphasizes the natural origin of the feeling of affection for other people. This sympathy (or benevolence) is for morality what faith is for knowledge. Although the distinction between good and evil is established through emotions, reason in its role as the servant of affects and instincts is necessary to determine the measure of social utility - the source of legal sanctions. Natural law, in the sense of a binding ethical code that exists outside of experience, cannot claim scientific truth; the related concepts of the state of nature, the original contract and the social contract are fictions, sometimes useful, but often of a purely “poetic” nature. Hume's aesthetics, although not systematically expressed, influenced subsequent thinkers. Classical (and neoclassical) rationalistic universalism is replaced by taste or emotion included in the internal structure of the soul. There is a tendency towards romantic individualism (or pluralism), but Hume does not reach the idea of ​​personal autonomy (essay “On the Standard of Taste”).

Hume always remained a writer who dreamed of the widest fame. "I always thought, when publishing A Treatise on Human Nature, that success depended on style and not on content." His History of England was the first truly national history and remained a model of historical research throughout the next century. Describing not only political, but also cultural processes, Hume shares with Voltaire the honor of being the “father of new historiography.” In the essay "On National Characters" he explains national differences in terms of moral (or institutional) rather than physical causes. In the essay “On the Numerous Nations of Antiquity” he proves that the population in the modern world is higher than in the ancient one. In the field of political theory, Hume's creative skepticism left no stone unturned from the central dogmas of both the Whig Party (On the Original Treaty) and the Tory Party (On Passive Obedience), and assessed the method of government solely from the point of view of the benefits it brought. In economics, Hume was considered the most competent and influential English thinker until the appearance of the works of A. Smith. He discussed the ideas of the physiocrats even before the emergence of the school itself; his concepts anticipated the ideas of D. Ricardo. Hume was the first to systematically develop theories of labor, money, profit, taxation, international trade and the balance of trade.

Hume's letters are excellent. The cold, insightful reasoning of the philosopher is interspersed in them with cordial, good-natured friendly chatter; Everywhere we find abundant manifestations of irony and humor. In literary critical works, Hume remained on traditional classical positions and wanted the flourishing of national Scottish literature. At the same time, his list of slang expressions that should be excluded from Scottish speech was a step towards a simpler and clearer style of English prose language, modeled on la clart francaise. However, Hume was later accused of writing too simply and clearly and therefore could not be considered a serious philosopher.

For David Hume, philosophy was his life's work. This can be seen by comparing two sections of the Treatise (“On the love of good fame” and “On curiosity, or love of truth”) with an autobiography or any complete biography of a thinker.

Plan
Introduction
1 Biography
2 Philosophy
3 Essays

Introduction

David Hume (David Hume, David Hume, English David Hume; May 7 (April 26, old style), 1711 Edinburgh, Scotland - August 25, 1776, ibid.) - Scottish philosopher, representative of empiricism and agnosticism, one of the largest figures in Scottish Enlightenment.

1. Biography

Born in 1711 in Edinburgh (Scotland) in the family of a lawyer, the owner of a small estate. Hume received a good education at the University of Edinburgh. He worked in the diplomatic missions of England in Europe.

He began his philosophical activity in 1739, publishing the first two parts "Treatise on Human Nature". A year later, the second part of the treatise was published. The first part was devoted to human cognition. Then he refined these ideas and published them in a separate book - "An Essay on Human Knowledge" .

He wrote a lot of works on various topics, including the history of England in eight volumes.

2. Philosophy

Historians of philosophy generally agree that Hume’s philosophy has the character of radical skepticism, but many researchers Who? They believe that the ideas of naturalism also play an extremely important role in Hume’s teaching.

Hume was greatly influenced by the ideas of the empiricists John Locke and George Berkeley, as well as Pierre Bayle, Isaac Newton, Samuel Clarke, Francis Hutcheson and Joseph Butler.

Hume believed that our knowledge begins with experience and ends with experience, without innate knowledge (a priori). Therefore we do not know the reason for our experience. Since experience is always limited by the past, we cannot comprehend the future. For such judgments, Hume was considered a great skeptic in the possibility of knowing the world through experience.

The experience consists of perceptions, perceptions are divided into impression(feelings and emotions) and ideas(memories and imagination). After perceiving the material, the learner begins to process these ideas. Decomposition by similarity and difference, far from each other or near (space), and by cause and effect. Everything consists of impressions. What is the source of the sensation of perception? Hume answers that there are at least three hypotheses:

1. There are images of objective objects (reflection theory, materialism).

2. The world is a complex of perceptual sensations (subjective idealism).

3. The feeling of perception is caused in our mind by God, the highest spirit (objective idealism).

Monument to Hume. Edinburgh.

Hume asks which of these hypotheses is correct. To do this, we need to compare these types of perceptions. But we are chained to the line of our perception and will never know what is beyond it. This means that the question of what the source of sensation is is a fundamentally insoluble question.. Anything is possible, but we will never be able to verify it. There is no evidence of the existence of the world. It can neither be proven nor disproved.

In 1876, Thomas Henry Huxley coined the term agnosticism to describe this position. Sometimes the false impression is created that Hume asserts the absolute impossibility of knowledge, but this is not entirely true. We know the content of consciousness, which means the world in consciousness is known. That is we know the world that appears in our minds, but we will never know the essence of the world, we can only know phenomena. This direction is called phenomenalism. On this basis, most of the theories of modern Western philosophy are built, asserting the unsolvability of the main question of philosophy. Cause-and-effect relationships in Hume's theory are the result of our habit. And a person is a bundle of perceptions.

Hume saw the basis of morality in moral feeling, but he denied free will, believing that all our actions are determined by affects.

3. Essays

· Works in two volumes. Volume 1. - M., 1965, 847 pp. (Philosophical Heritage, Vol. 9)

· Works in two volumes. Volume 2. - M., 1965, 927 pp. (Philosophical Heritage, T. 10).

· “Treatise on Human Nature” (1739) “On the Standard of Taste” (1739-1740) “Moral and Political Essays” (1741-1742) “On the Immortality of the Soul” “An Inquiry into Human Knowledge” (1748) “Dialogues on Natural Religion” "(1751)

· "History of Great Britain"

· Article about David Hume from the Around the World Encyclopedia

· David Hume. Research related to human cognition - text in Russian and English

· David Hume"Treatise on Human Nature"

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Hume, David