56 pages • 1 hour read
David HumeA Treatise of Human Nature
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1739A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Empiricism Versus Rationalism
In the history of Western philosophy, David Hume is most famous as a proponent of empiricism: knowledge gained through direct experience, experimentation, and observation. Empiricism is often conceived as opposed to rationalism, which is knowledge reached just through abstract logic and reasoning. Likewise, Hume rejects rationalism, arguing against the philosopher René Descartes’s view that all humans are born with some innate knowledge and that knowledge learned through logical deduction is superior to knowledge gained through the five senses. Not only that, but Hume argues that experience and observation are not just superior to abstract reasoning, but that experience and observation are the actual basis for how humans learn and develop intellectual and moral ideas. Hume summarizes his argument this way: “Wherever ideas are adequate representations of objects, the relations, contradictions and agreements of the ideas are all applicable to the objects; and this we may in general observe to be the foundation of all human knowledge” (78). In other words, all of our knowledge comes from how we rework, expand upon, or combine the impressions we gain through sensation and observation into more complex ideas.
Hume’s views on empiricism also make him argue against natural law theory, something closely related to the history of rationalism. Natural law theory holds that there are universal values that are discoverable through abstract reasoning, such as justice or the values governing sexuality. Hume instead argues that such values are social constructs, meaning concepts that were developed by society for mainly practical reasons. Justice is not innate to anything like natural law, but is a necessary invention for society to function and to overcome the natural selfishness of people. As Hume writes, “By society all [an individual’s] infirmities are compensated” (537) through concepts like justice.
A philosopher from the rationalism camp might respond that we still draw our ideas about morality and the soul from reason. Hume rejects this, arguing that such topics can either also be explained at least partially through empiricism, or that they are basically pointless to argue over. On the debate over the soul and how it interacts with the body, Hume simply says that “the question concerning the substance of the soul is absolutely unintelligible” (298). As for morality, even something as intangible as morality can at least be explained through our social relations and our ideas about our self-interest and other people. Even so, Hume does struggle to explain everything through empiricism. Sometimes he has to invoke more abstract concepts like “general rules” (197), which are the rules that society and our upbringing teach us to follow, and “common sense” (615). Even so, Hume’s view on empiricism and knowledge is fairly absolute, with little room for any abstract reasoning at all.
The Limits of Knowledge
Through his empiricist system of philosophy, Hume argues that our knowledge is limited to what we experience. This rule even extends to the realm of fiction: Imaginary beings like unicorns or spaceships are formed together using impressions and ideas that we developed through experience and observation. As Hume writes:
[W]e never really advance a step beyond ourselves, nor can conceive any kind of existence, but those perceptions, which have appear’d in that narrow compass. This is the universe of the imagination, nor have we any idea but what is there produc’d (116).
The centrality of experience also means our ability to imagine anything that does not have a basis in reality is limited. Hume asserts “nothing of which we can form a clear and distinct idea is absurd and impossible” (67). Hume uses the example of a gold mountain, which may not exist but which we can nevertheless envision because we have experience of a mountain and at least the color of gold. However, Hume continues, we cannot envision a mountain without a valley because such a thing is beyond our experience (81). Overall, Hume’s argument is that we cannot adequately imagine something that defies our experience, like a four-sided triangle or what it would feel like to experience time moving backward.
Such limitations lead Hume to completely dismiss certain metaphysical questions in Western philosophy, such as whether time and space stretch infinitely inward and outward. For Hume, the question is pointless since we cannot experience, imagine, or demonstrate the infinite divisibility of space and time. In contemplating such questions about the nature of reality, we have a “natural infirmity and unsteadiness both of our imagination and senses” (90). These limitations also apply to the question over whether or not we can truly know if anything exists outside our mind. If one contemplates questions like how reliable our senses really are and whether or not our mind can grasp the substances that form the university, it can lead to a radical skepticism that will lead to the questioning of everything: “This sceptical doubt, both with respect to reason and the senses, is a malady, which can never be radically cur’d” (267). The best solution is to simply not let ourselves be overwhelmed by such skepticism. The important point for Hume is that any question that cannot be investigated using experiment and our own senses is “absolutely unintelligible” (298) and best cast aside.
The Passions and Reason
A recurring idea in Western philosophy is that reason is at odds with what Hume calls the passions, the violent emotions. Hume rejects this traditional divide between the passions and reason, writing, “Our decisions concerning moral rectitude and depravity are evidently perceptions; and as all perceptions are either impressions or ideas, the exclusion of the one is a convincing argument for the other” (522). This means even intangible concepts like our emotions and our concepts of justice are all understood through our perceptions and observations. Furthermore, our emotions themselves are never wrong. Instead, only the judgments our passions are founded on can be wrong by being based on a misconception. In fact, paradoxically, abstract reason is what can lead us in irrational directions, leading Hume to famously say, “’Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger” (463).
In fact, Hume argues the entire premise that passions and reason are opposed to each other is mistaken. Instead, the real conflict is between calm passions and violent passions. Hume gives the example of resentment: “When I receive any injury from another, I often feel a violent passion of resentment, which makes me desire his evil and punishment, independent of all considerations of pleasure and advantage to myself” (465). In another example, we speak out against someone in a position to do us a favor out of anger or resentment, leading the violent passions to overcome our self-interest or ambition. Hume would say this is not a case of reason against emotion since it involves not reason, but two conflicting kinds of emotions.
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