Biography of Hume David. David Hume - short biography Hume philosophy

30.11.2023

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.”

A good goal can impart value only to those means that are sufficient and actually lead to the goal.

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. the 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.

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 Ninevals 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. Through these trips he secured his independence, becoming "the owner of about a thousand pounds."

“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.” The young Edward Gibbon called him “the great David Hume,” the young James Boswell called him “England’s greatest writer.” Montesquieu was the first thinker famous in Europe to recognize his genius; after Montesquieu's death, 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.

What the Scottish philosopher David Hume spoke about in the 18th century has become a reality today. The desire to demonstrate freedom, and not its real understanding, shifted human consciousness in a completely different direction from freedom. For me, Hume is a man who devoted his entire life to the study of consciousness, the mind, which, in fact, defines him as a real person. Until our consciousness is identical with our efforts, we will never realize our nature, since consciousness will obey only affects.

David Hume (1711–76) - philosopher, historian, founder of the Scottish Enlightenment. Ideas where human development is elevated to a special sensory status. In essence, we are talking about a transition from the state of Celtic culture, which followed sensory experience, to the analysis of this experience.

To say that Hume set the task of understanding the human spirit through the prism of experience would not be entirely correct; this would detract from the scale of the topics he touched upon. A treatise on human nature, where we find more questions than answers, offers a model of engagement in knowledge rather than the possibility of finding answers. After all, the answer is an affective state, and, therefore, a desired one. And the desired cannot be known, since it emotionally takes a person away from focusing on the subject. That is, in this case one should not solve questions of being and spirit, but remain in this question, be the question itself, if you like. Express it with your existence. Otherwise, we will never be free, being limited by the desire for the final result.

The activities of David Hume, both in his time and now, have not become sufficiently studied. But, in fact, his treatise on human nature should become fundamental in a person’s understanding and comprehension of his body. It is from the position of comprehension, and not knowledge, since this treatise poses more questions to us than it gives answers.

Today, when humanity has forgotten how to ask questions, the experience of David Hume is especially significant. After all, when we learn something, we often move away from the very idea of knowledge. Where is the state of knowledge? Where's the rhythm? David Hume wrote: “Victory is won not by armed men with spear and sword, but by the trumpeters, drummers and musicians of an army.”

Cognition is not only the state of our thoughts, but also the state of our feelings, our spirit. Even when reading the same thing, we all differ in the state in which we are, and therefore in the experience. And when a person, unable to experience knowledge or experiencing it poorly, dictates his thought to us (possessing, for example, state status), we hear his words, but do not analyze his experiences. Therefore, what is important to us is the reaction to the word, not its essence!

We need a scheme, identity in every act of cognition. Otherwise, as David writes, we pay attention not to reflections coming from ideas, but to the desire for explanation, that is, we leave the method without impression, fullness.

Hume's discussion of schemas and their connections shows the fundamental importance of consciousness, which must first be formed, not assented. There is no time to say “I know” - it is more important to be in the state of “I know.” “I know” can have a completely different color and smell, different from knowledge itself. And with our “I know” we impoverish not only knowledge, but also ourselves.

According to Hume, the rule should be laid down that the connection between all causes and effects is equally necessary. And if something is not defined, then there is a reason for this that needs to be paid attention to. Then we deepen our knowledge, and do not leave it aside. It is dangerous when we rely on a mass, arbitrary format of imagination. That is, according to Hume, we proceed not from our experience, but from an image, which will still be temporary, since it is not endowed with experience, and, therefore, with the effort of knowledge in time.

Everything would be fine, but we develop habits of perception, which is not endowed with knowledge. It is more important for us to experience a phenomenon than to manifest ourselves, that is, to be the phenomenon itself. Thus, we deprive ourselves of the impressions of the life we live, while expressing various ideas and depending on them.

As a result, we deprive ourselves of a human instrument (we do not develop consciousness) and a spiritual instrument (faith is in the nature of affect). Here the behavioral character also matures, which we adapt to affects, and not to judgments. As a result, all our actions and our whole life become random. After all, you can’t teach a person to express himself! Only a person himself can teach himself this. Instruments of expression should be taught.

But here we come across another basic model of Hume - the idea of naturalism, that is, the question of how much a person knows his nature and how much he generally corresponds to it. From Hume’s position, first one should accept a certain objectivity, into which one should introduce one’s subjective perceptions, and only then objectify them. Attempts to prove that we are right are not necessary primarily for ourselves. All the same, there will be those who will be more concerned about our wrongness than their own, because the process of the affect of non-acceptance is faster and simpler than the process of cognition and acceptance.

In fact, everything that David Hume described, he experienced himself. Confrontation with the church (which he, in fact, never spoke out against) did not give him the opportunity to make a career. But this allowed him to write “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion,” in which he discusses the topic of faith in a very interesting way. In essence, he defines faith as an empirical science, the basis of which is sensory experience.

David Hume occupies such a position in the space of his time that writing about him in the categories of “born, lived, died” means, rather, not respecting this great man with an essentially immortal spirit. Working all his life with causality, he pointed out the harmfulness of blindly following consequences without understanding their cause. After all, as long as a person’s will is guided by sensations, and not by reason, what can we talk about! There must be a reason everywhere, even if it is the highest, and one must be guided by its understanding, and not by repetition.

In general, David Hume not only created the conditions for the development of correct thought, but also, in fact, formulated the ideas of the Celtic form of existence, in which patterns and nodes are not images, but causes.

Email this page to a friend

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 My Life - 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. the 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 where Descartes and Mersenne were educated) was located. 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 perceive the ideas of this “Newton of moral 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 Ninevals and released two parts of his Essays, Moral and Political, 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. Through 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 Four Studies (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 Montesquieu's death, 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 to excommunicate 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 editor, 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 this 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 sciences 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 through the application of the inductive method is destined to be improved, 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 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 claim 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 in history been so convincingly attested as to be the basis of a religious system. Miraculous phenomena are always associated with human evidence, and people, as we know, 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 in 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.

David Hume was born David Home on 7 May 1711 in Edinburgh. His parents, Joseph Home and Catherine Falconer, rented land there. His father was a lawyer.

Because many English people had trouble understanding his surname when pronounced in a Scottish accent, David changed his surname from Home to Hume in 1734. At the age of 12 he began his studies at the University of Edinburgh. At first he wanted to connect his life with law, but then he turned his attention to philosophy. Hume never took his teachers seriously, because he believed that teachers could teach him little. He opened a new page in philosophy, because of which he decided to devote his entire life to philosophy. Because of this, Hume became a hermit and spent 10 years in solitude, reading and writing. He was so passionate about his work that he practically had a nervous breakdown, after which he decided to devote more time to an active life, which, in his opinion, should have a good effect on his further education.

Career

Hume could choose one of two ways to develop his career - either become a mentor to people or go into business. After being a merchant, he moved to La Flèche, Anjou, France. There he had numerous clashes with the Jesuits from the College of La Flèche. There he spent most of his savings while writing his Treatise on Human Nature.

Hume finished writing it when he was 26 years old. Although his book is now highly regarded and considered one of his most influential works, some British critics of the time did not view the treatise favorably.

In 1744, Hume published his Moral and Political Essays. After publication, Hume applied for a position in the chair of the doctrine of gaseous bodies and moral philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. But because he was considered an atheist, the seat went to William Cleghorn.

In 1745, when the Jacobite Rebellion broke out, Hume was the teacher of the Marquess of Anandale, whose official name was "madman", but he soon resigned from this post due to the conflict that occurred between them. After the incident, Hume began work on his famous work entitled “The History of England.” It took 15 years to write the work, and the work itself contained about a million words. The work was published in six volumes from 1754 to 1762. The work was related to the Canongate Theatre, as well as to Lord Monboddo and other representatives of the Scottish enlightenment of Edinburgh.

Hume worked as secretary to Lieutenant General St. Clair for three years beginning in 1746. During these three years, he wrote philosophical essays on the understanding of man, which were subsequently published with the title “An Inquiry into the Understanding of Man.”

This publication became much more famous than his treatise and brought Hume rave reviews.

Hume was accused of heresy, but received protection from his young cleric friend. His friend argued that, being an atheist, Hume was not influenced by the church. But despite these arguments, he was never able to take a place in the philosophy department at the University of Glasgow. In 1752, after returning from Edinburgh, he wrote My Own Life, which served as the impetus for his further work on the History of England. In literature, Hume is recognized as an outstanding historian; his book History of England covers events from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the revolution of 1688. At that time, this book became the best-selling book.

End of life and death

Hume was Lord Hertford's secretary in Paris from 1763 to 1765.

Hume knew, although he did not get along with, Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

In 1767, he was appointed Deputy Secretary of State for the Northern Department for a period of only one year. After which, in 1768, he returned to the city where he was born and lived there until his death.

On 25 August 1776, David Hume died of either bowel or liver cancer on the south-west corner of St Andrew's Square, Edinburgh's New Town. This place now has the address "21 Saint David Street".

Biography score

New feature! The average rating this biography received. Show rating

Ministry of Agriculture and Food of Russia

FSOU VPO DalGAU

Department of Philosophy

Test

Discipline: Philosophy

Topic: Philosophy of D. Hume

Completed by: student of the FPC “Electrification”

and automation of agriculture,

Guryev M.A., No. 291556

Checked by: Candidate of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor

Department of Philosophy Koryakina E.V.

Blagoveshchensk 2009

PLAN

1. Basic provisions of the philosophical teachings of D. Hume 3

1.1 Description of the main phenomena. Impressions and ideas 3

1.2 Associations and abstractions 5

1.3 On the existence of substances 7

1.4 The problem of causality 8

2. The doctrine of knowledge. Position in the debate between empiricism and rationalism 9

3. Teachings about social relations 10

3.1 The doctrine of society, justice, property and morality 10

3.2 Hume's Ethics 12

3.3 Criticism of religion 14

References 16

1 BASIC PROVISIONS OF PHILOSOPHICAL TEACHING

D. YUMA

1.1 Description of the main phenomena. Impressions and ideas.

D. Hume puts the doctrine of man at the center of philosophizing. In his Treatise of Human Nature, or an Attempt to Apply the Method of Reasoning to Moral Subjects by Experience, Hume turns to a careful study of human knowledge, to the justification of experience, the probability and certainty of knowledge and knowledge (Book I of the Treatise), to the study of human emotions (Book II), morality, virtue, problems of justice and property, state and law as the most important topics in the doctrine of human nature (Book III of the Treatise).

Hume includes the following main features of human nature: “Man is a rational being, and, as such, he finds his proper food in science...”; “Man is not only a rational being, but also a social being...”;

“Man, moreover, is an active being, and thanks to this inclination, as well as due to the various needs of human life, he must indulge in various affairs and activities...”

Nature, apparently, indicated to mankind a mixed way of life as the most suitable for it, secretly warning people against being too carried away by each individual inclination in order to avoid losing the ability for other activities and entertainments.

D. Hume believed that “people naturally, without thinking, approve of that character that is most similar to their own... One can consider it an infallible rule that if there is no relationship in life in which I would not like to be with some person , then the character of this person must be recognized as perfect within these limits.” But if most people do not entirely like their own character, they are unlikely to be appreciative of observing the same character in others. It is more natural to assume that we approve of a character that matches our ideal self-image. This means that in others we highly value those personal qualities that we would like to see in ourselves.

The starting point of Hume's reasoning is the belief that there is a fact of immediate given sensations to us, and hence our emotional experiences. Hume concluded that we, in principle, do not know and cannot know whether the material world exists or does not exist as an external source of sensations. "...Nature keeps us at a respectful distance from her secrets and provides us with only the knowledge of a few superficial qualities."

Almost all of Hume's subsequent philosophy is constructed by him as a theory of knowledge, describing the facts of consciousness. Transforming sensations into the absolute “beginning” of knowledge, he considers the structure of the subject in isolation from his objective-practical activity. This structure, in his opinion, consists of atomic impressions and those mental products that are derived from these impressions. Of these derivative types of mental activity, Hume is most interested in “ideas,” by which he does not mean sensations, but something else. Hume calls “impressions” and “ideas” collectively “perceptions.”

“Impressions” are those sensations that a particular subject receives from events and processes that take place in the field of action of his senses. This is the essence of the subject's sensation. Hume often understood “impressions” as perceptions in a sense that distinguishes them from sensations (individual properties of things are felt, but things are perceived in their integral form). Thus, Hume's “impressions” are not only simple sensory experiences, but also complex sensory formations.

“Ideas” in his theory of knowledge are figurative representations and sensory images of memory, products of the imagination, including distorted and fantastic products. Ideas in Hume's system of terminology represent an approximate, weaker or less vivid (not so “living”) reproduction of “impressions,” that is, their reflection within the sphere of consciousness. "...All ideas are copied from impressions." Depending on whether impressions are simple or complex, ideas are also correspondingly simple or complex.

“Perceptions” include “impressions” and “ideas.” For Hume, they are cognitive objects facing consciousness.

1.2 Associations and abstractions

A person cannot limit himself to mere impressions. For the success of his orientation in the environment, he must perceive complex, composite impressions, the structure and grouping of which depend on the structure of the external experience itself. But besides impressions, there are also ideas. They can also be complex. They are formed by associating simple impressions and ideas.

In associations, Hume sees the main, if not the only way of thinking through sensory images, and for him this is not only artistic, but all thinking in general. Associations are whimsical and are directed by random combinations of elements of experience, and therefore they themselves are random in content, although in form they are consistent with some permanent (and in this sense necessary) patterns.

Hume identified and distinguished the following three types of associative connections: by similarity, by contiguity in space and time, and by cause-and-effect dependence.

Within these three types, impressions, impressions and ideas can be associated, ideas with each other and with states of predisposition (attitudes) to continue previously experienced experiences.

According to the first type, associations occur by similarity, which can be not only positive, but also negative in nature. The latter means that instead of similarity, there is contrast: when experiencing emotions, a state of affect often appears that is opposite to the previous state. “...The secondary impulse,” writes Hume in his essay “On Tragedy,” “is transformed into a dominant one and gives it strength, although of a different and sometimes opposite nature.” However, most associations by similarity are positive.

According to the second type, association occurs by contiguity in space and by immediate sequence in time. This happens most of all with ideas of external impressions, that is, with memories of previous sensations ordered in a spatio-temporal manner. The most useful cases of association by contiguity, Hume believes, can be indicated from the field of empirical natural science. Thus, “the thought of an object easily transfers us to what is adjacent to it, but only the immediate presence of the object does this with the highest vividness.”

According to the third type, associations arise based on cause-and-effect relationships, which are most important in reasoning related to theoretical natural science. If we believe that A is the cause, and B is the effect, then later, when we receive an impression from B, the idea of A pops up in our minds, and it may also be that this association develops in the opposite direction: when When we experience an impression or idea A, we have the idea B.

Hume modified the theory that "some ideas are peculiar in their nature, but when represented they are general." Firstly, the initial class of things similar to each other, from which a representative is then extracted, is formed, according to Hume, spontaneously, under the influence of associations by similarity. Secondly, Hume believes that a sensory image takes on the role of a representative (representative of all members of a given class of things) temporarily, and then transfers it to the word by which this image is designated.

The representative concept of abstraction comes into agreement with the facts of artistic thinking, in which a figurative example, if well chosen, replaces a lot of general descriptions and is even more effective.

Those ideas to which Hume gives the status of general ones turn out to be, as it were, truncated particular ideas, retaining among their characteristics only those that other particular ideas of a given class have. Such truncated private ideas represent a semi-generalized, vague image-concept, the clarity of which is given by the word connected to it, again by association.

1.3 On the existence of substances

Solving the general problem of substance, Hume took the following position: “it is impossible to prove either the existence or non-existence of matter,” that is, he took an agnostic position. A similar agnostic position could be expected from him regarding the existence of human souls, but on this issue Hume is more categorical and completely rejects Berkeley’s views. He is convinced that there are no souls - substances.

Hume denies the existence of the “I” as a substrate of acts of perception and argues that what is called the individual soul - substance, is “a bundle or bundle of various perceptions, following each other with incomprehensible speed and being in constant flux.