MM#308--Philosophy 101--Hume

Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now here's your host, David Kaiser.

Hello, I am David and welcome back to another Mojo Minute. So roughly about a year ago we started our philosophy 101 series and our guide for that 101 series is the fantastic four volume series of books called Socrates' Children by the great Peter Krief. And in doing this 101 series we are tackling what Krief calls the big nine philosophers Socrates, aristotle, plato, augustine, aquinas, descartes, hume, kant and Hegel. And so far we have covered six of those nine big philosophers and I will put some links in the show notes for those Mojo Minutes. And today we're going to continue with our 101 series and talk all about David Hume, number seven on the big on the list of the big nine. So with that let's turn to our guide Again, it's the wonderful four volume series, socrates' Children and pick it up with our first socratic question why is David Hume important? Go on to the book. If you want to understand most contemporary philosophers who write in English today, you must know Hume, for most of these philosophers identify themselves as analytic philosophers and Hume is the single most important source of this philosophical school or method. He is also the most formidable, challenging and difficult to refute skeptic in the history of human thought. His logic is powerful Once you grant his apparently common, sensical and attractive premises, it's difficult or impossible to avoid his radical and non-common sensical, skeptical conclusions. So there we go. David Hume, the Scottish philosopher who lived from 1711 to 1776. And certainly of the English writers he is the most formidable. Now, if you are a Christian or a Catholic, this guy essentially will be attacking traditional Christianity all of his life and we'll get into the how a little bit later on. I guess I should probably back up because this is also true about Descartes, who we studied just in our last philosophy 101 episode. And really Descartes is the modern philosophers, was part of the modern philosophers who began to try and dismantle Christianity per se, and the Catholic theologians at the time was stood all of this until the 19th century, when the heresy of modernism comes into the church and we'll talk about that later on, some other Mojo minutes or Catholic corners. That will take a lot of unpacking, so I have to save that for a later date. But even for the Protestant Christian who believe, who believes, descartes and Hume are no big deal. Please know that is false. These guys started a heretical line within the world of philosophy that proved quite damaging after their deaths, descartes, as we learned in our last philosophy 101 episode, most likely was not an atheist himself but played the double game of saying there is a God, but then he was a skeptic of the previously established views that man was composed of the unity of body and soul. So, descartes skepticism started to dismantle Christianity. But we get to Hume, who absolutely hated the Catholic Church but essentially he hated Christianity too, and he lost his faith early in life. So actually let's learn real quick about his faith, going to the book no-transcript. Hume's life, like that of most philosophers, was not spectacular. Born in Edinburgh as David Holm, it was pronounced Hume, so he changed the spelling. He entered the University of Edinburgh at eleven, leaving at fifteen without a degree. His father had died when he was an infant and he was raised by a strict Presbyterian mother. This included three-hour church services and long daily family prayers. He lost his childhood faith in religion very early. His family pressured him to study the lucrative profession of law. But when he discovered philosophy, he says in his autobiography, that quote there opened up to me a new scene of thought. The law, which was the business I designed to follow, appeared nauseous to me and I could think of no other way of pushing my fortune in the world, but that of a scholar and a philosopher. His earliest and most important philosophical influence was Francis Hutchison, a Scottish ethicist at the University of Glasgow, who taught that morality is based on neither reason nor faith, neither natural nor divine, but feeling and sentiment. Hume conceived the project of extending this subjectivist principle to all of our mental activity, not just morality. This would undermine nearly all previous philosophy, and he was eighteen at the time, eighteen years old, and people were taking what he was saying seriously. Hard to imagine, but it is what it is, let's keep going. For six months, hume feverishly worked on his new science of thought. The result was a nervous breakdown that remained so severe that for nine months he could not follow a train of thought. He tried working for a businessman but found it quote unsuitable. At twenty-three he settled in France at Le Foucher, home to the prestigious Jesuit university where Descartes had studied. He lived in a tiny apartment on the country estate where he could use the college library, and he completed his treatise of human nature in seventeen. Thirty-seven, at the age of twenty-six, he returned to London and found a publisher, but only in by, in his own word, cash-strating his book of its most effective attacks on religion. He was bitterly disappointed when he found few readers and no favorable reviewers. He wrote that his book fell on dead-born from the press. His next disappointment was being turned down for a professorship at both Edinburgh and Glasgow because of his skepticism and apparent atheism. He became a private tutor to the various wealthy persons. His first pupil was literally insane. When he returned to Paris, the mecca for atheists, he was suddenly famous and successful and filled, fulfilled what he called his ruling passion, the love of literary fame. He was known as Le Bon David. He abandoned philosophy once skepticism is established what else could one say? And wrote a long history of Great Britain which brought him fame and fortune there. He retired on a long pension I'm sorry. He retired on a large pension and had a fine home built in Edinburgh on St David Street. Some claim the street was named for him, some not. So Hume took events when his publisher castrated his first work, the Treatise of Human Nature, from its most offensive attacks on religion. And isn't that ironic that when he returns to Paris, what did Krief call this? Let me find it yes. Here he calls Paris the mecca for the atheist at the time, perhaps all the time, even down to our own day, that he was suddenly found famous and they loved his literary fame. Let's go back to the book to complete his life biography. Hume and Benjamin Franklin would party together in Paris with blue stocking ladies on their laps. But Hume was as un-clever with the ladies as Rousseau was clever. Once, at a party game, he was put between two beautiful women and told to play the part of a sultan trying to win the love of his slaves. They could do nothing but slap his knees and belly and say over and over again well, young ladies, well, there you are then. Well, there you are. After 15 minutes the ladies left. Like Kant, hume never married, though he did fall in love once, when he was fifty-two, with a married but separated woman, madame beufleres, but fell out of love with him and in love with a prince whose mistress she had been. But he remained loyal and friendly to her until his death. Five days before he died he wrote a letter of condolence for the death of her husband. He died peacefully of cancer in his home, boswell. Samuel Johnson's biographer visited him shortly before he died because he could not believe an intelligent man could die peacefully without either faith or fear, with no hope of life after death. But Hume maintained his skepticism to the end. Moved only by a logical consistency, he called life after death a most unreasonable fancy. When asked whether he did not at least hope there was a heaven, he answered not at all, it is a most gloomy thought. Yes, david Hume's skepticism proved fatal to his life. And if he thought heaven was a most gloomy thought, may God have mercy on his soul. Now, what about the historical situation in which Hume lived? And here's where Peter Creif's books are always very, very good at helping us and guiding us in the context of which all the philosophers lived. Let's go back to the book. Hume lived at the height of the Enlightenment. Philosophically speaking, the year 1637 is probably the best candidate for the year of its beginning. The publication of Descartes' discourse on method, and one since the Enlightenment has not yet ended, for most intellectuals in the Western world still put their faith in science and not in the pre-scientific philosophy of the Catholic Middle Ages. But in another sense, the Enlightenment is over for the faith. That reason, especially scientific reason, is self-evident, self-validating and able to solve all theoretical and practical problems. This faith was given a philosophical death blow by Hume, reason's greatest critic. Perhaps the year of his death 1776, is the best candidate for the end of the Enlightenment, or perhaps it is 1831, with the death of Hegel, the last great rationalist system builder. The two centuries between 1637 and 1831 saw a jungle growth of philosophy, of science and of optimism about reason. Locke had already argued as early as 1664 that the laws of nature must govern human reason and human life as well as the rest of the universe. Hume actually agreed, and he had attempted to map these laws and epistemology, as did Hume. The result was a rational, scientific empiricism whose premises Hume inherited and took to other, more radical but logical conclusions. Locke had applied this philosophy of natural reason to ethics and the result was a philosophy of universal rights. He wrote, quote reason teaches all mankind who will but consult it that, being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions. This was the rational Enlightenment ethic that justified England's glorious revolution, more bloodless revolution of 1688 that replaced absolute monarchy with representative democracy. It would also inspire in significantly different ways both the American 1776 and the French 1789 revolutions. So Hume is quite important, especially within the English writers, especially more especially about how he influenced some of our American revolution and the French revolution. Now, the fact that Descartes started this theory of skepticism, then Hume took and ran with it. Actually, here's Hume's bottom line. Let's go to the book. Hume set out to destroy Plato's philosophy of the two worlds, matter and forms, two parts of human nature, the body and soul, two powers of knowledge sensation and reason and two degrees of certainty opinion and knowledge. The second level in each case does not exist. For Hume, plato's divided line leads not to wisdom but to nothing. This is closely connected, in Hume's mind, with the Enlightenment project of refuting superstition, those supernatural religions, most especially Catholicism, which Hume, like Hobbes, always regarded as his primary enemy. But undermining its epistemological assumptions, hume even uses the military language of a spiritual war and enemies. In referring to this philosophical project, he says that philosophies that go beyond strict empiricism make metaphysical claims that are quote not properly a science but arise either from the fruitless efforts of human vanity, which would penetrate into subjects utterly inaccessible to the understanding, or from the craft of popular superstitions, and many, through cowardice and folly, open the gates to their enemies and willingly receive them with reverence and submission as their legal sovereign. But is this a sufficient reason why philosophers should leave superstition still in possession of her retreat. Is it not possible to draw an opposite conclusion and perceive the necessity of carrying the war into the most secret recesses of the enemy? End of quote. So, like Hobbes Hume, david Hume sees his philosophy in terms of spiritual warfare. And clearly, after hearing that paragraph directly from Hume, he, david Hume, is an atheist. Almost all of his contemporaries thought he was so. Hume even says this in his autobiography that he lost his religious faith before he began his writing career and then, in his most famous writing, writing his most famous treatise, the Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding. This writing and treatise is so incompatible with Christianity no matter if you're a Protestant or Catholic that many believe. It was intended to be a mockery and to pose the ridiculousness of the Christian religion. He argued that miracles cannot exist and that faith cannot be defended by human reason. And actually here is his coup d'agra. Let's go back to the book for this one. It's a doozy. Hume claims that we cannot really know by reason any matter of fact. However, there seems to be one exception to this in Hume's mind. We can know that no miracle has ever happened as a matter of fact. Writing to a friend Hume expressed great excitement and enthusiasm over the fact that he thought he had finally come up with an argument that refuted miracles. He saw this not as an impersonal scientific conclusion but as part of a spiritual war against superstition. A spiritual war against superstition Seems that Mr Hume has it out for the Christian religion, especially all this miracle talk that was being told to a society at the time that was, frankly, almost totally Christian, except for the universities where this rubbish would be taught and talked about. The whole, the whole era, the whole decade, the whole century that Hume lived, certainly almost everybody was Christian, throughout Europe and throughout the United Kingdom, not unlike our day and age. Hume's purpose essentially was to drive a stake into the Holy Grail of miracles and Christ's resurrection as the central and necessary miracle to the Christian religion. So if you really take a step back from the apostles to the present day, believers, all Christians, were believing that Christ rose from the dead. On the third day there was an empty tomb after all. That tomb had a Roman seal. That tomb was guarded by Roman soldiers by all accounts up to four men. At the risk of falling asleep or leaving their post, they would have been executed. That same tomb had a stone weighing roughly 4,000 pounds and most likely 7 to 8 feet high. It would take a team of men to get it into place and certainly would take probably a half hour to an hour to roll it into place. Certainly it would not be movable by one or two men or the women that ran to the tomb early on Sunday morning. And then, finally, christ was seen by some four to five hundred witnesses, most especially his apostles and disciples, over those forty days until his ascension to God the Father. Many, in fact most, of those apostles would give their life for that person they saw as part of the resurrection. Those people that didn't, those people that did in fact see him, they actually just didn't see him. They ate with him, they walked with him, they touched him. Jesus at one point even made breakfast, john 21-9. So for Hume to say there's no such thing as miracles, or to try and cast doubt on the miracle, seems quite hubris. So in today's Mojo Minute and on this Philosophy 101 episode, let's close with a final paragraph from Creef's chapter all on David Hume, the greatest skeptic in all of philosophical history. Going back to the book, hume has set himself against universal common sense, against nearly all previous philosophy and against all religion. He has undermined reason's power to know anything beyond sense, impressions, from metaphysics to religion, to science, to common sense, to causality, to substance, to self, to mind, soul, spirit, other minds, immortality, providence, freedom, god, miracles and morality. He is the most complete skeptic in the history of philosophy and most likely wherever David Hume is at in the afterlife, he is no longer a skeptic.

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