Mariano [Ethics]

DAVID HUME
The most influential thinker of the Scottish and one
of the greatest philosophers of all time.
Empiricist - meaning he believed "causes and effects
are discoverable not by reason, but by experience".
He goes on to say that, even with the perspective of
the past, humanity cannot dictate future events
because thoughts of the past are limited, compared
to the possibilities for the future.
FAMOUS WORKS
EPISTEMOLOGY AND ETHICS
General Epistemological Principle: all 'ideas', the
contents of our thought, derive from more lively
'impressions', the contents of our sense experience and
emotional experience. This is put forward at first as an
empirical thesis, but it is also used as a normative
principle.
ETHICS: Ethical behavior is and should be based on
emotion or sentiment rather than abstract moral
principle, and in fact stated that “Reason is, and ought
only to be the slave of the passions”.

A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to

Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into
Moral Subjects [considered by many to be Hume's most
important work and one of the most influential works in
the history of philosophy.]

The publication of Hume’s Treatise was a disaster.

Its wit and clarity were overlooked. In 1740,
however, the critics were savage, describing his
work as “abstract and unintelligible”.

Today, however, Treatise is widely considered to be

Hume’s most important work, one of the keystone
books of western philosophy, in the words of one
commentator, “the founding document of cognitive
science” and possibly the “most important
philosophical work” in the English language.
Organized in three parts:
1. Of the Understanding
2. Of the Passions
3. Of Morals

with many sub-sections such as:

“Of Ideas, Their Origin, Composition, Connexion,
Abstraction”
“Of the Ideas of Space and Time” “Of Knowledge
and Probability” and “Of the Skeptical Other
Systems of Philosophy”
it concludes with a recapitulation with Hume’s
reasoning for his thesis that “sympathy is the chief
source of moral distinctions”.