Scottish philosopher, representative of empiricism and agnosticism, forerunner of the second positivism (empirio-criticism, Machism), economist and historian, publicist, one of the leading figures of the Scottish Enlightenment.

Hume began his philosophical work in 1738 by publishing the first two parts "A Treatise on Human Nature" where he attempted 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, i.e. human sensations, affects, emotions ) . Under ideas of course, 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 knowledge. He then developed these ideas and published them in a separate "Research on Human Cognition".

Hume believed that our knowledge begins with experience. However, Hume did not deny the possibility of a priori (here, inexperienced) 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. 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 (in the framework of his original theory of knowledge, Hume will question the existence of the last two in terms of substance). After perceiving the material, the cognizer begins to process these representations. Decomposition by similarity and difference, far apart or near (space), and by causality. And what is the source of the sensation of perception? Hume replies that there are at least three hypotheses:

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

Hume asks which of these hypotheses is correct. To do this, you need to compare these types of perceptions. But we are shackled in the line of our perception and will never know what is beyond it. This means that the question of what is the source of sensation is a fundamentally unsolvable question.. It's possible, but we'll never be able to verify it. There is no evidence for the existence of the world. You can't prove or disprove.

Works.

Monument to Hume in Edinburgh

• Works in two volumes. Volume 1. - M., 1965, 847 s (Philosophical Heritage, Vol. 9)
• Works in two volumes. Volume 2. - M., 1965, 927 s (Philosophical Heritage, Vol. 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)
• "British History"

Literature.

In Russian:

• Batin V.N. The 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. : Economics, 2008. - S. 343-345. - 352 p. - (The School of Economics Library, 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). - 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 .: Thought, 1973. - 180 p. - (: In 6 volumes / Chief ed. V. N. Cherkovets. - // Great Soviet Encyclopedia: in 30 volumes / chief ed. A. M. Prokhorov. - 3rd ed. - M. : Soviet Encyclopedia, 1978. - Vol. 30: Bookplate - Yaya. - 632 p.

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.

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

Due to the fact that many English people had trouble understanding his surname when it was pronounced with a Scottish accent, in 1734 David changed his surname from Home to Hume. At the age of 12, he began studying at the University of Edinburgh. At first he wanted to connect his life with law, but then turned his attention to philosophy. Hume never took his teachers seriously, as he believed that teachers had little to teach him. He opened a new page in philosophy, because of which he decided to devote his whole life to philosophy. Because of this, Hume became a hermit and spent 10 years in seclusion, reading and writing. He was so passionate about his work that he almost 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 paths to develop his career - either become a mentor to people, or go into commerce. After working as a merchant, he moved to La Flèche, Anjou, France. There he had numerous skirmishes with the Jesuits from La Flèche College. There he spent most of his savings while writing a Treatise on Human Nature.

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

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

In 1745, when the Jacobite rebellion broke out, Hume was the teacher of the Marquis of Anandale, whose official name was "madman", but he soon left this post due to a conflict between them. After the incident, Hume began work on his famous work called The History of England. The writing of the work took 15 years, 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 in 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 under 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, as 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 a book, My Own Life, which served as the impetus for him to continue his work on the History of England. In literature, Hume is recognized as an outstanding historian; his book A History of England recounts 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 secretary to Lord Hertford in Paris from 1763 to 1765.

Hume was acquainted, though not on good terms, with Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

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

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

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David Hume- English philosopher of Scottish origin, a prominent figure in the Scottish Enlightenment, economist, publicist, historian. Born in Edinburgh on May 7, 1711 in a not too prosperous noble family. After receiving a law degree at a local university, he worked for a trading company as a clerk for some time. As part of the diplomatic mission of England, he visited a number of European countries.

Being in 1734-1736. in France, he wrote the work that he considered the main thing in his life - A Treatise on Human Nature. Two books were published in 1739, the third - in 1740. However, the work that began the philosophical activity of D. Hume was not particularly successful. The part of the treatise devoted to the possibilities of human cognition was subsequently developed and published as a separate book, An Inquiry Concerning Human Cognition.

His system of views on knowledge arose as a result of rethinking the ideas of J. Berkeley's subjective idealism. The philosopher denied the fundamental possibility of the cognizability of the world, said that human nature is unchanged, and education becomes for people a source of not knowledge, but habits, and moral assessments of certain phenomena are based on personal feelings of pleasure. Hume argued the incomprehensibility of the causes of the flow of impressions, which is the sensory experience (as well as the source of knowledge) of a person, called the problem of the relationship between spirit and being unsolvable. With the filing of T.G. Huxley in 1876, this position was designated by the term "agnosticism".

The intense mental activity of the young Hume was not in vain for him. In the eighteenth year, Hume's health deteriorated greatly; there was a breakdown in spirit and a sluggish attitude even towards what he had previously done with such fervor. This led him to decide to drastically change his lifestyle. In 1734 he moved to Bristol, where he tried out as a clerk in a trading house, but after a few months he realized that he had not the slightest inclination for this kind of occupation.

Having failed in the commercial field, he went in the same 1734 for three years to France - to Paris and Reims. He spent a significant part of the time (2 years) at the La Flèche school (college), where R. Descartes once studied.

Literary and philosophical experiences

After returning to his homeland, Hume began philosophical activity: in 1738 the first two parts were published. "A Treatise on Human Nature". First of all, 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, i.e. human sensations, affects, emotions ) . Under ideas of course, weak images of these impressions in thinking and reasoning. The second part was devoted to psychological affects. A year later, the third part of the treatise, devoted to morality and morality, was published.

Hume's work did not provoke the expected heated debate in the intellectual community. On the contrary, the work was actually ignored. Rumor has it that the author is an atheist. The latter circumstance more than once turned out to be an insurmountable obstacle to Hume getting a teaching position, although Hume made great efforts to achieve this. So in 1744 he hoped in vain to get a chair of ethics and pneumatic philosophy in his native Edinburgh. The same thing happened at the University of Glasgow, where F. Hutcheson taught, where Hume repeatedly tried to get a job, but to no avail.

In 1745, Hume accepted the offer of the young Marquis Annendel to live with him as a mentor and tutor. Hume's pupil was a mentally unhealthy young man who could neither be taught nor developed in the way that a philosopher-educator would have wished. Hume for a whole year had to endure many insults from the uncle of the young marquis, who was in charge of all the affairs of the lords of Annendel. The Annendeli did not pay Hume the agreed salary; he had to go through a long process to get his earnings (the process dragged on until 1761).

After that, Hume became the secretary of General Saint-Clair (1746), with whom he went on a military expedition against French Canada. The expedition was limited to cruising off the coast of France. Together with General Hume, he was part of military missions in Vienna and Turin, as well as Holland and the German lands (1747-49).

In 1748 Hume began signing his works with his own name.

Further creativity and recognition

While in Italy, Hume revised the first book of the Treatise on Human Nature into "Research on Human Cognition". It was an abbreviated and simplified presentation of Hume's theory of knowledge. In 1748, this work was published in England, but again, like the Treatise ..., it did not attract the expected public attention. The abridged presentation of the third book of the "Treatise ..." did not arouse much interest, which is called "A Study on the Principles of Morality" published in 1751.

In the 1950s Hume was writing the history of England. By this work, he aroused the hatred of the English, Scots, Irish, churchmen, patriots and many others. But after the release of the second volume "History of England" in 1756, public opinion changed dramatically, and with the appearance of the following volumes, the publication found a significant audience not only in England, but also on the Continent. In total, Hume wrote six volumes, two of which were reprinted by him. The circulation of all books sold out completely. Hume wrote: “... I became not only a wealthy, but also a rich man. I returned to my homeland, to Scotland, with the firm intention not to leave it again and the pleasant knowledge that I had never resorted to the help of the powerful of this world 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.

As early as 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 new disappointments - the failure in the elections to the University of Glasgow and an attempt to excommunicate from the Scottish Church.

Activities in France and relations with the Enlightenment

In 1763, after the end of the war between England and France (Seven Years' War), Hume, as secretary of the British embassy at the Court of Versailles, was invited to the capital of France by the Marquis of Hertford, appointed to the post of English envoy. Until the beginning of 1766, he was in the diplomatic service in Paris, and in the last months he acted as British chargé d'affaires. In Paris, a bright relationship awaited him with the Countess de Bouffler.

Here he received recognition for his work on the history of England. Hume's criticism of religious fanatics was endorsed by Voltaire and C. A. Helvetius. Their interests and views converged in many respects.

Even before arriving in France, Hume began to correspond with C. A. Helvetius and C. Montesquieu. He developed a particularly close friendship with d'Alembert. Hume also corresponded with Voltaire, although Hume never met him personally. Hume was also friends with, and at Holbach's dinner parties he was always a welcome companion. A special impression on Helvetius, A. Turgot and other enlighteners was made by "Natural History of Religion" published in 1757 in the collection "Four Dissertations".

Hume's attitude towards the French Enlightenment was reserved. In a letter to E. Millyar, his publisher, Hume admitted that he prefers to make peace with the clergy than, following Helvetius, to get involved in a sharp and dangerous skirmish with them. Hume's ironic statements about Voltaire's deism and his remarks about the "dogmatism" of PA Holbach's "Systems of Nature" are known.

Hume's friendship with J.-J. Rousseau ended with friends eventually turning into enemies. However, already in one of his letters of January 1763, Hume complained about the undesirable "extravagance" of Rousseau's reasoning and their "unaccustomed" nature to the English reader. In 1766 Hume returned to the British Isles. At the same time, Hume invited Rousseau, who was persecuted in France, to England, to whom King George III was ready to provide asylum and livelihood. Hume began to fuss about the arrangement of his friend and bought a house for him in one of the cities of Derbyshire. Rousseau, however, did not find recognition among the English public and, with all the vehemence of an irritable person, attacked Hume, allegedly responsible for his unsuccessful resettlement in England. He accused Hume of being hostile to him, started a rumor about a "conspiracy" between Hume and the Parisian philosophes, who allegedly decided to "dishonor" him, Rousseau, and even began sending letters with these accusations throughout Europe. Forced to defend himself, Hume published "A short and true explanation of the controversy between Mr. Hume and Mr. Rousseau"(A Concise and Genuine Account of the Dispute between Mr. Hume and Mr. Rousseau, 1766). Rousseau left England the following year.

last years of life

Until 1768, Hume served as Assistant Secretary of State for the Northern Territories.

In 1769, Hume retired and returned to his native city - very rich (with an annual income of 1000 pounds). In the same year, Hume created the Philosophical Society in Edinburgh, where he acted as secretary. This circle included: Adam Ferguson, Adam Smith, Alexander Monroe, William Cullen, Joseph Black, Hugh Blair and others.

In total, during his life, Hume wrote forty-nine essays, which, in various combinations, went through nine editions during the lifetime of their author. These included essays on economic issues, and actually philosophical essays - “On Suicide” and “On the Immortality of the Soul”, and partly moral and psychological experiments: “Epicurean”, “Stoic”, “Platonist”, “Skeptic”. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when many of Hume's essays were written. Following the traditions of essay philosophers M. Montaigne and F. Bacon, Hume sets out his views in such a way that the reader can clearly see the practical conclusions and applications that follow from them.

Shortly before his death, Hume wrote his Autobiography. In it, he described himself as a meek, open, sociable and cheerful person who had a weakness for literary fame, which, however, "never hardened my character, despite all the frequent failures."

In the early 70s of the XVIII century. Hume repeatedly returned to work on his last major work, Dialogues on Natural Religion, the first draft of which dates back to 1751. The forerunner of these "dialogues" was, apparently, published by Hume anonymously in 1745. religion. 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: starting in 1770, a professor from Aberdeen James Beatty published five times a fierce anti-Humean pamphlet "An essay on the nature and immutability of truth: against sophistry and skepticism. But when, in the spring of 1775, Hume showed the first signs of a serious illness, he decided to take care of the posthumous publication of his last work and included a special clause about this in his will. His executors shied away from this point for a long time, also fearing serious trouble.

In the spring of 1775, Hume showed symptoms of illness, which at first did not inspire him with any fear. The disease, however, proved incurable and fatal. Hume died a year later from bowel cancer (according to other sources, the liver) at his home on St. David Street in the New City on August 25, 1776, at the age of 65.

A. Smith's message about how the philosopher spent his last days, which was simultaneously sent on November 9, 1776 as an open letter to the publisher of Hume's works, caused a scandal among the Edinburgh public. A. Smith wrote that Hume divided the last hours of his life between reading Lucian and playing whist, sneered at the tales of afterlife rewards and joked about the naivety of his own hopes for the imminent disappearance of the religious prejudices of the people.

At the same time, Edinburgh pastors and Oxford theologians published several pamphlets against the late philosopher.

Hume's grave had to be guarded for a week to prevent Edinburgh religious fanatics from desecrating the thinker's burial place.

Hume bequeathed to make the following inscription on his tombstone: "David Hume. Born April 26, 1711, died August 25, 1776.“I leave it to posterity,” he said, “to add the rest.”

Philosophy

General provisions

Historians of philosophy generally agree that Hume's philosophy in terms of epistemology has the character of skepticism. However, if the traditional ancient skepticism within the framework of the principle "Εποχή", in the words of Sextus Empiricus himself, only destroyed any positive knowledge about the world with the fire of doubt, offering no other way out than "refraining from judgment", then Hume's skepticism is more methodological than ontological. character. I. Kant, characterizing the Humean approach, made a well-known remark about Hume's landing of the "ship of knowledge" after the hole in "dogmatism" on the "stranded skepticism" - that is, interpreting Hume's problem not in the context of total skepticism as a basic philosophical strategy, but in terms of preliminary cleaning cognitive space necessary for further research moves. This approach seems all the more justified and true, since Hume himself considered epistemology as a foretaste of ethics and politics within the framework of the question "what can we know?".

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. However, Hume was also influenced by rationalists: Descartes, Leibniz, and others.

Structurally starting the exposition of his philosophy from the theory of knowledge, Hume in his first major work "Treatise on Human Nature" (1739-1740), nevertheless, points to the preparatory nature of epistemology in the context of his general philosophical system. From these comments, the secondary nature of epistemological constructions directly follows in the context of more important, in his opinion, philosophical tasks, namely, the problems of morality and ethics, as well as the social interaction of people in modern society. Later, it is the cognitive problem that will come to the fore (in the "Study on Human Knowledge" (1748-1758) it will be central) of Hume's philosophy, including among his critics, pushing and shading everything else.

Theory of knowledge

Traditionally Hume's theory of knowledge considered as one of the versions of empiricism-sensualism of the XVIII century. Indeed, Hume proceeded from the fact that our knowledge starts from experience. However, he thought, like his other colleagues like J. Locke and J. Berkeley, it never comes down to just a simple copying of experience: in our knowledge, we always have attempts to go beyond the experimental framework, to supplement experimental data with connections and conclusions not presented in experience. directly, to explain what is incomprehensible and unclear from the givenness of experience itself. Finally, our knowledge is always closely connected with fantasies and the creation of non-existent objects and worlds, and also contains a wide range of possibilities for all sorts of delusions. Experience gives cognition only "raw material", from which the cognitive activity of the mind receives specific cognitive results and on the basis of which it builds a general view of the cognizable reality.

Hume sees his task as follows: on the basis of the achievements of experimental science, to give a complete and accurate description of the nature of man in all its manifestations - knowledge, affects, morality and ethics, politics, religion, etc. The undoubted successes of natural science in their fields should serve here as an additional incentive for research work. However, in order to experimental method to apply correctly, it is necessary to understand the very essence of this method as an epistemological phenomenon, the core of which, as you know, is the same extremely widely interpreted experience.

Empiricism and Skepticism

Discover experiences among our content crazy (mind, mind) is very simple - the strongest bright and colorful perceptions of the latter are associated with it, while the content of memory and imagination will always be paler in relation to the primary experience. Experience thus consists of bright, saturated impressions, impressions are divided into internal (affects or emotions) and external (perceptions or sensations (perceptio)). Ideas(memories memory and images imagination) are "pale copies" of impressions. The entire content of the mind consists of impressions and ideas - 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 last two on a substantive level).

External impressions are already given to the mind in the experience of a certain connection with each other (as I see a car passing by, falling snow and pedestrians on the sidewalk, etc.), but the mind has the ability in its own ideas to simply copy and reproduce these connections (in memory ) and build your own connections (in your imagination). After perceiving the material, the cognizing mind always processes these representations - it puts simple ideas into complex ones and decomposes complex ideas into simple ones.

As a rule, impressions in themselves are sources complex (decomposable) ideas, whereas simple (further indecomposable, atomic) ideas are the products of the work of the mind, however, Hume emphasizes, no matter what idea we take in our mind, we can always theoretically trace its connection with the impression that gave rise to it, assuming the atomicity of any perceptions.

Ideas can thus be

a) are singled out by the mind by themselves as mere casts of impressions,

b) are given in a certain sequence and connections as copies of a sequence of impressions,

c) they can represent a product of impressions arbitrarily processed by the mind and through this processing go beyond the givenness of impressions-perceptions or complete it if necessary.

Complex ideas can be of three types - relationships, modes(properties, such as roundness as a property of many bodies or wetness as a property of liquids) and substances(bases and beginnings of sets, for example, matter or spirit).

Like any complex idea, all three types are only sums of simple ideas, not even always present in one place (modus), each type has a different illusion of its own epistemological and ontological validity. If the abstractness of modes is revealed immediately, then the abstractness of relations (the nature of substances will be discussed below) needs additional explanations.

The relationships between ideas are as follows: identities, similarities and differences, qualities and quantities (numbers), adjacencies in space and time, opposites and causality. It should be noted that we are talking here exclusively about relations between ideas in the mind and only between them, and not between real objects outside the mind. It has already been shown above that experience gives the mind a certain picture of external impressions (perceptions), while the mind can both copy this picture and rebuild and supplement it (if it considers it incomplete) - that is, change the relationship between ideas and their connections.

Relations while dividing into two groups, since the mind, when connecting ideas into complex ideal constructions, can:

a) not change the idea in any way (so the idea of ​​a segment that freely rotates around one of the vertices cannot be taken away from the idea of ​​a ball, the idea of ​​a fourth straight line cannot be added to the idea of ​​a triangle; the idea of ​​a triangle is strictly connected with the idea of ​​the sum of its angles equal to 180 degrees, and the idea of ​​a circle - with 360 degrees; idea (a+b) is equal to (b+a) and not equal to (a-b), a+a=2a, A=A, A is not B, if a>b and b>c, then a>c etc.); this type of connection is typical for relations of identity, quality, quantity, contrast;

b) change the ideas themselves (this is how the ideas of color, movement, rest, interaction with another ball or other figure, etc. can be added to the idea of ​​a ball), which turn into an analogue of children's bricks; the mind freely builds out of them a "tower" or "city in five minutes", "the most beautiful island on earth" or "centaur", a scientific law or assumptions about the weather for tomorrow; this type of connection is inherent in the relations of similarity, adjacency in time and space, and causal relationships.

In the first case, the mind always deals only with the so-called "necessary" truths(that is, truths that not only cannot arbitrarily change, but which cannot even be imagined (demonstrated) otherwise - their very nature excludes any other state of affairs for the mind). We find this kind of truth in mathematical knowledge, as well as in formal logic. This knowledge Hume believes inexperienced(a priori), despite the fact that experience is the source of all the ideas of the mind: in this case, the simple ideas of numbers, figures, their relationships and the rules of their connection, extracted from experience, act as structural units of analytical (deductive) inference based on the properties of new complex ideas and their connections (the simple idea of ​​a point gives rise to the idea of ​​a straight line as a distance between two points, the idea of ​​a straight line gives rise to the idea of ​​an angle, triangle, etc., the idea of ​​a unit added to a number gives rise to the idea of ​​a number series, while division by one gives a number taken in its entirety ("once")). Only on this basis the mind can do something to know - to know in the sense of owning strict, unchanging, necessary truths.

Comment:Here Hume intervenes in one of the scientific discussions that began in the time of R. Descartes, that is, at the beginning of the era of classical science of the New Age, but continues to this day, namely, in the dispute about the origins and nature of mathematics - algebra, arithmetic, geometry - Hume insists on its analytic nature and gives it entirely to the mind. However, such a confession in the mouth of Hume sounds like a sentence: mathematical truths refer only to the world of ideas constructed by the mind and cannot have anything to do with the external world as the source of all external impressions. Moreover, their analytic nature deprives them of any meaningfulness: all judgments of mathematics can only act as clarifications of the original premises, but not as a source fundamentally new ("synthetic") knowledge.

It turns out that it is here that the mind stands on firm feet and no less firm ground - since it is here that two important intellectual practices of the mind (reason-reason) effectively work: intuitive (direct visual perception of the truth by the mind as a spontaneous simple agreement with oneself) and demonstrative (conviction of the mind in the impossibility of other options for the association of ideas, when this impossibility is again clearly demonstrated to the mind). Nevertheless, knowledge based on the relations of ideas, while being renewed, expanded and developed, remains only knowledge of the mind's own inner world as its infinite clarification (analysis). Can the mind obtain similar (necessary) knowledge, but of a synthetic nature? The relations of the first group cannot be the source of such knowledge, but there are also relations of the second group - similarity, contiguity and causality.

However, in this case, the mind runs into a complex and, as it turns out, insoluble problem: how to get from the available knowledge (information, ideas) not just new knowledge (new ideas), but knowledge that retains all the characteristics of necessary truth, not accidental? In other words, how can one necessarily deduce from one fact (the idea of ​​a fact) the existence of another fact (another idea of ​​another fact), if the ideas themselves are atomic, delimited from each other and can be arbitrarily placed both in one and in other, opposite relations?.

The mind can freely combine (associate) ideas beyond the range of impressions-perceptions, as indicated above, by similarity, contiguity in space and time, as well as the presence of a causal connection between them. The first two relations obviously do not contain any necessity, since the mind can imagine any thing, both similar to the given one and adjacent to it in space and time. As a relation possibly containing necessity, therefore, only causality remains. This is how it appeared in the modern Hume of the classical natural science of the New Time. However, the analysis of causality undertaken by Hume shows the inherent impossibility of the need for such associations, since

a) experience in itself does not give any necessary association of ideas, it gives only what is given to it by experience, namely, their order in perceptions;

b) the mind also cannot give such an association, since neither intuition nor demonstration is possible here.

The impossibility of the need for any relations of ideas of the second type is not only justified by Hume, but also demonstrated by him, which makes the picture even simpler and clearer: if the association of ideas is necessary, then all other associations automatically become impossible (or - demonstratively obviously not true) just as it is impossible to represent a triangle in Euclidean geometry with the sum of angles greater than or less than 180 degrees, (a + b) unequal to (b + a) or a circle less than or greater than 360 degrees. We see that the body falls down from a height. But you can imagine (not see!) the opposite - imagination works here as the ability of the mind, which costs nothing to imagine bodies flying upwards, the sun rising not in the east, but in the west, etc., just like we do with we can easily imagine snow outside the window on a clear day. Any causal series can be

a) deployed by the imagination back from the effect to the cause;

b) presented as an alternative to another row;

c) described as a random sequence of facts in time, even if they are repeated many times.

Thus, Hume not only discovers and describes the traditional weakness of the inductive method (as the basic method of empiricism), but also shows the impossibility of any necessary (and therefore strictly true) synthetic knowledge.

“That which is false by virtue of demonstrative evidence contains a contradiction, and that which contains a contradiction cannot be imagined. But when it comes to something factual, then, however strong the evidence from experience, I can always imagine the opposite, although I can not always believe in it. .

Hume D. An Abridged Exposition of "A Treatise on Human Nature."

At the same time, Hume does not claim that the connection (causal or any other having the nature of necessity) between facts (ideas of facts) is completely absent, he only claims that no experience contains it. Our truths in themselves may well have a necessary character, but our mind can in no way discover and substantiate this character. The connection between impressions is given in experience, but the mind can never unambiguously declare that it is necessary. The connection between ideas can be produced by the mind, but the mind can never say that the opposite connection is completely excluded. In other words, the mind is unable to detect the very principle of necessity in its work on the association of simple and complex (at the same time unchanged in the course of changes in the relationship between them) ideas - connection is possible in one and the other and in a third way, even if these methods give the opposite result. Therefore, the mind is never able to independently determine which way of connecting ideas is the right one - this principle is found not in the mind, but outside it, as a kind of transcendence, about which the mind itself cannot say anything. Thus, the only way for the mind to determine itself is to follow the experience and the order of impressions-perceptions given in it.

The fact is that following the impressions-perceptions, the mind involuntarily obeys their order and getting used to expect some repetitive connections of perceptions (the apple is round, the material body falls down, the sun rises every morning in the east). Habit mind expect a certain order develops into belief, and then in faith(Belief) that this will necessarily happen always. The mind thus discovers the principle of association of ideas by resemblance, contiguity, and causality, not in itself, not in itself, but outside itself, without answering the question of the origin of this principle or its nature, and without inventing any hypotheses on this account. .

Thus, the mind is powerless to independently substantiate the idea of ​​causality (as well as similarity and contiguity) as a necessary connection between ideas. He only uses the series of perceptions already given to him in his constructions, blindly following him, and trusting him, but not illuminating the path of the cognizer with his light. As I. Newton noted, characterizing the basic setting of the New Age, “one should not invent any nonsense at random, one should also not shy away from similarities in nature, because nature is always simple and always agrees with itself” This must be taken for granted - the mind must refuse to put forward fruitless and empty hypotheses, otherwise the mind (reason) will not be able to discover anything and know nothing. Thus limiting the mind, we free it from its own illusions for its own cognitive work. Reason can follow experience, it can doubt experience, but it must clearly understand the moment of separation from any experience.

According to Hume himself, we are not talking about belittling the mind - we are talking about the fact that the mind begins to see its own strengths and capabilities, refraining from fantasies where it is easiest to leave in fantasy. The greatness of the mind is to say "I don't know" in response to a question - if the question really has no answer based on experience.

"Outside World" and the empirical subject

Revealing the lack of independence of the mind in the matter of cause-and-effect relationships was the first step not so much in the expulsion and disavowal of the mind, but in the self-discovery by the mind-mind of its true place in the cognitive process - not as a demiurge, but only as Kai, adding up the word “eternity” from nowhere that came from it is not clear where the fragments came from.

Hume consistently argues that

a) the mind is not independent in its constructions and conclusions regarding the world and world processes;

b) this lack of independence consists not only in following habit, beliefs and faith, but also in the inability to determine the truth or falsity of one's constructions independently, without experience; in themselves, all constructions of the mind have the right to exist and are not distinguished as true and false;

c) Necessity, so important to the mind, can theoretically be found in the connection of ideas, but it is by no means present in the structures of experience.

These conclusions are reproduced again and again in the sections devoted to the idea of ​​existence, space-time, force and energy, etc.

“Consequently, the guide in life is not reason, but habit. It alone forces the mind to assume in all cases that the future corresponds to the past. No matter how easy this step may seem, the mind would never, for all eternity, be able to take it.

Hume D. Abridged "Treatise on Human Nature"

Intellectual practice, therefore, can easily and conspicuously generate and comprehend differences while nature identities for various and independent ideas, it initially remains outside it, acting as something mysterious, random and absolutely opaque, about which a lot can be fantasize, but what cannot be comprehended (and, therefore, generate-assert) with the need. Numbers and figures are identical, but are things and their properties identical in experience? Identity can be replaced by similarity - and only that. What means - same, which is same?..

Identity turns out to be truly terra incognita for the knowing mind, despite the fact that it is forced to make identification constantly. Each object appears to the mind as a great from others and from oneself in time - but also, above all, how identical to myself. Here the mind enters the fundamental problem of existence substances, which, if present, should stop the fruitless wanderings of the mind within the world of atomic ideas and their association. Substantiality can become the basis of identity, including acting as a common source of plurality.

But the mind begins to wander not only in questions of necessity and substantiality in the external world, but also in the question of its own subjectivity. What does it mean - "I am I", given in experience and comprehended through experience? The question of the nature of the ego, like everything else, must be reduced to the sphere of experience, it is there that the answer to it should be sought. But if you ask the mind this question (note that the question is asked in this and not in another form: “what is I (my I) in itself?”), then the mind has no other way to answer it, except by declaring I am a stream of impressions. In fact, after all, the source of any information (and the knowledge formed on its basis) are only impressions and nothing but impressions, internal and external. What kind of impressions correspond to the idea of ​​"I"? What impression does it derive from if it is a simple idea? What impressions does it make if it is complex?

It is easy to find that the Self is present in every perception, like the idea of ​​existence. “This afternoon it is raining and sleet outside” - this judgment, expressing the content of a certain perception, asserts the existence of rain, sleet and today, as well as the presence of someone to whom all these perceptions are attached (you can call it whatever you like, for example, I). I am the one who perceives, but the I does not represent any independent content. I am just the sum of perceptions: cold, heat, rain, pain, satiety - but what is I, apart from all perceptions, by itself, the mind is not able to determine. He is not even able to determine whether it exists objectively (as well as whether the external world exists objectively) - for the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bexistence always joins what the mind thinks about, unless the mind consciously invents a “beautiful mountain” or a “golden island”, but trying to understand the world and himself in it.

Thus, at this stage, the mind has no choice but to recognize the infinite non-identity of oneself to oneself, or rather, the non-assignment and undetectableness of such identity in the primary stream of perceptions. The questions "what is the Self of an empirical subject?" or "what is the empirical subject itself?" lose their meaning, because the mind is not able to break through to this “self” (that is, self-identity): it can posit it as a possibility, but not assert it.

The same applies to the external world, given to the mind only as a stream of impressions-perceptions. And what is the source of the sensation of perception? Hume replies that there are at least three hypotheses:

• Perceptions are images of objective objects.
• The world is a complex of sensations of perception.
• The sensation of perception is evoked in our mind by God, the higher spirit.

Hume asks which of these hypotheses is correct. To do this, you need to compare these types of perceptions. But the mind is closed within the boundaries of perception, which form the basis of its content and cannot find out what is beyond these boundaries (although it can assume there is some content there, which, in fact, it does constantly, but without reason). This means that the question of what is the source of sensation is a fundamentally insoluble question for our mind.. It's possible, but we'll never be able to verify it. There is no rational proof of the existence of the external world. The existence of objective reality can neither be proved nor disproved - this is Hume's general conclusion - which, of course, does not mean the assertion of the non-existence of the world or the Self in general. Hume affirms only the impossibility of asserting the existence or non-existence of the material (external to the mind) substances. In this way, for the mind there can be no substances more precisely, the mind cannot use their qualities and properties to explain nature, since it itself is not rooted in their being, but they are in it.

Otherwise: experience does not give impressions of any "internal" (spiritual) or "external" (material) substance.

In 1876, Thomas Henry Huxley introduced the term agnosticism to denote his own position, which could not be designated as atheistic, theistic, deistic, pantheistic, etc. T. Huxley called Hume and Kant as allies. I, Huxley argued, cannot assert anything about the existence of the external world or about any necessity of it and in it. However, the modern understanding of agnosticism primitively connects this position with a simple denial of the knowability of the world. Was Hume an agnostic in the latter sense?

Indeed, a number of points in Hume's theory give the impression that Hume is asserting the absolute impossibility of knowing. This is not entirely true. Rather, on the contrary, Hume asserts the impossibility of absolute human knowledge. The mind knows the content of consciousness, which means that the world in consciousness (in itself) is known to it. That is the mind has for granted the world that is in itself, but he will never know that there is a world in itself, will not know entities of the world, It is possible to recognize only its phenomena, that is, some external random references to it. This direction in philosophy is called phenomenalism. On this basis, most of the theories of modern Western philosophy are built, asserting the unsolvability of the so-called fundamental question of philosophy. Hume, on the other hand, takes an even more cautious position with respect to phenomenalism: he does not claims the unknowability of the external world, he only doubts it, affirms the inconsistency of the mind's claims to the right to possess absolute truth, as well as the ability to know the legislator of nature.

Causality in Hume's theory is the result of habit followed by intelligence. The surrounding world is a stream of impressions, the source of which is not known to the mind. And a person, a human I, more precisely, an empirical subject - for the mind is a bundle of perceptions. This is the limit of the conclusions of the mind, going beyond which automatically gives rise to the "invention of hypotheses" of the most diverse kind - from religious to sophisticated philosophical. And again - the mind is not forbidden to invent hypotheses, the mind only has to remember that these are just hypotheses.

Note that all of the above does not allow one to characterize Hume's views as solipsism, although some authors give Hume's teaching such a clearly erroneous characterization. Hume's doctrine is by no means solipsistic, since a) he questions the existence of the subject and his ideas as the basis of any objective reality; b) it does not diminish this reality in any way in favor of the subject. The empirical subject, cognizing reality with his own mind, and the reality given to him in the fullness of experience, are absolutely ontologically equal in rights - Hume emphasizes this, repeatedly emphasizing his rejection of the solipsistic position.

Thus, an inquisitive mind-reason, striving to get to the very foundations of cognitive practice, discovers that any questioning of this kind is a kind of self-digging or self-undermining of the mind. The main dilemma he faces is the conflict between the assumption of an objective reality as an external cognizable world and its approval own internal ideal design as the fruit of intellectual work. This dilemma is, first of all, the dilemma between objectivity and subjectivity, as well as - chance and necessity. Or everything in the world necessary- but then this world is completely identical to the world of ideas (mathematical objects and logical laws) and is just a subjective projection of the mind (and then this really becomes solipsistic), because the mind sees (demonstrates) the need only within its constructions. Either exists objectively- that is, regardless of the mind and its ideas; but then in such a world there can be no necessity (more precisely, the mind cannot assert it, since no necessity here can be demonstrated, and therefore turns out to be doubtful). Experience acquaints the mind with the state of affairs in the stream of impressions-perceptions; habit (which gives the appearance of necessary connections) causes this knowledge to be transferred to any similar state of affairs in the future, although experience does not give the mind any guarantee of this.

“... I have already proved that the mind, acting independently and according to its most general principles, certainly undermines itself and does not leave the slightest evidence to any judgment, both in philosophy and in everyday life. We are saved from such complete skepticism by one special and seemingly trivial property of our imagination, namely the fact that we only with difficulty begin to deeply analyze things. […] So… we should not accept any subtle and detailed reasoning? Consider carefully the consequences of such a principle. By accepting it, you completely annihilate all sciences and all philosophy… […] Having recognized this principle and rejected all refined reasoning, we will get entangled in the most obvious absurdities. If we reject this principle and lean in favor of these arguments, we completely undermine the authority of human knowledge. Thus, we are left with the choice between false reason and no reason at all. As for me, I don’t know what should be done in this case… […] Intensive consideration of the various contradictions and imperfections of the human mind has so affected me, so inflamed my head, that I am ready to reject all faith, all reasoning and cannot recognize no opinion is even more probable or plausible than another. Where am I and what am I? To what causes do I owe my existence, and to what state shall I return? Whose mercy should I seek and whose wrath should I fear? What creatures surround me, and who do I have any influence on or who influences me in any way? All these questions lead me to complete confusion, and it seems to me that I am in the most desperate situation, surrounded by deep darkness and completely deprived of the use of all my members and abilities. Fortunately, if the mind is not able to dispel this darkness, then nature itself is sufficient for this purpose, which heals me from this philosophical melancholy, from this delirium, either by weakening the mood described, or by entertaining me with the help of a living impression that strikes my feelings and making these chimeras fade. I dine, play backgammon, talk and laugh with my friends; and if, after devoting three or four hours to these entertainments, I wished to return to the above-described speculations, they would seem to me so cold, forced and absurd that I could not bring myself to indulge in them again.

- Yum D. Treatise on human nature. T. 1. About knowledge. Ch. 7.

In the above quote - the quintessence of Hume's theory of knowledge, and of all philosophy in general. Indeed, the mind (reason or reason) is capable of posing questions about its own principles and its own practice, but such a questioning can completely block the activity of the mind, just as an attempt to comprehend the procedure of walking will make it impossible to take (in practice) at least one step. The mind, therefore, can only discover for itself its own limits, but is unable to overcome them, remaining within the constructions of its own imaginative faculty, although it harbors the illusion that imaginary worlds lead the mind to the transcendent. However, the mind gets its hands on a very important achievement: it understands the difference between the real state of affairs (in the stream of impressions) and its own fantasies.

The key to solving the problem is not the mind, which is already sufficiently, at first glance, disavowed by Hume (and along with the mind, the rationalistic line of empiricism in the person of J. Locke and even to some extent T. Hobbes), but the human nature, the study of which is not limited to the problems of epistemology. The point, however, is that Hume in no way (as he himself thinks) does not disavow the mind - he only shows its dependence on something more fundamental: on human nature and, more broadly, on nature in general. The mind is not reduced here, but rises - in its self-understanding and self-limitation. This is no longer the dogmatic mind of ordinary philistine “common sense”, blindly following nature (although this is enough for an ordinary person), but a mind that understands the impossibility of achieving the required absolute knowledge in its positions, understanding its own fundamental openness and incompleteness.

“In general, a certain amount of doubt, caution and modesty should be inherent in every sane person in all his research and decisions”

- Yum D. Research on human cognition.

Ethics and social philosophy

As Hume intended, the theory of knowledge and the initial skeptical attitude became a kind of starting springboard for solving the problems of morality and morality (the second (the doctrine of affects), the third (the doctrine of morality) and the fourth (the doctrine of society, religion, politics, etc.). ) part of the "Treatise on Human Nature"), but the continuation of Hume's teachings did not collect even a hundredth of the attention of criticism directed at his epistemology and ontology. Moreover, already after the release of the Treatise ... Hume was forced again and again to clarify the provisions of his theory of knowledge, and even preparing an abbreviated presentation of the Treatise ... he left the last parts out of brackets simply announcing their presence.

Nevertheless, the problems of ethics and social philosophy constitute perhaps the main part of Hume's entire teaching, causing a lively author's interest throughout his philosophical work. In addition to the "Treatise ..." Hume addresses moral, social and political problems in numerous essays, most of which have survived to this day and were published during Hume's lifetime.

Justification of morality

In all works devoted to the problems of moral and socio-political philosophy, Hume retains the attitude that he formulated at the end of the first book of the Treatise ..., although in the future he will more carefully smooth the corners on this issue: Man is part of nature and must trust her and live in harmony with her. In other words, a person (the human mind) cannot rely on himself in this life - he has no other choice but to rely on experience and use it.

There are a few more important things to note here:

a) an ordinary man in the street, guided by a sound mind, is actually already implementing a project of trust in nature, but does it spontaneously, under the influence of circumstances, not understanding either the essence or nature of such trust; this can be a source of fragility of faith, attempts by a person to act apart from nature, independently, etc.;

b) the philosophical mind should strive not for liberation from nature (and, moreover, not to strengthen this dangerous illusion), but to understand its own deep interest in nature, which is able to give a person everything he needs for life, including, and understanding of one's own and natural internal and external structure; Thus, the task of philosophy becomes not the transformation of nature or the liberation from it, but the demonstration of its positive power and role in the very process of human existence.

“... Reason is not able to dispel clouds of doubt, but Nature itself (our human nature) has sufficient forces to do this, and makes us in our practical life with the absolute necessity to live, and communicate, and act exactly the same as other people” . .

Collingwood R. J. The Idea of ​​History

Hume's ethical teaching is logically preceded by the doctrine of affect(internal, secondary perceptions-impressions reflections), which, in turn, acts as a link between Hume's theory of knowledge and ethics, politics, and political economy. If the source of primary impressions is nature, which by its very strength indicates their primacy and the obviousness of the connections between them (the mind can imagine an apple flying up from the branch, not down, but by no effort it can force it to perceive it perceptually, therefore, the liveliness of the impression itself gives mind to understand what the state of affairs is), then the source of secondary impressions becomes the person himself - disavowed as an empirical subject and carrier of spiritual substance in the first part of Hume's teaching.

Effects are of the following types:

• calm(experienced by a person about himself, his actions or external objects, for example, beautiful and ugly) and stormy(experienced by a person in relation to others: love, pride, hatred, humiliation);
• weak and strong;
• pleasant and unpleasant;
• straight(caused directly by good or evil, suffering or pleasure: desires, disgust, joy, hope, fear, certainty, despair) and indirect(caused with the assistance of other qualities: pride, humiliation, ambition, vanity, love, hatred, envy, compassion, malevolence, generosity).

These types are mostly intersecting sets, that is, the same affect can belong to different types depending on the specific situation of analysis, but it cannot be both direct and indirect.

It is easy to see that every affect presupposes the presence of the ego and is closely connected with it. If in the perception of the external world it is really difficult or impossible to separate the perceived and the perceiver (and therefore both can be represented as quanta of impressions and their sums), then the internal impressions of reflection directly point us to the subject - this I love, this I hate, this I take it that way. Of particular interest here are indirect affects, since they implicitly present not only the figure of I, but also the figure of another person. Our ego is the object of affects, but not the cause of them. Since relations are built here between two ideas, it is quite possible to use the appropriate terminology - after all, relations here are built between ideas. The first idea (reason) is what directly causes the object; the second (in this case - I as an object). The idea of ​​the Self, thus Hume notes, is originally given to us (the mind), and it is this idea that imparts special liveliness and brightness to the ideas connected directly with us. In other words, the criticism of the Self as a spiritual substance presented in the first part of the "Treatise ..." was not ontological, but purely methodological in nature within the general framework of criticism of the mind and its attitudes towards independent absolute cognition.

Here again, we should recall the various ways of connecting the various contents of our inner world (mind): the association of ideas (by similarity, contiguity and causality), the association of impressions-perceptions (only by similarity), and finally, the association of affects. Based on this, Hume tries to naturalistically substantiate the origin and development of a number of affects, linking them with the feeling of pleasure-displeasure. Here Hume remains true to himself - after all, pleasure is a kind of signal of nature that a person occupies the right place in its structure, is correctly united or connected with it, connected ("harmonia"), just as the strength and liveliness of impressions do not allow the mind to be deceived by about the reality or fantasy of the events taking place. On the other hand, in addition to our own feelings of pleasure and displeasure, we are greatly influenced by the opinions of other people (condemnation and censure). The context, therefore, becomes not purely natural (natural-naturalistic), but social, also including the human self and defining it. This important quality of receptivity to the Other (and, in general, to one's own environment) Hume calls sympathy. It is sympathy that makes a person the object of the need for external evaluations, it is sympathy that has the ability to represent the opinions of other people as one’s own opinion of the Self, it is sympathy that thus becomes one of the strongest foundations for belief in the existence of an external world inhabited by other people. Finally, it is sympathy that is capable of turning an affect into an external impression.

At this point Hume refers to the phenomenon will as the main source of human activity in the world. By will, Hume understands the inner impression (affect) that we experience (realize) when we intentionally (knowingli) give rise to some new movement of the body or perception of the mind. The starting points of volition are emotions and affects, not reason. Moreover, the mind is unable to contain this blow from within, but is able to resist. Hume saw the basis of morality and moral behavior in the moral sense, but he denied free will, believing that all our actions are due to affects. This is easily explained in the context of the above:

a) the mind cannot independently establish any rules for the world and the Self, because it is not even able to detect either the Self, or the Outer World, or the necessity in the world or the behavior of the Self; thus Hume quickly and effectively disavows any attempt to rationalize ethics and direct humanity towards happiness and good along certain rationally justified paths;

b) all the rules of behavior are already implicit in the context of nature and society - you just need to follow these rules, and nothing more: they do not require colossal effort or unprecedented sacrifices from everyone, they only allow everyone to live and work among others for their own good, not hindering others at the same time and not taking more for themselves than they need or than the world can give; in fact, here Hume comes close to the ethical models of two other great Scots - Hutcheson and Smith - but with one difference: he does not try to give his model additional authority with references to God, universal happiness, etc.; where other of his great contemporaries have a problem of justification, Hume again ends with problems - this is just a self-evident given.

c) the dependence of the will on affects does not remove responsibility from a (reasonable) person for his behavior; nature and the outside world in general give a person enough both in terms of impressions and in terms of affects so that a person can do the right thing (let us once again pay attention to the fact that Hume's morality and morality do not require anything supernatural from a person, no superabstinences, and even does not actually use the modality duties, all the more does not threaten with terrible punishments for apostasy); a person must, first of all, take care of his behavior, and only then about the behavior of other people, which are for him a space for self-discovery and self-improvement, and not a field for endless condemnations.

Philosophy of society and politics

In his socio-political philosophy, already beyond the "Treatise ...", Hume, in particular, sharply opposes the "theory of the natural contract", both in the Lockean and in the Hobbesian version. D. Hume's skepticism does not destroy this model, but only clearly exposes its construction. The rejection of the "social contract" is motivated, at first glance, by the fact that the causes of the "social state" - even if we can optimally describe them - will add nothing to the understanding of the state itself. Consequences can change in an infinitely changing world - namely, the consistently conceived world of pure empiricism turns out to be such - they change so radically that they acquire complete independence from the original cause.

The fact that the social, so-called "general rules" are based on coercion and fear (but not the absolute metaphysical fear of Hobbes, but a completely earthly fear of violence and punishment) does not in the least negate the fact that today a person is able to act in accordance with with these rules quite freely, not as a subject, but as a citizen. A parallel to this is found in the theory of knowledge - and here the indicated criticism is clarified from the other side. The skeptical "limitation of reason" by habit and faith appears not simply as a doubt about the possibility of human cognitive ability, not simply as a criticism of Locke's "empirical rationalism or rationalistic empiricism", but as an essential property, an attribute of reason itself - as the ability of reason to undermine its own principles. Consistently carried out rationality inevitably leads to fundamental irremovable contradictions (for example, between the attitude to think of objects as external and independent sources of perceptions and the attitude towards causal association) and further - insanity and delirium. Therefore, the question of the original causes is meaningless.

Here, as in Hobbes, in Hume's system there is a negative place for God as the opaque unknowable basis of all principles, as the negative boundary of thinking. Even if there is a God, the mind cannot justify itself by referring to Him. Mind-reason also should not ask about the essence or presence of this absolute principle, just as it should not be interested in the question of the existence of the external world - not only because of the simple unknowability of the latter, but because the mind itself understands that this is not the root cause. , but a simulacrum: it is pointless to look for a black cat in a dark room if we never know if it is there.

Economic views

Hume pays special attention to the problems of economics (here his closeness to A Smith and, in general, to representatives of the Scottish school and the direction of the Physiocrats affected), devoting several short but extremely informative essays to them. Modern researchers distinguish three levels of analysis in them.

The first level is economic psychology (economic motivations, incentives to work). Here the analysis is a natural history of the "formation and development of trade." Hume singles out four motivations to work:

• desire to consume
• desire to act
• desire for diversity
• desire to benefit.

He, however, notes that a person is driven not only by the desire for pleasure, but also by many other "instincts" that prompt him to do actions for their own sake, that is, such actions that do not automatically lead to results that meet his interests ( compare with the doctrine of affects and morality).

The second level of Hume's economic analysis is his political economy, or analysis of market relations. In criticizing the economic doctrines of his time, Hume tried to show that their main flaw was that they did not pay enough attention to economic growth and the psychological and other factors associated with it.

Hume formulated his quantitative theory of cash flows (in an essay "On the balance of trade") in the course of criticizing the position of the mercantilists. According to Hume, without restrictions on foreign trade, money will flow out of the country. Hume's position was that, due to the effect of money flows on prices in trading countries, the amount of money in each of them automatically tends to an equilibrium in which exports are balanced by imports. First, Hume believed that any attempt to increase the amount of money in the country to a value greater than the equilibrium value by restricting trade is doomed to failure (provided that money circulates only within the country), since the money flow from abroad increases prices within the country relative to prices in other countries, thereby reducing exports and increasing imports, again causing an outflow of money from the country. Second, Hume argued that the extent to which the influx of money into a country affects prices depends on the size of its total product. Therefore, it is the level of economic development of a nation, or its productive capacity, determined by the size of the population and the degree of perseverance of people, that determines the amount of money that the country can attract and retain.

In an essay "About Percentage" Hume again opposed the mercantilists, who believed that the rate of interest was determined by the money supply. Based on the quantity theory, Hume argued that an increase in the supply of money only leads to an increase in all prices, which causes an increase in the demand for loans to finance spending, keeping the rate of interest unchanged. In fact, the rate of interest is determined by the supply of real capital. He considers the impact of economic growth on the class structure of society and, through it, on economic incentives. Economic development causes the growth of a class of merchants and people involved in production - by investing money in production, they reduce consumption costs. This is also because the pursuit of profit breeds the desire to accumulate wealth as a symbol of success in the economic game. Since the new industrial classes receive a large share of the growing national income, their desire to save leads to a marked increase in the supply of capital and lower interest rates.

Increasing the amount of money, Hume suggests in an essay "About money", (an increase in their absolute quantity as such) may not lead to an increase in prices, but to an increase in economic activity. By tracing the impact of an increased money supply on an economy, Hume gives a clear description of how the multiplier works. However, Hume notes that the stimulus effect, if caused by a short-term increase in the money supply, cannot be long-term, and a long-term increase in the money supply, stimulating economic growth and changing spending and saving, can increase the supply of capital and lower the rate of interest.

In an essay "About taxes" Hume discusses the point of view that increasing taxes increases the ability to pay them, since it also stimulates the industriousness of people. A similar position was usually held by the mercantilists; and it is known as the "poverty benefit" doctrine, which justified the imposition of excises on goods consumed by the poor. Hume's position on this issue is ambivalent. He noted, referring to historical examples, that natural restrictions, such as infertile soil, often stimulate industriousness, and wrote that artificial barriers in the form of taxes can have the same effect. This point of view follows from Hume's ideas about the importance of the need for interesting activities as a motivation for work. He emphasized that in order for an activity to be interesting, it must be complex and demanding. However, Hume did not accept the "goodness of poverty" doctrine, with its unconditional approval of high taxes on goods consumed by the poor, nor the position that any tax on the results of labor would inevitably reduce its supply.

The third - and last - level of Hume's economic teaching is his economic philosophy, which contains a positive assessment of a society based on commerce and industry. Given Hume's deep interest in moral issues as a philosopher, it is not surprising that one of the most important for him was the question of the moral aspects of commercial and industrial growth. His economic philosophy contains three of the above labor motives. - desire to consume, desire for interesting activities and diversity of life. Hume saw them as ultimate goals, which are the main components of individual happiness, because, by creating new opportunities for consumption and interesting economic activity, economic growth contributes to the achievement of all these goals.

aesthetic concept

Hume believed that aesthetic questions are questions about the feelings of the subject as such, and aesthetics should be reduced to the problem of the emotional attitude of art consumers to works of art. For Hume, the point is the subjectivity of taste in general.

The further path of his analysis forks. One line of reasoning leads to the proposition that aesthetic ideas are derived from impressions, or at least stand in a strictly ordered relationship with them. This correspondence, consonant with Hume's thesis that ideas are derived from impressions, is rejected by another line of reasoning: aesthetic representations are themselves impressions, namely impressions of reflection. Hume chooses a path close to the second line. Aesthetic emotion is generated by an aesthetic impression.

General problems of aesthetics

In the third book of the Treatise on Human Nature, Hume writes that beauty is a quality that depends on the relationship of people to things. He supplements this statement with an indication that this attitude depends on feelings of egoism and sympathy, that is, on such components of human nature that are directed beyond the limits of the narrowly subjective world outside, into the objective world. Starting from this conclusion, Hume argues as follows: human nature has the ability to vary, but only within the limits set by Nature, therefore human nature supposes certain boundaries for fluctuations in tastes. Moreover, it creates the basis for the development of such tastes, which are approximately the same for the majority of mankind. Hume does not agree with extreme relativism in tastes and further connects "good taste" with a deep understanding of things, with freedom from ignorant prejudices, with a sense of proportion and with the peculiarities of life in a given country. A common natural “standard” of taste can be brought up if human nature is understood correctly and without illusions. The beautiful approaches that which is experienced as useful.

Thus, Hume interprets the beautiful, first of all, as useful. The orientation of utility not only to narrowly individual benefits, but also to something more general and “beautiful” acquires an abstract character, after which the beautiful becomes an expression of the expedient in general. Hume moves further away from narrow utilitarianism in aesthetics due to his use of the principle of abstract altruism (“sympathy”; that is, what is useful to all people is “liked” by them and me). In Hume, a kind of reversal of concepts takes place: what “pleases” and causes pleasure, even as a result of a vague awareness of some of its expediency, becomes for our taste, he considers initially beautiful. Hume writes that aesthetic feeling is a special "cold" or "calm" (meaning - partly corrected by reason), passion associated with subtle experiences and reflections and a special feeling. The Scottish thinker makes an attempt to clarify his position, based on the fact that associative mechanisms in the field of emotions (as well as in the field of moral feeling) operate in their own natural way.

Concrete manifestations of aesthetic feeling

In his essays, which are devoted to the actual problems of literature and art, or to a large extent affect them, Hume not only touches on theoretical issues, but also acts as a practitioner who creates works of undoubted aesthetic significance, as a publicist. As a writer, a realistic feeling prevails in him, although in the essays "On the Norm of Taste" and "The Skeptic" provisions are preserved that do not change, but basically only clarify and supplement the corresponding ideas of the "Treatise". Hume raises the question of the objective laws of artistic creation and opposes "pure art", advocating the expulsion of falsehood and artificiality from literature and dramaturgy.

In an essay "On the refinement of taste and affect"(published in 1741) Hume spoke in the sense that art should delight the soul of a gentleman, arouse in it pleasant, tender and subtle experiences that are accessible to the elite, but not to the "crowd".

In an essay "About the norm of taste" Hume argues that the beautiful exists only in the mind, and builds a series of subjective, in his opinion, analogues, in which he places sweetness and bitterness, happiness and sorrow, good and evil, beautiful and ugly. “The search for the truly beautiful or the truly ugly is as fruitless as the pretensions to establish what is truly sweet and what is bitter. Depending on the state of our senses, the same thing can be both sweet and bitter, and it is rightly said in the proverb that there is no dispute about tastes. It is quite natural and even absolutely necessary to extend this axiom to both physical and spiritual taste.

The most interesting essay in this regard "On simplicity and sophistication of style". Naturalness, according to Hume, is not only connected with simplicity and truth in art, conditioning them and being conditioned by them, but can also be transformed, as into its own, into simplification, triviality, emptiness and primitivism, and sometimes even border on rudeness and vulgarity. Refinement not only serves as the embodiment of fine taste and contributes to its education, but also easily degenerates into pretentious embellishment, mannerism, ornateness. in the rules of moral conduct. His preference for naturalness, simplicity and "life-to-life truth" becomes his measure, and his aversion to false pomposity, empty originality and cheap pursuit of external effects. Unnaturalness disgusts Huma, he is convinced that it leads to the degradation of literature and art.

Essay "About tragedy" contains a number of observations on the emotional states of consumers of art, and here Hume skillfully applies his teaching on the interaction of affects and the mechanics of associative connections. The conjugation of aesthetics and ethics is clearly revealed: they are united by the theory of "sympathy" as empathy and sympathy, which absorbed Shaftesbury's considerations about the so-called natural affects, and Hutcheson's doctrine of "universal benevolence". In ethical terms, "sympathy" moderates the selfish impulses of people, tames the emotional unbridledness of individuals and corrects their tastes and addictions. Altruistic feelings connect the beautiful and the useful. The reason that the experience of the tragic elevates us and, moreover, in a special, properly aesthetic way, Hume sees in the fact that the main impact of tragedy does not come from the realization that we are faced with an illusion, deceit, but, on the contrary, from the enthusiasm of readers, listeners and viewers with a sense of empathy with what is happening in the imagination and representation. People forget that before them is an illusion, and take everything that happens seriously. Then empathy develops into sympathy, solidarity and an ardent interest in the fate of the heroes acting on the stage. The familiarization of the listener and the viewer with what seems to him the truth, his getting used to what seems to him the flesh and blood of life itself - all this instills in him the same states that the authors attribute to the heroes of their works. True, these are not yet aesthetic experiences in themselves, since the imitation of reality is pleasant if it reaches a high degree of persuasiveness. This is still more epistemological than aesthetic satisfaction. But getting used to the states and feelings of the characters, which is possible only under the condition of a highly talented reproduction of life, the reader or viewer begins to worry about their fate, identifying himself with them. There is an association of their images with a sense of our personal "I", "difficulties give rise to an emotion that kindles the dominant feeling in us (affection) ... a pleasant feeling of attachment is enhanced by a feeling of anxiety." This pleasant feeling can easily turn into an unpleasant and painful one, if the feeling of anxiety and anxiety reaches the level of indignation, horror and despair. A secondary feeling, intensifying, strengthens, according to the law of association, the feeling that was associated with it, but if it grows beyond all measure, then it absorbs the latter. The feeling of great anxiety for the fate of the heroes can itself become pleasant, but only if it is not excessive and if it is accompanied by eloquence and the taste of an artist. Hume writes that the novelty and freshness of the impression stem from the originality of the idea. Imitation of the ordinary and the image of the new turn out to be the poles of opposition. These components of artistic skill outlined by Hume act according to associative schemes: the more often they occur, the more actively they translate unpleasant affects into their opposite, that is, into affects that pleasantly excite and elevate a person. In the last lines of the essay "On Tragedy" - sharp critical remarks Hume at the address of religious art. He accuses it of having a corrupting, relaxing effect on the human spirit and spreading a sense of "passive suffering".

Of great interest are Hume's essays entitled "How to write an essay", "On the Origin and Development of the Arts and Sciences" and "On Perfection in the Arts". Hume saw a threat to society not in the dissemination of knowledge, but in the rooting of ignorance and obscurantism inherited from the Middle Ages. In this respect, he was in complete agreement with the most active educators of his time. In the essay "On How to Write Essays" (1742), Hume continues the tradition of the greatest essayists of the past and argues that the works of this genre solve the problems of education and cultural development of society. He proclaims cooperation between scientists and philosophers, on the one hand, and writers and publicists, on the other, against "common [for them] enemies, enemies of reason and beauty." Hume declares the strengthening of this community to be his duty and mission.

The essay "On Improvement in the Arts" is a panegyric of industry and trade as powerful stimuli for the development of culture. Hume connects the rise and perfection of the arts with progress in crafts and with the growth of industrial enterprise. He draws attention to the fact that in many European languages ​​the word "art" (art) also means "skill" in any, and especially creative, activity. Hume draws the reader's attention to the interaction of economic and political phenomena with cultural-historical ones, thereby removing his former and repeatedly expressed thesis about the randomness of the periods of rise and fall of arts and literature in the life of peoples. These thoughts and considerations of Hume aroused the warm approval of K. Helvetius.

If in an essay "About eloquence" Hume primarily recognized the dependence of only oratory and journalism on the degree and nature of the development of political life in the country, and otherwise did not rebel against the opinion that there was something inexplicable, unexpected and accidental in the development of the arts, then in his work “On Improvement in the Arts” he comes to the conclusion that their destinies cannot be understood apart from a thoughtful study of their deep connections with other aspects of the history of peoples.

Criticism of religion

Hume devoted several works to religious views and beliefs, the most significant of which is the Dialogues on Natural Religion. The Dialogues were published after Hume's death in 1779, and he worked on them for many years until his death. In 1781 Hamann translated the Dialogues into German, according to some reports, they were used by Kant in his work on the Prolegomena. The “Dialogues” are conversations between an orthodox Christian (Demeus), a deist (Cleant) and a skeptic (Philo), and the balance of power between them is constantly changing - first Philo acts in alliance with Demeus, then against Demeus with Cleon, etc.

"Dialogues" show the groundlessness of the claims of religious consciousness to the leading, all-explaining role in both knowledge and moral issues. All men's ideas of divinity (if this idea is not innate, but, like all ideas, having experience as its source and foundation) are nothing but a combination of ideas which they acquire by contemplating the operations of their own minds. Therefore, the unconscious anthropomorphism of rational theology in the knowledge of supernatural objects inevitably turns out to be an illusion, just like the claims of natural philosophy to eternal truths in natural science. Religion is just another answer to the problem of ignorance than the mind prefers, but ignorance does not change from this fact. God is just as much a fiction of the mind (imagination) as is a necessary cause - a fiction in the sense that it is thought arbitrarily, ad hoc, outside of experience and subordinating experience to itself without any foundation.

Nevertheless, it should be noted that Hume's criticism of religion looks much softer than similar criticism of other representatives of the Enlightenment, for example, from the same Voltaire. Revealing the groundlessness of religion's claims to an absolute explanation of the world order and exposing it as a "human, too human" thing, Hume, nevertheless, constantly reminds that reason is also powerless in similar claims, that mind-reason-reason is also unable to answer questions about the sources of impressions, the necessary connection, etc. Religious fantasies in the epistemological plane are no worse and no better than the fantasies of the mind. Another thing is the role played by religion in human life apart from cognitive issues.

Religious feeling stems from the fear of death and the hope for the miraculous intervention of good forces. The touch of rational criticism on judgments about Creation casts doubt on them. Hume refers to these judgments with unconcealed irony and even (through his alter-ego Philo) makes a number of remarks to the Creator for the careless implementation of his “project”. For example, an almighty God could take care to remove the causes of evil.

Cleanthes remarks that the theistic principle "represents the only cosmogonic system that can be made clear and complete", but meets with the objection: does it not follow from the fact that nature is rational in its structure, only that the principle that first established and maintains order in the universe has some analogy with other actions of nature, including the structure of the human spirit, human thinking.

Hume, thus, rejects all attempts to prove the existence of God known at that time, including the so-called. "ontological argument". The Dialogues not only criticize, but also ridicule theists, pantheists and deists, that is, representatives of all the main "detachments" of the theological "army". But, having rejected the belief in miraculous, supernatural causelessness, Hume accepts (more precisely, admits) belief in some final cause or First Cause. Having rejected all variants of religious constructions, he does not exclude the possibility of religion without its specific conceptual and figurative constructions and theological dogmas. There are no grounds for believing in the existence of a personal God, in his opinion, but there are grounds for justifying belief in some supreme “Cause in general”. It is possible that "the causes of order in the universe probably have some remote analogy with the human mind." It turns out that the belief (belief) in objective causality, approved by Hume in the "Treatise on Human Nature" as a correct worldly position, is now used by him as a basis for the assumption of faith (faith) in "divine", more precisely, reasonable causality in the sense of the First Cause or fatalistic determinism, "natural" fate, Destiny.

Since there is an analogy between the Higher Mind and the human mind, doesn't this mean that the skeptical modesty (consciousness of one's own imperfection) of the latter is the most correct and human, in fact, way to the former? Religion must be patient and sympathetic to rationalistic criticism addressed to itself, and the rationalist-skeptic must remember that religious faith is a powerful cultural factor, that doubts about the truth of dogma are only “mind games” and should not play the role of inciting base passions and liberate energy of social disintegration and rebellion.

"History of England"

Hume highly valued historical knowledge, but did not agree with everything and did not always agree with the enlightenment-progressive view of history and its content. “The experience that the study of history brings,” wrote Hume in a short essay, “has also the advantage (besides its source being worldwide practice) that it acquaints us with human affairs without in the least concealing the most subtle manifestations of virtue. And, to tell the truth, I do not know of any other study or occupation that would be as flawless in this respect as history.

The reason for writing the History of England (with a general increase in interest in history and its problems in the context of the Enlightenment) was the election of Hume as a caretaker of the library of the Bar Society in Edinburgh in 1752. The library had extensive funds and a rich archive. Hume did not go too far into the mists of time and began his work with the chapters on the accession to the throne of the Stuart dynasty. At the same time, Hume proclaimed the freedom of the historian from any prejudices - national, political, pressure of authorities, opinions of the crowd, etc. History was initially considered secularized - there was no place for providentialism in his methodology even to explain inexplicable and miraculous facts and phenomena.

First came the history of the Stuarts (1754), then the history of the House of Tudors (1759), and finally (in 1762) the most ancient history, from Britain in the time of Julius Caesar.

Describing his position as a historian, Hume wrote: “I have the audacity to think that I do not belong to any party and do not follow any trend […] Both those who write and those who read history are interested in characters and events to a sufficient extent , in order to vividly experience feelings of praise and blame, and at the same time they have no personal interest in distorting their judgments. History is something in between in the depiction of morality and virtue, the "golden mean", between poetry (as a description and life of the struggle of passions, where there is nothing to do with the truth) and philosophy (as an abstract cold-conceptual speculation, in which living life itself disappears ). In the first case, virtue falls victim to selfish interests; in the second, the difference between vice and virtue can become so thin that even the most sophisticated ruler will not notice it.

However, this setting turned out to be not understood by the reading public - in an effort to give a picture of "objective reality" (as he understood it), Hume found himself under fire from criticism from a variety of positions.

I was greeted with cries of censure, anger and even hatred; English, Scots and Irish, Whigs and Tories, clerics and sectarians, free thinkers and saints, patriots and court flatterers - all united in their fury against a man who was not afraid to shed a tear of regret over the death of Charles I and the Earl of Strafford. When the first ardor of their anger cooled down, something even more deadly happened: the book was consigned to oblivion. Miller (publisher) informs me that within twelve months he sold only 45 copies. Indeed, I do not know whether in all three kingdoms there is at least one person, prominent in position or in scientific education, who would treat my book with tolerance.

D. Hume Autobiography

The methodological basis of Hume's work was G. Hallam's Constitutional History. From the everyday psychological meanings of human actions, Hume turns to the search for the meaning of events that took place in the history of England, looking for these meanings of people's actions in the formation of social structures, social institutions - that is, in fact, representing these institutions, institutions and structures as sign-symbolic formations. Experience here allows not only to draw certain conclusions, but also to complete the historical picture where there are gaps, for example, in Ancient History (which was often interpreted by critics as Hume's subjectivism). It should be noted that the second and subsequent volumes of the capital work were already met with great attention and understanding - including from the ruling Whig party.

The main thing was that both Tories and Whigs rejected Hume's concept of the emergence of revolutionary events: Hume saw their cause in selfish calculations and base passions of the clergy, both orthodox and sectarian. Hume strongly denounced the "dangerous ecstasy (enthusiasm)" of the revolutionary sectarian democrats, warning his readers that social projecting and rebellion often begin with the stirring up of religious passions. Hume was very hostile to the Levellers (equalizers), who, as he pointed out, emerged from among the rebellious sectarian poor.

Hume's intention is to promote, through his historical research, the convergence of the positions of various factions, strata, classes and express the unity of their interests, which is many times more important than dividing private disagreements. No wonder Hume most positively assessed, both in his history books and in essays, not the revolution of 1649, the period of open conflict and civil war, but its consequences, first of all, the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which marked the beginning of the modern bourgeois-democratic structure of Great Britain. .

This was consistent with the conclusion of Hume in the second volume of his "History ...": "The revolution caused a new era in the state organization and was associated with consequences that brought more benefits to the people than those that stemmed from the previous government ... And you can, without fear of falling into exaggeration , to say that from now on we have on our island, if not the best system of government, then at least the most complete system of freedom that has ever been known to people. Concerned about the strength of the alliance of the ruling class forces in Great Britain, Hume advises both parties of the ruling class "not to go too far" in their political struggle for autocracy.

Nevertheless, Hume managed on the pages of his "History ...", on the one hand, to preserve the individual nature of historical events and the people participating in them, on the other hand, more or less accurate adherence to the sources. Unlike representatives of the Enlightenment tradition, Hume did not believe that history is a linear progressive deployment of processes in space and time from antiquity to the present and did not evaluate events or historical figures according to these criteria. He saw his task in reconstructing the picture of the past in accordance with historical documents and other surviving sources. The activity of people unfolds under the influence of affects, people act within certain institutional frameworks. Even in the case of “non-transparency of affects” for an outside observer (namely, the experience of working on the first chapters prompted him to such a conclusion), there is always the opportunity to supplement the story-narrative about events and people of the past (story) with a story about state, legal, religious institutions. At the same time, his initial methodological orientation remained unchanged - the cognizing mind should rely only on experience (in this case, historical facts) and follow experience, but not try to direct this experience in one direction or another, imposing a picture of “how, in his opinion, should have been."

Analyzing the path of England to the brilliant eighteenth century - through civil war, revolutions and external wars - Hume became more and more convinced that the current state of Great Britain is the result of both certain regularities and many accidents. This ran counter to the Whig's model of a consistent build-up of civil rights in English society and the improvement of state institutions. Emphasizing the limited possibilities of the mind, Hume thereby pointed to the relative nature of his constructions and models, which may have either probable certainty or explicable power, but can never claim absolute truth.

Evaluation and fate of the philosophical heritage

C. A. Helvetius and Voltaire highly valued Hume's anti-religious criticism. They hoped that he would move from skepticism and agnosticism in matters of religion to atheism, and they encouraged him to take this radical step. In 1772, Voltaire wrote to D. Moore that he, Voltaire, was a "great admirer" of Hume. In a letter dated April 1, 1759, Helvetius, referring to his book On the Mind, turned to Hume with the words that his references to Hume in this book do him, the author of this book, a special honor. Helvetius offered Hume his services for translating all of his writings into French in exchange for Hume's translation into English of only one book, On the Mind.

In June 1763 Helvetius wrote to Hume the following:

“I have been informed that you have given up on the most wonderful enterprise in the world, writing a Church History. Just think about it! This subject is worthy of you just to the extent that you are worthy of it. And therefore, in the name of England, France, Germany and Italy, [in the name of] posterity, I implore you to write this history. Bear in mind that only you are capable of doing this, that many centuries must have passed before Mr. Hume was born, and that this is the very service that you must render to the universe of our day and future time.

P. A. Holbach called Hume the greatest philosopher of all ages and the best friend of mankind. D. Diderot and C. de Brosse wrote about their love for Hume and about his veneration. French materialists highly appreciated Hume's criticism of Christian morality and Hume's denial of the religious doctrine of the immortal soul. They fully endorsed and adopted Hume's argument against the orthodox church doctrine of miracles.

A. Smith adhered to the Humean line in characterizing the links between aesthetics and ethics. The first chapter of A. Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments (1753) begins as follows: happiness is necessary for him, although he gets nothing from this for himself, except the pleasure of seeing it. In the fifth part of the book, A. Smith discussed, in particular, how pleasure arises from mutual sympathy, how habits affect moral feelings, and selfishness interacts with “sympathy”. A. Smith developed the rationale for aesthetics on the principle of utility, as well as moral benefit.

I. Kant wrote that Hume was not understood by his contemporaries and was not basically accepted by his contemporary era. Indeed, Hume never met the level of controversy or discussion that he longed for and that he often openly provoked in his writings. However, in relation to his own work, Kant rated Hume's role extremely highly, calling Hume the one who awakened him "from the dogmatic sleep" of the pre-critical period. Indeed, after Hume and Kant, empiricism could no longer return to the heights that it occupied in the scientific and philosophical space of the 17th-18th centuries, Hume's criticism of dogmatism in one way or another had its effect.

In the context of the emergence of German classical philosophy, G. Hegel considered the ideas of Hume, who laid down many of the stereotypes of the perception of Hume and Humeism in the subsequent tradition. Hegel, in his general outline of history, placed Hume's teachings under the general heading "Transition Period" together with D. Berkeley, Stuart and other representatives of the English and French Enlightenment. Hume Hegel specifically singles out in the general series and especially emphasizes this, characterizing him as a total empiricist skeptic who denies everything in general. However, such a denial in Hume's teaching has an objective historical character - it brings empiricism to the end, forcing it to reveal the most inveterate problems of the theory of knowledge and reveal its own internal contradictions. The same applies to rationalism, which also got confused by the indicated time in the problem of the objectivity of knowledge and its sources. The replacement of God by transcendence, pre-established harmony, self-evidence did not and could not solve the problem of the foundation of either knowledge or cognition in general. Hume shows that no other fruit will ever grow on these grounds. Yes, knowledge is based on experience, however, experience does not provide answers to the colossal number of questions that confront a person. Yes, habit (instinct, as Hegel calls it) and faith provide an answer to the question, for example, about the course of future events or about the sources of common ideas. But isn't this the way not just to skepticism, but also to agnosticism? Reason has no grounds for affirming true knowledge, but habit cannot help it either. Such a way of reasoning - dead-end in its essence - contradicted not only Hegel's personal convictions, but also the spirit of his entire philosophical system. It is for this reason that Hegel views and evaluates Hume rather negatively (as an agnostic skeptic) than positively in the context of the achievements of philosophizing from Hume's positions.

Some of the problems posed by the Scottish thinker are still of interest to a large circle of researchers, for example, the so-called. "Hume's principle (Hume's guillotine, Hume's paradox)" in its broad interpretation. K. Popper believed that he managed to solve this problem by introducing the principle of falsification.

Hume's idea that a general belief in higher premises is a simple result of experience was adopted by D. S. Mill and G. Spencer. Also, Mill and Spencer extended to logic Hume's (in application only to the law of causality, metaphysics and morality) idea that the foundations of sciences cannot be justified from the content of ideas. Mill did not agree with Hume's attempt to justify belief based on association and tried to give an inductive justification for this belief. Spencer developed this teaching of Hume in his theory of evolution and evolutionary sociology.

Psychology after Hume, gradually expanding the meaning of association (James Mill), came to the doctrine of the possibility of explaining by association the unimaginability of the negation of a judgment, which for Hume remained a sign of speculative truth.

Hume's epistemology influenced not only the main directions of subsequent philosophy, but also the side ones. Thus, for example, Jacobi's doctrine of faith depends on Hume.

Hume's philosophy in terms of epistemology had a great influence on the representatives of the second positivism (empirio-criticism, Machism), especially Hume's ideas about the empirical subject, about perceptions as the ultimate reality for reason and reason, about causal and spatio-temporal necessity. The new followers of Hume attached particular importance to both the anti-dogmatic and ultimately antiskeptic character of his teaching. This attention on the part of the empirio-critics did not serve Hume the best: V. I. Ulyanov (V. Lenin), who criticized the philosophy of the empirio-critics, dealt a powerful critical blow to their authority, Hume. He devoted an entire chapter to the destruction of the latter's doctrine in a well-known work, reinforcing his arguments with references to the works of F. Engels.

“He [Engels] divides philosophers into ‘two big camps’: materialists and idealists. Engels sees the main difference between them in the fact that for materialists nature is primary, and spirit is secondary, while for idealists it is the other way around. Between those and others, Engels places the supporters of Hume and Kant, as denying the possibility of knowing the world, or at least its complete knowledge, calling them agnostics. In his "L. Feuerbach, "Engels applies this last term only to the supporters of Hume".

Lenin V. I. Materialism and empirio-criticism. instead of an introduction.

The same work subsequently gave rise to a whole tradition of negative evaluation of Humeism in the Soviet history of philosophy, directly accusing Hume of solipsism, fideism, phenomenalism and agnosticism and branding him as a typical representative of a “degenerate” bourgeois philosophy.

Hume's concept, including in the context of the formation of the agenda of German classical philosophy, was paid considerable attention in the early period of his work by the famous Russian philosopher of the first half of the 20th century. G. G. Shpet. According to the memoirs of A. Bely, Hume's skepticism became Shpet's hallmark in the philosophical discussions of the early 20th century. At the same time, Shpet, like Kant, persistently asserted that "Hume was not understood."

B. Russell stated that Hume's views in a certain sense are a dead end in the development of philosophy; when trying to deepen and improve them, "it is impossible to go further."

“Hume's philosophy, whether true or false, is the collapse of eighteenth-century rationalism. He, like Locke, begins with the intention of being sensationalistic and empirical, taking nothing for granted, but seeking any indication that can be gained from experience and observation. But, being smarter than Locke, more precise in analysis, and less inclined to agree with contradictory positions, which are sometimes reassuring, he came to the unfortunate conclusion that nothing can be known by experience and observation. There is no such thing as rational faith... In fact, in the last parts of the Treatise, Hume completely forgets his basic doubts and writes rather as any other enlightened moralist of his time could write; he applies to his doubts the remedy he recommends, namely "carelessness and inattention." In this sense, his skepticism is insincere, since he does not put it into practice ... The growth of alogism during the 19th and past years of the 20th century is a natural continuation of Hume's destruction of empiricism.

Russell B. HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY. YUM

R.J. paid special attention to the work of Hume the historian. Collingwood, who put forward the version that all Humean skepticism was only the threshold of the justification of historical knowledge as a special form of knowledge that did not fit into the Cartesian dogmatism that existed at that time. “one of the conquests of his philosophy,” writes Collingwood of Hume, “was the proof of the legitimacy and validity of history as a type of knowledge, in fact, even more validity than most other forms of knowledge, since it does not promise to give more than it can, and does not depend on from what dubious metaphysical hypotheses. However, he notes, Hume did not follow this path consistently enough, remaining in the depths of his soul a man of his enlightenment era.

One of the major representatives of poststructuralism and postmodernism, Gilles Deleuze, showed a serious interest in Hume's work. In a study specially dedicated to Hume, Deleuze addresses one of the key problems of postmodernism - the problem of constructing the figure of the author or the same subject from within the diversity of experience in the context of some initial natural order, similar to the pre-established harmony of G. Leibniz or the expediency of A. Bergson.

V. Porus noted that Hume's philosophy is not entirely in the context of the problems of its time, that is, the classical era (understood in this way, it can really be examples of skepticism, agnosticism and solipsism), partly it goes already into the non-classical era. The focus of Hume's attention is not knowledge and not even human nature, but culture as the basis of both. “This is a philosophy that differs from the classics of the 17th century, and therefore it can be called the beginning of a turn towards non-classical models of culture.”

There is a point of view that Hume's ideas in the sphere philosophy of law are only beginning to be fully realized in the 21st century.

Compositions

A complete edition of Hume's philosophical writings has been undertaken many times (in Edinburgh and London). Green and Grose specially published a collection of the most important philosophical works: "Essays and treatises on several subjects" (1875; first 1770); these include: "Essays moral, political", "An Inquiry conc. hum. underst.", "A dissert. on the passions", "An inquiry conc. prince of morals", "The natural history of religion". They also published especially "Treatise" together with "Dialogues" (1874) and "Inquiry conc. hum. underst." (1889). The last two works were also published by Selby Bigge, for the Clarendon Press with useful analytical indexes ("Treatise" - 1888, both "Inquiry" - 1894).

Until 1917 were translated into Russian: "Inquiry conc. hum. und." (translated by S. Tsereteli, 1902); "Science to the knowledge of luxury" (translated from French by Levchenkov, 1776); Polit. Disc." (in the book "D. Hume, Experiments", "Library of Economists", published by Soldatenkov, 1896); "Autobiography" (translated from French by Iv. Markov, 1781; reprinted in Soldatenkov's edition).

Collected works in Russian after 1917

• Works in two volumes. Volume 1. - M., 1965, 847 s (Philosophical Heritage, Vol. 9)
• Works in two volumes. Volume 2. - M., 1965, 927 s (Philosophical Heritage, Vol. 10).
• Works in 4 vols. - V.1-4. - M., 2000-2006.

Separate works.

• "A Treatise on Human Nature" (1739)
  • "An Abridged Statement of the Treatise on Human Nature"
    "Moral and political essays" (1741-1742)
    "On the norm of taste" (1739-1740)
    "On simplicity and sophistication of style"
    "On the refinement of taste and affect" (1741)
    "About tragedy"
    "On How to Write an Essay" (1742)
    "On the Origin and Development of the Arts and Sciences"
    "On Perfection in the Arts"
    "About eloquence"
    "About taxes"
    "About money"
    "About trade"
    "About Percentage"
    "On the Immortality of the Soul"
    "An Inquiry Concerning Human Knowledge" (1748)
    "Dialogues on Natural Religion" (1751)
    "On the Study of History"
    "Skeptic"
    "My Life" (Autobiography)
• "History of England" (History of England)

Title: Works in 2 volumes

M.: Thought, 1996

Pages: 735/800

Format: Djvu

Quality: excellent

Series: Philosophical heritage of TT. 125, 126

ISBN: 5-244-00764-5/ 5-244-0765-3

The philosophy of David Hume (1711 - 1776, Edinburgh, Scotland) is genealogically connected with classical English empiricism in the field of the theory of knowledge (epistemology), begun in modern times by F. Bacon and T. Hobbes and further developed by D. Locke, D. Berkeley and Hume himself . On the other hand, Hume is also interested in the problems of metaphysics, in particular the question of "causality" (causality between phenomena). Thus, his philosophy developed into a modern form of skepticism and entered the history of science under the name "agnosticism" - the denial of the possibility of objective knowledge of the subjects studied. Hume was also occupied with the problems of ethics, morality, history and politics, traditional for thinkers of the 18th century.
This two-volume book as a whole repeats the edition from 1965, published in the same series (the first volume is supplemented by one letter). It contains all the main works of the philosopher concerning the problems of the theory of knowledge, ontology and morality, as well as most of the famous Hume essays, essays on religion and the history of England.

Contents of the first volume

A. F. GRYAZNOV REASONABLE SKEPTICISM IN LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY

MY LIFE

A TREATMENT ON HUMAN NATURE, OR AN ATTEMPT TO APPLY THE METHOD OF REASONING BASED ON EXPERIENCE TO MORAL SUBJECTS (translated by S. I. Tsereteli)
Introduction

TREATMENT ON HUMAN NATURE BOOK ONE. ABOUT KNOWLEDGE
Part I. About ideas, their origin, composition, connections, abstraction, etc.
Chapter 1. On the origin of our ideas
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Part II. On the ideas of space and time
Chapter 1. Of the infinite divisibility of our ideas of space and time
Chapter 2. On the infinite divisibility of space and time
Chapter 3. Of Other Qualities of Our Ideas of Space and Time
Chapter 4. Answers to objections
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Part III. On knowledge and probability
Chapter 1. About knowledge
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Part IV. On Skeptical and Other Philosophical Systems
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7. Conclusion of this book
Application

TREATMENT ON HUMAN NATURE BOOK TWO. ABOUT AFFECTS
Part I. About pride and humiliation
Chapter 1
Chapter 2. About pride and humiliation. Their objects and causes
Chapter 3
Chapter 4. Of the relationship between impressions and ideas
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Part II. About love and hate
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5. About our respect for the rich and powerful [persons]
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Part III. On the Will and Direct Effects
Chapter 1. Of Freedom and Necessity
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10

TREATMENT ON HUMAN NATURE BOOK THREE. ABOUT MORALITY
Word to the reader
Part I. On Virtue and Vice in General
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Part II. About justice and injustice
Chapter 1. Is justice a natural or artificial virtue?
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Part III. About other virtues and vices
Chapter 1. Of the Origin of Natural Virtues and Vices
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6. Conclusion of this book

SUMMARY OF THE "TREATTE ON HUMAN NATURE" (translated by V. S. Shvyrev)

A LETTER FROM A GENTLEMEN TO HIS FRIEND IN EDINBURGH (translated by V. V. Vasiliev)

Notes
List of terms
Name index
Subject index

RESEARCH ON HUMAN KNOWLEDGE (translated by S. I. Tsereteli)

INTRODUCTORY NOTE
Chapter I. Of the Different Kinds of Philosophy
Chapter II. On the origin of ideas
Chapter III. About the Association of Ideas
Chapter IV. Skeptical doubts about the activities of the mind
Chapter V. The Skeptical Resolution of These Doubts
Chapter VI. About Probability
Chapter VII. On the idea of ​​necessary connection
Chapter VIII. On freedom and necessity
Chapter IX. On the mind of animals
Chapter X. Of Miracles
Chapter XI. About Providence and the Hereafter
Chapter XII. On academic or skeptical philosophy

A STUDY ON AFFECTS (translated by V. S. Shvyrev)
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI

RESEARCH ON THE PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY (translated by V. S. Shvyrev)
Chapter I. Of the general principles of morality
Chapter I. On benevolence
Chapter III. About justice
Chapter IV. About political society
Chapter V
Chapter VI. About the qualities that are useful to ourselves
Chapter VII. About qualities that are directly pleasing to ourselves
Chapter VIII. Of qualities immediately pleasing to others
Chapter IX. Conclusion
Appendix I. Of Moral Sense
Annex II. About selfishness
Annex III. Some Further Considerations
regarding justice
Annex IV. About some verbal disputes

NATURAL HISTORY OF RELIGION (translated by S. I. Tsereteli)
INTRODUCTION
Chapter I. Polytheism was the original religion of the people.
Chapter II. Origins of polytheism
Chapter III. Continuation of the previous
Chapter IV. The gods were not considered either creators or organizers of the world
Chapter V. Various Forms of Polytheism: Allegory, Cult of Heroes
Chapter VI. Origin of theism from polytheism
Chapter VII. Confirmation of the above doctrine
Chapter VIII. Ebb and flow of polytheism and theism
Chapter IX. Comparison of the above peoples in terms of their tolerance and intolerance
Chapter X
Chapter XI. About the same from the point of view of reasonableness or absurdity
Chapter XII. About the same from the point of view of doubt or conviction
Chapter XIII. Unholy conceptions of the divine nature in popular religions of both kinds
Chapter XIV. The Evil Influence of Folk Religions on Morality
Chapter XV. General conclusion

DIALOGUES ABOUT NATURAL RELIGION (translated by S. I. Tsereteli)
Pamphilus - Hermippou
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Part VII
Part VIII
Part IX
Part X
Part XI
Part XII

ESSAY
On the refinement of taste and affect (translated by F. F. Vermel)
On Freedom of the Press (translated by E. S. Lagutin)
That politics can become a science (translated by E. S. Lagutin)
On the initial principles of government (translated by E. S. Lagutin)
On the origin of government (translated by E. S. Lagutin)
About parties in general (translated by E. S. Lagutin)
About superstition and frenzy (translated by A. N. Chanyshev)
On the Dignity and Baseness of Human Nature (translated by E. S. Lagutin)
On Civil Liberty (translated by E. S. Lagutin)
On the emergence and development of the arts and sciences (translated by E. S. Lagutin)
The Epicurean (translated by A. N. Chanyshev)
Stoic (translated by A. N. Chanyshev)
Platonist (translated by A. N. Chanyshev)
Skeptic (translated by A. N. Chanyshev)
On polygamy and divorce (translated by E. S. Lagutin)
On National Characters (translated by E. S. Lagutin)
On the norm of taste (translated by F. F. Vermel)
On Trade (translated by M. O. Gershenzon)
On the original contract (translated by E. S. Lagutin)
The idea of ​​a perfect state (translated by E. S. Lagutin)
On the Immortality of the Soul (translated by S. M. Rogovin)
About suicide (translated by S. M. Rogovin)
On the study of history (translated by A. N. Chanyshev)

HISTORY OF ENGLAND (Extracts) (translated by A. N. Chanyshev)

FROM CORRESPONDENCE (translated by F. F. Vermel)

Notes
Name index
Subject index
Hume's works

Read the biography of the philosopher: briefly about life, basic ideas, teachings, philosophy
DAVID HUME
(1711-1776)

English historian, philosopher, economist. In the "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 unsolvable. He denied the objective nature of causality and the concept of substance. Developed the theory of association of ideas. Hume's doctrine is one of the sources of I. Kant's philosophy, positivism and neo-positivism.

David Hume was born in 1711 in Edinburgh, Scotland, the son of a poor nobleman who practiced law. Relatives of little David hoped that he would become a lawyer, but, while still a teenager, he told them that he had the deepest disgust for 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 the University of Edinburgh, he soon had to go to Bristol to try his hand at commerce. But in this field, he failed, and Hume's mother, who, after the death of her husband, took care of 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, most of which he spent at the Jesuit college of La Flèche, where Descartes had once studied. It is curious that both of these pupils of the Jesuits became the main exponents of the principle of doubt in the new philosophy. In France, Hume wrote a Treatise on Human Nature, which consisted of three books, which was then published in London in 1738-1740. The first book dealt with the theory of knowledge, the second dealt with the psychology of human affects, and the third dealt with the problems of moral theory.

Hume came to the main conclusions for his philosophy relatively early - at the age of 25. In general, all philosophical works proper, 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. There are almost no exact references to domestic authors in the treatise, for it was written away from the 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, had a very great influence on him. But Hume became a completely original philosopher.

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

Hume, having attached decisive importance to these sense organs in the cognition of reality, stopped in doubt before the question of the existence of reality, since he did not believe in their meaningful nature. "Our thought ... - wrote Hume - is limited by very narrow limits, and all the creative power of the mind is reduced only to the ability to connect, move, increase or decrease the material delivered 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, for they are obtained from experience. However, he not only opposes a priori assumptions, innate ideas, but also does not believe in the senses. In other words, Hume first reduces all knowledge about the world to experiential knowledge, and then psychologizes it, doubting the objectivity of the content of sensory impressions. In A Treatise on Human Nature, Hume writes that "the skeptic continues to reason and believe, although he claims that he cannot defend his reason with 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 ". among fanatics. But, differing from nature in a cheerful and ardent temperament, I very soon recovered from this blow and with great zeal continued my studies in the countryside.

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 not clearly connected with each other, and reading it required a certain mental effort. In addition, rumors spread that the author of these unreadable folios was an atheist. The latter circumstance subsequently prevented Hume more than once from obtaining a teaching position at the university - both in his native Edinburgh, where in 1744 he hoped in vain to take the chair 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 "Abbreviated Statement ...", but this publication did not arouse the interest of the reading public either. But Hume at that time established contacts with the most significant representatives of the Scottish spiritual culture. Of particular importance for the future were his correspondence with the moralist F. Hutcheson and 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 called "Moral and Political Essays (Essays)". It was a collection of reflections on a wide range of socio-political problems and finally brought Hume fame and success.

For Hume, the fame of a writer who knows how to analyze complex, but burning problems in an accessible form, has established itself. In total, during his life, he wrote 49 essays, which, in various combinations, went through nine editions during the life of their author. They also included essays on economic issues, and actually philosophical essays, including "On Suicide" and "On the Immortality of the Soul", and partly the moral and psychological experiments "Epicurean", "Stoic", "Platonist", "Skeptic". ".

In the mid-1740s, Hume, in order to improve his financial situation, first had to play the role of a companion with 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 in the military missions in Vienna and Turin.

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

The unrecognized philosopher returned to his homeland in Scotland. “For seven months now I have 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 moderate, I I can enjoy cleanliness, warmth and light, prosperity and pleasures. What else do you want? Independence? I have it in 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 vital need. Books? These 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 their librarian; this position did not bring me almost any income, but made it possible to use an extensive library. At this time I decided to write a History of England, but, not feeling in I had the courage to describe a historical period of 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 the parties most distorted the coverage of historical facts. I confess, I was almost sure of the success of this work. It seemed to me that I shall be the only historian who has scorned at the same time power, advantage, authority, and the voice of popular prejudice, and I expected applause in proportion to my efforts, but what a terrible disappointment, I was greeted with a cry of displeasure, indignation, almost hatred: the English, the Scots and the Irish, the Whigs and tories, churchmen and sectarians, freethinkers and hypocrites, patriots and courtiers - all they were in a fit of rage against a man who dared generously mourn the fate of Charles I and the Earl of Strafford; and, what is 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 on the history of the House of Stuart in the 17th century, and, in full accordance with his ethics, he could not completely take one side. Sympathizing with Parliament, he also disapproved of the brutal massacre of Lord Strafford and Charles I in the 1640s. Hume regards history as a kind of applied psychology, explaining events by the interweaving of individual characters, will and feelings, and, in his opinion, the stability of the course of events gives habit. The very emergence of the state is the result of the strengthening of the institution of military leaders, to whom the people "get used" to obey.

Hume's psychological approach was unusual for eighteenth-century English historiography, 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 tried to get rid of the 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 1757 Natural History of Religion. There he proceeds from the fact that "the mother of piety is ignorance", and ends up saying that "a people without religion, if there is such, is only a little higher than animals." Religious "truths" can never be known, they can only be believed in, but they arise with psychological necessity from the need of the senses. In England, by then a largely Protestant country, Hume's objective approach to the role of Catholics in the events of the 17th century aroused suspicion.

Hume listed by name all the major figures of the Catholic and royalist side, not missing their merits, as well as their sins. This was contrary to what was accepted in Whig historiography, which portrayed the opponents as a solid, rigid and mostly nameless mass. In total, Hume wrote six volumes, two of which were reprinted by him. Already the second volume of the "History of England" (1756) met with a more favorable reception, and when its subsequent volumes appeared, the publication found quite a few readers, including those on the continent. The circulation of all books sold out completely, this work was reprinted in France.

Hume wrote "I became not only a wealthy, but also a rich man. I returned to my homeland, to Scotland, with the firm intention of never leaving it again and the pleasant consciousness that I had never resorted to the help of the powerful of this world 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 settled in Edinburgh, turning his house into a kind of philosophical and literary salon. If at an earlier stage of his activity he emphasized in every possible way the role of freedom as the highest and absolute value, now in the essays he publishes on history, morality, art (Hume is one of the founders of the genre of free essay in English literature), the thought of a greater significance legality compared even with freedom and that it is better to go for the restriction of freedom than to deviate from the established order.

Thus, Hume's writings provided a platform for the national reconciliation of 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 outside of England at the time. However, with the accession to the English throne in 1760, George III, 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 in the diplomatic service in the French capital, and in the last months he acted as British chargé d'affaires.

In Paris, Hume was rewarded a hundredfold for his past literary failures - he was surrounded by general attention and even admiration, and the philosopher even thought about staying here forever later, from which Adam Smith dissuaded him. 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 writings, and this favor is not surprising later, during the years of the French restoration, it will manifest itself again.

Louis Bonald ardently 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 doctrine, as deism (the doctrine of God who created the world and does not interfere further in its affairs) or even atheism. Holbach called Hume the greatest philosopher of all ages and the best friend of mankind. Diderot and de Brosse wrote about their love for Hume and about his veneration. Helvetius and Voltaire extolled Hume, attributing to him in advance more merit than he really had, they hoped that he would pass from skepticism and agnosticism in matters of religion to atheism, and encouraged him to this radical step.

The most friendly relations were established between Hume and J. J. Rousseau, and Hume, returning to England, invited him to visit. However, upon arrival in London and then at Hume's estate (1766), Rousseau could not come to terms with stiff British customs, began to suspect Hume of arrogance, of neglect of his writings, and then (and this was already 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 the desire to keep him against his will in England as a prisoner.

Hume, who was impressed by Rousseau's free-thinking, was now frightened by the harshness of his rejection of civilization, science, even art, his willingness to replace the monarchy (so convenient, from Hume's point of view, for achieving an inter-estate compromise) with a republic in the spirit of the later Jacobin. Hume never became a materialist. In a letter to E. Millyar, his publisher, the philosopher admitted that he prefers 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' On the 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 ideologue J. J. Rousseau, the history of their relationship is extremely characteristic of former friends turned into enemies. In 1766, on his return 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 relations with British diplomats, which helped him to achieve such a high position.

In 1769, Hume retires and returns to his hometown. Now he was finally able to realize his old dream - to gather around him a group of talented philosophers, writers and art connoisseurs, lovers of the natural sciences. Hume became the secretary of the Philosophical Society established in Edinburgh and engaged in educational activities. The men of science and art who rallied around Hume during these years were the glory of Scotland. This circle included the professor of moral philosophy Adam Ferguson, the economist Adam Smith, the anatomist Alexander Monroe, the surgeon William Cullen, the chemist Joseph Black, the professor of rhetoric and literature Huge Blair, and some other well-known cultural figures of those times, including on the continent.

The cultural flourishing of Edinburgh in the second half of the 18th century owed much to the activities of this circle of eminent scientists, which served as the basis for the creation in 1783 by Adam Smith and the historian William of the Royal Society in Scotland.

In the early 1870s, Hume repeatedly returned to work on his last major work, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, the first draft of which dates back to 1751. The forerunner of these "dialogues" was, apparently, published by Hume anonymously in 1745, a pamphlet on questions of religion. This pamphlet has not yet been found Hume did not dare to publish the Dialogues during his lifetime, not without reason fearing persecution from church circles. Moreover, these persecutions were already making themselves felt: beginning in 1770, James Beatty, a professor at Aberdeen, published five times an anti-Humian pamphlet, An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth: Against Sophistry and Skepticism.

In the spring of 1775, Hume showed signs of a serious liver disease (which eventually brought him to the grave). 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 shied away from fulfilling his will, for they feared trouble for themselves.

Hume died in August 1776 at the age of 65. Adam Smith, a few days before the philosopher's death, promised to publish his Autobiography, adding to it a report on 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, ironically over tales of afterlife rewards and joked about the naivete of his own hopes for the imminent disappearance of religious prejudices among the people.

* * *
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Basically, our site is dedicated to the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (his thoughts, ideas, works and life), but in philosophy everything is connected, therefore, it is difficult to understand one philosopher without reading all the others at all.
The origins of philosophical thought must be sought in antiquity...
The philosophy of modern times arose through a break with scholasticism. The symbols of this break are Bacon and Descartes. The rulers of the thoughts of the new era - Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, Hume ...
In the 18th century, an ideological, as well as a philosophical and scientific direction appeared - "Enlightenment". Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot and other prominent enlighteners advocated a social contract between the people and the state in order to ensure the right to security, freedom, prosperity and happiness ... Representatives of the German classics - Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Feuerbach - for the first time realize that man does not live in the world of nature, but in the world of culture. The 19th century is the century of philosophers and revolutionaries. Thinkers appeared who not only explained the world, but also wished to change it. For example, Marx. In the same century, European irrationalists appeared - Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Bergson ... Schopenhauer and Nietzsche are the founders of nihilism, the philosophy of negation, which had many followers and successors. Finally, in the 20th century, among all the currents of world thought, one can distinguish existentialism - Heidegger, Jaspers, Sartre ... The starting point of existentialism is the philosophy of Kierkegaard ...
Russian philosophy, according to Berdyaev, begins with the philosophical letters of Chaadaev. The first representative of Russian philosophy known in the West, Vl. Solovyov. The religious philosopher Lev Shestov was close to existentialism. The most revered Russian philosopher in the West is Nikolai Berdyaev.
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