Note that while this relative sense of justification saves many common beliefs, it does not extend to commonly held beliefs about God, ethics, the ability of human reason, or other central tenets of “dogmatic rationalists.”

We can, in this relative sense of “mitigated” scepticism, justifiably believe that when we open a door what we customarily expect to be there will be there, and when we drop something it will fall to the ground. We reason naturally and, in a sense, justifiably, on the basis of past experience even if it is, strictly speaking, irrational to do so. This analysis of how people reason and should reason on the basis of past experience plays a critical role in Hume’s argument against the possibility of ever justifiably believing in testimony to the miraculous. Though his essay “Of Miracles” did not appear in the Treatise, there is evidence that he conceived of his famous argument about miracles in La Flèche at the time he was writing the Treatise.8 “Of Miracles” is probably the most widely discussed essay ever in the philosophy of religion.

Hume’s central arguments will be faulty insofar as his arguments rest on his theory of impressions and ideas, his related empiricist theory of meaning, and even his quasi-mechanistic understanding of how the brain works, theories which are mistaken. However, even mistaken and invalid arguments may be insightful, reveal truths, and have correct conclusions. As with many other great philosophical and of course literary works, a reflection on the stature of the Treatise is that it cannot be measured simply on whether its arguments are correct. Unlike some of his other works, principally Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Hume’s Treatise is arguably mistaken in nearly all of its major contentions—and many of its minor ones—especially in book one which provides the metaphysical or empirical foundation for books two and three. These latter parts of the Treatise—especially on ethics—may be more successful or correct in their own right, even apart from connections with book one, but they have been no more influential. However, one of the most influential ideas from Hume that has actually lasted comes from book two, namely, the Humean theory of motivation, which is discussed in contemporary motivational psychology and to which many subscribe.

There are many ways to learn something about philosophy, and reading a history of philosophy is one of the least desirable. A history may give an account of some of the positions held and arguments for those positions, and with varying degrees of success it may even place philosophical positions in the context of an intellectual landscape. But it will generally not teach one how to philosophize, nor give one a feel for what it is that philosophers are doing when they set out to solve certain problems. Reading a central and pivotal text in philosophy, however, may provide one with a more hands-on, prescient, and engaging approach. Hume’s Treatise is such a text. There are a handful of other texts that can do this—Plato’s Republic, Descartes’ Meditations, and Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason among them. The latter however is a good deal less accessible than the Treatise, even given the difficulties one will find in trying to make it through the Treatise untutored. And Plato’s Republic, for all its greatness, is in some respects like its metaphysics and epistemology—far more dated than Hume’s Treatise. The Treatise can reward the reader with some understanding of many of the central problems in the history of philosophy. But remarkably it is also a bridge in that it addresses problems, some that Hume himself set, that continue to engage contemporary philosophers—issues in logic, metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, the philosophy of science and language, and perhaps most important, ethics.

In what has become an age dominated by extraordinary greed, hateful religious fundamentalisms of all persuasions, an array of insidious and deadly racial, sexual, nationalistic, and other prejudices, it is a pity that there seems to be no David Hume to help fight dogmatic irrationalism in what this time around would have to be a very different and more complicated sort of fight, in even more complicated times. The problem now has less to do with identifying and locating dogmatic irrationalism, often again in the guise of rationalism—it is, after all, everywhere. The problem is more with what to do about it. Incidentally, Hume’s own racist and sexist views, those that some commentators feel it incumbent to explain away, much as some commentators on Kant have sought to divorce him from his own racist and other prejudicial views, should not be ignored. Neither Hume nor Kant, one would think, would be racist were they alive now—though venturing how they would vote is more problematic. In 1775 Hume did however support those who favoured withdrawing British troops from America.

It is doubtful, were Hume alive today, that he would think that human beings have advanced morally one iota. And one may wonder if this stultification and even denigration and backsliding of humankind cannot be seen in some ways as supporting Hume’s account of human nature—humans as irrational, comfort-seeking creatures of custom and habit—much more and in ways quite different, not only than those who attempt to support it with contemporary science, but in ways that may even have surprised, may be even disappointed, Hume himself. Suppose what would happen if, for example, the sympathy and moral sentiment Hume thought natural and essential for well-being and a just society had evaporated.

 

Michael P. Levine is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Western Australia. Recent publications include Integrity and the Fragile Self (2003, co-authored); The Analytic Freud (ed); Racism in Mind (2004, co-editor), and articles on moral psychology, social and political philosophy, metaphysics, architecture and ethics, and film.

INTRODUCTION

NOTHING is more usual and more natural for those, who pretend to discover any thing new to the world in philosophy and the sciences, than to insinuate the praises of their own systems, by decrying all those, which have been advanced before them. And indeed were they content with lamenting that ignorance, which we still lie under in the most important questions, that can come before the tribunal of human reason, there are few, who have an acquaintance with the sciences, that would not readily agree with them. ’Tis easy for one of judgment and learning, to perceive the weak foundation even of those systems, which have obtained the greatest credit, and have carried their pretensions highest to accurate and profound reasoning. Principles taken upon trust, consequences lamely deduced from them, want of coherence in the parts, and of evidence in the whole, these are every where to be met with in the systems of the most eminent philosophers, and seem to have drawn disgrace upon philosophy itself.

Nor is there required such profound knowledge to discover the present imperfect condition of the sciences, but even the rabble without doors may judge from the noise and clamour, which they hear, that all goes not well within.