Tag: David Hume

David Hume

Ever wondered why is it that the Scottish moral philosopher David Hume (1711 – 1776) is usually portrayed wearing what appears to be a tea cozy? Puzzling and funny.

Seriously, though, he was one of the greatest stars of the Scottish Enlightenment. The wiki entry on him is worth a careful read. He was a close friend of another great Scot — Adam Smith (1723 – 1790), also a moral philosopher. Smith is widely recognized as the father of the discipline known as political economy (which we now call economics). His book An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) is a masterpiece. Read it when you have a few months of free time. Continue reading “David Hume”

Stop all the clocks

Heading west ©Atanu Dey

Philosophy and poetry are my passions. Philosophy exercises my capacity to reason, and reading poetry (can’t write any) provides me the words that describe my emotions.

But aren’t emotions and reason opposed to each other? Not according to David Hume. In his “Treatise of Human Nature” he argued that “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”

In modern parlance we’d say that reason is downstream of passions. Reason is the horse and the passions is the rider. Without passion, very little gets done. Continue reading “Stop all the clocks”

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