Once the reader gets past the language and time issues that have passed since Hume's lifetime, the ideas he presents become clear and make a great deal of sense.
Hume uses several main arguments and conclusions in his writing. The first two are the most important, as they seem to set the groundwork for the others. The first is that everyone has impression and ideas about things but that these must be examined closely because they are often false. This seems logical because many things that people do, when looked back on, are found to be not really the best or most logical choice after all.

The second thing that Hume points out is that there are two different kinds of reasoning. One deals with fact and the other with ideas. Facts deal with mathematically-based issues that can be proven, and the other deals with understandings that have been passed down.…...

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Works Cited

Ashley, D. & Orenstein, D.M. (2000). Sociological Theory: Classical Statements (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Bongie, L.L. (1998) David Hume - Prophet of the Counter-Revolution. Liberty Fund, Indianapolis,

Comte's, a. (1855). View of the Nature and Importance of the Positive Philosophy [Electronic version]. Retrieved October 24, 2002, at http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/faculty/hodgson/Courses/so11/frameworks/fpintro.html

Durkheim, E. (1997). The Division of Labor in Society. New York, NY: Free Press.

This psychological egalitarianism was how he differed from many of the economists of his day. He did not make a distinction between the different classes of men, but believed that all men look for happiness, which included action and pleasure.

Hume's historical viewpoint included the realization that changes in economic life resulting from the expansion of trade carried with them changed demands on the entire population, and in the case of the workers, these demands would be met only if there was enough motivation. Workers, like other men, would only assume their responsibilities if guaranteed adequate reward, which as with the middle class will produce increased desire. With an expectation of a better future, men would exert themselves.

In opposition to his colleagues, Hume argued that the lower classes were equals of all men and that the betterment of society was based upon satisfying of the needs of the poor. He stressed…...

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References

Beer, M. Early British Economics from the XIIIth to the Middle of the XVIIIth Century. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1938

Bricke, John. Hume, Motivation and Morality, Hume Studies (1988) 14: 1-24.

Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. London: Oxford University, 2007

____. The Philosophy of David Hume. New York: Modern Library, 1963.

Hume and Montesquieu
David Hume and aron de Montesquieu were two of the Enlightenment Era's most famed philosophers. These two men had remarkably innovative ideas regarding the subject of commerce, which were very similar in many ways, yet different in others.

Renowned philosopher David Hume's Political Discourses essays presented an argument against the mercantilist theory, which insisted on retaining money only in one's own country (Penelhaum, 1995). Hume's gold-flow theory argued that increased money in one country automatically circulates to other countries.

For example, according to Hume, if England receives an influx of new money, the new money will increase the prices of labor and domestic products in England. As a result, foreign country will offer cheaper products than England, which will then import these products, resulting in the circulation of money to other countries.

Hume asserted that the same thing occurs if a country loses money. If England loses money by purchasing imports…...

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Bibliography

Bankowski, Z. Revolutions in Law and Legal Thought (Enlightenment, Rights and Revolution Series). Aberdeen, 1991.

Penelhum, Terence. David Hume: An Introduction to His Philosophical System. Purdue University, 1995.

Shackleton, Robert. Montesquieu. Oxford University Press, 1985.

David Hume's Concept Of Reason And Passion
e live in an age that places great primacy on reason. ith the evolution of scientific and technological knowledge, most people in estern societies believe that the faculties of reason should determine and motivate people's actions. More than two hundred years ago, however, British philosopher David Hume posited that reason cannot be the major determinant of moral action. Instead, reason should only play a secondary role to another primary human faculty -- passion.

This paper argues the continuing relevance of Hume's thesis, that despite the current level of scientific knowledge, passion remains the strongest determinant of ethical and moral action. The first part of this paper evaluates Hume's conception of reason as an ability to calculate and to discern causation. The next part of the paper then looks at Hume's definition and categories of conception. In the final section, the paper compares Hume's writings on…...

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Works Cited

Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. David Norton and Mary J. Norton, eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Hume, David. "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding." Edwin Burtt, ed. The English Philosophers from Bacon to Mill. New York: The Modern Library, 1967.

Norton, David Fate, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Hume. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Quinton, Anthony. Hume. New York: Routledge, 1999.

The dictionary defines morality as "1. standards of conduct that are accepted as right or proper; 2. The rightness or wrongness of something as judged by accepted moral standards; 3. A lesson in moral behavior." (Encarta, 1999) All three of those definitions have a strong element of the larger society in them.

Public discussions of moral behavior also emphasize the social nature of judging behavior. In Great ritain, Tony lair gave a speech where he argued for a "new social morality" that included duties as well as rights ((Lloyd, 1996)). Such comments demonstrate the difficulty of establishing whose morality is the right one. lair is a politician, and it seems reasonable that he was motivated by his political ambitions at least as much as he was concerned about the moral development of individuals. ut in addition, most people probably already include their duties in what they consider moral behavior. For instance,…...

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Bibliography

Davenport, Manuel M. 2000. "The Mystery of Morality." Journal of Power and Ethics, April 1.

Encarta. World English Dictionary. 1999.

Garrett, Don. 2001. "Mind and Morality: An examination of Hume's Moral Psychology (Review). The Philosophical Review, January 1.

Hume, David. "An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals." 1751.

"that the author of nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man; though possessed of much larger faculties, proportioned to the grandeur of the work, which he has executed," indicating that there is existence of Deity who has similarity to man but us more apportioned to the deeds and the works of His hands.
7. How is anthropomorphism used in relation to the argument?

Anthropomorphism is used in relation to this argument to compare human form and characteristics to God's. For example in the passage Damea imagines that the spirit of God has human ideas or bears resemblance to our spirit hence the Anthropomorphism.

8. How is analogy used in relation to the argument?

Analogy is used to compare human beings with God where in the passage Philo says that we ought not to imagine that the perfection of God and that of man can be compared. This is evident in the…...

Hume
UFOs and Resurrections: Why there can be no evidence for miracles, according to Hume

If an object falls from a tree and then suddenly starts to rise back up, there must be a natural explanation. For example, the object must be a bird or other animal that can fly, or a sudden gust of wind might have carried the object back up. In any case, a law of nature was not violated and the event was not a miracle. For extreme cases, such as the supposed resurrection of the dead claimed in the Christian Bible, philosopher David Hume states there can be absolutely no evidence. This is because of four specific reasons. First, "there is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good-sense, education, and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves." In other words, there…...

Accidental possessions are those that an entity can achieve and fail, yet he exists. If a set of required possessions is mutual by various individuals than the set of possessions represents the essence of a natural sorts. The point of Aristotelian science is to find out the continuations of the natural kinds. Kinds can then be prearranged with hierarchically within a classificatory arrangement of genus and types. When we make out ideas of modes the mind is again functioning but the prime example is in our mind. Modes provide us the ideas of mathematics of ethics, religion and politics, certainly of human gatherings in general. As these modal ideas are not only created by us but performed as principle wise that things in the universe either fit or do not fit. Therefore it belongs or do not belongs to that types, ideas of modes are obvious and different, sufficient…...

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Bibliography

Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. London: George Routledge and Sons, 1894.

Hume, David. A Treatise on Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects; and, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. London: Longmans Green, 1882.

Art Philosophy
Tragedy in Art

The newspapers are forever mentioning the word, 'tragedy'. It usually means that there has been a death or deaths associated with a catastrophic event. Surprisingly, this is in keeping with the use of tragedy as described by Aristotle: that it should evoke the emotions of pity and fear in the presence of an action of a certain magnitude. Pablo Picasso's 1937 mural, Guernica: Testimony of ar, is the epitome of tragedy in art as described by David Hume in his essay, Of Tragedy.

Hume expresses the belief that tragedy may be seen within art through the experience of passion, spirit, uneasiness and a certain pleasure brought about by an understanding of the symbolic aesthetic. He states, "The whole art of the poet is employed in rousing and supporting the compassion and indignation, the anxiety and resentment of his audience. They are pleased in proportion as they are afflicted,…...

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Works Cited

Hume, David. "On Tragedy." At  http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/humed/tragedy.htm 

Martin, Russell. "Cities under siege: Guernica remains one of the most potent depictions of the true horror of war." New Statesman, (2003),: Jan, 38-39.

Picasso, Pablo. Guernica: Testimony of War. At  http://www.pbs.org/treasuresoftheworld/a_nav/guernica_nav/main_guerfrm.html

" As such, Philo represents the ideology that God should remain important within the religious sphere, and that it is perfectly ok for people to love and admire Him from a religious standpoint. Yet, science is based on collecting evidence from actual observations. Because we cannot directly observe God, there is no room for Him in the genre of science. We cannot observe His behavior or record what he looks like in any sort of detail. Neither can we ask Him fundamental questions about the nature of our existence in order to help us on our quest to understand why we are here. He simply won't answer. Due to that, there is no way to rely on Him for anyone to base any sort of scientific or empirical assumptions of God's word or teachings as seen from the Bible, which was written by a mere human being.
Philo does not reject…...

Parenting is a challenging occupation. Indeed, how a parent raises his or her child is the cumulative result of the mental and emotional character of the parent, the background of the parent, the financial circumstances of the parent, how the parent was raised as a child, and also the emotional character of the child or the actions of the child. Consider a situation where the parent indulges in corporal punishment. As an action agent, the parent firmly believes that this punishment is of a corrective nature, meant to discipline the child. For the child receiving this punishment, certainly it is momentarily painful. The child might resent the punishment; alternatively, the child might recognize that the punishment is in response to instances of mischief.
The spectator might as the moral purveyor of this scenario might see this as a virtue or a vice. The spectator might believe that the corporal punishment…...

Descartes systematic approach to establishing an understanding of that which is rationally true inherently called on him to reject all assumed notions of what was true. This 'atheist' thought which he rejected would be characterized by its unfounded but universally accepted nature. By casting doubt and applying testing methods to assumed facts, Descartes sought to provide a living framework entirely governed by empiricism. Such a doctrine inclined Descartes to conclude that man could not accept himself to be capable of distinguishing between his experiences as he dreams and those which he has while awake. Descartes' assessment is derived from his own framework for the resolution of knowledge and, within the parameters that he had designed, is a functionally acceptable one. Indeed, he establishes meaningful similarities between our experiences in both realms.
Indeed, Descartes' view on dreams stems from his umbrella system of epistemology, which is instructed by the pursuit of…...

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Works Cited;

Hume, D. (1910). An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Harvard Classics, 37: P.F. Collier & Son.

Newman, L. (1999). Descartes' Epistemology. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Hume and the Lack of a Causal Link Between Our Known Experiences and the Existence of a Supreme Being
The "here and now": That is what concerns David Hume. There is simply no value in discussing such amorphous intangibles as one can infer from "the course of nature." More precisely, humans -- of them, philosophers -- cannot and should not be enticed to "regulate" their "conduct" by parameters such as the afterlife or God. Hume grounds his thinking in causality -- specifically the lack of causal link between "the experienced train of events" and the existence of a perfect being.

To understand Hume's view that contemplations of God are "uncertain and useless," one has to begin with Hume's philosophical methods. Hume is an empiricist philosopher. Hume works to bring the rigors of scientific methodology to the otherwise more fluid process of philosophical reasoning. The critical lynchpin here is Hume's distinction between matters…...

David Hume, in the fifth section of his work entitled, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, dismisses the concept that reasoning is the foundation upon which conclusions are necessarily drawn. As an empiricist, Hume believed that it was essential that individuals obtain knowledge based upon their own experience and observations. He classified knowledge into two types: the relations between ideas and matters of fact. In Hume's mind, mathematics is the classic example of a relations of ideas type knowledge. This is the only form of reasoning that has complete certainty. He considered such knowledge as being a priori while the other style of knowledge, matter of facts, was a posteriori. Relations of ideas are true by definition or logic while matters of fact must be learned and tested by one's senses.
The essence of matter of fact knowledge is the process of observation and employing induction and probability. Acquiring this knowledge is…...

Hume's Argument Against Induction
According to the empiricist English philosopher David Hume, inductive logic is inherently invalid. Hume took an extremely radical view of empiricism, the point of philosophical view that immediate, perceptual experience alone should validate inquiry into the nature of human existence and the nature of reality. Inductive logic is derived from assumptions and hypothesis about natural laws that govern the universe. Because every situation is different, Hume believed, every situation can and must be judged upon its own terms. One cannot assume because something happened in the past it will happen again in the future.

Induction depends upon a series of assumptions about something and generates the hypothesis that is event must always the case, based on a predictability of observations that validates a proposed hypothesis. Thus for Hume it was just as invalid as deductive logic, or making rationalist judgments based upon categorical assumptions. I might assume inductively…...

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Work Cited

Hume, David. Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, in Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals, edited by L.A. Selby-Bigge, 3rd edition revised by P.H. Nidditch, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.