Hume's Philosophy about reason and Passion - Essay Example

Hume’s philosophy about Reason & Passion David Hume was a historian & philosopher in the mid of 18th century from Scotland. Born on May 7, 1711 & died on August 25, 1776, Hume was one of the most important philosophers of that time & is regarded with many great western philosophers of modern times. He was famous for his philosophical ideas about human empiricism & skepticism. He purposed the ideas of passion that they drive human beings rather than logical reasoning or thinking. Hence he was a contemporary of Rene Descartes, a French philosopher of 17th century, who argued that human mind is a thinking thing & it follows the logical reasoning about everything.

Hume was strongly opposed to this idea of presenting human minds & he tried to establish a new & natural science about psychology of human nature. In his famous publication “A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to introduce the experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects”, he argued that the real force which is responsible for all human activities is their desires or passions about something. Whenever anyone tends to pull towards something, it may be money or a loved one or anything else; he makes every possible chance to accomplish the goals.

Reason cannot be wholly or completely the driving force, it is a part of passion or in Hume’s own words, “a slave of passions”. . The knowledge which humans take by their experience helps them to decide what is right & what is wrong for them. In the lights of all these combined perceptions, anyone becomes able to find the right way towards success & achievements. He regarded passions as the treatment of free wills & emotions & that the moral ethics are based upon the feelings not upon the moral principles.

According to him humans do not bother any kind of rules when it comes to a peculiar situation, neither they follow the logical reasoning according to the circumstances, but they follow their instincts & senses & behave accordingly. Unless the passion is not build on any false concepts, like such thing which do not have any existence, for example fear from ghosts or such things which usually don’t come in our way; it is the thing which determines what to do & what not. Hence passion can never be unreasonable since every person has his/her own logics to justify his/her passion about anything or anyone (Hume. 1739). Many scholars of that time harshly condemned this idea of Hume.

They said that it is impossible not to have any kind of moral ethics or a set of rules described for the humans. In this way, any human being will do whatever he/she will want & the world will become a place where only desires are fulfilled at any cost. This also goes in the opposite way of religion since it addresses not to obey only passions but moral ethics & reasons determine one’s path to follow. They also claim the text to be very abstract & meaningless & as a combination of jumbled words.

However, many scholars & philosophers of today’s time also consider his treatise a modern work in philosophy & name him as