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1 David Hume's Philosophy of Common Life 2 NOTES 1 David Hume’s Philosophy of Common Life 1 . Leo Strauss, “Social Science and Humanism,” in The Rebirth of Classical Rationalism , edited by Thomas L. Pangle (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 3–12. 2 . James Ceaser, Liberal Democracy and Political Science (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990); Thomas L. Pangle, Leo Strauss: An Introduction to His Thought and Intellectual Legacy (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), Chapter 4. 3 . See most recently Christopher Findlay, Hume’s Social Philosophy: Human Nature and Commercial Sociability in a Treatise on Human Nature (London: Continuum, 2007); Galen Strawson, The Secret Connexion: Causation, Realism, and David Hume , Revised Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 4 . Scott Yenor, “Between Rationalism and Postmodernism: David Hume’s Political Science of ‘Our Mixed Condition.’” Political Research Quarterly 55 (2002). 2 “Nothing but Sophistry and Illusion”: Metaphysical Speculation before Hume 1 . St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica , Q 84; Article 1, following Aristotle, characterizes Heraclitean position in the following manner: “It should be said in order to elucidate this question, that the early philoso- phers, who inquired into the natures of things, thought there was noth- ing in the world save bodies. And because they observed that all bodies are mobile, and considered them to be ever in a state of flux, they were of opinion that we can have no certain knowledge of the true nature of things. For what is in a continual state of flux, cannot be grasped with any degree of certitude, for it passes away ere the mind can form a judgment thereon: according to the saying of Heraclitus, that ‘it is not possible twice to touch a drop of water in a passing torrent.’” 212 NOTES 2 . They cannot explain how the matter got there in the first place or what is present when a thing is being generated or destroyed, for instance (1010a18 and 999b5–9). 3 . 987a29–b14. This characterization is borrowed from St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics (South Bend: Dumb Ox Books, 1995), 153. See also Summa Theologica , Q 84; Article 1. 4 . Aquinas, Summa Theologica , Q 84; Article 1 summarizes Aristotle’s objec- tion as follows: “It seems ridiculous, when we seek for knowledge of things which are to us manifest, to introduce other beings, which cannot be the substance of those others, since they differ from them essentially: so that granted that we have a knowledge of those separate substances, we cannot for that reason claim to form a judgment concerning these sensible things.” 5 . Aquinas, Summa Theologica , Q 84; Article 1 summarizes Aristotle’s objec- tion as follows: “Since those species are immaterial and immovable, knowledge of movement and matter would be excluded from science (which knowledge is proper to natural science), and likewise all demon- stration through moving and material causes.” 6 . Thucydides appears to be one taken with Heraclitean metaphysics, and this leads him to doubt the naturalness of justice and to assert the primacy of warfare ( stasis ) or motion in human affairs. The Heraclitean view of nature leads into the sophistic view that justice is the advantage of the stronger. 7 . “If this is not clear, it is not possible to define anything; for definition has to do with the general and with forms; so that as long as it is not evident what sort of parts are material and what sorts not, it is impossible to have a clear idea of anything” (103626–31). 8 . Recourse to imagination is part of Aristotle’s argument against Plato; no imagination would be needed if the intellect were simply to contem- plate the Ideas that exist apart from bodies. Consider St. Thomas, Summa Theologica , Q. 84; Article 6. 9 . One possible solution—the solution imputed to the Schoolmen by mod- ern thinkers—is the doctrine of innate ideas. Aristotle unequivocally rejects the idea that there might be innate ideas of forms already in the mind ( De Anima 430a1). Socrates claims that a science conversant with universals is derived from the memory and that teaching a person merely means awakening in her the remembrance of what she used to know suggests that he understood some variation on the theme that universals are innate. Consider Meno 82b–85c and Adam Smith, “The History of Ancient Logic and Metaphysics,” in Essays on Philosophical Subjects , edited by W. P. D. Wightman and J. C. Bryce (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1982), 124–5. 10 . Aquinas, Summa Theologica , Q. 85; Article 1; Reply to Objection 2: “The intellect . abstracts the species of a natural thing from the individual sensible matter, but not from the common sensible matter; for example, it abstracts the species of man from ‘this flesh and these bones,’ which do NOTES 213 not belong to the species as such, but to the individual (Metaph. vii, Did. vi, 10), and need not be considered in the species: whereas the species of man cannot be abstracted by the intellect form ‘flesh and bones.’” 11 . Smith, “Ancient Logic and Metaphysics,” in Essays on Philosophical Subjects (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1982) 126, believes that these “elusive” and “altogether incomprehensible” doctrines pass “easily enough, through the indolent imagination, accustomed to substitute words in the room of ideas” so long as they are “not much rested upon” or “particularly and distinctly explained.” This suggests that ancient metaphysics are, for Smith, if not for Hume, a species of common sense more than a philosophical construction. 12 . Frederick Copleston, Aquinas (Baltimore: Penguin, 1955), 81. 13 . Hume’s treatment of ancient philosophy makes no distinction between Aristotelean, scholastic and peripatetic philosophy. All branches of ancient philosophy, fundamentally resembling modern philosophy, in Hume’s presentation, begin with a skepticism of the senses, an imagina- tive attempt to overcome the skepticism by announcing dualistic philo- sophic doctrines, and continued wrangling over the proper interpretation of the system (T 221–4). 14 . “The opinions of the ancient philosophers, their fictions of substance and accident, and their reasonings concerning substantial forms and occult qualities, are like the spectres in the dark, and are deriv’d from prin- ciples, which, however common, are neither universal nor unavoidable in human nature” (T 226). 15 . Locke typifies modern philosophy as Hume understands it, though I make reference to other modern thinkers in the text and in footnotes. Locke, following Hobbes, Descartes and Bacon, presents the modern system with sufficient clarity for my purposes. He also begins to come to grips with the contradictions in the modern system that prompted Hume’s re-evaluation of it. 16 . Consider also Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan , edited by Richard Tuck (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991) 461 (Chapter 46): “The naturall Philosophy of those [Greek] Schools, was rather a Dream than Science, and set forth in senselesse and insignificant Language; which cannot be avoided by those that teach Philosophy . I beleeve that scarce any thing can be more absurdly said in naturall Philosophy, that that which now is called Aristotles Metaphysiques.” 17 . Ren é Descartes, “Optics,” in Selected Philosophical Writings , translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 62 (Discourse 5). 18 . Consider Descartes’ promise to doubt even “our revered theology” in “Discourse on the Method” in Selected Philosophical Writings , 23 (Part 1); Hobbes’ account “Of Darkeness from Vain Philosophy, and Fabulous Traditions,” for instance, in Leviathan , 458ff. (Chapter 46); and Locke, ECHU 1.2.24 and 4.20.4. 19 . Ren é Descartes, “Principles of Philosophy,” in Selected Philosophical Writings , 187 (# 74) makes much the same point: “The thoughts of almost all people are more concerned with words than with things; and as a result 214 NOTES people very often give their assent to words they do not understand.” Cf. James Gibson, Locke’s Theory of Knowledge and Its Historical Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1917), 190, who believes that Locke simply “takes for granted the validity of the [scholastic] categories which were fundamental for the thought of his age, and their adequacy for the interpretation of reality.” 20 . Hobbes, Leviathan , 14 (Chapter 1). See also Descartes’ explanation of the five senses in “Principles of Philosophy,” 203–4 (# 191–5). 21 . Descartes makes precisely the same distinction in “Principles of Philosophy” (185–6; # 70–1) and he thinks, like Locke, that the chief error human beings make lies in assuming that imputing an existence outside the mind to sensed secondary qualities. Consider: “It is clear, then, that when we say that we perceive colours in objects, this is really just the same as saying that we perceive something in the objects whose nature we do not know, but which produces in us a certain very clear and vivid sensation which we call the sensation of colour . As long as we merely judge that there is in the objects (that is, in the things, whatever they may turn out to be, which are the source of our sensations) some- thing whose nature we do not know, then we avoid error . But it is quite different when we suppose that we perceive colours in objects. Of course, we do not really know what it is that we are calling a colour; and we cannot find any intelligible resemblance between the colour which we suppose to be in the objects and that which we experience in our sensa- tions . [The body is stimulated by] what we call the sensations of taste, smells, sounds, heat, cold, light, colours, and so on—sensations which do not represent anything located outside our thought.” 22 . In Of the Conduct of the Understanding , Locke argues that notions of the schoolmen signify nothing: “To one that can form no determined ideas of what they stand for, they signify nothing at all; and all that he thinks he knows about them is to him so much knowledge about nothing, and amounts at most but to a learned ignorance” (Para.
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