David Hume: Causation, Substance, Morality, and Society
Hume on Causation, Substance, and Morality
An idea will be true if it comes from an impression, but it can also be a fiction. Thus, knowledge is limited to our impressions and ideas. The cause-effect relation is based on experience. We can never find in it a necessary connection between the facts, but only that an event (cause) is regularly followed by another (effect). The necessary connection would imply that this relationship would always hold, but this cannot be guaranteed.
Hume applied his analysis of causality to the idea of substance. Regarding the corporeal world (extended substance), we have only impressions and therefore it cannot be demonstrated. As for the thinking substance, it cannot be demonstrated because we have no impression that corresponds to the idea of a permanent entity. Finally, neither the existence of God can be proven a priori, because substance is a matter of fact and any demonstration would be based on analogy with human works.
The result of this analysis seems to lead to skepticism: the three Cartesian substances (the world, the self, and God) cannot be known, so reality is reduced to tolerance. Since we are not certain of any knowledge, we must maintain freedom of action and thought. Hume believes that morality is rooted in the feelings, since it is governed by passions and has no choice but to obey them. An action is virtuous or vicious according to the impression of pleasure or displeasure it produces. This feeling — the ability to sympathize with the happiness or misery of others — is common to all humanity. Finally, for Hume, the most beneficial arrangement is to live in society so that no individual or government may place its interests above the general interest.
British Enlightenment and Constitutionalism
After the 1688 Revolution in England, and soon after throughout Great Britain, a path toward constitutionalism began that became a model for other countries. Parliamentary monarchy led to the development of legislation in which citizens’ rights and political, religious, and economic freedoms became progressively more settled. The British Enlightenment helped spread a message of tolerance and an ideology that permeated the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. It also confronted ecclesiastical power (Hume was unable to access a university chair because of opposition from the Scottish church), especially when compared with the political, religious, and aristocratic privileges contested by those who fought the French Enlightenment.
In the field of science, Newton was the model and inspiration of the Enlightenment, together with the empiricism of Locke. Both influences helped counter religious dogma and defend the primacy of civil society and reason. In the religious sphere, some thinkers were atheists, but the predominant view was deism. The Enlightenment maintained a broad concept of philosophy with a variety of topics — from reason to religion, society, and history — and in many cases it led to new social sciences (anthropology, economics, etc.). Knowledge was conceived by the Enlightenment as an instrument for human inquiry and action in the world, whereas metaphysics was analyzed from a critical perspective.
Hume’s Two Types of Knowledge
For Hume, there are two types of knowledge: relations of ideas and matters of fact. Relations of ideas express formal relations, independent of experience and necessary (for example, logic or mathematics). Matters of fact are synthetic and probable.
- Relations of ideas: Formal, necessary truths independent of sensory experience (e.g., mathematics, logic).
- Matters of fact: Contingent, synthetic claims based on experience and observed regularities.