Reading & the Good Life
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This week continues our exploration into the wisdom of the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume. This month's book is The Great Guide: What David Hume Can Teach Us Being Human and Living Well by Julian Baggini (a previous podcast guest).
Who is David Hume?
Generally regarded as one of the most important philosophers to write in English, David Hume (1711–1776) was also well known in his own time as a historian and essayist. A master stylist in any genre, his major philosophical works—A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–1740), the Enquiries concerning Human Understanding (1748), and Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), as well as his posthumously published Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779)—remain widely and deeply influential. […]
***Learn more: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/
Selected Passages
The following passages from The Great Guide by Julian Baggini will help guide our conversation (Register here). Here are a few reflection questions: (1) How would one embody these lessons in daily life? (2) What might make it challenging to implement these ideas? (3) How can the following insights help us to live the good life?
“Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions”? … Hume was certainly critical of the idea that morality could be grounded in pure reason. In an especially poetic passage in the essay “The Sceptic” he writes, “The reflections of philosophy are too subtile and distant to take place in common life, or eradicate any affection. The air is too fine to breathe in, where it is above the winds and clouds of the atmosphere.” Hume’s belief that all philosophy must be grounded in a proper understanding of human nature led him to the conclusion that any moral philosophy that doesn’t fully accommodate our emotions—or “passions” as they were then termed—is fundamentally unsound. […]
— Julian Baggini, The Great Guide (Ch. 5)
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