Hume

[poliphilo]

I don't possess a logical mind.

I know because I was trying to read Hume last night and I was slip-sliding all over the place like it was my first outing on the ice.

Ailz says Hume is easy.

Ailz has a logical mind.

The two essays we're studying for her course are the ones on The Immortality of the Soul and Suicide. As far as I can make out Hume is saying, in both of them, that human beings suffer from an inflated idea of their own importance. Also he gets in some sly digs at the clergy.

I enjoyed the sly digs.

Neither essay was published in Hume's lifetime. They were considered too inflammatory. Too dangerous to their author. When they finally saw the light of day (at the end of the 18th century) the editor surrounded them with dark matter of his own "intended as an antidote to the poison contained in these performances".

A little clear thinking and Authority throws a hissy fit.

Comments

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

Hume, Locke, Smith... I just can't get those Brits! Hand me some Voltaire or something; that's much more my style. I'm perhaps just continental to the core, in spite of the tweed and the accent?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm woefully ill-read in philosophy. I think I'm beginning to understand why.

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm not too keen on it either, really. I prefer literary criticism and other stuff that sort of borders on it but isn't philosophy as such.

Voltaire is a bit of an exception, perhaps because I got so keen on him when reading his short stories as a teenager that he seems somehow familiar...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've read Candide and that's all. I should read more.

I love that smile of his.