David Hume

"Hume's account of justice is part of a larger account of the moral and political virtues generally. Hume wrote as a philosophical anthropologist, not as a reformer, unlike Bentham and Mill who set out to reform our moral outlook rather than merely to explain it."

"In every page of David Hume, there is more to be learned than from Hegel's, Herbart's and Schleiermacher's complete philosophical works."

"Upon the whole, I have always considered him, both in his lifetime and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit."

"Today, at any leading American university, a Kant, with all his dithering about God, freedom, and immortality, or even a Hume, wouldn't survive a year in graduate school, much less get hired as an instructor."

"Hume noticed clearly the connection of these doctrines to freedom, and how the maximum freedom of all requires equal restraints on the freedom of each through what he called the three 'fundamental laws of nature': 'the stability of possession, of its transference by consent, and of the performance of promises' (1739/1886:11, 288, 293). [...] Hume may have been the first clearly to perceive that general freedom becomes possible by the natural moral instincts being `checked and restrained by a subsequent judgement' according to 'justice, or a regard to the property of others, fidelity, or the observance of promises [which have] become obligatory, and acquire[d] an authority over mankind' (1741, 1742/1886:111, 455). Hume did not make the error, later so common, of confusing two senses of freedom: that curious sense in which an isolated individual is supposed to be able to be free, and that in which many persons collaborating with one another can be free. Seen in the latter context of such collaboration, only abstract rules of property - i.e., the rules of law - guarantee freedom."

"Hume came close to an evolutionary interpretation, even perceiving that 'no form can persist unless it possesses those powers and organs necessary for its subsistence: some new order or economy must be tried and so on, without intermission; till at last some order which can support and maintain itself, is fallen upon'; and that man cannot 'pretend to an exemption from the lot of all living animals [because the] perpetual war among all living creatures' must go on (1779/1886:11, 429, 436). As has been well said, he practically recognised that 'there is a third category between natural and artificial which shares certain characteristics with both' (Haakonssen, 1981:24)."

"Humean skepticism should be well distinguished from Greek skepticism. Hume's assumes as basic the truth of the empirical, of feeling, of intuition, and from that base contests general determinations and laws—because they lack justification from sense perception. Ancient skepticism was so far from making feeling and intuition the principle of truth that, on the contrary, it turned first of all against the senses."

"Every one knows that judicious matter and charms of style have rendered Hume's history the manual of every student. I remember well the enthusiasm with which I devoured it when young, and the length of time, the research and reflection which were necessary to eradicate the poison it had instilled into my mind. It was unfortunate that he first took up the history of the Stuarts, became their apologist, and advocated all their enormities... [H]e still continues to be put into the hands of all our young people, and to infect them with the poison of his own principles of government. It is this book which has undermined the free principles of the English government, has persuaded readers of all classes that these were usurpations on the legitimate and salutary rights of the crown, and has spread universal toryism over the land."

"It has ever appeared to me, that the difference between the whig and the tory of England is, that the whig deduces his rights from the Anglo-Saxon source, and the tory from the Norman. And Hume, the great apostle of toryism, says, in so many words, note AA to chapter 42, that, in the reign of the Stuarts, “it was the people who encroached upon the sovereign, not the sovereign who attempted, as is pretended, to usurp upon the people.” This supposes the Norman usurpations to be rights in his successors. And again, C, 159, “the commons established a principle, which is noble in itself, and seems specious, but is belied by all history and experience, that the people are the origin of all just power.” And where else will this degenerate son of science, this traitor to his fellow men, find the origin of just powers, if not in the majority of the society? Will it be in the minority? Or in an individual of that minority?"

"Hume is a Tory by chance, as being a Scotchman; but not on a principle of duty, for he has no principle. If he is anything, he is a Hobbist."

"Ich gestehe frei: die Erinnerungen des David Hume war eben dasjenige, was mir vor vielen Jahren zuerst den dogmatischen Schlummer unterbrach, und meinen Untersuchungen im Felde der spekulativen Philosophie eine ganz andere Richtung gab."

"Aus jeder Seite von David Hume ist mehr zu lernen, als aus Hegels, Herbarts und Schleiermachers sämtlichen philosophischen Werken zusammengenommen."

"Sie sehen also, [Jean-Jacques Rousseau] ist eine Komposition aus Launen, Affektiertheit, Boshaftigkeit, Selbstgefälligkeit und Unruhe mit einer winzigen, wenn überhaupt vorhandenen Beimischung von Wahnsinn. [...] Die oben genannten, vorherrschenden Qualitäten zusammen mit Undankbarkeit, Grausamkeit und Lügerei, und der von mir nicht extra zuerwähnenden Redegewandtheit und Erfindungsgabe, formen die gesamte geistige Verfassung."

"Himmel und Hölle setzen zwei verschiedene Arten von Menschen voraus: gute und böse; aber der größte Teil der Menschen schwankt zwischen Laster und Tugend."

"Nirgends in der Welt sei dann Zufall, nirgends Unbestimmtheit, nirgends Freiheit. Wenn wir handeln, sind wir gleichzeitig der Gegenstand eines Handelns; der letzte Urheber aller unsrer Entschlüsse ist der Schöpfer der Welt,"

"Gewohnheit ist [...] der große Führer im Leben."

"die Natur ist immer mächtiger als das Denken."

"Die Vernunft ist nur ein Sklave der Affekte und soll es sein; sie darf niemals eine andere Funktion beanspruchen, als die, denselben zu dienen und zu gehorchen."