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108 reviews for:
Enquiries Concerning the Human Understanding: And Concerning the Principles of Morals
David Hume
3.78 AVERAGE
108 reviews for:
Enquiries Concerning the Human Understanding: And Concerning the Principles of Morals
David Hume
3.78 AVERAGE
challenging
reflective
This Kindle edition is from a 1902 printing (a 2nd edition) reprinted from the posthumous edition of 1777. It includes endnotes and an extensive index by LA Selby-Bigge, a late University College, Oxford fellow. Note that Hume is Scottish and wrote the book initially in English.
I have always been interested in philosophy and history and finally got around to reading this foundational work. The title describes what this book is about. Hume starts by briefly introducing philosophy and then jumps into the main questions. The biggie is where ideas come from. How do we understand things? What is instinct, inspiration? Interestingly, his answers to these questions still hold up well to modern thought.
Hume wrote this book at a time and place when Calvinism still held great sway, and people thought God was behind every thought and action. As a result, his ideas were radical, and I was interested to see how he delicately handled ideas that would offend many of his readers.
I highly recommend this seminal work to anyone interested in philosophy who enjoys stretching their minds. This book is something I will refer to often. I continue to enjoy the access my Kindle gives me to great classics like this.
I originally wrote this review on 9/30/2010.
I have always been interested in philosophy and history and finally got around to reading this foundational work. The title describes what this book is about. Hume starts by briefly introducing philosophy and then jumps into the main questions. The biggie is where ideas come from. How do we understand things? What is instinct, inspiration? Interestingly, his answers to these questions still hold up well to modern thought.
Hume wrote this book at a time and place when Calvinism still held great sway, and people thought God was behind every thought and action. As a result, his ideas were radical, and I was interested to see how he delicately handled ideas that would offend many of his readers.
I highly recommend this seminal work to anyone interested in philosophy who enjoys stretching their minds. This book is something I will refer to often. I continue to enjoy the access my Kindle gives me to great classics like this.
I originally wrote this review on 9/30/2010.
An exciting look into the theory of knowledge. This book has quite a few ideas to mull over that are relevant and brilliant. I especially enjoyed the bits about separation of property, habits, free will, and social virtues.
Intriguing, hard to get through but it was very enlightening.
It's a bit pointless to try to comment on this book, especially considering how much scholarship there is on Hume and how widely studied he still is by the intellectually curious and in Philosophy departments. He is an amazingly advanced thinker for the time, and is still important today, partly because although he doesn't seem to like Spinoza or any of the Rationalists, most of the basis for contemporary psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience is found in these two great philosophers' writing.
The problem of induction is forcefully and eloquently articulated here, and Hume's mostly convincing on everything he writes about. There are some odd things in this book you rarely hear about, and Hume's discussion of religion is nuanced in a way that doesn't seem to register with most, at least not in my intellectual circles.
The problem of induction is forcefully and eloquently articulated here, and Hume's mostly convincing on everything he writes about. There are some odd things in this book you rarely hear about, and Hume's discussion of religion is nuanced in a way that doesn't seem to register with most, at least not in my intellectual circles.
I never know what to rate these because technically it's a seminal work of philosophy. Hugely important to further generations of philosophers and one of Hume's best. But I personally was bored through a lot of it. Still though, best and easiest to read of the empiricists without a doubt. Go Hume!
(Read for my essay on Hume's Bundle Theory in relation to the possibility of Selfhood and stable identity development in contrast with Sartre's Being and Nothingness). Self-contradictory when speaking of "some universal law" which can only exist without fundament, in nothing but a non-physical "connexion of ideas". If the human mind is nothing but a non-physical collection of connected perceptions, then how does he speak of any Soul or Self at all? Where does the Soul exist if 'we' are or 'it' is merely part of the necessarily connected but instable bundle of ideas? Does the fundament for the Soul exist within an idea as well? Then how, if ideas are alike but instable, can we speak of 'the' (one) Soul?
Concluding: Hume raises questions.
Concluding: Hume raises questions.
Takes some effort to adjust to the language style of the 18th century but very thoughtful content.
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
A really good read! There were moments where Hume would repeat himself a tad too much and he might have had some faulty logic with some of his ideas, but he's definitely entertaining (in that nerdy philosopher sort of way). If I could do an entire paper on this book without struggling, I know he must have done something right.
challenging
reflective
slow-paced