Show Notes
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Reason is not the master. It never was. Fall asleep to the complete philosophy of David Hume.
David Hume followed the evidence of the senses wherever it led, even when it overturned the deepest assumptions of Western thought. What he found shook the foundations of philosophy so thoroughly that Kant said Hume woke him from his dogmatic slumber.
This three-hour episode traces Hume’s life and ideas from Enlightenment Edinburgh through the ambitious Treatise he wrote as a young man in France. We explore his empiricist theory of knowledge, his denial of the self, his revolutionary analysis of causation, the is-ought problem, his moral philosophy of sentiment and sympathy, his critique of miracles and natural religion, and the problem of induction that still haunts philosophy and science today. Hume emerges not as a destroyer of knowledge but as one of the most honest and courageous thinkers in the Western tradition.
Please listen only in safe, restful contexts.
(0:00:00) The Young Philosopher and the City of Enlightenment (0:15:25) All Knowledge Begins with Experience (0:31:17) The Bundle and the Void, Hume’s Denial of the Self (0:47:12) Causation, The Habit That Runs the World (1:03:07) The Is-Ought Problem (1:18:17) Sentiment and Sympathy, Hume’s Moral Philosophy (1:34:33) Miracles, Religion, and the Limits of Faith (1:50:37) The Problem of Induction (2:04:39) Reason Is the Slave of the Passions (2:20:20) The Shadow That Reaches to Us
Suggested Reading: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Hackett Classics): https://amzn.to/4cGkVUZ A Treatise of Human Nature (Oxford): https://amzn.to/4um8V1e Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Oxford World’s Classics): https://amzn.to/4rm3M6G A.J. Ayer, Hume: A Very Short Introduction: https://amzn.to/4bdMYsn Barry Stroud, Hume: https://amzn.to/4be4BZe James A. Harris, Hume: An Intellectual Biography: https://amzn.to/46OCONt Ernest Campbell Mossner, The Life of David Hume: https://amzn.to/4ugHBkX
All research and writing is done personally. Subscribe to Sleepy Philosophy Radio for more longform philosophy. Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Tracks used: Anguish, Blue Feather, Evening Fall (Harp), Gregorian Chant, Heartbreaking, Lightless Dawn, Lone Harvest, Magic Forest, Mesmerize, Mourning Song, Oppressive Gloom, Promising Relationship, Quinn's Song: A New Man, Relent, Smoother Move, Sunset at Glengorm, Trio for Piano Cello and Clarinet, Wounded
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