Introductory: The Distinctive Principles and Ethical Origins of Hume’s Philosophy

Abstract

HUME’S Treatise of Human Nature, as its readers soon discover, is a difficult and often puzzling work. The ardour of mind and variability of mood in which it was composed, its loose and careless terminology, and other minor defects very excusable in a first and youthful work, also even its sheer bulk, account for many of the reader’s difficulties. But the root-causes lie deeper, in the arrangement of the work as a whole. It opens with an exposition of what, in the main, is Hutcheson’s version of Locke’s ‘ theory of ideas ’. Hume builds it into his system, putting it to new uses, but otherwise leaving it — so at least a first reading of the opening sections would appear to suggest — in all essentials unchanged. As we shall find, our attitude towards the Treatise must largely be determined by the answer we give to this initial question: How does Hume’s treatment of the ‘ doctrine of ideas ’ in these opening sections of the Treatise (Sections 1 to 6) stand in relation to the newer, more distinctive doctrines dealt with throughout the rest of Book I and in Books II and III ?