Adrian Buck’s Reviews > Hume > Status Update

"I cannot forebear having a curiousity to be acquainted with the principles of moral good and evil, the nature and foundation of government, and the cause of those several passions and inclinations, which attenuate and govern me," Me neither, should try another book on Hume :)

"Even Mathematics, Natural Philosophy and Natural Religion, are in some sense measure dependent on the science of MAN' points to the escape route from Stroud's discussion of absolute necessity - it is created by definition, by how we choose to organise our knowledge.

"Hume has to explain how it is possible for a conscious to think about and refer to his thoughts, feelings and desires as his" I would invert this, the idea that develops is surely that on an external objective world outside of the self.

"Such reflections..." conflate necessity and causality.

"But it should not be surprising to find that having an idea of necessity and being able to countenance various unrealised possibilities go hand in hand." Well, actually, it is.

"Hume, after all, was a pre-Kantian...he wanted to answer the more fundamental questions of how people come have a conception of a world, or of themselves, and to think about it scientifically (or morally, or politically, or religiously or aesthetically) at all.

"And, given his conception of reason and his rather simple conception of man's virtually self-interested 'natural' condition. I think this appeal to reason does not succeed." There is an an equivocation here being the 'rationality' of economics and the rationality of philosophy. Hume is uninterested in the latter. No discussion of custom here.

That honestly is the best policy, may be a good general rule, but is liable to many exceptions; and he, it may perhaps be thought, conducts himself with most wisdom, who observes the general rule, and takes advantage of all the exceptions."

"Tho' the rules of justice be artificial, they are not arbitrary. Nor is the expression improper to call them Laws of Nature:" The problem I have is with 'law'.

Simply to have something in one's hand or pocket is not necessarily to own it...Those goods are one's property, and for Hume, property is those goods, whose constant possession is established by...the laws of justice. Since laws of justice do not exist before men 'agree' to form themselves into a society, there is no such thing as property outside of society."