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Review Of David Hume's 'A Treatise Of Human Nature'

368 Words2 Pages
In David Hume’s “A Treatise of Human Nature”, Hume shows people’s tendency to claim conflict between passion and reason. “Nothing is more usual in philosophy, and even in common life, than to talk of the combat of passion and reason”. Hume argues that this is an ‘ancient fallacy’ and that reason alone cannot motivate the will.
Hume argues that there are two kinds of reasoning. Demonstrative reasoning is only concerned about the relations of ideas. Probabilistic reasoning is only concerned with relations between objects of our experience. Both of these only concern relational facts which cannot be motivators. Reason, in Hume’s view, is merely a tool the passions implement to achieve its goal. “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the
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