Work · Empiricism, Enlightenment & Liberalism
A Treatise of Human Nature
Impressions and ideas, causation as custom, the self as a bundle.
Introduction
Hume wrote the Treatise in France, partly at La Flèche, and published it anonymously: Books I “Of the Understanding” and II “Of the Passions” in 1739, Book III “Of Morals” in 1740. In the same year he published an anonymous “Abstract” to explain its central argument. The subtitle calls the work an attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects. Well-known passages include the claim that reason “is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions” (Book II) and the observation that writers on morality slip from “is” to “ought” without explanation (Book III). Hume later wrote that it “fell dead-born from the press”.
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Connections
Builds on
- An Essay Concerning Human Understanding1689 · John Locke
- A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge1710 · George Berkeley
Taken up in
- An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding1748 · David Hume
- The Theory of Moral Sentiments1759 · Adam Smith
- An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation1789 · Jeremy Bentham
- Reasons and Persons1984 · Derek Parfit
Criticized in
- An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense1764 · Thomas Reid
- An Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect1824 · Mary Shepherd
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