Do we really need a reason?

David Hume was an 18th-century philosopher, credit as a precursor for modern cognitive science. However, he was also an experienced essayist, philosopher, and the inspiration for several of the most important ethical there developments in the modern-day.

First, some background:

David Hume was the second son, born into a relatively low class, noble family in Edinburgh, United Kingdom. As such, he knew very early on that he had to get a job (as was the custom back in the day). He was known as a brilliant child, and by the time his older brother went to college, he was following.

Despite his education, he quickly learned he wasn’t cut out for work. He had tried law, like his father and older brother, and was considered for educational positions, but he didn’t land those jobs. As such, he turned to education, deciding to pursue higher education and become one of the more learned men during his time. That is to say, he decided to become a professional thinker, a philosopher.

Although he was considered brilliant, he struggled very hard to get his books into the hands of readers. His first book: A Treatise in Human Nature, was not received well. His later books kept doing worse. Eventually, he learned that his way of expressing ideas was the downfall of his literature, and thus trained himself to write in a manner more suitable for his intended audience, and as a result, he was able to become the equivalent of a best selling author.

But, I’m not here to talk about Hume’s history. Instead, I’m here to offer my thoughts on his philosophies through two of his quotes.

“Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”

Hume lived during an age of reason. Where many people, both scholars and the everyday man, thought the beauty and glory of humans was in their rational thought, and ability to do such. However, Hume himself thought differently, to him, humans were just another animal thinking they were worthy of glory because of their perception of rational thought.

Instead, Hume believed that humans were influenced by their feelings rather than their reason. The key the collective needed to get right was that to go about life well, we needed to feel and not reason out everything.

And while thinking through this quote I came to the conclusion:

I’ve been surrounded by rational people almost my whole life. I believe there has to be an answer to fundamental questions that are backed by reason and observation rather than just a gut feeling. Even feelings themselves are fundamentally quite rational, even more so, the way people feel differently is as well.

Yes, although many reactions, if not all reactions that humans have are purely governed by feeling, the way we choose to react is through reason We choose to think rationally, or we choose to disregard rationality and instead opt for feeling. Regardless, each choice we make is through a rational decision that we think will benefit us.

Hume proposed that all reason only comes in to enforce our original convictions. Although that may be true for an argument, a discussion, there are plenty of times where reason and logic completely disregard what a person had already believed.

Furthermore, different people are wired differently. There are people who are more likely to think through things with reason rather than feeling, and there are others who prefer to do the opposite. Yes, reason can be tainted by feeling, but feelings can also be tainted by reason.

I believe there has to be a mix of both. To be human is to be allowed to feel, but to make the choice, to be able to make the decision to regard or throw away reason. Everything in this world can’t be governed by one or the other. There has to be a balance between the two. And yes, I’m aware that all I am writing stems from feeling, but it is feeling that I have found in reason. Yes, humans take pride in their reason, and yes, we strive to be reasonable creatures, and yes, we also let our feelings govern us, but humans have the ability to make their own choices based on reasons that suit their own needs.

Initially, I believe we are more influenced by our feelings than our reason, and by dealing with our feelings we are able to become more tolerant, but I do believe that the way we deal with them is through logic. Although we can’t fully come to terms with our feeling through logic alone, it is an important stepping stone in actually dealing with ourselves. We need reason to stop and take a step back, to look at the world as it really is, or at least, as our reason allows us to perceive it. We can ground ourselves in facts that we know, facts that have been observed.

Furthermore, we know through reasoning and logic, everything in our world is perceived slightly differently (the theory of relativity), and so, why would it be different for logic and emotions?

“Be a philosopher but, amid all your philosophy be still a man.”

Hume believed that although it was a good thing to be educated, to be a scholar, every man had to go back to their feelings as the everyday person. No one could forget the opinion of the common person. Rather, there was no point in thinking up complex ideals and moralities without looking at the fact that people, you, me, everyone, are human. That they make mistakes, and more often than not, are morally gray characters.

My thoughts:

To be a philosopher is to be a man that questions. There are other qualifications, but ultimately, I believe philosophers are men that question the essence of their nature and their existence. To do so, they also have to question what it means to be good, to be bad.

It’s easy to look at philosophies that men of old have come up with, ones that govern what we think and the way we think, frameworks of sorts. But to question them is arguably more valuable. At the end of the day, we have to remember that philosophers and scholars are also human. They are subject to the same philosophies they preach about.

It’s easy to forget that they are also human, but in the end, like Hume said, everything is subject to perception, and the way philosophers perceive the world is the way they shape their philosophies.

At the end of the day, even though we have knowledge and power, ability and reason, we have to remember we are also human. No one human is a single thing, we are layers and layers of perceptions and emotions strung together with choices and abilities to reason. It is only this way that we can accept the mistakes and words of others. We can’t hold others to our moral standards without understanding them first, without looking at them, and acknowledging that they too are human.