A Treatise of Human Nature

Introduction

A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects is David Hume's first major philosophical work, published in 1739–1740 when Hume was in his late twenties. It is the most ambitious early statement of British empiricism and contains the philosophical positions that Hume would spend the rest of his career reformulating in more accessible form. The work was a publishing failure in its time (Hume's famous remark that it fell stillborn from the press) but is now widely regarded as one of the major works of modern philosophy.

The Treatise contains the foundational positions that have shaped subsequent epistemology, philosophy of mind, ethics, and metaphysics: the analysis of causation and the problem of induction; the bundle theory of the self; the is-ought gap; the sentimentalist theory of ethics; the analysis of belief as feeling rather than judgment. Each of these moves has shaped continuing philosophical discussion.

Form, length, date, language

The Treatise is a substantial work of approximately 270,000 words in English, divided into three books. Book I (Of the Understanding) and Book II (Of the Passions) were published anonymously in 1739; Book III (Of Morals) followed in 1740. An Abstract of the Treatise (also published 1740, also anonymous) was written by Hume to publicize the work and clarify what Hume took to be its central arguments.

The original language is English. Hume composed the Treatise during his stay at La Flèche, the Jesuit college in France where Descartes had also studied, between 1734 and 1737.

Why it was written

The Treatise announces its project in the Introduction: to apply the experimental method of reasoning that had transformed natural philosophy to the moral subjects of human cognition, passion, and ethics. Just as Newton had developed a science of nature through careful observation and inference, Hume aimed to develop a science of human nature through the same method.

The particular focus is the analysis of the operations of the human mind: what are the elements of human cognition, how do they combine, what are their causes, what are their limits. The science of human nature, Hume argues, is the foundation of all the other sciences, because every science is conducted by human minds and the limits and powers of those minds set the limits and possibilities of inquiry generally.

Structure and argument

Book I: Of the Understanding. The longest and most influential book. Hume distinguishes impressions (the immediate data of sensation and reflection) from ideas (the fainter copies of impressions in memory and imagination); develops the doctrine that every legitimate idea must be traceable to an antecedent impression; analyzes the relations of ideas (resemblance, contiguity, causation) that allow the mind to move from one idea to another.

The analysis of causation (Part III) is the most influential single section. Causation, on Hume's analysis, consists of three relations: temporal succession, contiguity, and necessary connection. The first two are observable; the third — the supposed necessary connection between cause and effect — is not observable in the events themselves but is contributed by the mind through habit. The analysis produces the famous skeptical conclusions about causation and induction that have organized subsequent philosophy of science.

Part IV of Book I contains the famous treatments of substance, personal identity, and skepticism. The bundle theory of the self appears in Section VI; Hume's own reservations about the analysis appear in the Appendix to Book III (1740).

Book II: Of the Passions. Hume's analysis of the emotions. The book develops a detailed taxonomy of pride, humility, love, hatred, and other passions, with extended analyses of the causes and effects of each. Book II is the least-read of the three books in contemporary philosophy but contains substantial material that has been increasingly engaged in recent work on emotion theory.

Book III: Of Morals. Hume's ethical theory. The famous opening Section (Book III, Part I, Section I) contains the passage on the is-ought gap: moral writers regularly slide from descriptive (is) claims to normative (ought) claims without justifying the inference. Book III develops Hume's sentimentalist ethics: moral judgments are not products of reason but of moral sentiments — the felt approval or disapproval that arises in a spectator contemplating an action or character. The position is foundational for the modern sentimentalist tradition in ethics.

Key passages

• Introduction — the announcement of the experimental method applied to moral subjects.
• Book I, Part I, Section I — the distinction between impressions and ideas.
• Book I, Part III, Sections II–XIV — the analysis of causation and the problem of induction.
• Book I, Part IV, Section VI — the bundle theory of the self.
• Book I, Part IV, Section VII — the famous conclusion of Book I, with Hume's reflections on the skeptical position to which his analysis has led.
• Book III, Part I, Section I — the is-ought passage.
• Book III, Part II — the analysis of justice and property.
• Book III, Part III — the sentimentalist theory of virtue.
• Appendix (added 1740) — Hume's expression of dissatisfaction with the bundle theory.

Reception history

The contemporary reception of the Treatise was poor. The work failed commercially; reviews were few and generally critical. Hume blamed the failure on the work's manner rather than its substance and spent the rest of his career rewriting parts of it in more accessible form: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) reformulates Book I; An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751) reformulates Book III. The Enquiries were Hume's preferred mature presentations; he reportedly came to regard the Treatise as a juvenile work and did not wish to be remembered for it.

The modern scholarly judgment has been that Hume undervalued the Treatise. The work contains substantial material that the Enquiries compress or omit, and many of the most influential single moves in Hume's philosophy receive their fullest treatment in the Treatise. The work has been the focus of substantial twentieth-century Hume scholarship, especially since the publication of the Selby-Bigge edition (1888; revised Nidditch 1978) made the text widely available.

The Treatise shaped the British empiricist tradition substantially. Kant's Critical philosophy was provoked partly by his reading of Hume's analysis of causation (transmitted to Kant primarily through the Enquiries, but the substantial arguments derive from the Treatise). The contemporary literature on causation, induction, personal identity, and metaethics continues to engage the Treatise directly.

Contemporary engagement

The standard scholarly text is the Selby-Bigge edition revised by P.H. Nidditch (Oxford, 1978); the Norton-Norton critical edition (Oxford, 2000) is the more recent scholarly standard. Major recent scholarly work includes Don Garrett's Cognition and Commitment in Hume's Philosophy (1997), Annette Baier's A Progress of Sentiments (1991), James A. Harris's Hume: An Intellectual Biography (2015), and the substantial work of Helen Beebee, Saul Traiger, and others. The Hume Studies journal and the proceedings of the Hume Society document continuing scholarship.

Further reading

• Hume — the author
• Empiricism — the tradition
• Problem of Induction — the central skeptical result
• Bundle Theory — the famous account of the self
• Is-Ought Gap — the metaethical observation
• Kant — the philosopher whose Critical philosophy responds to Hume

Hume's ambitious first major work. The most extensive single statement of British empiricism.