Acknowledgements
This unit was written by Dr Alex Barber Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons...
View ArticleReferences
Boswell, J. (1971) Boswell in Extremes: The Private Papers of James Boswell, 1776–1778, ed. C. McC. Weis and F.A. Pottle, London, Heinemann.Boswell, J. (1986) The Life of Samuel Johnson, ed. C....
View Article5.4 Assessing Hume's views
The main value of Hume's essay lies in its discussion of our duties to God. Here Hume's arguments initially seem quite convincing. But arguments almost always seem convincing when they are first heard...
View ArticleClik here to view.
5.3 Do we have a duty to God not to commit suicide?
Why, you may be wondering, would anyone think that we have a duty to God not to take our own lives? Because it would have been so familiar to his original readership, Hume barely bothers to state the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
5.2 Philosophy, religion and everyday life
Perhaps because he is aware he will be stirring up trouble by publishing his views on this topic, Hume warms to his theme by talking in paragraphs 1–4 about how he conceives of the relation between...
View Article5.1 The reception of Hume's views
‘Of suicide’ was received with the same degree of public hostility as his essay on immortality. Here is what an anonymous reviewer of the 1777 posthumous edition of both essays had to say in the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
4.3 Physical grounds for thinking we are immortal
In section III Hume discusses what he calls physical reasons for thinking there is an afterlife. A sensible guess as to what he means by a physical reason is that it is one based on observation and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
4.2 Moral grounds for thinking we are immortal
The moral reason (as Hume calls it) for thinking that there is an afterlife has already been touched on. God, being just, would surely see to it that we are punished or rewarded for our aberrant or...
View ArticleClik here to view.
4.1 Why was our immortality an issue?
When reading about Hume's death you may have been puzzled as to why people became so worked up about Hume's attitude. The question of what, if anything, happens after death is something most of us are...
View ArticleClik here to view.
3.4 Proving God's existence
Deists had at their disposal three traditional ways of arguing for the existence of God.The most popular in the late eighteenth century was the argument from design (also known as the teleological...
View Article3.3 Deism
In the readings you will often come across allusions to the contrast between revealed religion and natural religion (or deism). The distinction turns on what the nature of the evidence is for a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
3.2 Empiricism
The Enlightenment is also known as the Age of Reason, but it was a very specific conception of reason that held sway. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe had seen a boom in knowledge brought...
View Article3.1 Introduction
Hume often assumes familiarity with views that were popular at the time of writing. To have done otherwise would have been tedious for the original readership. Many of these views are no longer so...
View Article2.1 Working through the section
This section examines Hume's reasons for being complacent in the face of death, as these are laid out in his suppressed essay of 1755, ‘Of the immortality of the soul’. More generally, they examine...
View ArticleClik here to view.
1 Prelude: Hume's death
In mid-August 1776 crowds formed outside the family home of David Hume. Hume was a pivotal figure in the Scottish Enlightenment, and his imminent death was widely anticipated. The crowds were anxious...
View ArticleLearning outcomes
Having studied this unit, you should gain:familiarity with debates in the late Enlightenment concerning suicide, immortality, the nature of evidence, the existence of God and related topics, plus some...
View ArticleIntroduction
This unit examines David Hume's reasons for being complacent in the face of death, as these are laid out in his suppressed essay of 1755, ‘Of the immortality of the soul’. More generally, they examine...
View ArticleAcknowledgements
This unit was written by Dr Alex Barber Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons...
View ArticleReferences
Boswell, J. (1971) Boswell in Extremes: The Private Papers of James Boswell, 1776–1778, ed. C. McC. Weis and F.A. Pottle, London, Heinemann.Boswell, J. (1986) The Life of Samuel Johnson, ed. C....
View ArticleNext steps
After completing this unit you may wish to study another OpenLearn Study Unit or find out more about this topic. Here are some suggestions:The Enlightenment (A207_1) Brighton Pavilion (A207_7) History...
View Article
