Monday, October 15, 2007
Somewhere in the Middle
The path to human understanding lies someplace between the extremes. On one end of the philosophical spectrum is Hume. At the other end is Hamann. Hume focuses on experience and observance as the ways in which humans reach understanding. Hume's approach is rational. Hamann's approach focuses on faith and belief instead--an irrational approach. After skeptically analyzing both approaches, it became clear to me that in order to find the answer to human understanding, both methods must be utilized. Some knowledge can be gained through observation and experience. This includes knowing that snow and ice are cold. While other knowledge is simply "known". Knowledge like this includes belief in God and faith in destiny. Humans are born with the capability to both learn from experience, but are also capable of believing that which cannot be scientifically proven. Therefore, the path to human understanding involves both experience and belief.
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A conversation between Hume and Wollstonecraft discussing "What if women reason".
David: Virtue is the most valuable, and philosophers paint her in a most...
Mary: Paint her?
David: Of course I refer to virtue in the feminine sense. Doesn't everyone?
Mary: Virtue does exalt one being above another, but I do not assign it a female attribute, lest we assign the feminine creature exaulted over the male.
David: We can not stand with the philosophers who for ever talk of truth and falsehood, vice and virtue, beauty and deformity, without also distinguishing between male and female identities as well.
Mary: I read your Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and found not once the mention of woman.
David: I did not merely allude to women when I mentioned that passion between the sexes is innate, and behaviour and conduct of the one sex is very unlike that of the other. It is thence we become acquainted with natures different characters, which she preserves with regularity.
Mary: She?
David: Yes. Nature.
Mary: You continue to abstract the female, making her part of what males historically subdue or acquire. With that structure, there can be no allowance in your reasoning for the possibility that women also reason.
David: It may seem difficult to comprehend, but is of unspeakable importance. You will be happy if you reconcile your profound enquiry with clearness, your novelty with truth.
Hume, David. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1748. Section One
Wollstonecraft, Mary. Vindication of the Rights of Women, With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects, 1792. Chapter Eight
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