Analysis Of David Hume's Paper On Judgments

In Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion we are introduced to three characters that serve the purpose to debate God and his nature, more specifically, what can mankind infer about God and his nature. The three characters; Demea, Philo, and Cleanthes all engage in a debate concerning this question and they all serve the purpose of supporting their views on the subject. It is the “argument from design” put forth by Cleanthes that is the focal point of the discussion, and it is Demea and Philo who attempt to discredit it.

Hume believes that we have instances where we start with the instant reaction of sentiment but when we lack the ability to reason we loose the ability to explain why we have sentiment. Nevertheless in cases, such as fine art, we need reasoning in order to produce the feelings of sentiment.

Firstly, Hume effectively tackles the commonly held assertion that humans are purely rational creatures that successfully implement reason in every situation. Hume concedes

David Hume was an imperialist philosopher who revolutionized scientific argument and methodology with his skepticism. His arguments about the way people though up to his day, and still today, are fundamental in explaining how we gain knowledge and what we do with this knowledge. Hume helped pave a road leading toward a higher state of consciousness for humanity with his theory concerning the perceptions of the mind. He divided the minds perception into two distinct group's impression and ideas. With these two classifications Hume rationalized the depths of human understanding. Impressions consist of the perception regarding all that is seen, felt and heard. Ideas are formulated thoughts based upon impressions. They are the perceptions of

Immanuel Kant and Edward Bullough both express their opinions between the agreeable and the beautiful in their own personal writings, “The Analytic of the Beautiful” and “Psychical Distance”, respectively. Each writer states their own criterion of the beautiful, and both distinguish why the difference between the beautiful and the agreeable is important. Edward Bullough’s theory is that to distinguish between the beautiful and the agreeable there must be a distance from practical reasoning: “Distance is produced in the first instance by putting the phenomenon, so to speak, out of gear with our practical, actual self; by allowing it to stand outside the context of our personal needs and ends.”(Bullough 298-299) Immanuel Kant’s theory, “The agreeable is what gratifies a man; the beautiful what simply pleases him; the good what is esteemed (approved), i.e., that on which he sets an

Essentially, the individual making the objective statement must base his assessment of beauty upon certain aspects of the object (or the object’s qualities acting upon individual) which would be objective in regards to the object. Each scenario is reminiscent of Burke’s assessment that beauty and sublimity are characterized by specific

Hume is the creator of two different perceptions that reside in the human mind, ideas and impressions. Impressions are more simply put as the root of

David Hume, a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, is well known for his radical views on philosophy in his book An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. The book’s main focus is how moral sense and reason contribute to our moral judgments. Moral sense is discussed as the ultimate distinction between vice and virtue. On the other hand, reason is discussed as what is useful, why it is useful, and how it is useful. Hume vaguely discusses moral judges and their lists of virtues. Hume then goes into great detail about artificial and natural virtues. Finally, he discusses reason and that this does not cause our actions but instead a combination of utility and sentiment do.

In conclusion, I have argued that Hume’s sentimentally grounded theory, as exemplified in the passage, cannot yield a complete account to understanding the role our moral judgements have in regards to others, as empathy (or sympathy) is not necessarily a precursor to making moral judgements. Nevertheless, I think that Hume’s theory of moral sentiments makes plausible the claim that our sentiments, grounded in our moral sense faculty, can elucidate our understanding of morality, to an extent, as it raises awareness of how emotions ‘contribute to and play a role a role in the starting point of coming to make moral judgements and that they are genuine forces that motivate our morally grounded thoughts and

There are many similarities and oppositions in regard to Hume and Kant’s theories on aesthetic experiences of the beautiful. Perhaps the main dispute between these two philosophers would be how exactly beauty is defined. According to Hume, beauty is defined by a group of experts within the area of interest. Kant states beauty only arises when an object is universally regarded as such. However, an essential agreement between Kant and Hume would be beauty is overall not subjective, but more so objective in that, when making a judgement about beauty, one must have no bias about the object in question. In this paper, I will further dissect these two arguments as well as other key similarities and oppositions.

Using the “Critique of Judgment” Analytic of the Beautiful, written by Immanuel Kant, I will be exploring how Kant formulates the idea of aesthetics. I will also use “Gender and Aesthetics: An Introduction” by Carolyn Korsmeyer to briefly discuss opposing views of Kant’s views and philosophies of aesthetic judgements. Kant’s views on the judgements of the aesthetics and how something is perceived as “beautiful” is in direct contrast to his counterparts Burke and Thomas Hobbes, who are both empiricists. In the essay, there will be a further explanation of where the contrast arises and how the individuals varying philosophies both explain in their own ways different ways to view something as “beautiful”.

I argue for an interpretation of Kant's aesthetics whereby the experience of the beautiful plays the same functional role in the invisible church of natural religion as Scripture does for the visible churches of ecclesiastical religions. Thus, I contend, the links that Kant himself implies between the aesthetic and the moral (in the third Critique and the Religion) are much stronger than generally portrayed by commentators. Indeed, for Kant, experience of the beautiful may be necessary in order to found what Kant views as the final end of morality — the ethical community — since human moral psychology requires embodiments of moral ideas. Finally, I seek to modify Martha Nussbaums' argument

In 1790, Immanuel Kant created a piece of work known as the Critique of Judgement. In his work, the Critique of Judgement, Immanuel Kant moves his attention to focusing on aesthetics and what truly makes a piece of art beautiful and pleasing to the eye. Up until around the 1780s Immanuel Kant did not particularly worry or concern himself with aesthetics and how that judges an object or piece of art. It was only in the 1780s that Kant started to take an interest in the aesthetic value of objects and pieces of art. According to Kant, for an object to truly be called beautiful there are four “Moments” in which that particular object must go through. In the book, The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, Crawford tells us, “It is divided into four “Moments,” corresponding to the headings of the table of judgements in the Critique of Pure Reason: quantity, quality, relation and modality” (Crawford 52). Kant’s theory of these four moments that an object must go through in order for it to be called beautiful are a very elaborate but quite easy concept to understand. Crawford does his very best throughout this particular reading to try and make the theory as easily understandable as possible due to the somewhat hard to read language Kant uses in his original work. Immanuel Kant’s four “Moments” of quantity, quality, relation and modality, do an exceptional job of explaining what makes an object beautiful.

In Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgement, Kant analyzes the meaning of the beautiful and the sublime and how they contrast from each other by employing nature through his analysis. In book one of Kant’s Critique of Judgement titled Analytic of the Beautiful, he argues that the judgement of beauty is disinterested and that it is both subjective and universal simultaneously. On the other hand, in the Analytic of the Sublime, Kant analyzes the sublime as an idea that cannot fully be grasped by the mind. While the concept of the beautiful and the sublime are considerably different to Kant, Kant uses nature to describe beauty as something that is concerned with form and appears to be “purposive without purpose”, whereas he uses nature to depict that the sublime is formless and that the sublime unlike the beautiful appears as contra-purposive. Though the two concepts contrasts since the beautiful has form while the sublime is formless, Kant utilizes nature in both the beautiful and the sublime effectively because it allows the reader to understand the difference between them by connecting the physical appearance of nature to the beautiful while connecting the intangible feeling that nature gives off to the sublime.

David Hume’s statement that the most lively thought is still inferior to the dullest sensation, is a rather divisive, as there are individuals who agree with the statement in question and those who disagree. In order to analyse such statement thoroughly it is crucial to elaborate on concepts such as sensations and impressions and ideas, as well as Hume’s theory of knowledge. David Hume while a sceptic, he was also (Fisher 2011, :527–528) well known for his empiricist, naturalist approach to philosophy.(Warburton,1998 :77) The main idea of philosophical scepticism is that there can be no knowledge without a justification, therefore in order for a belief to be considered as true, there should always be a reason behind said belief. Scepticism is generally a school of thought, where it is deemed impossible to have adequate information behind a thesis;(Perry,Bratman, 2013, :136) David Hume however did not follow the doctrine of the academic sceptics that rejects the existence of knowledge. He also questioned the traditional view that humans are mainly rational beings. (Warburton,1998 :78-79) Hume’s work contains empiricist beliefs, since he was an empiricist himself, therefore he acknowledges that the main source of knowledge is sensory experience. Hume uses the term perception for any contents of experience, it can be described as the equivalent of Locke’s idea, a perception occurs when an individual is sensing, feeling, remembering, imagining etc and they are two categories of