Philosophers · 哲學家 · The Early Modern Age
David Hume 休謨 · 1711–1776
He followed empiricism to its conclusions about cause, self, and reason, and remained the most cheerful of philosophers.
他把經驗主義一路推到它對因果、自我與理性的結論，卻始終是最開朗的哲學家。
- Born 出生
- 1711, Edinburgh, Scotland
- Died 去世
- August 25, 1776, Edinburgh
- Educated 教育
- University of Edinburgh, from about age eleven
- Professions 職業
- Tutor, secretary, librarian, diplomat, historian
- Main works 主要著作
- A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40); An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748); Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779)
- Friend 朋友
- Adam Smith
中文翻譯Every paragraph has a Chinese translation. Tap 中譯▾ under a paragraph to open that one, or use Show Chinese · 顯示中譯 at the top to open them all. 每一段都有中譯：點段落下方的「中譯」只開那一段，或按上方的「顯示中譯」一次全部打開。
Life · 生平
A life in three scenes 三幕人生
A book written in his twenties 二十幾歲寫的一本書
Hume was born in Edinburgh in 1711 and grew up on his family’s small estate near the English border. His father died when he was two. He went to the University of Edinburgh at about eleven, which was early even for the time, and was expected to become a lawyer. He found that he could not bear the law and wanted only to read philosophy. At eighteen, he later said, there opened up to him “a new scene of thought,” and he worked at it so hard that his health broke down for several years.
休謨 1711 年生於愛丁堡，在家族位於英格蘭邊界附近的小莊園長大。他兩歲時父親去世。大約十一歲他就進了愛丁堡大學，即使在當時也算早；家人期待他當律師。他發現自己受不了法律，只想讀哲學。他後來說，十八歲那年，「一片新的思想景象」在他面前展開；他用功到健康崩潰了好幾年。
In 1734 he went to France to live cheaply and write, and settled at La Flèche, the town where Descartes had gone to school. There, between the ages of twenty-three and twenty-six, he wrote A Treatise of Human Nature. It is one of the great books of philosophy, and it failed. “It fell dead-born from the press,” he wrote, without even exciting a murmur among the zealots. He concluded that the fault lay in the manner and not the matter, and spent years recasting its arguments in shorter and more graceful works.
1734 年他前往法國，為的是省錢過日子、專心寫作；他落腳在拉弗萊什，就是笛卡兒求學的那個小鎮。在那裡，從二十三歲到二十六歲，他寫了《人性論》。這是哲學史上的偉大著作之一，而它失敗了。他寫道：「它一出印刷廠就是個死胎」，連在狂熱分子當中激起一聲低語都沒有。他斷定毛病出在寫法、不在內容，於是花了多年，把書裡的論證改寫成比較短、比較優雅的作品。
No professor’s chair 沒有教授的位子
Hume never held a university post. He applied for the chair of moral philosophy at Edinburgh in 1745 and for a chair at Glasgow a few years later, and both times the clergy blocked him on the ground that he was an unbeliever. He earned his living as tutor to a mad nobleman, as secretary to a general, and then as keeper of the Advocates’ Library in Edinburgh, which gave him the books he needed to write a six-volume History of England. The History made him rich and, in his own time, far more famous than his philosophy did.
休謨從來沒有擔任過大學教職。1745 年他申請愛丁堡大學的道德哲學教席，幾年後又申請格拉斯哥大學的一個教席；兩次都被神職人員擋下，理由是他不信神。他靠當一位瘋癲貴族的家庭教師、當一位將軍的秘書謀生，後來擔任愛丁堡律師公會圖書館的館長；這個職位給了他寫六卷本《英國史》所需要的書。《英國史》讓他致富，而且在他自己的時代，帶給他的名聲遠遠超過他的哲學。
Le bon David 好人大衛
In 1763 he went to Paris as secretary to the British ambassador and found himself a celebrity. The French called him le bon David, and he was by every account a kind, sociable, and very fat man who loved good dinners. He tried to help the persecuted Jean-Jacques Rousseau by bringing him to England, and Rousseau, growing suspicious, accused him of plotting against him. The quarrel entertained Europe.
1763 年他以英國大使秘書的身分前往巴黎，發現自己成了名人。法國人叫他「好人大衛」（le bon David）；從各方面的記載看，他是個和善、好交際、非常胖、喜歡美食的人。他試著幫助受迫害的盧梭，把他帶到英國；而盧梭疑心日重，反過來指控他密謀陷害自己。這場爭吵成了全歐洲的談資。
He retired to Edinburgh, where he cooked for his friends and revised his works. In 1775 he learned that he had a fatal disorder of the bowels. He faced death without fear and without changing his views, to the dismay of James Boswell, who visited to see whether an unbeliever could really die calmly. He arranged for his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, which he had kept unpublished for twenty-five years, to appear after his death. His friend Adam Smith wrote that he had always considered him “as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit.”
他退休回到愛丁堡，在那裡為朋友下廚，並且修訂自己的著作。1775 年他得知自己患了致命的腸疾。他面對死亡毫無恐懼，也沒有改變看法；這讓詹姆斯・包斯威爾很沮喪，包斯威爾特地去探望，想看看一個不信神的人是不是真的能平靜地死去。他安排好，讓那部他壓了二十五年沒有發表的《自然宗教對話錄》在他死後問世。他的朋友亞當・斯密寫道，自己向來認為他「接近一個完美的智者與有德者的理想，接近到人類脆弱的本性或許容許的極限」。
- 1711Born in Edinburgh生於愛丁堡
- 1734Goes to La Flèche前往拉弗萊什
- 1739A Treatise of Human Nature《人性論》
- 1748An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding《人類理解研究》
- 1754History of England begins to appear《英國史》開始出版
- 1763Paris巴黎
- 1776Dies in Edinburgh卒於愛丁堡
The central idea · 核心觀念
Every idea is a copy of an impression 每個觀念都是印象的摹本
Hume divides the contents of the mind into impressions, which are the vivid perceptions we have when we see, feel, love, or hate, and ideas, which are the faint copies of these that we use in thinking. His first principle is that every simple idea is copied from an earlier impression. This gives him a test. When a philosopher uses a word, ask from what impression the supposed idea is derived. If none can be found, the word has no meaning.
休謨把心靈的內容分成「印象」與「觀念」：印象是我們在看、感受、愛、恨的時候所擁有的鮮明知覺；觀念是這些印象的微弱摹本，我們用它們來思考。他的第一原則是：每一個簡單觀念，都是從先前的某個印象摹寫來的。這給了他一個檢驗。當一位哲學家使用一個詞，就問：這個所謂的觀念，是從哪一個印象來的？如果一個都找不到，這個詞就沒有意義。
He then applies the test to the most important ideas in philosophy, with destructive results. Necessary connection: we have an impression of one event following another and none of any tie between them. The self: “when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other,” and so a person is “nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions.” Moral judgment: no observation of an act reveals its wrongness, which lies in the feeling of the observer, and no statement of what ought to be can be deduced from statements of what is. Even action is ruled by feeling: “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.” Reason can tell us how to get what we want. It cannot tell us what to want.
接著他把這個檢驗用在哲學裡最重要的幾個觀念上，結果是毀滅性的。必然連結：我們有「一個事件跟在另一個之後」的印象，卻沒有它們之間任何紐帶的印象。自我：「當我最貼近地進入我稱為『自己』的東西時，我總是碰到某個個別的知覺」，所以一個人「不過是一束或一堆不同的知覺」。道德判斷：對一個行為再怎麼觀察，也看不到它的「錯」；錯在觀察者的感受裡；而任何關於「應該如何」的陳述，都無法從關於「是如何」的陳述演繹出來。連行動也由感受統治：「理性是、而且只應該是激情的奴隸。」理性能告訴我們怎樣得到想要的東西；它不能告訴我們該想要什麼。
Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.做一個哲學家吧；但是，在你一切的哲學當中，仍然要做一個人。
Nature’s advice to the thinker, as Hume imagines it, and a fair summary of how he lived. 休謨想像中「自然」給思想者的忠告，也相當貼切地概括了他自己的活法。
The strongest objection · 最強的反駁
His own fork cuts him 他自己的叉子刺到了他
The Enquiry ends with one of the most quoted paragraphs in philosophy. Take any book, Hume says, and ask whether it contains abstract reasoning about quantity or number, or experimental reasoning about matters of fact. If it contains neither, “Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.” The obvious question is which of the two the Enquiry itself contains. The claim that all meaningful statements fall into these two classes is not a truth of mathematics. It does not look like a report of experiments either. By its own test the book seems to belong in the fire. The same difficulty returned in the twentieth century for the logical positivists, who revived Hume’s principle and were asked how it could itself be verified.
《人類理解研究》的結尾，是哲學裡被引用最多的段落之一。休謨說，隨便拿起一本書，問它是否包含關於量或數的抽象推理，或者關於實際事情的實驗推理。如果兩者都沒有，「那就把它投進火裡：因為它包含的只能是詭辯與幻象。」顯而易見的問題是：《人類理解研究》本身包含的是這兩者中的哪一種？「一切有意義的陳述都落在這兩類之中」這個主張，並不是數學真理；看起來也不像實驗報告。照它自己的檢驗，這本書似乎該進火堆。同樣的困難在二十世紀又回到邏輯實證論者身上：他們重新啟用休謨的原則，然後被人問到，這個原則本身要怎麼檢證。
Kant’s objection goes deeper. Hume assumed that the mind receives impressions passively and that order must be found among them. Kant replied that a stream of unconnected impressions would not be an experience of anything. To perceive a ball moving, one must already connect what is seen now with what was seen a moment ago, according to rules. The connections Hume could not find in his impressions are, on this view, what the mind contributes in order to have experience at all. Kant said it was Hume who “first interrupted my dogmatic slumber.”
康德的反駁更深。休謨假定，心靈是被動地接受印象的，而秩序必須在印象當中去找。康德回答說，一連串互不相連的印象，根本算不上對任何東西的經驗。要知覺到一顆球在動，人必須已經按照規則，把此刻看見的跟片刻之前看見的連結起來。休謨在印象裡找不到的那些連結，照這個看法，正是心靈為了能有經驗而貢獻的東西。康德說，是休謨「首先打斷了我獨斷的沉睡」。
How we know · 史料
A footnote that has not been forgiven 一條沒有被原諒的註腳
Hume’s reputation for good sense and good nature makes one passage harder to read. In a footnote added in 1753 to his essay “Of National Characters,” he wrote that he was inclined to suspect that Black people were naturally inferior to whites, and he dismissed a report of a learned Black man in Jamaica as probably exaggerated. The claim had no basis in evidence and was challenged in his own day by the philosopher James Beattie, among others. He revised the note late in life and did not withdraw it. In 2020 the University of Edinburgh removed his name from one of its buildings. The passage is sometimes excused as a prejudice of the age. It is fairer to say that the philosopher who told us to proportion belief to evidence failed, on this subject, to do so, and that the failure did harm.
休謨以明理與好脾氣著稱，這讓有一段文字更難讀下去。1753 年，他在〈論民族性〉這篇文章加了一條註腳，寫道他傾向於懷疑黑人天生不如白人，並且把關於牙買加一位有學問的黑人的報導，當作多半言過其實而不予理會。這個主張沒有任何證據基礎，在他自己的時代就受到哲學家貝蒂等人的質疑。他晚年修改過這條註腳，但沒有撤回。2020 年，愛丁堡大學把他的名字從校內一棟建築上拿掉。這段文字有時被當成「時代的偏見」而獲得開脫。比較公允的說法是：這位教我們「使信念與證據成比例」的哲學家，在這個題目上沒有做到，而這個失誤造成了傷害。
Dharma and the West · 佛法與西方哲學
Hume and the Buddha 休謨與佛陀
No Western philosopher sounds more Buddhist than Hume on the self. He looked inward for the owner of his experiences and found only the experiences, “a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.” A Theravāda monk analyzing the person into five aggregates would say almost the same. The psychologist Alison Gopnik has even argued that Hume could have heard of Buddhist ideas at La Flèche, where one of the Jesuits had lived in Siam and knew a fellow missionary’s report on Tibetan Buddhism. The evidence is circumstantial, and most scholars think Hume reached his view independently.
在自我這個問題上，沒有哪一位西方哲學家聽起來比休謨更像佛教徒。他往內找自己種種經驗的主人，找到的只有經驗：「一束或一堆不同的知覺，以不可思議的速度彼此相續，處於永恆的流變與運動之中。」一位把人分析為五蘊的上座部比丘，說的幾乎是同樣的話。心理學家艾莉森・高普尼克甚至論證過，休謨有可能在拉弗萊什聽說過佛教的觀念：那裡有一位耶穌會士曾經住過暹羅，並且知道一位傳教士同伴關於藏傳佛教的報告。這些證據都是旁證，多數學者認為休謨是獨立得出這個看法的。
The contrast lies in what each did next. Hume found his conclusions disturbing, and his remedy was to leave the study: “I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends,” after which his speculations seemed cold and strained. For him the discovery that there is no self was a theoretical result with no practical use. For the Buddha it was the most practical discovery possible, because clinging to a self is the cause of suffering, and seeing through it, steadily and in experience, is release. Hume reached the insight by argument and then set it aside at dinner. The Buddhist path is a method for keeping it in view (Dharma and the West, D2).
對比在於兩人接下來做了什麼。休謨覺得自己的結論令人不安，而他的解藥是離開書房：「我吃飯，我下一盤雙陸棋，我談天，跟朋友們同樂」；在那之後，他那些玄想就顯得冰冷而牽強。對他來說，「沒有自我」這個發現是一個理論上的結果，沒有實際用處。對佛陀來說，那是最實際不過的發現，因為執取一個自我正是苦的原因，而穩定地、在經驗中看穿它，就是解脫。休謨靠論證到達了這個洞見，然後在餐桌上把它擱下。佛教的道，是一套讓它一直留在視野裡的方法（佛法與西方哲學 D2）。
Terms of art · 哲學術語
Words that come with him 跟著他一起來的詞
Vivid original perceptions, and their fainter copies in thought.
鮮明的原初知覺，以及它們在思想中較微弱的摹本。
Every simple idea derives from a corresponding earlier impression.
每一個簡單觀念，都來自一個對應的、先前的印象。
The division of all knowable truths into relations of ideas and matters of fact.
把一切可知的真理分成「觀念的關係」與「實際的事情」。
The view that a person is a collection of perceptions with no underlying self.
主張人是一堆知覺的集合，底下沒有自我。
No conclusion about what ought to be follows from premises only about what is.
從只談「是如何」的前提，推不出關於「應該如何」的結論。
Hume’s own position: doubt about foundations, joined to modest reliance on experience in practice.
休謨自己的立場：對基礎存疑，同時在實踐上適度地倚賴經驗。
Reading check · 理解測驗
Did it land? 讀懂了嗎
1. What does Hume’s copy principle say?
2. What did Hume find when he looked for the self?
3. Why does the last paragraph of the Enquiry seem to undermine the book?
Go further · 延伸
Where he appears 他出現在哪幾課
- David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding ↗Start here; sections II to V and XII. 從這本開始；讀第二到五章與第十二章。
- David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part IV, sections 6 and 7 ↗On personal identity, and the famous conclusion about backgammon. 論人格同一，以及關於雙陸棋的那段著名結語。
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “David Hume” ↗