Was den Menschen zum Menschen macht

David Hume

3 Min. Lesezeit

🇩🇪 Deutsche Version: David Hume

David Hume is a Scottish empiricist and one of the most influential philosophers of the modern era. The book draws on him in two respects: as a proponent of an empirical-functionalist concept of person (Pb 7) and as the originator of the is-ought fallacy, which grounded the modern separation of facts and values.

Concept of Person

Hume understands the person as nothing more than a bundle of perceptions (bundle theory): “But setting aside some metaphysicians of this kind, I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement” (Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part IV, Section VI). This concept of person denies a substantial self and reduces personhood to empirically observable states of consciousness — a paradigmatic form of theoretical oblivion of the person (cf. Bexten 2017, p. 115).

The Diachronic Identity Objection

Against Hume’s bundle theory stands the diachronic identity objection: a mere bundle of perceptions cannot at the same time be the subject that identifies these perceptions as its own. Whoever remembers is not a chain of perceptions but the one who is the same person across time. Hume’s construction runs in a circle: it presupposes what it denies. In addition, the exclusion objection shows its practical untenability, and the performative contradiction shows that Hume, as an arguing subject, enacts the very personhood he theoretically denies.

The Is-Ought Fallacy (Hume’s Law)

Hume’s most consequential thesis for ethics is the claim that no ought-judgment (“ought”) can be derived from a judgment of being (“is”). This so-called Hume’s law became the foundation of the modern separation of descriptive and normative discourse. The dissertation shows that this thesis rests on a positivistic concept of nature that takes nature to be a value-free domain — an assumption refuted by the existence of objective values and the ontological dignity of the person (cf. naturalistic fallacy; Bexten 2017, pp. 115, 240).

Place in the Book

Hume is discussed in Chapter 3: The Concept of Person (German) and Chapter 4: Personhood (German). His concept of person (Pb 7) serves as an example of the empirical-functionalist conception, which is contrasted with the substance-ontological-relational concept of person.

Sources: Bexten 2017, pp. 115, 240 (Hume’s bundle theory as a paradigmatic form of theoretical oblivion of the person, and the is-ought fallacy).

Further sources:

  • A Treatise of Human Nature (1739/40). Book I, Part IV, Section VI (bundle theory — the person as a bundle of perceptions)
  • An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) (empiricist grounding of the is-ought separation)

See also

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