What David Hume Actually Said About Action
All 3 David Hume passages on action, in full — what each one claims, what holds them together, and who argues the other way.
David Hume returns to action three times in thinkr's library — more often than to almost anything else. Scottish empiricist whose calm skepticism dismantled easy assumptions about causation, the self, and the foundations of belief.
What follows is every one of those passages, in full, with what each is actually claiming. The language is of its period, but the question underneath is not: what is action for, and what does it ask of you?
Every David Hume passage on action
“As to the Approbation or Esteem of those Blockheads who call themselves the Public, & whom a Bookseller, a Lord, a Priest, or a Party can guide, I do most heartily despise it.”
“Here am I who have written on all sorts of subjects calculated to excite hostility, moral, political, and religious, and yet I have no enemies — except, indeed, all the Whigs, all the Tories, and all the Christians.”
“From the comparison of theism and idolatry, we may form some other observations, which will also confirm the vulgar observation that the corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.”
What holds these together
Read in sequence rather than one at a time, the passages stop being separate aphorisms. David Hume is not offering three opinions about action; the lines are facets of one position, and the repetition is the argument. The shortest of them — “As to the Approbation or Esteem of those Blockheads who call themselves the Public, & whom a Bookseller, a Lord, a Priest, or a Party can guide, I do most heartily despise it” — is the version you can carry, and the longer ones are what it unpacks into.
David Hume applied to a real decision
Quotation is the easy part. The harder test is what the position actually does when it meets a situation where every option costs something. thinkr puts two such cases to David Hume.
A friend asks if they made the right choice. They didn't.
Argued as taoist restraint: You are resisting the urge to force the moment. The danger is mistaking avoidance for patience.
You notice a loophole that benefits you and hurts no one visibly.
Argued as skeptical realism: You are suspicious of moral theater and alert to how systems really work. The risk is becoming clever at the expense of character.
Work through these yourself
- A friend asks if they made the right choice. They didn't. — argued from taoist restraint and several competing positions
- You notice a loophole that benefits you and hurts no one visibly. — argued from skeptical realism and several competing positions
Who disagrees
Plato, Seneca, Mahatma Gandhi and Lao Tzu all address action too, and they do not converge. Reading David Hume alone gives you a coherent position; reading David Hume against Plato shows you what the position is actually choosing against.