PHL100Y1 Lecture Notes - Scottish Enlightenment
Document Summary
Socrates and aristotle insisted on starting with everyday beliefs and views, even when they thought such views needed to be modi ed or extended. Plato was less attracted to the everyday, but he too accepted without much question certain fundamental views of his day the primacy of justice, say, and the nature of the virtues. In plato and aristotle we saw philosophers attempting to draw conclusions from deep metaphysical principles, in each case trying to get ethical values out of them. Hume rejects the other part of the classical enterprise, namely the link between metaphysics and values (about which we will only hear a little), and goes further than descartes in dethroning metaphysics. Hume, in fact, deeply distrusted speculative metaphysics as well as what he called ordinary philosophy. [2] david hume (1711 1776) was an important gure of the so-called scottish enlightenment", a friend of adam smith.
