[lit-ideas] Re: Reason
- From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 17:19:05 -0700
on 5/18/05 9:13 AM, Mirembe Nantongo at nantongo@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> And yet there it sits, smugly and uselessly, purporting to govern these
> all -- with the consent of us, the benighted governed, if you please --
> generating nothing but sterile chatter, wars, dead-ends, divorces and Paul
> Stone.
Hume, dead white male very much of his time, suggested that because reason
has limits, it should serve. Are you suggesting that it has got a bit
uppity since then? Perhaps reason is just a dog; the more you exercise it,
the better it behaves, and the more willing you are to put up with its
snores when it drowses?
David Ritchie
Portland, Oregon
"Reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions and can never pretend
to any other office than to serve and obey them."
David Hume, Essays
"We are placed in this world, as in a great theatre, where the true springs
and causes of every event are concealed from us; nor have we sufficient
wisdom to forsee, or power to prevent, those ills with which we are
constantly threatened."
David Hume, The Natural History of Religion
"Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to
the scratching of my finger."
David Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature
"I am apt in a cool hour to suspect, in general, that most of my reasonings
will be more useful by furnishing hints and exciting people's curiosity,
than as containing any principles that would augment the stock of
knowledge."
David Hume, letter to Frances Hutcheson
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