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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
Within Hume's philosophical system and his account of human nature one finds a number of elements that are intimately related to his moral objectives. I refer, widely, to his moral objectives, rather than more restrictedly to his ethical theory, because his whole system has a moral thrust that can be discerned in many places where the immediate subject-matter is not ethical at all.
HUME AND HIS PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM
In 1927, A. E. Taylor concluded his Leslie Stephen Lecture David Hume and the Miraculous with a judgement of Hume's attitude to his philosophical work that has been held by many others:
What kind of response one makes to life will, no doubt, for better or worse, depend on the sort of man one is for good or bad. . . . But we can all make it our purpose that our philosophy, if we have one, shall be no mere affair of surface opinions, but the genuine expression of a whole personality. Because I can never feel that Hume's own philosophy was that, I have to own to a haunting uncertainty whether Hume was really a great philosopher, or only a "very clever man."
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