About this nonfiction
A Cultivated Reason : An Essay on Hume and Humeanism by Christopher Williams is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.
As Plato’s tripartite division of the soul, Descartes’s criterion of clear and distinct ideas, and Kant’s notion of the categorical imperative attest, philosophy has traditionally been wedded to rationalism and its “intellectualist” view of persons. In this book Christopher Williams seeks to wean his fellow philosophers away from an overly rationalistic self-understanding by using resources that are available within the philosophical tradition itself, including some that anticipate strands of Nietzsche’s thought. The book begins by developing Hume’s critique of rationalism, with reference especially to the section of the __Treatise__ that deals with the continuing existence of bodies (an argument that subverts intellectualist criteria by attempting to satisfy them) and to his neglected essay “The Sceptic” where Hume reveals the importance of our embodiment through a comic portrayal of philosophers’ efforts to “correct our sentiments.” Then it moves on to ward off charges of irrationalism by showing that, although our powers of self-correction are more limited than the rationalist thinks they are, a Humean position is able both to sustain a commitment to reflection and to sensitize
It is typically read by self-directed learners exploring a subject in depth.
Common subject areas: history, science, philosophy, social sciences.
- Author
- Christopher Williams
- Publisher
- Pennsylvania State University Press
- Published
- 2021
- Language
- EN
- ISBN
- 9780271076249
- Category
- nonfiction
- Subjects
- History, Philosophy, Humanities