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Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.

David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature

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The story behind the card

Hume published A Treatise of Human Nature in 1739, when he was twenty-seven. It sold so poorly that he later wrote, in a short autobiography, that it 'fell dead-born from the press'. In it he argues that reason can discover facts and relations and can work out the means to a given end, but it cannot by itself supply the ends we care about or tell us what to want. Calling reason the 'slave of the passions' is therefore a claim about what moves us to act, not a dismissal of reasoning. It belongs to his wider view that moral judgements come from feeling rather than from reason alone.

Türkçe oku
Akıl, tutkuların kölesidir ve yalnızca öyle olmalıdır.
David Hume, İnsan Doğası Üzerine Bir İnceleme

Hume, İnsan Doğası Üzerine Bir İnceleme'yi 1739'da, yirmi yedi yaşındayken yayımladı. Kitap o kadar az ilgi gördü ki Hume yıllar sonra kısa otobiyografisinde onun “matbaadan ölü doğduğunu” yazdı. Hume bu kitapta şunu savunur: Akıl olguları ve aralarındaki ilişkileri bulabilir, bir amaca hangi yoldan varılacağını da hesaplayabilir; ama neyi isteyeceğimizi, neyi önemseyeceğimizi tek başına belirleyemez. Aklı “tutkuların kölesi” diye anması bu yüzden akıl yürütmeyi küçümsemek değildir; bizi harekete geçirenin tutkular olduğunu söyler. Bu görüş, ahlak yargılarımızın akıldan çok duygudan doğduğu yolundaki genel düşüncesinin bir parçasıdır.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: A Treatise of Human Nature
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