Believing What We Don’t Believe

(An Essay on "Hume to Hegel," Featured in The Absolute Choice): The Fundamentality of “Natural Belief” and Our World of Paralyzed Centipedes and Kafkaesque Mice

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As featured in The Conflict of Mind, “Deconstructing Common Life” reviews the work of David Hume and my understanding of his philosophy as a revelation of why “the true isn’t the rational.” A hope is that The Absolute Choice might offer more elaborations and considerations of Hume which were not included in that paper, all in hopes of bridging Hume and Hegel together. My understandings and interpretations of David Hume are profoundly indebted to Dr. Donald Livingston and his book Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium, without which I would not be able to consider Hegel and Hume together today.

Does that overlap sound absurd? Understandably, and the first step we must make to bring Hume and Hegel together is to clarify that Hume is no simple empiricist, assuming by that we mean someone who follows ‘the doctrine that all knowledge originates from experience and that nothing is in the intellect that was not first in sense.’¹ But even this might apply to Hume (as does to Aristotle and Aquinas) if we do not by this assume ‘that necessary propositions are analytic’ — unfortunately, that is almost always what is meant today when people speak of “empiricism.”² ‘No philosopher has suffered more from than the narrowing of vision that comes from the modern habit of epistemological classification than Hume. He is commonly identified as an empiricist and indeed as an especially clear case of what radical empiricism is.’³ In truth, though clarifications must be made, Hume is far more like a phenomenologist (even a “Phenomenological Pragmatist,” as I like to discuss), and with that move we can start to move Hume and Hegel closer together.

A problem I find in writing this paper is that I want to quote every page of Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium, and perhaps across all my work I have done such (I wouldn’t be surprised) — it was one of the most influential books I ever read and easily helped save me from the very melancholy and delirium in its title. I want to quote now about how empiricism is linked with the industrial revolution and Modernism, and ‘makes no appearance in Hume’s philosophy,’ but instead we find in Hume not someone who wants to tell us about composition and “atoms” but instead someone ‘whose favorite way of understanding something is to tell a story about its origin.’⁴ ⁵ Page after page, we find in Dr. Livingston’s masterpiece endless quotes and endless points of exciting insight — it’s hard to know what not to include.

I

Rather than as an empiricist, it is better to think of Hume as engaged in a ‘radical questioning of philosophy,’ which is ‘the master philosophical question.’⁶ Is he a skeptic? Indeed, ‘Hume’s philosophical writings […] were generally viewed by his contemporaries as skeptical’: John Stuart Mills claimed of Hume that ‘the object of his reasoning was not to obtain truth, but to show that it is unattainable. His mind, too, was completely enslaved by a taste for literature…’⁷ It is not entirely wrong though that Hume was a “skeptic,” but we must distinguish ‘between two sorts of skepticism: one is virtuous and is used as a dialectical foil against which truth is illuminated; the other is vicious and destructive of reason and truth.’⁸ In fact, we can see Hume’s “good, dialectical skepticism” as precisely a method of stopping the other kind of “bad, autonomous skepticism,” mainly ‘the Pyrrhonian challenge of all authority,’ which sounds strange considering how much Hume and Pyrrhonian thinking overlap, and yet what cannot be overlooked is Hume’s adamant insistent on “honoring common life.”⁹ We can see Hume using “radical skepticism” precisely to oppose a sentiment like what we see expressed in Marx in Marx’s letter to Ruge: ‘What we must accomplish is the ruthless critique of everything that exists.’¹⁰ And yet does not Hume support “radical skepticism?” Yes, but there is a difference between “true skepticism which honors” and “false and autonomous skepticism,” which is a distinction that is critical to get right, seeing as both reach everything (for philosophy can be about everything, including itself).

Suggesting the Wittgenstein of On Certainty, we see in Hume something more like ‘inductive fallibilism,’ which is to say ‘that the conclusion of the best inductive argument may be false even though its premises are true,’ but why Hume makes this point is not to make us nihilists but to put “reason in its proper bounds” (which ironically Kant saw himself as needing to do in response to Hume).¹¹ Hegel carries out similar work, suggesting both are masters at the craft of their unique philosophical projects in making a topic of philosophy the practice of philosophy itself. On that point, please note how unique philosophy is in that “asking about philosophy” doesn’t make one meta-philosophical: the “meta” is contained within the entity, suggesting a unique window into A/B versus A/A. It is this peculiar characteristic of philosophy that interests both Hume and Hegel, of which being able to ask about again makes philosophy unique, as it is unique in that we can ask philosophical questions about the results of that inquiry, then those results — on and on. How is this possible? And what must the world be like for such a way of thinking to exist and prove possible? (Is it dialectical “all the way down?” A/B?) And what must we be like as subjects to be capable of philosophy? For both Hegel and Hume, to ask these questions is to approach what makes us human.

Dr. Livingston explains it far better than me, but we must see Hume — when he critiques Natural Law, morality, our experience of objects, politics — all of his efforts are unified by a constant effort of ‘exemplifications of true and false philosophical theorizing.’¹² He is always exploring those differences, deconstructing examples of “autonomous rationality” and “false philosophy” in favor of “dialectical (non)rationality” and “true philosophy.” ‘[T]here are no foundations of certainty of any kind on which a theory of knowledge [can] be built,’ which means we need a “dialectical movement” that keeps us “forever in the air,” per se, like a badminton birdie, for which touching “the ground” is to lose.¹³ If “touching the (foundational) ground” is to fail, this would suggest that most philosophy has engaged in practices of bringing about its own failure and calling it success — this is what Hume seeks to stop. And then Hegel comes along and asks, “What must the nature of reality be like so that we must be ‘a birdie never touching the ground’ (which is to say why must we always be dialectical)?” While Hume seems more satisfied simply to acknowledge dialectic, Hegel asks, “Why are dialectics ‘fitting?’ ” — thus continuing the question.

‘The great topical distinction in the Treatise is not the empiricist one between uninterpreted sense impressions and interpretation, but the dialectical distinction between two sorts of interpretation: custom and reflection. The exploration of this dialectical relation is the central theme of all Hume’s philosophical writing […]’¹⁴

Where we fail to discuss Hume as dialectical, we fail to discuss Hume. The role of philosophy is to uncover this dialectic for Hume, which is to say this should be the conclusion of ‘the speculative intellect’s inquiry into its own nature,’ while for Hegel that is indeed the role and revelation of “Absolute Knowing,” which then leads to Science of Logic.¹⁵ Ultimately, Hume would have us study philosophy so that we might ‘be able to see through a new philosophical theory immediately and so would be able to preserve, without interruption, the peace that transcends all philosophical understanding,’ similar to how Hegel would have us think “The Now” to preserve the Now versus us desire to return to the past or leap ahead into the future (“The Owl of Minerva”)¹⁶ Nothing threatens this peace more than philosophy, and yet philosophy is required for us to maintain it: we must play with fire, both in the temptation to be lost in abstraction and to avoid the Now and Real. Both Hume and Hegel demand dialectics which keep us Now and Real, so are the thinkers identical?

II

Dr. Livingston notes that ‘[t]here is much to be learned from a comparative study of Hume and Hegel,’ suggesting Hume, Hegel, and Human Nature by Christopher Berry.¹⁷ Dr. Berry impressively argues that ‘Hume’s belief in the constancy and uniformity of human nature’ aligns with ‘human nature as a concrete universal in Hegel,’ though Dr. Berry also argues that they ultimately have different ‘estimation[s] and conception[s] of history.’¹⁸ I hopefully argue in “Hegel’s Justification of Hegel” that the two might algin, especially when we grasp that Spirit and State are always A/B (and hence Notion and Nature are dialectically linked), which is to say we can consider Hegel and Hume more aligned if we make the ontoepistemology of Science of Logic more present and central to all of Hegel’s thinking. If I am wrong about this, forgive me and my eagerness to algin Hume and Hegel.

Much of the possible disagreement between Hume and Hegel seems to involve ‘the relationship between human nature and social experience,’ a point with which I agree: Hume does not seem to have space for a version of “mass political philosophical consciousness” (as Dr. Livingston discusses) that avoids effacement and dehumanization, but my concern with accepting this fate is that Hume can lead to Dugin.¹⁹ Indeed, the risk of Hegel is that we further grow and strengthen the ‘mass philosophical consciousness in political life’ which leads to “the barbarism of refinement” and destructive “autonomous rationality,” but I repeat the risk of avoiding Hegel is Duginism.²⁰ If the road which Hegel opens for us is impossible, which is to say that “Absolute Knowing” cannot spread and scale, then Duginism or Global Tyranny might be our only options.

‘[N]either Hume nor Hegel is a relativist, Dr. Berry informs us, noting that for both ‘some concrete material criteria is termed a substantive account of rationality,’ which is to say that inner opinions, philosophies, and intellectual differences are not in themselves substantive without relation to materiality (geography, environment, etc.).²¹ “Relativism” cannot provide us with any social “certainty” like Descartes sought to grant us, while both Hegel (through justifying “The State”) and Hume (through justifying “common life”) give us “grounds” for not falling into epistemic nihilism or philosophic melancholy. Both Hume and Hegel understand that we cannot meaningfully discuss “human nature” without also discussing history ( ‘Hume […] most unequivocally enunciates his view of human nature in his characterization of the function and premises of historical knowledge’), a point which makes me think of Rudolph Steiner, who might help bridge Hume and Hegel.²² This is because we are always conditioned as subjects by our environments and “concreteness,” which change through time (perhaps due mainly thanks to technology, most notably “information technology,” as stressed by thinkers like Alexander Bard), which is different from saying “truth is relative.” Yes, the phrase “human nature is conditioned” sounds like “human nature is relative,” but the difference is paramount. In other words, we cannot discuss “human nature” without discussing history, tradition, “trial and error,” technology, and the like. Yes, there are constants in “human nature,” such as our love of self-deception, pathos, etc., but there are also shifts — though of course this will depend on what we mean by “human nature” (I personally use the language of “subject” more). Overall, for Hume and Hegel, we could say that ‘the Enlightenment’s understanding of human nature as uniform and constant [was contracted with] a concrete specific understanding: an understanding here termed contextualist.’²³ In contrast, Kantianism will oppose Hume in suggesting ‘a structure of experience,’ meaning something “behind and guiding” experience (which for Hume would possibly be an ultimate violation of “common life”), a critique to which Hegel will then reply (who could be strangely seen as a combination of Hume and Kant, but I will not push that too far).²⁴

III

Why is “conditionalism” and “context” so important to Hume? Hume will not have anything “over” our experience of “common life,” for if there is something “over” it, there is the possibility of tyranny. Dr. Livingston suggests this point when he considers Hume’s “theory of meaning,” which though problematic still suggests Hume’s overall project. Hume suggests ideas are derived from impressions, and thus ideas are in service of impressions; likewise, he wants meaning to mostly if not always be a reference to something in the world, for that would make ideas, meanings, and concepts subservient to things and phenomena, making “the world safer,” per se. For Hume, our “common life” entails ‘a community of shared judgments [and is] a paradigm of non-controversial descriptive meaning[s] whereas philosophical language is not,’ and that means “philosophical language” is weak to bind us to a community and frankly to “bind us to ourselves.”²⁵ We fragment from others, and then we fragment internally, and then who can put Humpy Dumpty back together again?

Conditionalism

This in mind, if I were to highlight two of Hume’s main epistemological realizations:

1. Hume examines how we can generally think of all systems as falling under two categories: ‘the popular and the philosophical. Philosophical reflection reveals a false premise in the popular system […] On the basis of this error, the philosophical system attempts totality to replace the popular one, but, ironically, this and any other reflective total critique presupposes the popular system: the philosophical system has the same difficulties as the popular one.’²⁶ Neither can “ground themselves,” which is to say both lead to “Absolute Knowing” (to suggest Hegel), as expanded on elsewhere.

2. ‘Hume, however, was one of the first in modern times to appreciate the fact that the acceptability of a system is independent of the truth or falsity of its axioms. Considerations of the logical strength of the axioms to generate theorems within the system and of the system’s relations, logical and otherwise, to other systems are more important than an isolated concern with the semantic properties of the axioms.’²⁷

A system can be “internally coherent” and yet wrong, and also a philosophical system requires that which is experiential, “common,” and concrete (“non-philosophical” or “non-rational”) to be possible (in other words, ‘philosophy is parasitic upon the popular system’).²⁸ In this, we can understand why ‘[a] point of Hume’s apparent skepticism is only to show, Kemp Smith claims, that we ought to reject the request for showing that those beliefs are justified. We hold them anyway, and the proper philosophical task is to account for why we do’ (a sentiment which suggests Hegel’s emphasis on “interpretation” as the task of philosophy)²⁹ Can we “know” a hamburger without eating one? Yes and no, and this point can be argued, but critically Hume would suggest that we cannot know if our idea of a hamburger is wrong without the experience. And this is where all the danger lies…

‘What we may perhaps describe as the chief aim of Hume’s philosophy is to prove that belief rests neither on reason nor on evidence,’ as the great Norman Kemp Smith put it, which is to say that we believe what we believe for reasons we don’t believe.³⁰ Problematically, Moderns especially believe what they believe for reasons they don’t believe, meaning they deny the impossibility of “autonomous rationality,” which sets the world to end up like a snake eating its own tail, a black hole (for ultimately the choice of “Absolute Knowing” can be seen as a choice between “a black hole” and a “white hole,” Lovecraft and Dante — but more on that another time). The belief in the body, the reality of the world, the effectiveness of language — these are ‘natural belief[s]’ (‘due to the ultimate instincts or propensities which constitute our human nature’) we must assume to ask about them, and so they are axiomatic.³¹ Such “nonrational” matters are things we cannot question without assuming, and such things are what Hume says philosophy must honor or will face effacement (if we deny “Absolute Knowing,” totalitarianism will be our fate). Things we cannot question without enacting or assuming (the existence of the mind, the real world, etc.) cannot be questioned without causing self-demise, suggesting why ‘[the] doctrine of natural belief is one of the most essential, and perhaps the most characteristic doctrine in Hume’s philosophy.’³² And indeed, we Moderns do tend to question such things, the “natural beliefs of common life,” in proportion to the spread of “philosophical consciousness” around the globe, as seems unavoidable due to the internet, Pluralism, and Globalization. This is turning the world into a world full of centipedes trying to figure out how they use all their legs — paralyzed, a “Meaning Crisis.”

‘We cannot by means of reason explain any of the ultimate characteristics of our experience,’ Hume warned us, but the very possession of reason makes us feel like we have reason to try.³³ He saw that we would use reason to criticize what made reason possible, and he wrote what he did versus just settle on a “common sense” argument because he seemingly recognized that we would feel “epistemically irresponsible” not to use reason to question what made reason possible (self-effacing, a snake eating its own tale). And if ultimately reality is “groundless,” as we realize at Hegel’s “Absolute Knowing,” then there is nothing to stop us from trying to find reason in what makes reason possible (and thus cannot be given reason), and so we can and feel like we should do the impossible and self-efface. Basically, Hume saw that his philosophical project was needed or else we would reasonably and according to “epistemic responsibility” end up as the mouse in A Little Fable by Franz Kafka. And not just us, but everyone.

‘Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. It is that principle alone, which renders our experience useful to us,’ but we are in an age in which reason cannot help but feel “epistemically immoral” not to search for the reasons of custom.³⁴ Is all this — this “collective conflict of mind” — evidence of some evolution of consciousness like discussed by Rudolph Steiner? What does it mean for Spirit to “reason about the groundlessness of reason?” What negation/sublation might be found in “Absolute Knowing?” Is not “Absolute Knowing” the end of our journey? It seems that way, and yet why does it come before Science of Logic?

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Notes

¹Livingston, Donald. Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1998: 3.

²Livingston, Donald. Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1998: 3.

³Livingston, Donald. Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1998: 3.

⁴Livingston, Donald. Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1998: 5.

⁵Livingston, Donald. Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1998: 6.

⁶Livingston, Donald. Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1998: 12.

⁷Livingston, Donald W. “Introduction.” Hume: A Re-Evaluation. Ed. Donald W. Livingston and James T. Kin. New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 1976: 1.

⁸Livingston, Donald W. “Introduction.” Hume: A Re-Evaluation. Ed. Donald W. Livingston and James T. Kin. New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 1976: 1.

⁹Livingston, Donald W. “Introduction.” Hume: A Re-Evaluation. Ed. Donald W. Livingston and James T. Kin. New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 1976: 5.

¹⁰Livingston, Donald W. “Introduction.” Hume: A Re-Evaluation. Ed. Donald W. Livingston and James T. Kin. New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 1976: 5.

¹¹Livingston, Donald W. “Introduction.” Hume: A Re-Evaluation. Ed. Donald W. Livingston and James T. Kin. New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 1976: 7.

¹²Livingston, Donald. Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1998: 14.

¹³Livingston, Donald. Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1998: 16.

¹⁴Livingston, Donald. Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1998: 16.

¹⁵Livingston, Donald. Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1998: 16.

¹⁶Livingston, Donald. Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1998: 10.

¹⁷ivingston, Donald. Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1998: 388.

¹⁸Berry, Christopher. Hume, Hegel, and Human Nature. Hingham, MA: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1982: ix.

¹⁹Berry, Christopher. Hume, Hegel, and Human Nature. Hingham, MA: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1982: 2.

²⁰Livingston, Donald. Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1998: 258.

²¹Berry, Christopher. Hume, Hegel, and Human Nature. Hingham, MA: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1982: 3.

²²Berry, Christopher. Hume, Hegel, and Human Nature. Hingham, MA: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1982: 19.

²³Berry, Christopher. Hume, Hegel, and Human Nature. Hingham, MA: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1982: 25.

²⁴Berry, Christopher. Hume, Hegel, and Human Nature. Hingham, MA: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1982: 44.

²⁵Livingston, Donald W. “Hume’s Historical Theory of Meaning.” Hume: A Re-Evaluation. Ed. Donald W. Livingston and James T. Kin. New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 1976: 215.

²⁶Livingston, Donald W. “Hume’s Historical Theory of Meaning.” Hume: A Re-Evaluation. Ed. Donald W. Livingston and James T. Kin. New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 1976: 217.

²⁷Livingston, Donald W. “Hume’s Historical Theory of Meaning.” Hume: A Re-Evaluation. Ed. Donald W. Livingston and James T. Kin. New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 1976: 217.

²⁸Livingston, Donald W. “Hume’s Historical Theory of Meaning.” Hume: A Re-Evaluation. Ed. Donald W. Livingston and James T. Kin. New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 1976: 217.

²⁹Robinson, Wade L. “Naturalist and Meta-sceptic.” Hume: A Re-Evaluation. Ed. Donald W. Livingston and James T. Kin. New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 1976: 25.

³⁰Smith, Norman Kemp. The Philosophy of David Hume. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005: 85.

³¹Smith, Norman Kemp. The Philosophy of David Hume. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005: 85–86.

³²Smith, Norman Kemp. The Philosophy of David Hume. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005: 86.

³³Smith, Norman Kemp. The Philosophy of David Hume. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005: 87.

³⁴Hume, David. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1993: 29.

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