Autor připomíná 300. výročí narození Davida Huma tím, že české odborné i studentské veřejnosti předkládá text Humova Dopisu lékaři, opatřený poznámkami zpřístupňujícími jeho obsah. Tento dopis představuje významné svědectví o počátcích Humovy filosofie a je místem, kde můžeme identifikovat "bod obratu" na cestu směřující k Traktátu. Zároveň je nepostradatelným dokumentem pro výklad Huma z pozice "kontextualistického přístupu" k ranně-novověké filosofii, jak jej uplatňují zejména Alexander Stewart a John P. Wright.

John Arbuthnot's celebrated but flawed paper in the Philosophical Transactions of 1711-12 is a philosophically and historically plausible target of Hume's probability theory. Arbuthnot argues for providential design rather than chance as a cause of the annual birth ratio, and the paper was championed as a successful extension of the new calculations of the value of wagers in games of chance to wagers about natural and social phenomena. Arbuthnot replaces the earlier anti-Epicurean notion of chance with the equiprobability assumption of (...) Huygens's mathematics of games of chance, and misrepresents the birth ratio data to rule out chance in favour of design. The probability sections of Hume's Treatise taken together correct the equiprobability assumption and its extension to other kinds of phenomena in the estimation of wagers or expectations about particular events. Hume's probability theory demonstrates the flaw in this version of the design argument. (shrink)

In this paper I consider the context and significance of the first instalment of Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature , Books One and Two, on the understanding and on the passions, published in 1739 without Book Three. I argue that Books One and Two taken together should be read as addressing the question of the relation between reason and passion, and place Hume's discussion in the context of a large early modern philosophical literature on the topic. Hume's goal is (...) to show that the passions do not require government by reason, and to illustrate various ways in which the passions of social beings regulate themselves. The underlying theme of the first Treatise is thus a new theory of sociability: sympathetic sociability. (shrink)