Miejsce etyki w systemie filozoficznym Dawida Hume’a

Abstract

Commentators of Hume's thought do not agree on the problem of its coherence and not rarely they announce that it is a collection of sceptical doubts directed towards the seventeenth-century metaphysics of substance. One of the most interesting problems is the supposed gap between the phenomenologist approach of Humean epistemology, as represented in the first book of his Treatise and in Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, and commonsensical theory of practical philosophy: ethics, politics, economy, found in Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals and some essays. In the paper I try to defend systematic character of his philosophy. According to Hume's own statements, various parts of his philosophy represent succeeding parts of his "science on man", e. g. on human nature. A link between the two main parts of Hume's is to be found in his theory of ethics. There he rejects a metaphysical notion of 'substance', typical for the seventeenth- -century thought, and endeavours to establish a new theory based on "experimental" or empiricist method. Thus he shows that our moral distinctions have nothing in common with metaphysical assumptions.