Ep. 57: Hume Was Wrong

Young Heretics

Spencer Klavan

Society & Culture, Education

4.9 • 4.5K Ratings

🗓️ 15 June 2021

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For the first time on Young Heretics, Spencer Klavan tackles a philosopher with whom he thoroughly and entirely disagrees: David Hume. Reading through the "Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding," Spencer examines the roots of modern skepticism and its influence on later thinkers like Freud.

Read along with Spencer with your copy of Hume's "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" here: https://www.amazon.com/Enquiry-concerning-Understanding-Oxford-Philosophical/dp/0198752482.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Today I want to talk about someone who I think was basically wrong about basically everything.
0:10.5	Usually on this show or so far on this show, let's say, I've been bringing you people that I admire
0:18.4	immensely, bringing you great works of literature and fiction and art that I think belong
0:24.5	as titans in the pantheon to mixed metaphors. There are gods of the Western culture and Western
0:32.3	civilization. Today I want to talk about someone who had a tremendous influence on the West, but who
0:37.5	I think was wrong. And that's David Hume, the Scottish philosopher of the 18th century. And I want
0:44.4	to spend a second talking a little bit about why I think it's important to bring you people that I
0:49.6	disagree with from the Western canon. And what our job is here on this show to just remind us,
0:57.2	right? Because I am here giving you the classical education that you are being denied by modern culture.
1:04.6	That's the whole point of this show. That's why I love to do it. That's what I'm here for.
1:10.8	That's what I was made for is to share these incredible ideas that have been passed down throughout
1:15.5	the centuries and the generations and that now can help you to live a higher, deeper, more profound
1:21.6	and virtuous life. That's the whole point. The Western tradition is a big tradition. It obviously
1:28.0	encompasses an enormous range of people, eras, thoughts, ideas. Not all of those are going to be
1:34.8	ones that I think are right. And so I am presenting these things to you from a point of view, right? I
1:41.8	can't lie to you about that. I have to be honest about what I believe, what I think I've always
1:45.9	told you exactly what I think about various ideas, various people. So on the one hand, I'm giving
1:52.4	you these ideas from inside the Western tradition because we're all a part of it, right? We participate
1:58.4	in that big conversation. We take authors and we say, well, I agree with this and I don't agree
2:02.4	with that and we kind of incorporate them, try them out in our lives, right? That's a really underrated
2:06.4	way of kind of figuring out if something works as you spend a little time with an author, spend a
2:10.8	little time using his ideas in your life, see if it works. So we're all in that and we can't,
	...

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