Word: hume
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...check the operation of a vague generality under fire, take the typical example, "Hume brought empiricism to its logical extreme." The question is asked, "Did the philosophical beliefs of Hume represent the spirit of the age in which he lived?" Our hero replies by opening his essay with: "David Hume, the great Scottish philosopher, brought empiricism to its logical extreme. If these be the spirit of the age in which he lived, then he was representative of it." This generality expert has already taken his position for the essay. Actually he has not the vaguest idea of what Hume really...
...artful equivocation is an almost impossible concept to explain, but it is easy to demonstrate. Let us begin with the question, "Did the philosophical beliefs of Hume represent the spirit of the age in which he lived...
...equivocator would answer it in this way: "Some people believe that David Hume was not necessarily a great philosopher because his thought was merely a reflection of conditions around him, colored by his own personality...
...Others, however, strongly support Hume's greatness on the ground that the force of his personality definitely affected the age in which he lived. It is not a question of the cart before the horse in either case, merely the old problem of which came first, the chicken or the egg. In any case, there is much to be said on both sides...
...long run the expert in the use of unwarranted assumption comes off better than the equivocator. He would deal with our question on Hume not by baffling the grader or by fencing with him but like this: "It is absurd to discuss whether Hume is representative of the age in which he lived unless we note the progress of that age on all fronts. After all, Hume did not live in a vacuum...