Word: hume
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...Hume brought empiricism to its logical extreme." (Philosophy...
...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 this 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 what Hume really said...
...artful equivocation is an almost impossible concept to explain, but it is easy to demonstrate. Let us take our earlier typical examination question, "Did the philosophical beliefs of Hume represent the spirit of the age in which be lived?" The equivocator would answer it 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. Other, however, strongly support Hume's greatness on the ground that the force of his personality definitely affected the age in which he lived...
...long run the expert in the use of unwarranted assumptions comes off better than the equivocator. He would deal with our question of Hume not by baffling the grader or fencing with him but like this: "It is absurd to discuss whether Hume is representative of the age in which he lived unless we first note the progress of that age on all intellectual fronts. After all, Hume did not live in a vacuum...
...died during the war and left the University crates of material, crates that held no hieroglyphs. Instead, his bounty was the arcana of Rex Stout, Dashiell Hammett and the rest, all conveniently graded by the good professor. The Clue of the Bricklayer's Aunt got a B, but David Hume's Goodbye to Life received a straight A on the inside cover...