Tuesday, September 6, 2011

God Bless You, David Hume

David Hume, Scottish Historian and Skeptical Philsopher, initiated the rift in the human sciences, forever dividing natural and psychological philosophy.

Hume underscored man's innate capacity for bias and historicity within human tradition, forever negating pure reason as pure guide for proper action and understanding

He upheld the triumph of tradition and human interaction, which better safeguard our senses and sensibilities than any thinking man can do.

We cannot reason our way to the truth, no more than a map can lead us through a dark tunnel without external light.

The truth as eternal light, as guidance for wandering minds, cannot be kindled in the finite recesses of human reason. Our capacity to reflect from within must necessarily draw us to depend on the Source without.

By faith we connect the infinitesimal instances of human experience. Though we cannot know for sure that the sun will rise tomorrow, our implied optimism, for want of a better word, enables us to live for today and plan for tomorrow.

Despite our surface-knowledge of those whom we meet, we trust their communication, until context or corruption would suggest otherwise.

We devine the proper course of action based on the best information available to us, yet resolved that the ultimate outcomes remains beyond our senses and sanity.

"The moment of decision is madness," Kierkegaard quipped, not to infer the innate insanity of human experience, but the inherent limitation of our reason alone to articulate the right, wrong, and benefit our actions and circumstances.

Despite his virulent atheism and anti-Christian posture, David Hume conceded at the end of his life the definite existence and need for God in the lives of men, no matter how violently in offends his forever impoverished sense and sensibility.

God bless you, David Hume, for making reasonable the certainty of inexplicable certainties to the craven human mind.

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