Page 140 - 《社会》2020年第6期

The Natural Connotation of Common Life: The Methodological
Meaning of David Hume’s Moral Philosophy
YANG Lu
Abstract： This paper starts from the skepticism of modern people since Descartes, and
discusses the methodological significance of Hume’s moral philosophy around the
natural meaning of common life. Modern individuals seem to rely on pure reason to
understand the world and search for absolute certainty， only to find things in common
life suspicious and incomprehensible. Hume abandoned the mathematical model used
by Descartes and his successors， and instead chose a daily life perspective to conduct
experiments. He found that men were mightily governed by imagination and passion
rather than their cogitative rationality. This allows them to live in an environment of
precedents and customs in an interconnected manner. If modern men each adhered to
their own ideal standards set by false reason, consensus and compromise could hardly
be achieved. Hume believed that moral philosophy had its own objectives and methods
that were very different from natural philosophy’s search for universal laws through
mathematical models. It shouldn’t try to attain perfect precision and exactness that
human nature could never attain. Its goal was to promote moderation rather than
produce extreme. By revisiting Hume’s moral science, this paper attempts to reflect on
sociology’s pursuit of quantitative scientific models, and explore how to go beyond the
“limited understanding” of the society offered by natural science and truly penetrate
into the operation of moral factors such as ideas, customs and common beliefs in
people’s daily life， which are often the real basis for social interactions and dealings.
Keywords：common life， Nature， law of association of ideas， moral philosophy

1734 年，休谟在给乔治·切恩医生（Dr. George Cheyne）的信中写道：
大概在 1729 年 9 月初， 我所有的热忱似乎一瞬间烟消云
散，我再也提不起此前曾给我带来无限愉悦的那种精神气。 当
我放下我的书本时， 我没感到精神上有任何不舒服或萎靡不
振。 因此，我从未想过在这种情况下我有任何身体失调。 我以
为是 因 为 我 生 性 懒 散 所 致 ， 所 以 要 用 加 倍 的 用 功 来 克 服 。
（ Hume，2011：13）
然而，大约九个月后，休谟开始遭受身心症状的困扰，患上了长达四

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