Can reason alone push us to act?
David Hume
Can reason alone push us to act?
Imagine you're deciding whether to donate to charity. You know it's good and rational to help others, but you don't feel compelled to give.
Hume suggests that our actions are driven more by emotions than cold logic. Even though you think donating is rational, it's your feelings that ultimately push you to act.
Example
You see a homeless person on the street, feel sympathy, and decide to donate money.
Remember this
Reason alone isn't enough to motivate moral actions; our passions play a crucial role.
Text adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Related concepts
Immanuel Kant
Kant separates duty from inclination to determine moral worth
Is–ought problem
Hume's guillotine: ethical conclusions can't follow from facts alone
Axiological ethics
Max Scheler's material value ethics opposed Kant's purely formal ethics
Principle of sufficient reason
Every contingent fact has a sufficient reason
Emmanuel Levinas
Levinas argues that ethics precedes knowledge
logical positivism collapsed
Can a philosophy prove itself scientifically?
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