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Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, Section VIII

Of Liberty and Necessity

OPEN THE BOOK WITH A QUESTION

Does the regular dependence of action on character and desire erase responsibility, or make it possible?

Evidence-backed moments
2
Timeline events
1
Verified places
0

People who carry this work into the voyage

Read the argument as a story

Story 1Can we be responsible if we could not have done otherwise?

Hume — Liberty compatible with necessity

The question that opens it

Does the regular dependence of action on character and desire erase responsibility, or make it possible?

What changes as you read the work
  1. 1

    Hume offers one of the most influential statements of classical compatibilism, reconciling freedom and moral responsibility with causal determination.

    Check the evidence

    This is an evidence-linked editorial account, not a direct quotation.

    • Hume on Free Will

      Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

      Locator: Introduction; §1 Liberty and Necessity — The Classical Reading

      Open source
  2. 2

    On this reading, a free action is not uncaused; it issues from the agent's desires and will and contrasts with action produced by constraint.

    Check the evidence

    This is an evidence-linked editorial account, not a direct quotation.

    • Hume on Free Will

      Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

      Locator: §1 The Classical Reading; Treatise 2.3.2 and Enquiry 8

      Open source
Try the full inquiry

How the work moved through time

  1. 1748

    Section VIII of the Enquiry presents a public argument reconciling liberty and necessity.

    PerspectiveOpen in question

Continue with the questions it unsettles