Quote by David Hume: “Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions.”

Logic and analysis alone cannot tell you what to want or care about — only your feelings can do that. Reason is a tool for figuring out how to get what you value, but it cannot generate the values themselves. This was a shocking claim in an age devoted to Reason.

Hume published A Treatise of Human Nature in 1739, a work he later said 'fell dead-born from the press.' Written when he was just 28, it would eventually be recognised as one of the most significant philosophical texts in English, overturning assumptions about reason's primacy that had dominated since Descartes.

Scottish philosopher and historian whose radical empiricism challenged the foundations of metaphysics and religion. His Treatise of Human Nature and Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding are landmarks of Enlightenment thought, and his scepticism about causation profoundly influenced Kant.