Quotes · Quote card
Quotation from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume
“It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger”
A Treatise of Human Nature, Book II, Part III, Sect. 3 (Of the influencing motives of the will) (Project Gutenberg #4705)
A deliberately shocking example: preferences are not true or false, so reason cannot condemn even a monstrous choice of ends.
Citation: "It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger" — David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book II, Part III, Sect. 3 (Of the influencing motives of the will) (Project Gutenberg #4705). (id a-treatise-of-human-nature-q13)
Portrait: David Hume, Allan Ramsay, Public domain.
