David Hume's Definition Of Liberty And Necessity

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In the controversy between freedom and determinism, Hume thinks that this kind of argument can be ended by redefining the definition of necessity and liberty (63). According to Hume, this discussion had been debated for a long time because people were holding the wrong definition of necessity and liberty in examining this topic, so the incorrect definition of necessity and liberty bring the endlessness into the discussion (63). In Hume’s “Of Liberty and Necessity”, he redefines the definition of necessity and liberty, and he tries to reconcile freedom and determinism by using his new definition of necessity and liberty. This article will be divided in two parts: 1) explicating Hume’s new definition of necessity and liberty; 2) examining whether Hume’s new definition of necessity and liberty are successful to resolve the argument between free will and determinism.
Hume’s definition of necessity and liberty According to Hume, some people who hold the view, for a long time, that all physical object is subjected to the determination of the nature, which means that all the outcome of the phenomena have already been determined by what produced the phenomena; in Hume’s word, the outcome of the phenomena is called
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For Hume, an individual has free will if the action or absence of action of the individual correspond to his/her will which the will could not be otherwise. Hume thinks that this concept of free will is applicable to everyone except for the people who were physically limited, like prisoner (72). In Hume’s conception of free will, liberty is not an opposition of determinism, instead, Hume puts liberty in the opposite side of constraints which is the boundary stopping one acting according to his/her will (72).
Hume’s reconciliation on Freedom and

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