Razón y pasión en Hume (sobre la miseria de la Razón demostrativa)

Abstract

This paper attempts to review Hume’s criticism of the traditional confrontation between reason and passion. Against the model of a geometrical reason, Hume suggests another possible source of certainty which is capable of overcoming the «miseries » —limits and ideological excesses— of that demonstrative and intuitive reason. There are no geometrical self-evidences in issues concerning facts and morality. Only a renewed and wider concept of rationality is valid when thinking about those issues. Besides mathematical reason and its absolute certainties, there would be another kind of equally valid, but much more useful certainty, that Hume discovers as rooted in the sentimental dimension of human beings. Thus, he reveals «the other of reason» inside reason itself, foreseeing important ideas of contemporary authors, who are critical with the excesses of the modern «charismatic reason».