Abstract

What is the organizational structure of Hume’s essay? The first three paragraphs are purely introductory and somewhat incidental. To someone untutored in Hume’s general religious skepticism, these opening remarks might appear to be the vain boasts of a philosopher in praise of philosophy. More plausibly, his opening remarks are stage-setting devices. They prepare the reader not for what Hume will argue but rather for how he will uncompromisingly challenge commonly held presuppositions about the sensitive issue of suicide. His comments are methodological or perhaps meta-philosophical in character. In more contemporary language, Hume is promoting the following two theses in these introductory paragraphs, each of which has to do with the inadequacy of non-philosophical foundations for reaching conclusions about the morality of suicide