Lule asked:

According to the writings of David Hume, where do we get our idea of liberty? Are liberty and
necessity opposed? Can they be reconciled? If they are not opposed to each other, what is each
opposed to?

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In the EnquiriesHume says quite plainly, "By liberty, then, we can only mean a power of acting or not
acting, according to the determination of the will." The word 'power' was commonly used by Hume to
mean 'causal efficacy,' i.e. the 'power' that A has to cause B. he goes on to offer the example that we
can choose either to stay at rest or move, a universal hypothetical liberty afforded to anyone who was
not a prisoner; and it is not a subject of dispute.

We are here involved with Hume's notion regarding causality; just as causation applies to material
objects in space then, according to Hume, it also applies to mental or internal events. His approach to
this topic is epistemological. He questions, not whether there iscausal necessity, but what we can
knowabout it. Empirical knowledge of juxtaposed events is easily obtained through the senses:
Hume, however, claimed that the only knowledge available to us is just this sensa. i.e. what is given
to us through the senses. "The impulse of one billiard -ball is attended with motion in the second. This
is the whole that appears to the outward senses...There is not in any single particular instance of
cause and effect anything which can suggest the idea of power of necessary connexion." The notion
'cause,' according to Hume, is a metaphysical concept, we are not made aware of it through the
senses, it is a mental constructapplied or added to the received sensa. On Hume's view two things
are causally if and only if the one kind of thing regularlyfollows the other. However, there could be a
time when it did not ! There is no guarantee that the sun will continue to rise every morning as a
causal effect of the earth's motion. More pertinent to your question is the sometimes unpredictable
behaviour of individuals, in either exercising liberty or demonstrating what is considered to be
determined action.

Hume asserts that the absence of any feelings of constraint or compulsion when we take ourselves to
be acting freely is no evidence in favour of libertarianism, we would have to be thinking of causality in
terms of force or necessitation. As we have seen, Hume is sceptical of any such force once it is
realised that "we know nothing further of causation of any kind than merely the constant conjunction
of objects." Reflection seems to reveal that what we call free actions "have a regular conjunction with
motives and circumstances and characters," so as to enable to draw inferences from one to another.

From Hume's interpretation of causal events in our everyday thinking, it seems that the answer to
your fundamental question : Where do we get our idea of liberty ? lies in the notion that some
decisions are taken in the absence of feelings of compulsion or constraint. Failure to feel forced to act
when I think of myself acting freely has no bearing on whether the act was caused or determined in
accordance with physical law. This answers your question : Are liberty and necessity opposed ? Free
actions are determined by motives conjoined with circumstances and the determining factors
themselves are the effects of other determining factors. But this in no way undermines the everyday
distinction between free and unfree actions. A free action is not an uncaused or undetermined action ;
it is, rather , an action which is determined by our own choice, as opposed to an unfree action, one
imposed on us by the choice of another or by circumstances we have no control over, and "this
hypothetical liberty is universally allowed to belong to everyone who is not a prisoner and in chains."

To make things a little clearer, Hume states that free will and determinism are compatible. The
compatibilist position amounts to saying that all actions are determined , but that some (the free ones)
are determined from within, while others (the unfree ones) are determined from without. He also
claims that the libertarian is in effect thinking of free actions as uncaused ones, but, as he says in
speaking of voluntary actions, the ones for which we are to be held responsible and for which we are
praised or blamed are ones which are caused by us.

References and quotations from Enquiries concerning Human UnderstandingThird Edition, David
Hume, Oxford University Press.

John Brandon