HKB
1 passages · search this phrase →
Often appears with: the passions and the emotions · reason and the intellect · mathematical vs sensory proof satisfaction · love of truth · difficulty and genius make truth pleasurable
Usually: argument (1) · curiosity (1)
“The first and most considerable circumstance requisite to render truth agreeable, is the genius and capacity, which is employed in its invention and discovery.” David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature · insight
In introducing curiosity, Hume claims truth is loved because of mental capacity and difficulty in discovering it, distinguishing truth about relations of ideas from truth about conformity to real existence.
with a small variation, which it is not necessary to give any particular account of. It is for this reason I have all along confined myself to the principal passion. The same care of avoiding prolixity is the reason why I wave the examination of the will and direct passions, as they appear in animals; since nothing is more evident, than that they are of the same nature, and excited by the same causes as in human cre…