Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions,”
- Date
- 1739
Meaning of “Reason is, and ought only to be, the…”
Hume argues that reasoning can inform means and consequences but does not by itself supply the motivating ends that move a person to act.
Where does it come from?
A Treatise of Human Nature, Book II, Part III, Section III, “Of the Influencing Motives of the Will,” Project Gutenberg #4705. The frozen catalog retains the opening clause “Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions,” from a longer sentence. It remains Hume’s historical philosophical thesis rather than contemporary empirical psychology.