Enlightenment1711–1776 · Scottish

David Hume

A leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, Hume pushed empiricism to its limits, tracing all ideas back to impressions from experience and questioning what reason can actually prove. His skeptical analyses of causation, the self, and induction unsettled philosophy so deeply that Kant credited Hume with waking him from his 'dogmatic slumber.' He wrote with rare clarity and wit.

Schools

EmpiricismScottish EnlightenmentSkepticism

Key concepts

Problem of InductionBundle Theory of SelfIs–Ought GapConstant Conjunction

Core works

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
1748
Hume argues that all the contents of the mind derive from experience: vivid impressions and the fainter ideas copied from them. Any idea that cannot be traced to an impression is suspect. Applying this test, he turns to causation and finds that we never actually perceive a necessary connection between cause and effect — only one event regularly following another. Our confidence that the future will resemble the past, he shows, rests not on reason or proof but on habit. This is the problem of induction. The Enquiry extends the same skeptical scrutiny to miracles and to the limits of human knowledge, modeling a temperate, fallibilist way of holding beliefs.
Read summary →

Core works

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding