David Hume
The cheerful skeptic who found no self under introspection and no necessity behind causation — only habit.
“A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.”
Core ideas
- Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions
- Causation is expectation built from repeated experience
- The 'self' is a bundle of perceptions, not a thing
Historical context
His first book sank 'from the press'; his History paid the bills. Kant later credited Hume with interrupting his dogmatic slumber.
Key works
A Treatise of Human Nature · Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Questions they speak to
Minds in conversation
- Baruch SpinozaAmsterdam
- Immanuel KantKönigsberg
- The BuddhaLumbini / Ganges valley
Sources
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Hume