Work · Empiricism, Enlightenment & Liberalism
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
The sharpened version of the problems of causation and induction.
Introduction
Hume recast the first book of his Treatise in shorter, more elegant form; it appeared in 1748 as “Philosophical Essays concerning Human Understanding” and received its present title in 1758. Its twelve sections leave out much of the Treatise, such as the theory of personal identity, and add new topics: section X, “Of Miracles”, argues that testimony can hardly ever make a miracle credible, which caused a scandal. The book ends with the advice to burn any volume of divinity or metaphysics that contains neither reasoning about quantity nor about matters of fact. Kant, who did not read English, could know it in a German translation of 1755; it was Hume, he later wrote, who interrupted his “dogmatic slumber”.
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Connections
Builds on
- A Treatise of Human Nature1739 · David Hume
Taken up in
- Language, Truth and Logic1936 · A. J. Ayer
Answered in
- Critique of Pure Reason1781 · Immanuel Kant
- The Logic of Scientific Discovery1934 · Karl Popper
Criticized in
- An Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect1824 · Mary Shepherd
More works by David Hume
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