An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
David Hume1748Read this if you…
- have read Descartes and want the natural next step
- are interested in skepticism and theory of how we know what we know
- are interested in philosophy of causation
Skip this if you…
- find systematic rigorous philosophical argumentation too boring
- don't want a guy questioning all knowledge rather than proposing anything
The 
Take
Probably the most rigorously clear yet readable philosophy book i ever read. I largely agree with his propositions even if they aren’t too ambitious
The lineage through An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
- Meditations on First Philosophy by René Descartes. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding built on it. - Hume names Descartes directly — "the Cartesian doubt" is the antagonist of Section XII - The *Meditations* is the method Hume rejects: doubt everything, then rebuild from a single indubitable point - Read Descartes first and Hume's mitigated skepticism comes into focus as the counter-move — he argues Descartes' all-or-nothing doubt collapses on itself, and offers a humbler version in its place
- The Works of Cicero by Marcus Tullius Cicero. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding built on it. - When Hume names his own "academical or sceptical" philosophy in the *Enquiry*, he's claiming descent from Cicero's Academic skepticism — he says so explicitly - He read Cicero closely as a young man and held him up as the model of philosophy written for common life, not the schools - Read Cicero first and Hume's measured, doubt-tempered method stops looking like an invention and starts looking like an inheritance
Depicted in Art
Printed title page of the 1748 first edition, set in period type: 'Philosophical Essays concerning Human Understanding. By the Author of the Essays Moral and Political. London: Printed for A. Millar.'
David Hume, 1748
Same Ramsay 1766 portrait, scanned from the National Galleries of Scotland's PG 1057 record — Hume in scarlet and gold, resting on a Tacitus volume.
Allan Ramsay, 1766
Earlier Ramsay portrait of Hume at age 43, in a plain dark coat without the scarlet finery — a sober, scholarly bust-length view.
Allan Ramsay, 1754
Larger-than-life bronze of Hume seated bare-chested in classical Greek robes, a slate tablet on his knee, his right toe burnished gold by tourists rubbing it for luck.
Alexander Stoddart, 1995
Recommended Editions
Oxford University Press
2008
The Oxford World's Classics edited by Peter Millican. Millican is one of the sharpest living Hume scholars, and his notes make the causation and miracles arguments track the way Hume actually built them.
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Notable Quotes
A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.
- Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist, 1879–1955: "It is very possible that without these philosophical studies I would not have come to the solution."
- Charles Darwin, naturalist; founder of modern evolutionary biology, 1809–1882: Darwin read the first Enquiry in August 1838 while working out natural selection, taking up Hume's account of animal reason and instinct in his notebooks.
- Bertrand Russell, British philosopher and logician; Nobel laureate, 1872–1970: "He developed to its logical conclusion the empirical philosophy of Locke and Berkeley, and by making it self-consistent made it incredible."
- Karl Popper, philosopher of science, 1902–1994: "I found Hume's refutation of inductive inference clear and conclusive."
- Immanuel Kant, German Enlightenment philosopher, 1724–1804: "The remembrance of David Hume was the very thing that first interrupted my dogmatic slumber."
- Adam Smith, moral philosopher; founder of modern economics, 1723–1790: "Approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man as the nature of human frailty will permit."