Topics Philosophers

Question Hume lobs some pretty convincing skepticism at the entire discipline of philosophy in the last chapter of his <i>Enquiry</i>. Besides Kant, have other philosophers tackled these doubts head-on? Since his skepticism is not just about metaphysics, but about all philosophy, do contemporary analytic philosophers regard these doubts seriously?

Accepted:
December 1, 2005

Comments

Hume's skepticism is a fascinating thing, isn't it. For myself, I suspect you and I differ on what it means to say that his skepticism is about "all philosophy." In my view, while I think that in a sense that's true, it doesn't follow for Hume that philosophy is pointless. Rather, his skepticism undermines a certain species of philosophy, what he calls "false philosophy," i.e. a kind of rationalistic dogmatism. Hume endorses in the Enquiry and elsewhere a curious kind of what he calls "true" philosophy, which amount to something like, as he characterizes it, "the reflections of common life methodized and corrected" (EHU Section XII, 130 [162]; cf. Section V). That's what he means by his "mitigated" or "academical" philosophy. Although I don't fully agree with his account, may I recommend Donald W. Livingston's books, "Hume's Philosophy of Common Life" and "Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium." The account of scepticism in the latter is closer to my own, but the former lays out in greater detail the centrality of Hume's thoughts on "common life" as the locus of true philosophy.