Other editions of book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Philosopher David Hume was considered to one of the most important figures in the age of Scottish enlightenment. In "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" Hume discusses the weakness that humans have in their abilities to comprehend the world around them, what is referred to in the title as human understanding. This work, now commonly required reading in philosophy classes, exposed a broad audience to philosophy when it was first published.

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In this relatively brief 1748 volume, the empiricist David Hume virtually renounces his “juvenile” three-volume “Treatise of Human Nature,” written in his early twenties. Building, however, on certain themes from that work and on his impressions of John Locke’s AN ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING, Hume constructs his particular philosophy. A skeptic from the outset, in a step-by-step presentation, he arrives at the sources and the development of human understanding, without ever reaching the conclusion that ours is the CORRECT understanding. It is, nevertheless, an understanding adequate and necessary for human existence. The society he kept, the abilities with which he was justly credited, the reputation his works deservedly won for him, made him a man of mark and influence in his day. Read by the learned, courted by statesmen, he taught gentlemen liberality, and governments toleration. The influence of Hume, silent and inappreciable to the multitude, has been of the utmost importance to the nation. His works have been studied by philosophers, politicians, and prelates . . . Oddly enough, none of Hume's works were popular when they first appeared . . . The world has since made up for its negligence, by perpetual comment and solid appreciation. — J. Watts in ANCIENT AND MODERN CELEBRATED FREETHINKERS (by Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts) The philosophy of Hume is significant amongst those of Europe, not merely from its intellectual features, as a system of opinion; but also from the way in which it developed tendencies, which were latent in English Philosophy from the first, and from the reaction which it inaugurated—the movement of reconstruction to which it gave rise…. He saw with, consummate clearness, the logical result of a system of which Experience is the alpha and the omega; and his destructive criticism has been quite as helpful to the progress of the human mind, as the constructive efforts which it overthrew, chiefly because it cleared the atmosphere of mist…thus preparing the way for the critical idealism of Kant, and rendering its rise inevitable. — William Knight, LL.D., HUME 1886

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding By David Hume - Moral philosophy, or the science of human nature, may be treated after two different manners; each of which has its peculiar merit, and may contribute to the entertainment, instruction, and reformation of mankind. The one considers man chiefly as born for action; and as influenced in his measures by taste and sentiment; pursuing one object, and avoiding another, according to the value which these objects seem to possess, and according to the light in which they present themselves. As virtue, of all objects, is allowed to be the most valuable, this species of philosophers paint her in the most amiable colours; borrowing all helps from poetry and eloquence, and treating their subject in an easy and obvious manner, and such as is best fitted to please the imagination, and engage the affections. They select the most striking observations and instances from common life; place opposite characters in a proper contrast; and alluring us into the paths of virtue by the views of glory and happiness, direct our steps in these paths by the soundest precepts and most illustrious examples. They make us feel the difference between vice and virtue; they excite and regulate our sentiments; and so they can but bend our hearts to the love of probity and true honour, they think, that they have fully attained the end of all their labours.

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An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume was published in 1748 and is a shortened revision of his masterwork, A Treatise of Human Nature, which met with a disappointing reception when published anonymously in 1739. In revising he eliminated material from the Treatise and focused on clarifying and emphasizing its most important elements. The resulting book articulates Hume’s theory of knowledge in a logical sequence of incremental steps. The first six sections outline the epistemology, and the latter six sections discuss its application to specific topics. Hume is one of the founding proponents of empiricism, and holds that mental activity falls into two groups, direct impressions of experience that have the strongest effect, and ideas, which are memories and imaginings and somewhat less forceful. He goes on to treat the association of ideas, the nature of understanding and doubt, and the roles of habit and probability. His arguments take the reader to the edge of what he acknowledges are the limits of knowledge, and in doing so he delves into the difficult subjects of liberty, theology and miracles. The book was highly influential upon release, has served as a key influence on giants such as Immanuel Kant, and is rightly regarded as a classic in modern philosophy. It is especially worth examining at the present time given the attention given to the problems of truth in public affairs.

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding is a book by the Scottish empiricist philosopher David Hume, published in English in 1748.] It was a revision of an earlier effort, Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature, published anonymously in London in 1739-40. Hume was disappointed with the reception of the Treatise, which "fell dead-born from the press," as he put it, and so tried again to disseminate his more developed ideas to the public by writing a shorter and more polemical work. The end product of his labours was the Enquiry. The Enquiry dispensed with much of the material from the Treatise, in favor of clarifying and emphasizing its most important aspects. For example, Hume's views on personal identity do not appear. However, more vital propositions, such as Hume's argument for the role of habit in a theory of knowledge, are retained. This book has proven highly influential, both in the years that would immediately follow and today. Immanuel Kant points to it as the book which woke him from his self-described "dogmatic slumber." The Enquiry is widely regarded as a classic in modern philosophical literature.

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding is a book by the Scottish empiricist philosopher David Hume, published in English in 1748.] It was a revision of an earlier effort, Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature, published anonymously in London in 1739-40. Hume was disappointed with the reception of the Treatise, which "fell dead-born from the press," as he put it, and so tried again to disseminate his more developed ideas to the public by writing a shorter and more polemical work. The end product of his labours was the Enquiry. The Enquiry dispensed with much of the material from the Treatise, in favor of clarifying and emphasizing its most important aspects. For example, Hume's views on personal identity do not appear. However, more vital propositions, such as Hume's argument for the role of habit in a theory of knowledge, are retained. This book has proven highly influential, both in the years that would immediately follow and today. Immanuel Kant points to it as the book which woke him from his self-described "dogmatic slumber." The Enquiry is widely regarded as a classic in modern philosophical literature.