An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: A Classic Work of Empiricism, Scepticism, and Enlightenment Philosophy

Hume, David

ISBN 10: 1515435032 / ISBN 13: 9781515435037

Published by A & D Publishing, 2018

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: A Classic Work of Empiricism, Scepticism, and Enlightenment Philosophy
• Publisher: A & D Publishing
• Publication Date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1515435032
• ISBN 13: 9781515435037
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding is one of the central works of modern philosophy, a concise and powerful examination of knowledge, belief, causation, scepticism, miracles, and the limits of human reason. First published in 1748, the book recast arguments Hume had developed in A Treatise of Human Nature into a shorter, clearer, and more forceful form. It remains one of the most important statements of British empiricism and one of the defining texts in the history of epistemology.

Hume asks what the human mind can truly know, how ideas arise from experience, why people believe in cause and effect, and whether reason can justify the assumptions on which ordinary life depends. His famous discussion of miracles, his analysis of necessary connection, and his sceptical account of induction helped reshape philosophy and later forced Immanuel Kant to confront what Kant called his "dogmatic slumber." Written with clarity, irony, and intellectual discipline, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding is essential reading for students of philosophy, Enlightenment thought, scepticism, empiricism, philosophy of religion, and the history of ideas.

About the Author

David Hume (1711-1776) was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, and one of the most important figures of the Scottish Enlightenment. Born in Edinburgh, Hume became famous for his sceptical, empiricist approach to knowledge, causation, religion, morality, and human nature. His early A Treatise of Human Nature received little attention when first published, but Hume later reworked and clarified many of its central arguments in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. Those works helped establish him as one of the most influential philosophers to write in English.Hume's philosophy challenged claims about innate ideas, rational certainty, miracles, personal identity, and the necessary connection between cause and effect. He argued that much of what human beings take for knowledge rests on experience, custom, habit, and probability rather than on demonstrative reason. His work shaped later debates in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of science, and had a profound effect on Immanuel Kant and subsequent modern philosophy. Clear, sceptical, elegant, and unsettling, Hume remains essential reading for anyone interested in Enlightenment philosophy, British empiricism, scepticism, and the limits of human understanding.