An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS DAVID HUME An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding Edited with an Introduction and Notes by PETER MILLICAN 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York Editorial material © Peter Millican 2007 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published as an Oxford World’s Classics paperback 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Hume, David, 1711-1776 [Philosophical essays concerning human understanding] An enquiry concerning human understanding / David Hume; edited with an introduction and notes by Peter Millican. p. cm.—(Oxford world’s classics) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN–13: 978–0–19–921158–6 (alk. paper) 1. Knowledge, Theory of. I. Millican, P. J. R. (Peter J. R.) II. Title. B1481.M55 2007 121—dc22 2006102409 Typeset by Cepha Imaging Private Ltd., Bangalore, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Clays Ltd., St Ives plc ISBN 978-0-19-921158-6 13579108642 CONTENTS Abbreviations vii Introduction ix 1. From Ancient to Modern Cosmology xi 2. From Aristotelian to Cartesian Intelligibility xiii 3. Corpuscularianism, Locke, and Newton xvi 4. Free Will, and the Dangers of Infidelity xx 5. God’s Design, and Human Reason xxiii 6. Inertness, Malebranche, and Berkeley xxv 7. The Humean Revolution xxix 8. Section I: The Aims of the Enquiry xxx 9. Sections II and III: The Origin and Association of Ideas xxxii 10. Section IV: Hume’s Fork xxxv 11. Sections IV and V: The Basis of Factual Reasoning xxxvii 12. Section VI: ‘Of Probability’ xl 13. Section VII: ‘Of the Idea of Necessary Connexion’ xlii 14. Section VIII: ‘Of Liberty and Necessity’ xlvi 15. Section IX: ‘Of the Reason of Animals’ xlviii 16. Section X: ‘Of Miracles’ xlix 17. Section XI: ‘Of a Particular Providence, and of a Future State’ lii 18. Section XII: ‘Of the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy’ liii Note on the Text lvii Select Bibliography lxi A Chronology of David Hume lxiii AN ENQUIRY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING Advertisement 2 i. Of the different Species of Philosophy 3 ii. Of the Origin of Ideas 12 iii. Of the Association of Ideas 16 vi Contents iv. Sceptical Doubts concerning the Operations of the Understanding 18 v. Sceptical Solution of these Doubts 30 vi. Of Probability 41 vii. Of the Idea of necessary Connexion 44 viii. Of Liberty and Necessity 58 ix. Of the Reason of Animals 76 x. Of Miracles 79 xi. Of a particular Providence and of a future State 96 xii. Of the academical or sceptical Philosophy 109 Hume’s Endnotes 121 Appendix I: Abstract of A Treatise of Human Nature (1740) 133 Appendix II: ‘Of the Immortality of the Soul’ (printed 1755) 146 Appendix III: Excerpts from Parts I and II of the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779) 152 Appendix IV: Excerpts from Hume’s Letters 161 Appendix V: ‘My Own Life’ 169 Textual Variants 177 Explanatory Notes 185 Glossary 212 Glossarial Index of Major Philosophers and Philosophical Movements 220 Hume’s Index 229 Index of Major Themes, Concepts, and Examples 231 Index of Names Mentioned in the Enquiry 233 Index of References to Hume’s Works 235 ABBREVIATIONS References to Hume’s works are to the following editions and, except for the Enquiry and the Treatise, indicate page numbers. D Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, ed. Norman Kemp Smith (Edinburgh: Nelson, 2nd edn. 1947) E Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (this volume). References to the Enquiry are given using section and paragraph numbers. In the endmatter (such as the Explanatory Notes), the initial E is usually omitted: thus the first paragraph on p. 26 of this volume can be referred to as either ‘E 4.19’ or simply ‘4.19’. For detail concerning marginal numbers and footnote references within the Enquiry, see the Note on the Text, below, pp. lvii–lx. Essays Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 2nd edn., 1987) History The History of England, ed. William Todd, 6 vols. (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1983) HL The Letters of David Hume, ed. J. Y. T. Greig, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932) NHL New Letters of David Hume, ed. R. Klibansky and E. C. Mossner (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954) L A Letter from a Gentleman to his Friend in Edinburgh, ed. Ernest C. Mossner and John V. Price (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1967, containing a facsimile of the original 1745 edn.) T A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). References to the Treatise are given using book, part, section, and paragraph numbers. Thus, for example, ‘T 1.3.6.10’ indicates paragraph 10 of Book 1, Part 3, Section 6. This page intentionally left blank INTRODUCTION David Hume (1711–76) was one of the great philosophers (arguably the greatest) of that prodigiously fruitful era known as the early modern period. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, scholastic Aristotelianism, a world-view which had dominated thought for many hundreds of years, finally began to be overshadowed by a recogniz- ably modern scientific perspective. René Descartes (1596–1650), building on the discoveries of Galileo Galilei and others, was the first philosopher seriously to threaten Aristotle’s dominance. Then in the next generation, John Locke (1632–1704) developed a rival account of the world, incorporating scientific developments from England associated particularly with Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton. By the end of the seventeenth century, scholasticism was in terminal decline, but intense debate continued as philosophers sought to make sense of the world and man’s place in it, accommodating the new discoveries. Some of the points in dispute were essentially scientific, but many others concerned what we would now call epistemology (i.e. theory of knowledge) or philosophy of science, and many of the most intractable also had a theological dimension. Both Descartes and Locke found ways of tying these threads together, and they were followed by others, such as respectively Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715) and George Berkeley (1685–1753), who later developed their theories in novel ways. Despite this variety of speculation, these thinkers all shared some important assumptions, notably a view of the world as created by divine reason, and—relatedly—as potentially ‘intelligible’ to human reason. Hume’s special significance is as the first great philosopher to question both of these pervasive assumptions, and to build an epistemology and philosophy of science that in no way depend on either of them. Over a century before Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species of 1859, Hume argued powerfully that human reason is fundamentally similar to that of the other animals, founded on instinct rather than quasi-divine insight into things. Hence science must proceed by exper- iment and systematization of observations, rather than by metaphys- ical theorizing or a priori speculation. This outlook, revolutionary in its time, was to be powerfully vindicated during the twentieth century x Introduction as the successes of relativity theory and quantum mechanics forced scientists—often very reluctantly— to accept that intuitive ‘unintel- ligibility’ to human reason is no impediment to empirical truth. Hume’s once scandalous message has thus become almost scientific ‘common sense’. Outside the laboratory, however, we still inhabit a world infused with ancient assumptions, and largely blind to the need for, or the consequences of, their abandonment. So Hume’s attempt to forge an empirically based, naturalistic world-view retains a unique contemporary relevance. Hume’s first publication, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40), began as ‘an attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects’. But in both advocating and pursuing the empirical study of the human world, the juvenile Hume ‘was carry’d away by the Heat of Youth & Invention’ (see p. 163), producing a long work in which his strokes of critical genius were confusingly mingled with unrealistically ambitious psychological generalizations and—at least in Book I—unresolved sceptical paradoxes. Hume quickly regretted this, as his letters testify, and even before the final Book III of the Treatise was delivered from the press, he was already reformu- lating his approach in the short 1740 Abstract (included in this volume as Appendix I). By 1748 he had produced a second major work, the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding,1 following the pattern of the Abstract in focusing on his central philosophical message, expanding and clarifying the key arguments that support it (for example in Sections IV, VII, and VIII), and limiting his psychological speculations to modest hints of ‘explications and analogies’ (E 5.9).

Load more