APPENDICES It Would Seem That Hume Had Predecessors, Or at The
APPENDICES 1. THE PRECURSORS OF HUME (p. 58) It would seem that Hume had predecessors, or at the very least precursors, in the Middle Ages, in particular Robert Holkot in the twelfth century, about whom little is actually known (cf. IR 90, 342 [Loewenberg 87, 302]). As for Nicholas de Ultricuria [Nicolas of Autrecourt], who had previously been known only as an atomist and whose name has been suggested by Hastings RASHDALL ('Nicholas de Ultricuria, a Medieval Hume,' Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 7 [1906-1907] 3 ff.), among the texts cited the only thing we see that really applies to this question consists of the following lines from Nicholas's Thesis 15: Quibuscunque acceptis, que possunt esse causa alicujus effectus, nescimus evidenter quod ad positionem eorum sequatur effectus positio ["Whatever conditions we take to be the cause of any effect, we do not evidently know that, those conditions being posited, it follows that the effect must be posited also" (Rashdall 10)], and this passage perhaps does not quite suffice to demonstrate the English author's claim. It is highly significant that both Robert and Nicolas professed atomistic opinions, and it is at least quite probable that, for these two aspects of their doctrines, they were closely linked to the Arab Mutakallimun, whom they probably knew through the resumes and refutations of Jewish thinkers, notably Maimonides, and who, in addition to a radical atomism, maintained the impossibility of any logical connection between cause and effect (see Isaac HUSIK, A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy, New York: Macmillan, 1916, pp. xxi-xxii, xxvii, 249).
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