Jay Gelhard

The eighteenth century Scottish philosopher David Hume is a profoundly influential figure in moral philosophy. One of the leading intellectuals in the Scottish Enlightenment, Hume wrote on moral philosophy, metaphysics, political economy, natural science and many more subjects. His work would become highly influential throughout Europe and infamously awoke Immanuel Kant from his “dogmatic slumber”, inspiring him to write the Critique of Pure Reason. He cultivated friendships with some of the most influential intellectuals in Europe, notably Adam Smith and Jean-Jaques Rousseau, although he would have a falling out with the latter over their philosophical differences. Indeed, compared to other Enlightenment figures like Rousseau, Hume promulgated a skeptical philosophy. In the Age of Reason, Hume emphasized the inability of reason to tell us anything about the world with certainty. Hume’s skeptical philosophy was to span both metaphysical, moral philosophy. In this sense, Hume believed that his metaphysical philosophy also answered moral questions.

The analytic-synthetic distinction is a topic relevant to both the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind. In dealing with subject-predicate distinctions, the analytic-synthetic distinction attempts to demonstrate what we can say. At the same time, through a priori- a posteriori distinctions, the analytic-synthetic distinction attempts to demonstrate what we can know. For these reasons, the analytic-synthetic distinction became one of the biggest controversies from early modern philosophy well into the twentieth century. While Kant is generally credited with the precise formulation, I argue that David Hume presented one of the earliest coherent forms of the analytic-synthetic distinction. The one major difference in Kant’s analytic-synthetic distinction is the allowance of synthetic a priori judgments. While the analytic-synthetic distinction was accepted by philosophers for hundreds of years, it would undergo significant criticism from the twentieth-century philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine. Quine saw himself as a follower of Humean epistemology; however, he believed Hume was incorrect in asserting analytic a priori judgments. Quine attempted to dismantle the analytic-synthetic distinction, which some philosophers accept today. I conclude by demonstrating connections between Kant’s and Quine’s epistemology.

Hume’s theory of causation was one of the primary motivations for Kant’s writing of The Critique of Pure Reason. As Kant freely admits, “I openly confess that my remembering David Hume was the very thing which many years ago first interrupted my dogmatic slumber” [Kant, 4:260]. as the very thing which many years ago first interrupted my dogmatic slumber” [Kant, 4:260]. Hume believes that causation rests on the unsound principle of empirical induction. For Hume, causation is merely the assumed connection that one empirical event must necessarily and universally succeed another, an assumption which Hume believes to be a non sequitur. In Hume’s mind, there is no way to prove, through reason, that one appearance, an empirical event, must necessarily succeed the other. Instead, Hume states that the fundamental rule guiding the synthesis of appearances is constant conjunction, not causation [Hume, §V:30]. Therefore, the judgment of cause-and-effect, as well as any other causal laws which claim to be necessary and strictly universal, cannot claim to use reason. For Kant, Hume is fundamentally questioning the constitution of the human understanding; indeed, even Hume calls his critique of causation “special doubts concerning the operation of the understanding” [Hume, §IV:15]. In response, Kant seeks to use his Pure Concepts of the Understanding to show how the conditions of possible experience necessitate the use of the Pure Concept of causality.