Kant and Ancient Skepticism (original) (raw)
Related papers
Cambridge Critical Guidebook to the Prolegomena
The focus of this essay will be Kant’s understanding of Hume, and the impact of that understanding on Kant’s critical philosophy. Contrary to the traditional reading of this relationship, which focuses on Kant’s (admittedly real) dissatisfaction with Hume’s account of causation, my discussion will focus on broader issues of philosophical methodology. In particular, following a number of recent interpreters, I will argue that Kant sees Hume as raising, in a particularly forceful fashion, a “demarcation challenge” concerning how to distinguish the legitimate use of reason in (say) natural scientific contexts from the illegitimate use of it in (say) dogmatic metaphysics. I will then go on to argue that Kant sees Hume’s tendency to slide into more radical forms of skepticism as a symptom of his failure to provide a systematic or principled account of this distinction. This failure, I argue, can be traced (according to Kant) to Hume’s impoverished, non-hylomorphic account of our faculties – which (i) robs Hume of the materials necessary to construct a genuinely systematic philosophy as Kant understands this and (ii) makes it impossible for Hume to clearly conceive of what Kant calls “Formal Idealism”. In this way, the failings of Hume’s account of causation are (for Kant) symptoms of more fundamental limitations within Hume’s philosophy. I close by briefly discussing the similarities between Hume and Kant’s understanding of the relationship between (i) philosophical methodology and (ii) the nature of our faculties.
The Reversibility of Skepticism : Maimon’s Skepticism Compared to that of the “New Humeans”
Paradoxically, there are very few skeptical philosophers in the modern epoch (since Descartes) who have laid claim to skepticism “consistently,” that is to say, without denying, diminishing or rejecting it at some or other period of their working life. Surprising as it may at first seem, only two philosophers—before the “skeptical revival” seen in analytic philosophy in the last thirty years—truly assumed skepticism without qualification of any kind: these two philosophers, who were contemporaries, are the post-Kantians Schulze (also known as Aenesidemus) and Maimon. This article defines the skepticism that each of them assumed “consistently”. Once the meaning of their positions is elucidated, the article goes on to compare them with a more contemporary form of skepticism. This putting into perspective ultimately reveals the coherency and consistency of Maimon’s transcendental skepticism compared with the position of those who are today known as the “New Humeans.”
Hume's two views of modern scepticism
History of European Ideas, 2006
Hume's position in the history of philosophical scepticism can hardly be questioned. But the nature of his own philosophical scepticism is a matter of contention in both the historical and philosophical literatures. In this essay, I argue that a philosophical reconstruction of Hume's scepticism needs to pay attention to the way in which Hume and his contemporaries understood the place of sceptical thinking in the history of modern philosophy. When looked at in this context, Hume's philosophy of knowledge and the understanding is self-evidently sceptical. It is so, because it develops both a critical and a positive view of what a sceptical attitude implies. From a critical perspective, Hume aims to show that human reason is incapable of being its own foundation. From a more positive perspective, Hume sketches a phenomenology of the understanding by developing a probabilistic and self-referential view of philosophical knowledge, one which is not different from common knowledge and which relies on the workings of human nature and the imagination to make sense of the world and of our actions.
Empiricism and Skepticism: An Overview of Hume Philosophy
Journal of Interdisciplinary Cycle Research, 2020
The present paper has attempted to give insight about Hume philosophical ideas about empiricism and skepticism. It is because of the metaphysical as well as the epistemological uncertainty, which developed due to giving undue importance to innate principles accepted by modern rationalist; utmost importance is started given to the experience. But, what happens when experience itself push you in the field of skepticism. Empiricist believes that reason is not sufficient to explore the nature of ultimate reality. Therefore, Empiricism as an epistemological school develops in reaction to rationalism. Their primary aim was to take philosophy at zenith, as they accepting empiricism as a scientific approach as well as philosophical techniques to philosophizing. Empiricism came into existence with Locke, who survives with Berkeley and culminates in the writing of Hume. It is Hume who gave us the world view of empiricism as a system of philosophical enquiry, by limiting everything to experience which he has tried well to show how everything's end up in skepticism. Focusing on this piece of writing the present paper has put light on the empiricism as a tool of philosophical inquiry and also its limitation which Hume has focused upon.
2016
INTRODUCTION Since Antiquity the scope of skeptical doubt was already a controversial issue for ancient Pyrrhonians; however, textual evidence suggests that for them, skeptical doubts were directed exclusively towards disputes between philosophers, particularly in relation to the problem of determining the nature of good and bad things. But regarding everyday beliefs, Pyrrhonians assented to appearances as the rest of us (cf. Sextus Empiricus, PH. 1.7 and 1.23-4).1 Sextus makes it explicit that a doxastic conception of human agency, where knowledge was a necessary condition for action, was commonplace among philosophers.2 Descartes (HR 219-220) also affirmed that skeptical doubt was possible only in philosophical inquiry but not in everyday life, where action results more relevant than truth. In the Treatise (1.4.57) Hume warned against a clash of intuitions regarding the skeptical
Hume's Radical Skepticism: A Developmental Interpretation
Hume Studies, 1989
Hume is a radical skeptic in the Pyrrhonian tradition insofar he held that fundamental aspects of the human understanding are embedded with contradictions. What are these contradictions, and when do they arise? Hume's position on this changed over time. I show that in the main text of the Treatise, Hume exposes contradictions in areas involving external objects and causality, but denies that contradictions arise with morality. For morality, according to Hume, morality involves only the world of mental events (as opposed to the world of external objects), and at first he believed that the world of mental events was free from contradiction. However, in his discussion of “the self” in the Appendix to the Treatise, he changes his position and asserts that contradictions arise even within the world of mental events. In the conclusion to his second Enquiry, he extends this radical skepticism by exposing a contradiction specifically with morality.
Hume's Changing Views on the 'Durability' of Skepticism
Journal of Scottish Philosophy
While Hume is famous for his development and defense of various arguments for radical skepticism, Hume was bothered by the tension between his “abstruse” philosophical reflections and ordinary life: If he often felt intensely skeptical in his study, he nonetheless felt genuinely unable to take these skeptical views seriously when he returned to the concerns and activities of everyday life. Hume’s published work shows a deep and ongoing preoccupation with this tension, and I believe it also shows that Hume’s view about the “durability” of skepticism (that is, the extent to which skeptical insights can have an abiding impact on our cognitive lives) underwent an evolutionary development throughout the course of his publishing career. In this paper I propose to trace these textual developments in detail. In particular, I will argue that Hume’s concern for intellectual stability is what drives the evolution, as he struggled to understand the “durable value” in skepticism.