An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

By David Hume

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding is a book by the Scottish empiricist philosopher David Hume. This book has proven highly influential, both in the years that would immediately follow and today. Immanuel Kant points to it as the book which woke him from his self-described "dogmatic slumber".

The argument of the Enquiry proceeds by a series of incremental steps, separated into chapters which logically succeed one another. After expounding his epistemology, Hume explains how to apply his principles to specific topics.

I. Of the Different Species of Philosophy
II. Of the Origin of Ideas
III. Of the Association of Ideas
IV. Sceptical Doubts Concerning the Operations of the Understanding
V. Sceptical Solution of these Doubts
VI. Of Probability
VII. Of the Idea of Necessary Connexion
VIII. Of Liberty and Necessity
IX. Of the Reason of Animals
X. Of Miracles
XI. Of a Particular Providence and of a Future State
XII. Of the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookRix
• Release date: Jan 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9783736807631

David Hume

David Hume was an eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher, historian, and essayist, and the author of A Treatise of Human Nature, considered by many to be one of the most important philosophical works ever published. Hume attended the University of Edinburgh at an early age and considered a career in law before deciding that the pursuit of knowledge was his true calling. Hume’s writings on rationalism and empiricism, free will, determinism, and the existence of God would be enormously influential on contemporaries such as Adam Smith, as well as the philosophers like Schopenhauer, John Stuart Mill, and Karl Popper, who succeeded him. Hume died in 1776.

Reviews for An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

[jorgecarvajal-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of the greatest thinkers of all time explains majestically and simply how we think and why we think the way we think. Understanding the basic concepts and workings of perception, reason, cause and effect has indeed deep ramifications when we become conscious of it.

[rincewind1986 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Not really sure how one can review a philosophical text, found it a little over complicaed for what Hume was actually trying to say, but no doubt a major epistemological work.

[dverg48 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I found this very difficult reading - maybe my mind wasn't in the right philosophical state.

[ljrei77 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Fantastic book. Hume has some incredibly interesting views on the creation of identity, especially on the origin of thought. Highly recommend for those who wish to explore the question of "What is the self?"