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    An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (with an Introduction by L. A. Selby-Bigge)
    An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (with an Introduction by L. A. Selby-Bigge)
    An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (with an Introduction by L. A. Selby-Bigge)
    Ebook227 pages3 hours

    An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (with an Introduction by L. A. Selby-Bigge)

    By David Hume

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    Disappointed by the public reception to “A Treatise of Human Nature”, published anonymously between 1739 and 1740, David Hume decided to produce a shorter more polemic version of that work nearly ten years later. That revision, which was published in 1748, would be entitled “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding”. Dispensing with much of the extraneous material from the “Treatise”, Hume focuses on his more vital propositions in the “Enquiry”. Proceeding in incremental steps Hume discusses the following concepts: “The Different Species of Philosophy”, “The Origin of Ideas”, “The Association of Ideas”, “Sceptical Doubts Concerning the Operations of the Understanding”, “Sceptical Solution of These Doubts”, “Probability”, “The Idea of Necessary Connection”, “Liberty and Necessity”, “The Reason of Animals”, “Miracles”, “Of a Particular Providence and of a Future State”, and “The Academical or Sceptical Philosophy”. Widely considered a classic of modern philosophical literature, “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding” is Hume’s theory of knowledge which would influence thinkers both in his time and for generations to come. This edition includes an introduction by L. A. Selby-Bigge and a biographical afterword.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigireads.com Publishing
    Release dateApr 17, 2018
    ISBN9781420957280
    An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (with an Introduction by L. A. Selby-Bigge)
    Author

    David Hume

    David Hume wird 1711 in Edinburgh geboren. Im Alter von 12 Jahren beginnt er das Studium der antiken Philosophie, Literatur und Jura an der dortigen Universität. 1735 geht Hume für zwei Jahre nach Frankreich, wo Ein Traktat über die menschliche Natur entsteht. Es stellt den ehrgeizigen Versuch dar, die Grundlegung einer umfassenden empirischen Wissenschaft von der Natur des Menschen zu konzipieren. Das Werk findet zeitgenössisch nur wenig Beachtung, was ihn dazu zwingt, als Brotberuf auf Erzieher- und Sekretärsstellen zurückzugreifen. Erst als 1748 die Untersuchung über den menschlichen Verstand erscheint, wird Hume schlagartig zu einem der bekanntesten europäischen Philosophen und mit Locke und Berkeley zu einem Hauptvertreter des klassischen englischem Empirismus. Wieder nach Schottland zurückgekehrt, ermöglicht ihm eine Stelle als Bibliothekar an der Universität von Edinburgh intensive historisch-politische Studien, aus welchen die Geschichte Großbritanniens hervorgeht. 1769 zieht sich Hume aus der Öffentlichkeit zurück, um seine Schriften zu überarbeiten. Er stirbt nach langer Krankheit 1776 in Edinburgh.

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      An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (with an Introduction by L. A. Selby-Bigge) - David Hume

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      AN ENQUIRY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING

      By DAVID HUME

      Introduction by L. A. SELBY-BIGGE

      An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

      By David Hume

      Introduction by L. A. Selby-Bigge

      Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5727-3

      eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5728-0

      This edition copyright © 2018. Digireads.com Publishing.

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

      Cover Image: a detail of a portrait of David Hume (oil on canvas), Allan Ramsay (1713-84) / Edinburgh University Library, Scotland / With kind permission of the University of Edinburgh / Bridgeman Images.

      Please visit www.digireads.com

      CONTENTS

      INTRODUCTION

      SECTION I.

      SECTION II.

      SECTION III.

      SECTION IV.

      SECTION V.

      SECTION VI.

      SECTION VII.

      SECTION VIII.

      SECTION IX.

      SECTION X.

      SECTION XI.

      SECTION XII.

      BIOGRAPHICAL AFTERWORD

      Introduction

      1. Hume’s philosophic writings are to be read with great caution. His pages, especially those of the Treatise, are so full of matter, he says so many different things in so many different ways and different connections, and with so much indifference to what he has said before, that it is very hard to say positively that he taught, or did not teach, this or that particular doctrine. He applies the same principles to such a great variety of subjects that it is not surprising that many verbal, and some real inconsistencies can be found in his statements. He is ambitious rather than shy of saying the same thing in different ways, and at the same time he is often slovenly and indifferent about his words and formulae. This makes it easy to find all philosophies in Hume, or, by setting up one statement against another, none at all. Of Professor Green’s criticism of Hume it is impossible to speak, here in Oxford, without the greatest respect. Apart from its philosophic importance, it is always serious and legitimate; but it is also impossible not to feel that it would have been quite as important and a good deal shorter, if it had contained fewer of the verbal victories which are so easily won over Hume.

      2. The question whether Hume’s philosophy is to be judged by his Treatise or his Enquiries is of some interest, and this Introduction aims chiefly at making clear the relation between them.

      Hume composed his Treatise between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-five, finishing it in the year 1736. The first two books were published in 1739, and the third book in 1740. The first edition of the Enquiry into the Human Understanding appeared in 1748; the Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals appeared in 1751, and the Dissertation on the Passions (corresponding to Bk. II of the Treatise) in 1757.{1}

      Hume says himself that the Treatise ‘fell dead-born from the press without reaching such distinction as even to excite a murmur among the zealots? That distinction was, to the end of his life, particularly dear to Hume, and it will be seen that in the Enquiries he made a bold bid for it in his quite superfluous section on Miracles and a Particular Providence. He entertained the notion, however, that his want of success in publishing the Treatise ‘had proceeded more from the manner than the matter,’ and that he had been ‘guilty of a very usual indiscretion in going to the press too early.’ He therefore ‘cast the first part of that work anew in the Enquiry concerning the Human Understanding,’ and afterwards continued the same process in his Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, which, he says, ‘in my own opinion is of all my writings, historical, philosophical, or literary, incomparably the best.’ In the posthumous edition of his Collected Essays of 1777, the Advertisement, on which so much stress has been laid, first appeared. It is printed at the beginning of this reprint, and declares the author’s desire that ‘the following pieces may alone be regarded as containing his philosophical sentiments and principles.’

      This declaration has not only been taken seriously by some writers, but they have even complied with it and duly ignored the Treatise. By others it has been treated as an interesting indication of the character of a man who had long ago given up philosophy, who always had a passion for applause, and little respect or generosity for his own failures. By Mr. Grose the Advertisement is regarded as ‘the posthumous utterance of a splenetic invalid,’ and Mr. Green’s elaborate criticism is directed almost entirely against the Treatise.

      3. To discuss a question of literary justice would be out of place in an Introduction which aims at estimating philosophic importance. Two remarks, however, may be made before passing on.

      The first is, that even in Hume’s philosophical writings the author’s personal character continually excites our interest The Treatise, as was noticed at the time of its publication, is full of egoisms. Even in this severe work together with a genuine ardor and enthusiasm, there is an occasional note of insincerity, arrogance or wantonness which strikes the serious student painfully. The following pages will perhaps show that Hume, in re-casting the Treatise into its new form, displayed the less admirable sides of his temper rather freely.

      In the second place, it is undeniable that Hume’s own judgment on the style of his earlier work was quite correct. The Treatise was ill-proportioned, incoherent, ill-expressed. There are ambiguities and obscurities of expression in important passages which are most exasperating. Instead of the easy language, familiar and yet precise, of the Enquiries, we have an amount of verbal vagueness and slovenliness for which it is hard to excuse even ‘a solitary Scotchman.’ How far the difference between the two works is merely one of style is considered below, but whether it be due to matter or manner, it remains that the Enquiries are an easy book and the Treatise a very hard one. In the Treatise he revels in minutiae, in difficulties, in paradoxes: he heaps questions upon himself, and complicates argument by argument: he is pedantic and captious. In the Enquiry he ignores much with which he had formerly vexed his own and his readers’ souls, and like a man of the world takes the line of least resistance (except as touching the zealots’). He gives us elegance, lucidity and proportion.

      4. Perhaps it may be allowed the writer here to record his own adherence to those who judge Hume’s philosophy by his Treatise. Bk. I of the Treatise is beyond doubt a work of first-rate philosophic importance, and in some ways the most important work of philosophy in the English language. It would be impossible to say the same of the Enquiries, and although in one sense the Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals is the best thing Hume ever wrote, to ignore the Treatise is to deprive him of his place among the great thinkers of Europe.

      At the same time it is perhaps well worth while to examine rather closely the actual relations between the contents of the earlier and later works. The comparative tables of contents which are printed at the end of this Introduction may perhaps save the student some ungrateful labour, and show, in a graphic form, at all events the relative amount of space assigned to various subjects in the two works. The difference in the method of treatment, conclusions, and general tone can of course only be gathered by reading the different passages side by side. The results of such a reading are presented in the following pages.

      5. Taking the ENQUIRY CONCERNING THE HUMAN UNDERSTANDING separately, we are at once struck by the entire omission of Bk. I, part ii of the Treatise. Space and time are not treated of at all in the Enquiry as independent subjects interesting in themselves; they are only introduced incidentally in §§ 124-5 of the Enquiry, as illustrating the absurdity of the abstract sciences and in support of a skeptical position.

      We are also struck by the introduction of the two theological sections (x-xi) of the Enquiry, and by the very small space given to the general questions concerning knowledge and the relation of subject and object.

      Sections 116-132, covering only seventeen pages in all, do duty in the Enquiry for the whole of Bk. I, part iv of the Treatise, where ninety-four pages are devoted to the same topics.

      This wholesale omission and insertion cannot well be due to philosophical discontent with the positions or arguments, or to a general desire to fill up a gap in the system, but must be ascribed rather to a general desire to make the Enquiry readable. Parts ii and iv are certainly the hardest in the Treatise, and the least generally interesting to the habitués of coffee-houses, especially at a period when ‘the greatest part of men have agreed to convert reading into an amusement;’ whereas a lively and skeptical discussion of miracles and providence could hardly fail to find readers, attract attention, and excite that ‘murmur among the zealots’ by which the author desired to be distinguished.

      Taking the two works rather more in detail, we find these notable differences:—

      6. Psychology. Even in the Treatise we feel that the introductory psychology is rather meagre and short to serve as a foundation for so large a system, but in the Enquiry it is still more cut down.

      Thus the Enquiry omits the distinction between simple and complex ideas; between impressions of sensation and reflection, which is of importance afterwards for the explanation of the idea of necessary connection; between ideas of memory and imagination: in the treatment of association little is said about causation as a principle of association, and the account of the products of association, the three classes of complex ideas, relations, modes and substances, and abstract ideas, disappears.

      Thus the list of philosophic relations and the distinction between philosophic and natural relation are omitted, and do not appear at all in the Enquiry. The question of abstraction is only alluded to incidentally near the end of the Enquiry (§§ 122 and 125 n). Substance is passed over, as it is also in § xii of the Enquiry, probably both from the difficulty of the subject, and because in the Enquiry Hume is not nearly so anxious to show that the fundamental popular conceptions are fictitious. There is something solid to which the popular conception of causation can be reduced, but when substance and body are analyzed, as they are in the Treatise, the importance of the materials out of which they are said to be formed is out of all proportion to the place which the finished products occupy in thought and language.

      The slight treatment of association again is quite characteristic of the temper of the Enquiry. The details of psychical mechanism, which are rather tiresomely paraded in the Treatise, are consistently passed over in the Enquiry, notably so in the case of sympathy.

      7. Space and Time. It must be admitted that the subject of space and time, as treated in the Treatise, is not very attractive. There is nothing in the Enquiry corresponding to the forty-two pages of the Treatise, in which space and time are treated, except two pages in § xii.

      Of the philosophical importance of Hume’s treatment of them in the Treatise it is unnecessary to speak; it is apparent from the large amount of criticism which Professor Green thought fit to bestow on it. It is to be noted, however, that the account of causation which Hume gives afterwards in the Enquiry, is left hanging in the air when the support of the theory of succession has been withdrawn. The omission of the section on the ideas of existence and external existence is, like the omission of the various accounts of substance, only a part of Hume’s avoidance of the general question of the relation of knowledge and reality.

      8. Causation. In the account of causation Hume passes over the very interesting and fundamental question raised in the Treatise of the position of cause in the fabric of our knowledge. On p. 78 of the Treatise (Bk. I, iii, § 3; cf. p. 157), he asks why a cause is always necessary, and concludes that there is no reason for the presumption that everything must have a cause. This conclusion he supports by his analysis of the idea of a particular cause, and asserts again (p. 172) that there is ‘no absolute metaphysical necessity’ that one object should have another associated with it in such a way that its idea shall determine the mind to form the idea of the other. This conclusion is of the gravest importance for Hume’s theory of causation in general, and is difficult to reconcile with his negation of the reality of chance and his assumption of secret causes (Treatise, pp. 130, 132). His failure in the Enquiry to take the opportunity of treating this question over again is significant of the lower philosophic standard of the later work, especially as he does take the opportunity to add a good deal to his previous discussion of the origin of the idea of power (Enquiry, §§ 51-3, 60 n; cf. Treatise, p. 632, Appendix). In the same spirit the distinction between essential and accidental circumstances, and the question of the employment of general rules (Treatise, pp. 145f, 173f), subjects of great speculative as well as practical interest, are ignored in the Enquiry.

      9. A good deal of psychological detail is omitted in the Enquiry. Thus §§ v, ix, x and xiii of Bk. I, part iii, of the Treatise are omitted bodily, partly no doubt to shorten the discussion, and partly on Hume’s new principle of not trying to penetrate beneath the obvious explanations of phenomena. He adds, however, a detailed discussion (Enquiry, §§ 51-3) of the possibility of deriving the idea of power from an internal impression, such as the feeling of initiative or effort accompanying a bodily or mental movement. These sections would appear to be occasioned by contemporary discussions, and are excellently expressed. On the same footing stands the discussion of the theory of occasional causes, which is very well done in §§ 54-7 of the Enquiry (cf. Treatise, p. 171). The omission of the practical § xv of the Treatise, on the rules by which to judge of causes and effects, appears rather strange, unless we regard it as raising a difficult general question which Hume has already shown his anxiety to avoid in his omission of § iii. With regard to the account of the origin, in particular cases, of the idea of cause and effect, there is little difference between the Treatise and Enquiry, except that in the Enquiry ‘contiguity’ practically drops out altogether. A good deal was said about contiguity in § ix of the Treatise, which disappears in the Enquiry; and again in the final definitions of cause given in § xiv, pp. 170-172 of the Treatise, contiguity appears on the same level as resemblance, whereas in the definitions given in the Enquiry, § 60, no mention is made of it at all.

      10. A comparison of the definitions given on pp. 170-2 of the Treatise and § 60 of the Enquiry, shows that in the Enquiry the distinction between causation as a philosophical and a natural relation is altogether dropped. In the Treatise this distinction is very hard to follow, and there is little doubt that the sacrifice of it in the Enquiry is deliberate. In the Enquiry Hume asserts more clearly than in the Treatise (though with some of the old inconsistencies) that there is nothing at the bottom of causation except a mental habit of transition or expectation, or, in other words, a ‘natural relation.’ Thus the omission of the chapter on the rules by which to judge of cause and effect and the sacrifice of contiguity are both part of the same policy: succession cannot be got rid of altogether, and this, it is true, is a philosophical relation (Treatise, p. 14), but it is one which is a matter of perception rather than reasoning (Treatise, p. 73), and is not one which raises much discussion—we seldom have much difficulty in discovering whether A or B came first, and you cannot strictly say that B was more consequent on A than C was, or vice versa. But men of science are very curious about contiguity, and the examination of it as a philosophical relation would often run counter to the connections established by contiguity as a natural relation. Contiguity therefore drops out of the Enquiry as a philosophical relation, though it must be supposed to exert its influence as a natural relation (cf. Treatise, p. 92).

      Resemblance was not treated in the Treatise as a philosophical relation, in connection with causation, but rather as a natural relation, i.e. not as a relation between A and B which men of science would take into consideration, but as the relation between a¹ b¹ a⁴ b⁴, a⁸ b³, &c., which was the foundation of the unconscious habit of proceeding to assert a⁴ b⁴ or A B. This position is still more clearly given to resemblance in the Enquiry, where Hume asserts roundly that one instance is as good philosophically (or as we should say, ‘scientifically’) as a thousand (cf. Enquiry, §31). The only effect of resemblance or repetition is to produce a habit.

      Philosophical relations are those which a man of science perceives or establishes when he consciously compares one object with another. Natural relations are those which unconsciously join one idea to another in his mind. In the case of causation, therefore, a philosophical relation must be between A and B, a¹ and bl, a² and ba: natural relation must be between one particular case of A B and another, e. g. between a¹ bl and a² b², a³ b³, &c. The philosophical relation of causation is what a man of science sees in one case of A B taken by itself, and that is nothing but succession and contiguity. Hume feeling the difficulty of maintaining philosophical relations at all, wisely says nothing in the Enquiry about their difference from natural relations, and says as little as possible about those elements of causation which he cannot spare, and which in the Treatise appeared as philosophical relations. The distinction in the Treatise is indeed most bewildering, but, with its disappearance in the Enquiry, the relation of causation becomes more completely subjective, and it becomes even more hard than in the Treatise to see how there can be any difference between real and apparent causes, or any room for concealed causes. On the other hand, it may be said that, so long as natural was opposed to philosophical relation, there was still possible an, invidious contrast between the subjectivity of the one and the objectivity of the other, while in the Enquiry some credit

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