DAVID HUME An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding

1 OXFORD WORLD S CLASSICSDAVID HUMEAn Enquiry concerningHuman UnderstandingEdited with an Introduction and Notes byPETER MILLICAN13 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dpOxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide inOxford New YorkAuckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong KarachiKuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City NairobiNew Delhi Shanghai Taipei TorontoWith offices inArgentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France GreeceGuatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal SingaporeSouth Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine VietnamOxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countriesPublished in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc.

2 , New YorkEditorial material Peter Millican 2007 The moral rights of the author have been assertedDatabase right Oxford University Press (maker)First published as an Oxford World s Classics paperback 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address aboveYou must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirerBritish Library Cataloguing in Publication DataData availableLibrary of Congress Cataloging in Publication DataHume, DAVID , 1711-1776[Philosophical essays concerning Human Understanding ]An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding / DAVID Hume; edited with an introduction and notes by Peter cm.

3 (Oxford world s classics)Includes bibliographical references and 13: 978 0 19 921158 6 (alk. paper)1. Knowledge, Theory of. I. Millican, P. J. R. (Peter J. R.) II. 2007121 dc222006102409 Typeset by Cepha Imaging Private Ltd., Bangalore, IndiaPrinted in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Clays Ltd., St Ives plcISBN Ancient to Modern Aristotelian to Cartesian , Locke, and Will, and the Dangers of s Design, and Human , Malebranche, and Humean I: The Aims of the II and III: The Origin and Association of IV: Hume s IV and V: The Basis of Factual 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.

4 Of the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy liiiNote on the TextlviiSelect BibliographylxiA Chronology of DAVID HumelxiiiAN Enquiry concerning Human the different Species of the Origin of the Association of Doubts concerning the Operations of the Solution of these the Idea of necessary Liberty and the Reason of a particular Providence and of a future the academical or sceptical Philosophy109 Hume s Endnotes121 Appendix I:AbstractofA Treatise of Human Nature(1740)133 Appendix II: Of the Immortality of the Soul (printed 1755)146 Appendix III: Excerpts from Parts I and II of the Dialoguesconcerning natural religion (1779)152 Appendix IV: Excerpts from Hume s Letters161 Appendix V: My Own Life 169 Textual Variants177 Explanatory Notes185 Glossary212 Glossarial Index of Major Philosophers and Philosophical Movements220 Hume s Index229 Index of Major Themes, Concepts, and Examples231 Index of Names Mentioned in the Enquiry233 Index of References to Hume s Works235 ContentsviABBREVIATIONSR eferences to Hume s works are to the following editions and, except fortheEnquiryand the Treatise, indicate page concerning natural religion , ed.

5 Norman Kemp Smith(Edinburgh: Nelson, 2nd edn. 1947)EEnquiry concerning Human Understanding (this volume). Referencesto the Enquiryare given using section and paragraph numbers. Inthe endmatter (such as the Explanatory Notes), the initial Eisusually omitted: thus the first paragraph on p. 26of this volumecan be referred to as either or simply . For detailconcerning marginal numbers and footnote references within theEnquiry, see the Note on the Text, below, pp. lvii , Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller(Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 2nd edn., 1987)History The History of England, ed. William Todd, 6vols.

6 (Indianapolis:Liberty Classics, 1983)HLThe Letters of DAVID Hume, ed. J. Y. T. Greig, 2vols. (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1932)NHLNew Letters of DAVID Hume, ed. R. Klibansky and E. C. Mossner(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954)LA Letter from a Gentleman to his Friend in Edinburgh, ed. Ernest and John V. Price (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UniversityPress,1967, containing a facsimile of the original 1745edn.)TA Treatise of Human Nature, ed. DAVID Fate Norton and Mary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). References totheTreatiseare given using book, part, section, and paragraphnumbers. Thus, for example, indicates paragraph 10of Book 1, Part 3, Section page intentionally left blank INTRODUCTIOND avid Hume (1711 76) was one of the great philosophers (arguablythe greatest) of that prodigiously fruitful era known as the early modernperiod.

7 During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, scholasticAristotelianism, a world-view which had dominated thought for manyhundreds of years, finally began to be overshadowed by a recogniz-ably modern scientific perspective. Ren Descartes (1596 1650),building on the discoveries of Galileo Galilei and others, was the firstphilosopher seriously to threaten Aristotle s dominance. Then in thenext generation, John Locke (1632 1704) developed a rival accountof the world, incorporating scientific developments from Englandassociated particularly with Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton. By theend of the seventeenth century, scholasticism was in terminal decline,but intense debate continued as philosophers sought to make sense ofthe world and man s place in it, accommodating the new of the points in dispute were essentially scientific, but manyothers concerned what we would now call epistemology( theory ofknowledge) or philosophy of science, and many of the most intractablealso had a theological dimension.

8 Both Descartes and Locke foundways of tying these threads together, and they were followed byothers, such as respectively Nicolas Malebranche (1638 1715) andGeorge Berkeley (1685 1753), who later developed their theories innovel this variety of speculation, these thinkers all shared someimportant assumptions, notably a view of the world as created bydivine reason, and relatedly as potentially intelligible to humanreason. Hume s special significance is as the first great philosopher toquestion both of these pervasive assumptions, and to build an episte-mology and philosophy of science that in no way depend on either ofthem.

9 Over a century before Charles Darwin s Origin of Speciesof1859, Hume argued powerfully that Human reason is fundamentallysimilar to that of the other animals, founded on instinct rather thanquasi-divine insight into things. Hence science must proceed by exper-iment and systematization of observations, rather than by metaphys-ical theorizing or a priori speculation. This outlook, revolutionary in itstime, was to be powerfully vindicated during the twentieth centuryas the successes of relativity theory and quantum mechanics forcedscientists often very reluctantly to accept that intuitive unintel-ligibility to Human reason is no impediment to empirical sonce scandalous message has thus become almost scientific commonsense.

10 Outside the laboratory, however, we still inhabit aworld infused with ancient assumptions, and largely blind to the needfor, or the consequences of, their abandonment. So Hume s attemptto forge an empirically based, naturalistic world-view retains aunique contemporary sfirst publication, A Treatise of Human Nature(1739 40),began as an attempt to introduce the experimental method of rea-soning into moral subjects . But in both advocating and pursuing theempirical study of the Human world, the juvenile Hume was carry daway by the Heat of Youth & Invention (see p. 163), producing a longwork in which his strokes of critical genius were confusingly mingledwith unrealistically ambitious psychological generalizations and atleast in Book I unresolved sceptical paradoxes.