Rating: 
Summary: Yes Hume is interesting...
Review: and an antithesis to descartes. I must say, that in counter point to Kant's take on Hume, it was the writing of Alessandro Manzoni that awoke me from my dogmatic slumber.
Rating: 
Summary: A Must Have For Philosophers
Review: Anyone interested in epistemology and modern philosophy must become acquainted with Hume's Enquiry. Hume, is one of the empiricist philosophers that have lead the way for the empiricist tradition that has greatly influenced today's philosophers and theologians (at least the modernists of the last century). The Oxford Edition is exteremly helpful. Before the Enquiry begins, the editor has offered a point by point look at Hume's purpose in the Enquiry, often explaining some of the arguments before so that when reading the Enquiry, they will be more easily grasped. Throughout the Enquiry, there are endnotes that can be referenced to see what Hume is referring to. Often, Hume would refer to a greek philosopher and not provide citations to them. He was not writing to the general public, but to educated readers. Fortunately, the editors have done the work of finding those citations and references. The footnotes also contain explanation of various terms. Anthony Flew edited another edition. I suggest buying both since each offers comments that the other does not have. Something to say about Hume's own writing: I thought Hume was a great read. He made me think through a number of issues that were initially challenging, and rightfully so. If you are a skeptic, Hume is your hero. If you deny solipsism, though Hume's epistemology goes even deeper, or believe we have self knowledge or direct knowledge about the external world, then you will believe Hume's philosophy belongs right where he cast the books containing miraculous stories. I myself have my intuitions about where Hume is right now. Nevertheless, Hume forced me to become more critical and a sharper thinker. You should read him if you want to do serious work in philosophy; and this is the text to have in order to understand him better.
Rating:
Summary: The temporary death of a priori
Review: Before the Epiricist philosophers came along, it was generally accepted that there were certain things that humans merely knew facts to be true. Basic philosophical concepts were reasoned to be true by a priori reasoning. Thus, complex metaphysical ideas were formed by inductive logic, working off what was assumed to be true. Then Hume came along and destroyed more than two thousand years of metaphysics. Hume showed that everything we know can be broken down in to two categories: Relations of Ideas and Matters of Fact. Relations of Ideas are things that a true by defintion. 2+2 will always equal 4, because that is how it is defined. Try as we might, we can never successfully imagine 2+2 equalling 5. So relations of facts do not really tell us anything about the natural world. They are definitions we use to describe what is happening. Matters of fact, on the other hand, are ideas we have that arise from our experience with the world, such as "The Sun will rise tomorrow morning." Unlike with Relations of Ideas, Matters of Fact are not true my their defintition. We can imagine successfully "The Sun will not rise tomorrow." How, then, if we can imagine the supposed impossible, do we know anything to be truly impossible? Hume creates the basis for philosophical skepticism in this enquiry. He effectively show us that we can never know anything to be absolutely true. It wasn't until Kant's Critique of Pure Reason that philosophy recovered from the blow of Hume's metaphysics. This is a seminal text in the history of metaphysical and epistimilogical work and should be read by any and all philosophers.
Rating: 
Summary: A great book, but flawed philosophically
Review: Hume is rightfully an important philosopher. Philosophy had been mainly a metaphysical/rationalistic field until Hume (in addition to Locke and Berkeley) came along. His basic philosophy is this: induction is the only principle by which we can have knowledge, but induction is fundamentally flawed. Thus, there is no belief of which we can be totally certain of. Hume even questions whether we can be as sure as Descartes was when he asserted "Cogito Ergo Sum". To Hume, one could consistently maintain that the "self" was just a bunch of thoughts in succession. Hume believed that there were no strict identities in nature, but only resemblences which the mind tends to treat as identities. He also treated ideas as imperfect images of our experiences. The problem I have with Hume is on resemblence and his treatment of ideas. I agree with him that there are resemblences in nature which humans tend to treat as the same--but then what is this resemblence based on? The nominalists have to account for why resemblence is there in the first place. Perceived identity must have its basis in reality somehow. And his treatment of ideas is just plain wrong--our ideas are not just images, although they can include images. I obviously can't give a complete criticism of Hume's philosophy in a review, so if anyone wants to discuss this with me just email me. But I definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in philosophy--any complete philosophical theory must challenge or incorporate Hume if it is to succeed.
Rating:
Summary: A great book, but flawed philosophically
Review: Hume is rightfully an important philosopher. Philosophy had been mainly a metaphysical/rationalistic field until Hume (in addition to Locke and Berkeley) came along. His basic philosophy is this: induction is the only principle by which we can have knowledge, but induction is fundamentally flawed. Thus, there is no belief of which we can be totally certain of. Hume even questions whether we can be as sure as Descartes was when he asserted "Cogito Ergo Sum". To Hume, one could consistently maintain that the "self" was just a bunch of thoughts in succession. Hume believed that there were no strict identities in nature, but only resemblences which the mind tends to treat as identities. He also treated ideas as imperfect images of our experiences. The problem I have with Hume is on resemblence and his treatment of ideas. I agree with him that there are resemblences in nature which humans tend to treat as the same--but then what is this resemblence based on? The nominalists have to account for why resemblence is there in the first place. Perceived identity must have its basis in reality somehow. And his treatment of ideas is just plain wrong--our ideas are not just images, although they can include images. I obviously can't give a complete criticism of Hume's philosophy in a review, so if anyone wants to discuss this with me just email me. But I definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in philosophy--any complete philosophical theory must challenge or incorporate Hume if it is to succeed.
Rating:
Summary: An Inquiry Concerning Human Inquiry by David Hume
Review: Hume's work on the dynamics of causality and human reasoning
met with a good deal of support and controversy. For instance,
John Maynard Keynes wrote: "Hume's skeptical criticisms are usually associated with
causality; but arguments by induction-inference from past
particulars to future generalizations-was the first real
object of his attack. Hume showed, not that inductive methods
were false, but that their validity had never been established
and that all possible lines of proof seemed equally unpromising." Keynes wrote further that: "Hume has pointed with infallible finger to those passages which,
in the eyes of posterity as well as those of the author 'shake off the yoke of authority, accustom men to think for themselves,
give new hints which men of genius may carry further and, by the very opposition, illustrate points wherein no one before
suspected any difficulty." The work is an important contribution to economic and political
theory, propositional logic and the historical development
of formal logic systems and arguments thereof.
Rating:
Summary: As Exciting and Thought-Provoking as Philosophy Gets
Review: Hume, I and many others think, was the greatest philosopher to have written in English, and this is the book to pick up if you want to introduce yourself to Saint David's distinctive brand of classical empiricism. This is a must-read for anyone with even a passing interest in philosophy, and it's hard for me to see how anyone interested in the history of modern thought can avoid reading this book or the corresponding sections of Hume's Treatise. As is well-known, the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding was intended as an encapsulation and popularization of the views Hume defended in Book I of his magnum opus, A Treatise of Human Nature. Hume assumed that book's commercial failure could be accounted for by its length, difficulty, and lack of accessibility, and so, being a man who desired literary fame, he hoped to acquire commercial success by presenting the same ideas in a more appealing and accessible manner. Unfortunately, it seems Hume misunderstood what the literati of his day were looking for in a philosophical treatise. For the Enquiry, like the Treatise before it, didn't bring him the fame he sought. Still, Hume did understand what goes into writing excellent philosophical prose, and consequently this book is a much easier read than Book I of the Treatise. Indeed, this book constitutes an excellent introduction to Hume's thought, and, except for maybe Berkeley's Three Dialogues, I can't think of another primary source that would serve as a better introduction to classical British empiricism. Now, let's get to the ideas here. Hume, like the other classical empiricists, was primarily concerned with the psychological question of the origin of our concepts. About the answer to this question, the empiricists were all agreed--our concepts are furnished by experience, which includes both sensory experience and introspection (i.e., the experience of our own mental states). And the empiricists also agreed about the way we can justify our beliefs. Some beliefs are true (or false) in virtue of the ideas they contained, and we can know their truth (or falsity) simply by thinking about them; other beliefs are true (or false) in virtue of how the external world is, and we can know their truth (or falsity) only by drawing on our experiences of the world. According to Hume, all substantial conclusions about the world fall into this second category. That is, the truth (or falsity) of all substantial claims about the existence and nature of things in the external world can be discovered only by checking those claims against the evidence of our senses. The traditional way of placing Hume within the story of empiricism goes something like this. Hume takes up the empiricism of Locke and Berkeley and pushes it to its logical conclusion. Whereas Locke and Berkeley hadn't been wholly consistent empiricists, Hume, the true believer, demonstrates that classical empiricism leads to a pretty thoroughgoing skepticism. Since he's wholly convinced of the truth of his empiricist premises, Hume is willing to accept the skepticism that goes along with them. However, those who aren't convinced of that his empiricism is obviously correct think that Hume has actually demonstrated the implausibility of his empiricism. If this is where empiricism leads, they think, then it's clear that we need to reject empiricism. Indeed, some, like Thomas Reid, view Hume's arguments as constituting a reductio ad absurdum of his sort of empiricism. On this interpretation, Hume's philosophy essentially presents a dilemma for all future thinkers: abandon empiricism, or accept empiricism along with Humean skepticism. But a different view of Hume, one of Hume as proposing a wholly naturalistic account of the human mind, has recently emerged as a competitor to the general conception of Hume's place within philosophy sketched in the previous paragraph. This interpretation downplays Hume's skepticism and emphasizes his professed intentions to provide a positive account of the operation of the human mind that appealed to nothing beyond the evidence of our senses. According to proponents of this interpretation, Hume is most interested in a description of the operation of the human mind. He's describing what human nature allows us to know and what it doesn't allow us to know. Furthermore, he argues that our nature is such that, where it fails to provide us with the resources to acquire the knowledge we might want, it provides us with a natural habit of forming the right conclusions anyway. Even though our nature limits our knowledge of the world, it ensures that we possess the habits of mind needed to make our way in the world. Hume dubs all these habits of mind "custom." If this view is correct, then Hume has abjured many of the normative aims of traditional epistemological inquiry. He isn't attempting to show how we can answer a skeptic or why we have good reason to believe what we think we know. Instead, he wants us to stand back from our everyday beliefs and think about the natural processes that result in them. How, exactly, do our minds operate? How do we come to think what we do about the world? Hume thinks that this sort of inquiry will lead us see that, at some point, the explanation of why we think what we think reaches certain brute facts about the operation of the human mind. When we reach these points, there is nothing more to be said. We simply can't help thinking in these ways, and we lack the resources to demonstrate that these ways of thinking constitute an accurate way to represent the operation of the external world. And, Hume claims, it turns out that many of the fundamental elements of our conception of the world--the belief that things stand in causal relations to one another, the belief that we can know that there is a world outside our minds, the belief the future will resemble the past--end up not being open to ratification by experience. With respect to beliefs of these sorts, we ultimately have to appeal to custom in order to explain their existence and popularity. Hume, then, can be seen as demolishing the pretensions of reason in order to make room for a wholly naturalistic account of human thinking.
Rating:
Summary: It helps
Review: I believe that most of the people that are posting reviews are just trying to show off their knowledge. With that said, I had to read this for Lincoln-Douglas high school debate. I found it to be an enormous help in forming arguments for a broad range of topics. This shows that the ideas expoused in this book can be applied to nearly all aspects of society. After reading this (and maybe some Locke and Kant as well) you will have an entirely new way of looking at societal systems and government. -it really is 5 stars, that's not there just for the heck of it.
Rating:
Summary: Hume - a skeptic with style - a pleasure to read
Review: This book will make you question many things; indeed Hume makes our quest for knowledge look like the struggle of Sisyphus rolling his rock up a hill, only to have it fall down again and again as he fruitlessly makes his repeated efforts. Hume argues to the logical conclusion of the empiricist tradition that began with John Locke.
According to the empiricist thesis, sensory experience is the foundation for all knowledge about the world. This knowledge is what Hume calls Matters of Fact. Matters of Fact include such statements as "The sun will rise tomorrow" or "The cat is on the mat." Deductive knowledge, such as mathematics and logic, is termed "Relations of Ideas" by Hume. These are necessary truths, or true in all possible worlds, thus they are not truths about the actual world, according to Hume. However, Hume thinks that Relations of ideas are useless to us because they contain an empty sort of knowledge that tells us nothing about the world. Hume says Relations of Ideas are CREATED meanings, unlike Plato and Aristotle who would say that mathematical and logical truths are facts about the world as well, not merely our creation. The relation of ideas/matters of fact dichotomy is the same as the analytic/sythetic distinction of contemporary philosophy. Hume does not doubt the truth of relations of ideas, he just thinks they are useless. For a skeptical attack on even the analytic/synthetic distinction, and hence analytical truth, see "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" by W.V. Quine. To gain useful knowledge, i.e., knowledge of matters of fact, we can rely off inductive reasoning (reasoning from singular instances to a universal generalization) and sense observation. Now Hume never uses the term "induction," for his attack is explicitly on our knowledge of causation in nature, but his argument would apply to all forms of induction, not just causation, thus it is often called "Hume's attack on induction." To this day, no one has solved the problem of induction. This alone makes Hume a worthwhile read. The argument basically goes like this: Induction involves a generalization to the unobserved on the basis of observed phenomena. To have a good reason for making such a generalization, we have to presuppose that the whole of nature exibits uniformity in its behavior (If nature were not uniform, then it would be unwise to try and infer future experience on the basis of past experience). However, to make a statement about the uniformity of the whole of nature is to make a statement about unobserved phenomena (since we can never observe the whole of nature). Since this is about the unobseved, sense observation is out of the question to cite as evidence for a uniformity maxim about nature. Thus, the only available evidence for such a maxim would have to come from induction, but we need the maxim to justify induction in the first place! Thus, inductive reasoning is essentially circular. However, please note that this is only true if all reasoning must be based on the framework of deductive logic. Hume also attacks religion and belief in the external world. To believe in the external world is to use inductive reasoning because we generalize from the observed (the sense impressions in our mind) to the unobserved (a mind independent reality). We can have no knowledge of a mind-independent reality because all the reality that we can ever experience must be contained somehow in our minds. If it wasn't in our minds, we could never experience it. There is a large similarity between this view and the view of Protagoras the sophist, 2400 years ago. He said "As things appear to a man, so they are for him." In other words, the only reality for each individual is that which is contained (appears) in his mind. Plato set out to defeat this view in his dialogue, the Theaetetus. If Plato is successful, then Hume is defeated as well.
In numerous places, Hume anticipates Postmodern theses. And he suffers from the same problem that any skeptical or relativist position suffers: The Humean skeptic says "Knowledge is impossible," but if that was true, how could he know that? The relativist says either: a) reality is relative to each individual's construal of his appearances (Protagoras, existentialism). b) reality is relative to each socio-cultural or linguistic community's construal of its appearances (Postmodernism). c) reality is relative to the a priori categories and intuitions of space and time, which are innate in all rational beings to allow them to construe their appearances (Kant's answer to skepticism). However, if any of these 3 relativist theses are true, then some knowledge of reality must be non-relative. How could you state "Reality is relative to x" unless you were able to see the way reality worked from a standpoint that is outside the constraints of x? If you are making that statement from inside the constraints of some perspective, then anyone with a different perspective need not listen to you because your statement about relativism is not part of their reality since it is not within their framework/perspective. Basically, if Hume, or any skeptic/relativist were right, then we should be equally skeptical about whatever they are trying to convince us. Still, Hume is very much worth the read, and he will make you think outside the box if you are going to understand and get past his arguments. Though the skeptical position seems contradictory for reasons stated above, this refutation of skepticism is only possible by first admitting that the skeptic is right! Thus, we still have a lot of work to do to find an alternative to skepticism/relativism, and Hume's book cuts out our work for us. He raises the problems that we need to solve if we are ever going to escape the hopelessness of relativism and skepticism. And even if the skeptic is unanswerable in the end, we are better off at least knowing that, and thus we will be freed from dogmatic and unfounded beliefs. Hume does us a great service by freeing us from dogmatic faith in both religion AND science -- a critical, skeptical eye in this age of empty ready-made certainties is both healthy and necessary if we are ever to get on the path to real knowledge.
Rating:
Summary: Required reading from the greatest of the empiricists
Review: This is a good edition of the first but fundamental book published by Hume in 3 volumes (1 and 2 in 1739; 3 in 1740) dedicated to the methodical study of knowledge, passions and moral, through experience and practical observation. It is with Hume that empiricism (following Locke and Berkeley) reaches its complete expression as a "modern" classical system, against previous dogmatic visions of philosophy. According to Kant, Hume awoke him from the dogmatic dream......
With Hume, english illustration comes to a definitive expression. Through his opus, empiricism is systematized and acquires a new dimension that expands its influence on all fields of philosophy. Previous conceptions about the theory of knowledge, ethics, politics, esthetics, and the philosophy of religion, all are transformed or renovated by Hume. In spite of his critics, Hume's system dwelled with different topics of modern interest: positivism, psychology, nominalism, critical skepticism, determinism, agnosticism, moral philosophy, political economy, etc.
No serious philosopher after Hume, has been able to avoid a careful look at his system. So if you are a student or scholar of the subject matter, I highly recommend this edition of Hume's seminal work.
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