All Annotations of SparkNotes: David Hume: Context[Preview]

saved byKrissa Randolph on 2006-04-30

• Krissa Randolph
  • Hume is widely regarded as the third and most radical
    of the British empiricists, after John Locke and George Berkeley.
    Like Locke and Berkeley, Hume argued that all knowledge results
    from our experiences and is not received from God or innate to our
    minds. This kind of empiricism led to today’s “scientific method,”
    which holds that knowledge should be based on observations rather
    than intuition or faith. Radical empiricism went further, arguing
    that our knowledge is nothing more than the sum of our experiences.
    Unlike Locke and Berkeley, Hume removed God from the equation completely
    and argued forcefully against the possibility of his existence as
    his contemporaries envisioned it.
  • the Scottish philosophers practiced extreme skepticism
    and identified more strongly with utilitarianism, which posits that
    actions should be measured by their effect on the greater good of
    the world, not their consequences for the individual.
  • Despite Hume’s nay-saying contemporaries, his theories
    of the “evolution” of ethics, institutions, and social conventions
    proved highly influential for later philosophers. Attention to his
    works grew after the great philosopher Immanuel Kant credited Hume with
    awakening him from “dogmatic slumber.”
  • Hume caused
    a stir by advocating a system of morality based on utility, or usefulness,
    instead of God’s authority. His newfound success encouraged him
    to seek a department chair position at the University of Edinburgh,
    but the town council rejected him because of his antireligious philosophy.