Thinker · Empiricists
Hume
1711 – 1776 · Empiricists · The rationalists & empiricists · 2 works
The cheerful skeptic who followed empiricism all the way to its bitter end. If everything we know comes from experience (which Locke and Berkeley already believed), then Hume showed that experience can't justify the most ordinary thing in the world: the expectation that tomorrow will be like today. He turned empiricism's own tools on causation, the self, and the future itself until the floor gave way, and then, having proven that reason can't ground daily life, he went and played cards. The man who wrote the most corrosive philosophy of the age was, by every account, the most likable person in it.
What changed
Before
Experience grounds our knowledge of the world
After
Experience, followed honestly, can't even ground tomorrow
Inside the walk-through
The man whose book fell dead-born
Impressions, ideas, and Hume's fork
The crack in the world: causation and induction
The self as a bundle
Reason, the slave of the passions
Religion at arm's length
The afterlife of a cheerful skeptic
The works
