Historical Dictionary of Hume’s Philosophy
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loginIt is hardly necessary today to make a case for Hume’s stature as a philosopher. He is, indeed, widely regarded as the greatest philosopher ever to write in the English language. It was not always so. In his own day and for most of the 19th century, Hume was seen by many as merely a negative, destructive skeptic—undoubtedly very clever, but not to be taken seriously as a philosopher. (A notable exception was the great German philosopher Immanuel Kant, who deplored the misread-ing of Hume’s intentions and credited Hume with waking him, Kant, from his “dogmatic slumber.”) Early in the 20th century, the Scottish philosopher Norman Kemp Smith argued that Hume’s “skepticism” was in fact a variety of naturalism, which is directed mainly against rationalist philosophical theories and not against commonsense notions of causation, the external world, morality, and the like. Hume scholars have criticized many of Kemp Smith’s specific claims, but no one doubts the key role he played in changing the way Hume is interpreted. It is a pleasure to note that Hume scholarship is flourishing today, as it has been for the past several decades. Even critics who find Hume’s arguments unconvincing are generally willing to concede that his phi-losophy is eminently worthy of careful attention.
