David Hume Skepticism

David Hume is commonly sited and referred to as the most important and influential philosopher ever to write in English. While this fact may not seem to be that impressive, one must remember the amount of English–speaking philosophers who came after him, or were his contemporaries, and with that context it is a great achievement. As a philosopher, his works on empiricism and skepticism stand out from anyone else during his lifetime. He followed in the scientific footsteps of the likes of Newton and Galileo, to pioneer the scientific method and help gain understanding of the human psyche. I will examine his epistemological/metaphysical, scientific, and aesthetic contributions to both the thinkers of his day as well as the philosophers, scientists and politicians of this generation. One of the most important issues Hume struggles with is that of skepticism, particularly on matter of causality. If humans are only able to perceive the natural world through empiricism, then the senses are our only understanding to how the world operates. Hume’s Bundle Theory was built on this notion and explained away the existence of any material object as only a

Hume says that “Beauty is no quality in things themselves: it exists merely in the mind that contemplates them.” Beauty is not a “thingy” thing, but a mode that we can attribute to already existing matter. Hume’s reconciliation for the dilemma of “beauty being in the eye of the beholder,” and yet at the same time a standard of taste, can be see as more of a understanding or interpretation of how things are and not a discovery of how things should be done. This standard of taste can be seen as a method to understand why beautiful art is considered to be beautiful. Why do some pieces of art please the senses? This standard is an explanation of why something is aesthetically pleasing to