Hume’s Empiricism: Knowledge, Reality, and Society
David Hume
Historical and Socio-Cultural Context
Empiricism emerged in Britain during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, influenced by the philosophical environment of Oxford University. In the Middle Ages, Oxford and Paris vied for intellectual dominance in Europe. Oxford focused on natural and physical works, aligning with Aristotelian thought and emphasizing observation of nature. Roger Bacon, William of Ockham, and Francis Bacon were precursors to modern empiricism.
England underwent a revolution, achieving political, religious, and economic freedoms, becoming a leading commercial and capitalist power. The English parliamentary system, based on social contract theories, contrasted with absolute monarchy and became a model for intellectuals.
Philosophical Framework
While rationalism dominated mainland Europe, empiricism arose in Britain, marking a significant philosophical shift.
Empiricism asserts that sensory experience is the sole source of knowledge. All true knowledge must derive from experience.
Empiricists argue that knowledge originates from experience. The human mind is not born with innate ideas but is like a blank slate filled with sensory data. Knowledge resides within human consciousness, a point shared with rationalism.
Rationalists believed knowledge could encompass everything through a proper method. Empiricists, however, limit knowledge to what can be sensed, deeming anything beyond experience unknowable.
Rationalists favored mathematical models, while empiricists focused on experimental sciences like physics, medicine, and chemistry.
Reality
Relations of Ideas and Matters of Fact
Hume focused on how objects of knowledge are accessed by consciousness. Relations of ideas pertain to formal sciences and offer demonstrative certainty, akin to Leibniz’s truths of reason and Kant’s analytic judgments.
Matters of fact encompass non-scientific knowledge crucial to human life, including empirical, moral, and behavioral sciences. Hume argued that our understanding of facts is based on belief, not certainty.
Critique of Causality
Matters of fact rely on the principle of causality, involving cause, effect, and their necessary connection. Hume argued that our idea of causality comes from observing repeated pairings of events. We believe things will continue as they have, but there is no absolute certainty.
Society
Hume considered politics a science within the Sciences of Man, alongside logic, morality, and criticism. He believed society arises from human utility, solving problems inherent in a solitary life. He did not see society as a product of a deliberate covenant but as a response to felt disadvantages of isolation.