David Hume (1711–76) is commonly acknowledged to be the most important philosopher of the English language, and scepticism is commonly understood to be central to Hume’s thought. What, however, counts as scepticism for Hume and how it informs his various works has remained a topic of enduring controversy. Hume’s Scepticism: Pyrrhonian and Academic answers the constellation of interpretive questions around which that controversy has orbited by presenting a comprehensive and detailed investigation of Hume’s scepticism that situates it in the intersecting sceptical traditions from which it sprang ... More

David Hume (1711–76) is commonly acknowledged to be the most important philosopher of the English language, and scepticism is commonly understood to be central to Hume’s thought. What, however, counts as scepticism for Hume and how it informs his various works has remained a topic of enduring controversy. Hume’s Scepticism: Pyrrhonian and Academic answers the constellation of interpretive questions around which that controversy has orbited by presenting a comprehensive and detailed investigation of Hume’s scepticism that situates it in the intersecting sceptical traditions from which it sprang. Making a sharp break with dominant contemporary readings, Hume’s Scepticism offers a radical interpretation of Hume as a thoroughgoing sceptic—epistemic, metaphysical, and also doxastic. Hume’s Scepticism advances its arguments for this conclusion in two broad hemispheres. Part One situates Hume’s thought historically in both the Pyrrhonian and the Academic streams of sceptical thought that preceded him. Part Two investigates and interprets the conceptual spaces and logical apparatuses of the complete Humean corpus–including the Treatise, Enquiries, Essays, History, Dialogues, and letters–through the lens of what has come to be called the Pyrrhonian Fourfold. Hume’s Scepticism argues that Hume’s naturalism is a component of his sceptical philosophy and not a refutation of it or therapy for it. Drawing on the probabilistic and doxastic theories of Philonian Academic scepticism, especially in Clitomachus of Carthage, the book shows how Hume developed an utterly non-dogmatic theory of belief. The text delineates the sceptical core of Humes’ political thought and his philosophy of religion; and it explains his sceptical rendering of science and of the external world. Hume’s Scepticism, in other words, advances both historical and logical reasons for the conclusion that Hume is a complete, profound, and coherent sceptic.