Anda di halaman 1dari 14
KANT, HAMANN-JACOBI AND SCHELLING ON HUME * To the extent that contemporary philosophy deals with traditional problems in the traditional manner, Hume’s influence in epistemology is still of paramount importance !. In fact, with some stylization and simplification an important segment of the history of Western philosophy can be presented in the following manner: According to Hume, all legitimate knowledge is derived from experience. But experience never yields universal, necessary propositions—it can only tell us “this and this happened”, but it can never tell us “this and this happened by necessity”; and therefore it never can tell us “this and this will happen in the future”. Kant admitted that experience never results in universal, necessary propositions, But, he insisted, we are in possession of at least one science consisting of universal, necessary propositions — a science the legitimate character of which nobody could deny, viz. mathematics?, Therefore, Kant concluded, not all legitimate knowledge was based on experience. Hume, so Kant said in his Prolegomena, did not realize the true character of mathematics 3, 1 For a succinct presentation of the relation between Hume and analytical philosophy see S. N. Hampsutre, “Hume's Place in Philosophy”, in D. F. Pears (ed.), David Hume: A Symposium, London 1963, pp. 1-10, esp. 4 £. 21 take it that Hume's doctrines concerning the character of mathematical knowledge, which he expressed in the Treatise, do not essentially differ from those expressed in his Enquiry with one exception, irrelevant to the present context, viz. that in the Treatise (III 1) he rather sharply differentiates geometry from arithme- tic and algebra, whereas in the Enquiry (IV 1) he speaks simply of geometry as merely another branch of mathematics. In the Abstract, Hume makes no differen- tiation between geometry and arithmetic on p. 13, but he does it on p. 24. He obviously was not interested in making up his mind in this respect. > In Kamt’s language: Hume considered all mathematical (or at least arithmetic. al) knowledge to be analytical, ie., not knowledge in the ufll sense of the word. In Hume's language: Mathematics (or at least arithmetics) expressed only relations of ideas, not any matters of fact. This is said by W. A. Sucurinc, Hume and Ne- 482 PHILIP MERLAN If Kant was right as to the nature of mathematics, he would clearly have refuted Hume. It was only Russell who undertook to destroy Kant’s argument: he asserted that mathematics indeed consists of univ- ersal and necessary propositions but that all these propositions were merely analytical (tautological) in character and thus no knowledge in any true sense of the word. Thus Russell restored Hume’s empiricism (all true knowledge is based on experience), fully aware of its skeptical consequences (no universal, necessary truths; no true predication pos- sible)‘, though unwilling to accept them 5. Hegel is interested in Hume almost exclusively because of the latter’s skepticism also in the field of moral philosophy *, He finds him remarkable almost solely because his philosophy became the starting point of that of Kant. Now it is well known that skepticism is by no means Hume's last word. Implicitly or explicitly, both in the field of action and that of theory, man has always claimed to be in possession of necessary and universal truths. This claim, Hume caid, can not be juetified, if by justification we mean something like reasonable proof. The basis of that claim is not reason; it is something quite non-rational — call it cessary Truth, “Dialogue”, 5 (1966), pp. 47-65. Suchting denies that, according to ‘Hume, all necessary propositions are analytic. It seems to me that the main weakness of Suchting’s paper is his treatment of Hume's occasional dicta on equal footing with the passages in which Hume desls with this problem ex professo (esp. in Enquiry 1V 1). The clearest exposition of Kant’s attitude to Hume's skepticism is contained in his Prolegomena par. 2 (in its original form as restored by Vaihin- ger by transferring to it parts of par. 4). That Hume's relation of ideas should be equated with Kant’s analytical propositions has been denied by P. Lae, Hume's Lebre vom Wissen, “Philosophische Studien”, 17 (1901), pp. 6244673, esp. 649-651. 4 See, eg, A. History of Western Philosophy (1945), p. 831 £. (on the nature of mathematics); p. 673 («it must be hoped that there is some way of escaping the consequences of radical empiricism »). Russell later in Human Knowledge, New York, 1948, asserted that the indeed found such an escape. The validity of this clam cannot be discussed here; I must limit myself to quoting H. J. McLexnon, Has Russell Answered Hume?, “Journal of Philosophy”, 49 (1952), pp. 145-159, esp. p. 158 f, and state that I agree with his denial of the validity, $ Thus I bypassed the question of what Hume's reasoning was conceming causality. Within the framework of what I said above it could be put this way: To assert that A is the cause of B is implicitly to assert that A must in the past have been followed by B and will therefore by necessity be followed by B in the future. However, all that experience, the only source of legitimate knowledge, can tell us is that in the past A has always been followed by B. In other words, ‘Hume's reasoning is not affected by admission or by negation of the principle of causality. Even if A were actually the cause of B, we would never have the right to assert this. © The passages can easily be found with the help of Glockner’s Hegel Lexikon (G. W. F. Hegel, Samiliche Werke, Vol. XXIV, Stuttgart 1937). KANT, HAMANN JACOBI AND SCHELLING ON HUME, 483 instinct, nature, custom, etc., or, to use a general term, belief, While we imagine we know, we actually (only!) believe whatever some non- rational factor forces us to believe. However, it is precisely this (mere!) belief which enables us to live, We can not know that if we left our room on the third floor by the window, we would break our neck; but we believe that this would happen to us and therefore leave the room by the door, thus staying alive. The correctness or truth of our beliefs can not be supported by rational evidence and justified in this sense of the word. They can, however, be justified in the sense of pointing out their beneficial character’. It is this post-skeptical Hume who is of prime importance to Hamann and to Jacobi. Helped by the fact that “belief” can mean faith and can be translated by “Glaube”, both treat Hume’s post-skeptical consequences as justification of faith and thus of religion. They know, of course, that this is not what Hume wanted to do; but they (especially Hamann) 7 For it seems easy to turn this idea into something like an unlimited eulogy of custom, as Belgion does at present (M. BeLctoN, David Hume, London 1965). This is turning Hume into another Burke, 7A clear account of the two strands, the skeptical and the non-skeptical in ‘Hume can be found, eg. in R. Popkin, David Hume: His Pyrrbonism and bis Critique of Pyrrhonism, “The Philosophical Quarterly”, 1 (1951), pp. 385-407, esp. pp. 399 f. R. Kemp Smith tried to prove that even within Hume's doctrine of belief (ice. the assertion that what is generally taken to be cognition is nothing but mere belief) it is for Hume of prime importance to distinguish unwarranted beliefs from what according to Hume are non-warranted ones. This would mean that there would be a strand of non-skepticism even within the field of beliefs (The Philosophy of David Hume [1941], eg., pp. 131 £.). Now, it is true that there is a tendency in Hume to make such a difference; and it would indeed be almost inconceivable that he would have never tried to establish the difference between superstition and belief. But precisely in the passage in which Hume tries to assert the difference berween warranted and unwarranted beliefs, viz. Treatise I 4 (pp. 225 f. Selby- Bigge), he succeeds merely to the extent of applying the concept “natural” to some beliefs, naturalness then being the mark of warrantability, while refusing to epply it to others, unwarranted beliefs thus being marked as unnatural — but only to add: in a sense, all beliefs ate natural. And a few lines later he says in substance that warranted and unwarranted beliefs are related to each other like health and malady (which seems to admit a pretty radical difference between the two) but feels compelled to add: even malady can be said to be natural — only that health is “most natural” (p. 226, lines 4 f. Selby-Bigge). Indeed, if the concept of “natural” admits of degrees, Kemp Smith would be correct in attributing to Hume a radical distinction between warranted and unwarranted beliefs; but does it? Don't We have before us 2 clear case of the misuse of the word “natural”, here as so ‘often chatoyant between its descriptive and its normative connotations. Cfr. the treatment of the whole problem especially in J. Laporte, Le scepticisme de Hume, “Revue philosophique”, 58 (1933), pp. 61-127; 59 (1934), pp. 161-225, esp. p. 221.

Anda mungkin juga menyukai