David Hume: An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (1748)

Abstract

Perhaps the simplest way into Hume’s Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (1748) is to contrast the author’s empiricist approach with that of his rationalist predecessors, such as Descartes (see Chapter 2 on the Meditations). To put it rather crudely, empiricists believe that all knowledge is derived from experience, and there is nothing which can be understood by the mind alone. Without experience, the mind is, as Locke put it, a ‘blank slate’ (tabula rasa), incapable of thinking of anything.