When understood even as scantly as I understand it, the early modern period of philosophy (which is just as much a predicament as it is a historical period) must be seen as having its origination in Descartes. All of the works of the major philosophers of that era – Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume – are, to a certain extent, just so many varied engagements with Descartes’ philosophy: They are either attempts at working out it’s implications, or else are posed as answers to (or, more often, refutations of) his work. The predicament of the early modern age is, at least as far as I can conceive it, a largely Cartesian legacy. Certainly the problem of subjectivism, which in some ways reaches an apogeic note in Hume (or perhaps more so in Locke, and Berkeley), is the progeny of the cogito. Thus, along with the metaphysical dualism of “mind” and “matter,” Descartes, with his methodological doubt, ushers in the epistemological dualism of “object” and “subject” – a dualism, which despite his own efforts to overcome, is nevertheless alive and well in the works of the empiricists. I suspect, moreover, that it was the methodological doubt of Descartes that would later inspire the empiricists in the deployment of their so-called “wrecking ball” – a realization that makes their criticisms of Descartes somewhat like the denials of the schoolboy who refuses to admit to his taunting friends that yes, he does in fact have a crush on the little girl in class.
Of course the difference, it might be stated, between a philosopher like Descartes on the one hand and, say, David Hume on the other is substantiated by the claim that, while the latter was a thoroughgoing critic and genuine in his skepticism, for the former the role of the skeptic was donned only lightly and only in order to serve his ultimate purpose, namely the triumphal vindication of the powers of human knowledge. In other words, Descartes’ skepticism was only superficial and a means to an end – his presuppositions guided him to his desired conclusion, and so, despite all pretense of doubt, in reality he was never all that open to the discovery of “truth.” Hume, on the other hand is generally painted in a very different light: he is seen as the genuine skeptic, and as such, is often viewed as the champion of free-thought, and of pure disinterested rational inquiry. It seems to me, however, that Hume is just as much a man of the modern era as Descartes, and is no less driven (by his own determination to construct a “science” of human understanding) to accepting certain (desired) beliefs that are nevertheless inconsistent with his own claims about knowledge.
After reading Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature, and his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding it seems obvious to me that the popular portrayal of Hume as the defender of philosophy against belief is one that overlooks the ultimate outcome of his argument. The more accurate picture is, I think, quite the reverse: Hume’s attack is upon philosophy, upon reason itself – “knowledge,” at least in the sense that this was understood in the modern era (and indeed as Hume himself understood it), is ultimately an abstraction of human experience. For Hume then, it is not philosophy, but rather a kind of faith which directs our lives. And though Hume, it seems, would admonish us to seek out a rational path to truth, it is not without irony that belief, after his work is done, is all that we are left.
This is, if I understand, more or less the theme that the obscure German philosopher Johan Georg Hamann picks up from Hume in his later theological critique of philosophy (which was aimed at Kant – and which inspired Kiekegaard in his severe criticism of Hegel).
