How An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding drew on Meditations on First Philosophy
A documented line of influence: David Hume demonstrably engaged René Descartes’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Meditations on First Philosophy
René Descartes · 1641
EnlightenmentThe influenced
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
David Hume · 1748
EnlightenmentRelevance
9/10
On An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding’s page
- Hume names Descartes directly — "the Cartesian doubt" is the antagonist of Section XII
- The Meditations is the method Hume rejects: doubt everything, then rebuild from a single indubitable point
- Read Descartes first and Hume's mitigated skepticism comes into focus as the counter-move — he argues Descartes' all-or-nothing doubt collapses on itself, and offers a humbler version in its place
On Meditations on First Philosophy’s page
- The doubt Hume sets out to dismantle has a name here: Cartesian doubt
- Descartes' method of suspending everything to find one certainty becomes Hume's chief target in Section XII of the Enquiry
- Hume's charge: this universal skepticism is self-undermining, since it has to lean on the very faculties it claims to suspect