How An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding drew on The Works of Cicero
A documented line of influence: David Hume demonstrably engaged Marcus Tullius Cicero’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Works of Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero · c. 50 BCE
Ancient RomeThe influenced
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
David Hume · 1748
EnlightenmentRelevance
7/10
On An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding’s page
- When Hume names his own "academical or sceptical" philosophy in the Enquiry, he's claiming descent from Cicero's Academic skepticism — he says so explicitly
- He read Cicero closely as a young man and held him up as the model of philosophy written for common life, not the schools
- Read Cicero first and Hume's measured, doubt-tempered method stops looking like an invention and starts looking like an inheritance
On The Works of Cicero’s page
- The model for the kind of philosophy Hume set out to write — elegant, addressed to common life, built to last
- Hume devoured Cicero at Edinburgh and openly claimed his ancestry: in the Enquiry's closing section he identifies his own mitigated skepticism with Cicero's Academic skepticism
- The skeptical tradition that runs through the Enquiry has its Roman headwaters here