‘That a corporeal substance, which hath absolute existence without the minds of spirits, should be produced out of nothing by the mere will of a spirit hath been looked upon as a thing so contrary to all reason, so impossible and absurd, that not only the most celebrated amongst the ancients, but even divers modern and Christian philosophers have thought matter co-eternal with the Deity.’.

I shall situate Hume's scepticism within a broader philosophical and historical context. Firstly, I shall consider the place of Hume's thought within the early modern break with the almost millennium long metaphysical tradition, a break initiated by Descartes. The framework of being structured by a universal order was replaced by the individual human mind that broke free from any higher authority and became an autonomous cognitive agent. Subsequently, the ontological self-evidence of the world or the possibility of adequate knowledge came (...) under sceptical attack. Hume firmly belongs to this discourse and can be seen as themost consistent exponent of this early modern sceptical line. In this light, the ‘New Hume’ claim that Hume was an ontological realist will be shown to be misplaced in principle. Secondly, the strong influence of Pyrrhonism on Hume's philosophy will be considered, together with his concept of mitigated scepticism. The Pyrrhonian legacy is especially noticeable in Hume's acceptance of the weakness of reason and in his emphasis on the instructive role of philosophy – instead of attempting to make it the foundation of science it becomes a guide to a balanced, happy life. In this respect, Hume standsoutside the early modern mainstreamin philosophy. (shrink)

So many times have we heard it told and even recounted it ourselves, that the tale of Descartes’ metaphysical adventure is something we can slip our philosophical feet into without feeling the slightest pinch. The story, or perhaps, only its plot, is this: Descartes, in order to discover whether anything is certain, attempted to doubt everything; though he succeeded in casting at least a shadow of doubt on vast areas of belief, happily one item, though only one, emerged from the (...) inquiry in a respectable condition, indubitable. The remainder of the tale relates how he proceeded to deduce truth after truth from that single original certainty. (shrink)

There is still considerable debate among commentators about the extent to which Descartes intended to, or actually did, exercise the principle of methodic doubt. Basically, the debate is about the import of the word “all” in the opening sentence of the synopsis of the Meditations: “In the first Meditation I set forth the reasons for which we may, generally speaking, doubt about all things … ”. A. K. Stout and Willis Doney have argued that the thing to be doubted is (...) all knowledge to the extent in which memory plays a role in it. They attempt to show that Descartes is looking for a guarantee for the reliability of memory rather than for, say, a guarantee for the reliability of all clear and distinct ideas. Most commentators do not restrict methodic doubt in this way. For example, Alan Gewirth has recently suggested that sometimes Descartes even doubts the cogito. (shrink)