This is the first full book-length study in forty years of David Hume's Enquiry concerning Human Understanding-which, contrary to its author's expressed wishes, long lived in the shadow of its predecessor A Treatise of Human Nature. Stephen Buckle presents the Enquiry in a fresh light, aiming to raise it to its rightful position in the history of philosophy. He argues that the Enquiry is not, as so often assumed, a mere collection of watered-down extracts from the earlier work. It is, rather, a coherent work with a unified argument; and, when this argument is grasped as a whole, the Enquiry shows itself to be the best introduction to the features of its author's general philosophy.

• 1. Approaching the Text


• 1: Clearing the Ground


• 2: Circumstances and Aim


• 3: Experimentalism and Scepticism


• 2. The Argument


• 1: Of the Different Species of Philosophy


• 2: Of the Origin of Ideas


• 3: Of the Association of Ideas


• 4: Sceptical Doubts concerning the Operations of the Understanding


• 5: Sceptical Solution of these Doubts


• 6: Of Probability


• 7: Of the Idea of Necessary Connexion


• 8: Of Liberty and Necessity


• 9: Of the Reason of Animals


• 10: Of Miracles


• 11: Of a Particular Providence and of a Future State


• 12: Of the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy


• 3. Conclusion


• Hume's Enlightenment Tract


• Bibliography, Index