David Hume: Classical and Contemporary Interpretations

Abstract

In this paper, I consider the classical and some of the contemporary interpretations of the ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume. I briefly discuss the sources of classical interpretations, reasons to accept them, and the directions of their transformation in contemporary literature. I try to show that, despite their merits, the main classical interpretations – sсeptical and naturalistic – do not stand up to criticism. The naturalistic interpretation assumes that Hume follows the “experimental method” in solving philosophical questions, but it can be shown that this is not so, at least in his First Enquiry. The sсeptical interpretation suggests that Hume was a sсeptic, which, strictly speaking, is also wrong. The newest interpretations of Hume's ideas – Paul Russell’s, for example – also have serious problems. At the end of the article, I outline some ways of creating a new synthetic interpretation of Hume's ideas.