Sceptycyzm w filozofii Dawida Hume’a

Abstract

In his principal work, Treatise of Human Nature, Hume writes he 'must plead the privilege of a sceptic', and the phrase seems to be motto of all his philosophy as it is often ascribed as a sceptical one. The very notion of scepticism can be understood twofold: in the relation to philosophical tradition of Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus — what is more important — as an immanent feature of Hume's own philosophical system. In this later sense Hume contrasts two kinds of scepticism — an excessive and a mitigated one. The inner contradictions of the former species of scepticism make clear the mpossibility of reducing human nature only to the operations of reason. On the other hand a itigated scepticism allows to delimit the claims of reason in order to point out the importance of human affectivity in various spheres of human practical activity.