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David Hume
David Hume (1711–1776) Through his pursuit of a naturalistic grounding for morality and his forceful critique of supernaturalism, Scottish philosopher David Hume significantly undermined confidence in orthodox Christianity. Professor, minister, and philosopher James Anderson summarizes the major points of Hume’s thought and offers a critical assessment from a distinctively Reformed perspective. He shows that Hume’s arguments, far from refuting the Christian worldview, indirectly support that worldview by exposing the self-defeating implications of naturalism. Deepen your understanding of this immensely influential thinker, and you will be better able to engage with today’s secular challenges to faith.
- GenresPhilosophy
162 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 2, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
April 9, 2025
Anderson, James W. David Hume. Presbyterian & Reformed.
Philosophical Project
David Hume sought to give an empirical and systematic account of human nature. As such an account proceeds from sense experience, we should not be surprised to learn that Hume prizes sensation over reason, skepticism over dogmatism, and naturalism over religion. Although empiricism is an intellectually dead-in, it did yield some surprising (and occasionally helpful) insights on reason and ethics.
Probably more clearly than any other Enlightenment figure, Hume demonstrates what reason cannot do. Reason cannot ground its own principles, since doing so would beg the question. Reason cannot motivate me to action; at best it can tell me what I should do. Most famously, reason cannot justify causal relations.
Ethics
If reason is helpless to do the above, what does Hume propose for the answer? Sense experience. Before we attack him for what looks to be such a naive move, we need to see what sense experience entails for Hume. For ethics, passions lead the way. We need not immediately dismiss Hume. Passions do play a role in ethical behavior. For many (most?) people, passions do overwhelm reason. This is simple observation. We are not left at the mercy of the passions, however. If reason is helpless and if we should not live by passions, Hume urges we should cultivate the sentiments. Sentiments are feelings of approval and disapproval. That which is morally good is agreeably useful to society.
Hume’s elegant simplicity comes at a high price. Who gets to determine what is morally good and agreeably useful except the status quo? What happens if two societies with two different status quos disagree? I do not know what kind of answer Hume could give. There is one payoff, though: cultivating noble sentiments is a good thing. Hume was right on that. He just could not define noble.
Philosophy of Mind
Anderson has a lengthy but very useful section on the mind. For Hume, there are two types of relations: ideas and facts. He subdivides ideas into simple and complex. For example, take a red apple. The color red is simple. It cannot be further reduced. The idea of the apple, however, can: spherical, red, hard, etc. Both ideas are perceptions, which are all mental phenomena.
This is Hume’s theory of ideas. An impression strikes the mind. This idea is either a sensation or a reflection. Here Hume’s taxonomy gets fuzzy. Both sensations and reflections are faint images of impressions. The important thing, however, is that this allows Hume to put forth his “copy principle:” simple ideas derive from simple impressions.
Religion
Anderson reviews the standard problems with Hume’s religious views. Hume already presupposes naturalism, which he then uses to reject any conclusion he does not like. Moreover, it is not clear how Hume’s own view does not reduce to passions. This is not a simple genetic fallacy. We are not saying Hume is wrong because his views, like ours presumably, reduce to passions. Rather, his views, if consistent, are no more rational than the believer’s.
As to miracles, Hume’s claim that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence sounds good, but it rejects much of modern science. Concepts like quantum mechanics and relativity would fail such a criterion. Even more, Hume’s criterion rules out all future probabilities.
Conclusion
Anderson ends with a section on Reformed Epistemology’s critique of Hume. For example, many of my beliefs are properly basic and would fail Hume’s test. For example, no one reasons to sense experience, only from; even worse, memory beliefs could fail Hume’s test. Perhaps most devastating of all, it is not clear how Hume’s own criteria would survive.
James Anderson has written “a most instructive book” and deserves its place on the shelf of Hume studies.
Philosophical Project
David Hume sought to give an empirical and systematic account of human nature. As such an account proceeds from sense experience, we should not be surprised to learn that Hume prizes sensation over reason, skepticism over dogmatism, and naturalism over religion. Although empiricism is an intellectually dead-in, it did yield some surprising (and occasionally helpful) insights on reason and ethics.
Probably more clearly than any other Enlightenment figure, Hume demonstrates what reason cannot do. Reason cannot ground its own principles, since doing so would beg the question. Reason cannot motivate me to action; at best it can tell me what I should do. Most famously, reason cannot justify causal relations.
Ethics
If reason is helpless to do the above, what does Hume propose for the answer? Sense experience. Before we attack him for what looks to be such a naive move, we need to see what sense experience entails for Hume. For ethics, passions lead the way. We need not immediately dismiss Hume. Passions do play a role in ethical behavior. For many (most?) people, passions do overwhelm reason. This is simple observation. We are not left at the mercy of the passions, however. If reason is helpless and if we should not live by passions, Hume urges we should cultivate the sentiments. Sentiments are feelings of approval and disapproval. That which is morally good is agreeably useful to society.
Hume’s elegant simplicity comes at a high price. Who gets to determine what is morally good and agreeably useful except the status quo? What happens if two societies with two different status quos disagree? I do not know what kind of answer Hume could give. There is one payoff, though: cultivating noble sentiments is a good thing. Hume was right on that. He just could not define noble.
Philosophy of Mind
Anderson has a lengthy but very useful section on the mind. For Hume, there are two types of relations: ideas and facts. He subdivides ideas into simple and complex. For example, take a red apple. The color red is simple. It cannot be further reduced. The idea of the apple, however, can: spherical, red, hard, etc. Both ideas are perceptions, which are all mental phenomena.
This is Hume’s theory of ideas. An impression strikes the mind. This idea is either a sensation or a reflection. Here Hume’s taxonomy gets fuzzy. Both sensations and reflections are faint images of impressions. The important thing, however, is that this allows Hume to put forth his “copy principle:” simple ideas derive from simple impressions.
Religion
Anderson reviews the standard problems with Hume’s religious views. Hume already presupposes naturalism, which he then uses to reject any conclusion he does not like. Moreover, it is not clear how Hume’s own view does not reduce to passions. This is not a simple genetic fallacy. We are not saying Hume is wrong because his views, like ours presumably, reduce to passions. Rather, his views, if consistent, are no more rational than the believer’s.
As to miracles, Hume’s claim that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence sounds good, but it rejects much of modern science. Concepts like quantum mechanics and relativity would fail such a criterion. Even more, Hume’s criterion rules out all future probabilities.
Conclusion
Anderson ends with a section on Reformed Epistemology’s critique of Hume. For example, many of my beliefs are properly basic and would fail Hume’s test. For example, no one reasons to sense experience, only from; even worse, memory beliefs could fail Hume’s test. Perhaps most devastating of all, it is not clear how Hume’s own criteria would survive.
James Anderson has written “a most instructive book” and deserves its place on the shelf of Hume studies.
February 10, 2024
Magisterial. I have only the highest praise for James N. Anderson and this finely written work of analytic Christian philosophy. In clear & simple language, Anderson: (1) explains Hume’s thought; (2) relates Hume’s far-reaching influence; (3) demonstrates how Hume’s philosophy is riddled with contradictions & vicious circularity; (4) shows how Kant’s transcendental idealism is not able to save Humean thought from utter scepticism and solipsism/subjectivism; (5) exposes the irrationalism of metaphysical naturalism and the Enlightenment presupposition of autonomous human thought; (6) provides a compelling invitation to explore Cornelius Van Til’s Christian appropriation of Kant’s transcendental argument as the way to save synthetic a priori truths. Tolle lege.
December 14, 2020
In a 1999 poll conducted by the British based Sunday Times the person voted as the “Greatest Scot of the Millennium” was the philosopher David Hume. Unfortunately Hume’s philosophy wasn’t just unbiblical but many times Hume was deliberately anti-Christian. Over the decades of evangelism, engaging in apologetics and taking courses in philosophy and religion I’ve heard people cite Hume or use argument for naturalism that came from Hume. So who was Hume, what did he teach and what does a Christian philosophical critique of Hume looks like? This book does an incredibly good job answering these questions. The author James Anderson is an excellent example of a Christian scholar who engages in philosophy, theology and apologetics and here in this book he delivers the good. This book is part of the Great Thinkers series published by P&R Publishing and thus far of the four volumes I have read (this work and the ones on Aquinas, Marx and Richard Dawkins) currently this one is my favorite one.
In general the book can be divided into two. The first part of the book is a presentation about David Hume and also his philosophy. This then is followed by the latter part of the book that offers a critique of Hume both philosophically and also from a Biblical and Reformed worldview. The book consists of eight chapters with the first chapter on David Hume’s life and works followed by the next three chapters on what Hume believed. Chapter two looks at his philosophical projects including Hume’s overall goal, his thory of the mind and view of causation, etc. Chapter three is on Hume’s ethics and chapter four is on his religious skepticism. Chapter five is a short chapter on how Hume has been relevant even after his lifetime. Then chapters six through eight presents the author’s devastating critiques against Hume. Chapter six assessed various aspect of his philosophy with chapter seven reserved for the author’s examination of Hume’s religious skepticism. The final chapter looks at how Christian apologetics and Hume in which Anderson presents a Transcendental argument from Hume’s skepticism for the Christian worldview.
I learned quite a lot in this book and not just with Hume’s view but also the way Anderson went about refuting Hume. In fact I think that’s probably the most helpful part of what I got from this work is seeing Anderson brought up observations and arguments against Hume especially with Anderson’s internal critique of Hume in which Hume’s own beliefs are turned against himself and his worldview. For instance many who know about Hume know how Hume is skeptical of how one can know causation happening in the context of Hume’s skepticism of the cosmological argument for the existence of God. Hume notes how just because you see correlation of event A before event B doesn’t mean event A cause or necessitate event B, because necessity itself is not something we can have impressions of empirically. But when Hume talks about how our mind has perceptions such as ideas and impressions yet in talking about “impressions” it presupposes there is something external to the mind that is causing the perception in our mind. Here we see Hume assumes causation when his worldview undermine the concept of causation itself. Pretty devastating and yet Anderson goes further to note that Hume’s account of causation that our mind out of habit notices event A is followed by event B attribute causation in our minds and yet this explanation assumes causation, specifically habit is causing our beliefs in causation! The book’s discussion on Hume’s view against miracles is also defeated with rebuttals from everyday uncontroversial experiences and also Hume’s own self-defeating epistemology. I recommend this work as a worthwile to be read so Christians be equipped for those who think Hume is the Goliath that has slayed beliefs in the Bible and beliefs in the supernatural, which is the assumption of some unbelievers in the world today.
In general the book can be divided into two. The first part of the book is a presentation about David Hume and also his philosophy. This then is followed by the latter part of the book that offers a critique of Hume both philosophically and also from a Biblical and Reformed worldview. The book consists of eight chapters with the first chapter on David Hume’s life and works followed by the next three chapters on what Hume believed. Chapter two looks at his philosophical projects including Hume’s overall goal, his thory of the mind and view of causation, etc. Chapter three is on Hume’s ethics and chapter four is on his religious skepticism. Chapter five is a short chapter on how Hume has been relevant even after his lifetime. Then chapters six through eight presents the author’s devastating critiques against Hume. Chapter six assessed various aspect of his philosophy with chapter seven reserved for the author’s examination of Hume’s religious skepticism. The final chapter looks at how Christian apologetics and Hume in which Anderson presents a Transcendental argument from Hume’s skepticism for the Christian worldview.
I learned quite a lot in this book and not just with Hume’s view but also the way Anderson went about refuting Hume. In fact I think that’s probably the most helpful part of what I got from this work is seeing Anderson brought up observations and arguments against Hume especially with Anderson’s internal critique of Hume in which Hume’s own beliefs are turned against himself and his worldview. For instance many who know about Hume know how Hume is skeptical of how one can know causation happening in the context of Hume’s skepticism of the cosmological argument for the existence of God. Hume notes how just because you see correlation of event A before event B doesn’t mean event A cause or necessitate event B, because necessity itself is not something we can have impressions of empirically. But when Hume talks about how our mind has perceptions such as ideas and impressions yet in talking about “impressions” it presupposes there is something external to the mind that is causing the perception in our mind. Here we see Hume assumes causation when his worldview undermine the concept of causation itself. Pretty devastating and yet Anderson goes further to note that Hume’s account of causation that our mind out of habit notices event A is followed by event B attribute causation in our minds and yet this explanation assumes causation, specifically habit is causing our beliefs in causation! The book’s discussion on Hume’s view against miracles is also defeated with rebuttals from everyday uncontroversial experiences and also Hume’s own self-defeating epistemology. I recommend this work as a worthwile to be read so Christians be equipped for those who think Hume is the Goliath that has slayed beliefs in the Bible and beliefs in the supernatural, which is the assumption of some unbelievers in the world today.
October 26, 2023
I picked up this book hoping it would help me in a paper I am working on for apologetics on encountering empiricism today. Anderson nails Hume and shows how he influenced evidentialism today. Empiricism is still out there; in fact, it’s a common view on the streets today that we can only know anything from observation or brute facts. Even Christian apologists today spend gross amounts of time trying to heap up verifiable evidence for things that really can only be known by divine revelation (e.g., the resurrection). Anderson is very helpful in adapting the transcendental argument to empiricism and shows how empiricism actually undermines the right use of empirical evidence and therefore lapses into solipsism and skepticism, undermining science and the entire worldview it was created to support.
March 23, 2024
Great survey of David Hume and his thought. With empiricism being embraced (knowingly or unknowingly) in large numbers here in the States this book offers anyone looking to engage more throughly with forms of Hume’s thought as a good introduction.
May 25, 2024
Brief, excellent summary of David Hume’s thought and critique from a Reformed Christian perspective. James Anderson clearly understands the subject matter and is a very good writer. I loved this book.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews