Kant’s Analytic Response to Hume: An Unsuccessful Attempt

Hume’s theory of causation was one of the primary motivations for Kant’s writing of The Critique of Pure Reason. As Kant freely admits, “I openly confess that my remembering David Hume was the very thing which many years ago first interrupted my dogmatic slumber” [Kant, 4:260]. as the very thing which many years ago first interrupted my dogmatic slumber” [Kant, 4:260]. Hume believes that causation rests on the unsound principle of empirical induction. For Hume, causation is merely the assumed connection that one empirical event must necessarily and universally succeed another, an assumption which Hume believes to be a non sequitur. In Hume’s mind, there is no way to prove, through reason, that one appearance, an empirical event, must necessarily succeed the other. Instead, Hume states that the fundamental rule guiding the synthesis of appearances is constant conjunction, not causation [Hume, §V:30]. Therefore, the judgment of cause-and-effect, as well as any other causal laws which claim to be necessary and strictly universal, cannot claim to use reason. For Kant, Hume is fundamentally questioning the constitution of the human understanding; indeed, even Hume calls his critique of causation “special doubts concerning the operation of the understanding” [Hume, §IV:15]. In response, Kant seeks to use his Pure Concepts of the Understanding to show how the conditions of possible experience necessitate the use of the Pure Concept of causality.