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David Hume

Hume, HobNobs and Metaphysics

Sally Latham shows how Hume’s views on causality really take the biscuit.

Hume is usually seen as the champion of the anti-metaphysical stance. In Section I of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding he says metaphysics is “not properly a science,” and seeks to “penetrate into subjects utterly inaccessible to the understanding” (p.11, OUP edition). In particular, the usual understanding of Hume concerning causation is that he claimed any reference to causes – metaphysical bonds between events, or some sort of mysterious power rendering one event the necessary consequence of another – is not rooted in experience, and hence meaningless. Rather, what is derived from experience is a ‘constant conjunction of events’.

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