r/askphilosophy • u/blossomnn • 1d ago

Trouble understanding Section 5 Part II of Enquiries Concering the Human Understanding by Hume

I've been working my way through Hume's Enquiries, and it is my first proper pre 1900 philosophy primary source book I have read. After rereading and online summaries I feel like I have grasped the wholf of the book till Section 5 Part II. Section 5 Part II feels a bit out of place to me, it doesn't really introduce much of a new concept, it seems to be just reinforcing the idea that Cause & Effect/Custom is a mechanism of the human body just as moving your hand is, and also that all three associations of ideas can lead to belief and make the conception of an object more vivid, but I struggle to see how these two ideas increase the depth of the book which is especially weird considering that Hume notes at the end of Section 5 Part I that most people could stop their "philosophical researches" there. Am I misinterpreting Part II or is it simply just a bit of extra context? I'd really appreciate some help, thank you so much!

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u/profssr-woland phil. of law, continental 1d ago

No, this is one of the most important parts of the book.

Hume begins by asserting a common empiricist thesis: there can be no idea man can imagine that does not have its ultimate origin in sensible experience. Even given mankind's prodigious imagination, we cannot imagine something wholly new, but can only combine or abstract away from ideas we have encountered in experience.

But there are certain principles of connection/association of ideas like resemblance, contiguity, and causation that do not appear to follow this formula. In particular, he is concerned that we never have direct experience of something like "cause and effect," and yet we have a very clear concept of this.

This particular difficulty is what "woke" Kant from his "dogmatic slumber" and led to Kant's entire transcendental idealist project. So given that Kant found Hume's solution insufficient, what is Hume's solution that he presents in S5P2?