1001Philosophers

David Hume vs Immanuel Kant on Knowledge

Hume argued that causation, induction, and the persistence of the self are not justifiable by reason but only by custom and habit. Kant accepted the diagnosis but argued that the very possibility of experience requires a priori categories supplied by the understanding, and grounded causation as a transcendental condition of experience. Where Hume's empiricism dissolves what reason claimed to know, Kant's critical philosophy reconstructs it as the structure of any possible experience.

About this topic

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature, sources, and limits of knowledge. Philosophers have asked what distinguishes knowledge from mere opinion, whether it requires certainty or can be probabilistic, and how perception, reason, memory, and testimony each contribute. Ancient skeptics challenged the possibility of knowledge altogether, while rationalists located its source in reason and empiricists in experience. Contemporary epistemology investigates justification, reliability, and the social conditions under which beliefs count as knowing.

For a side-by-side overview of the two philosophers more broadly, see the full David Hume vs Immanuel Kant comparison. To browse philosophy more widely on this theme, see the Knowledge quotes hub.

Representative quotes on knowledge

David Hume on knowledge

  • “A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.”

    Section X: Of Miracles; Part I. 87

  • “Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.”

    Part 4, Section 7

  • “All knowledge degenerates into probability.”

    Part 4, Section 1

  • “When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken.”

    § 9.13 : Conclusion, Pt. 1

  • “Here then we may learn the fallacy of the remark... that any particular state is weak, though fertile, populous, and well cultivated, merely because it wants money . It appears that the want of money can never injure any state within itself: For men and commodities are the real strength of any community. It is the simple manner of living which here hurts the public, by confining the gold and silve”

    Of Money (1752) as quoted in David Hume: Writings on Economics (1955, 1970) ed., Eugene Rotwein, p. 45.

All 10 David Hume quotes on knowledge →

Immanuel Kant on knowledge

  • “All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason.”

    All human knowledge begins with intuitions, proceeds from thence to concepts, and ends with ideas.

  • “Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.”

    A 51, B 75

  • “The body is a temple.”

    A lecture at Königsberg (1775), as quoted in A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles from Ancient and Modern Sources (1946) by H. L. Mencken , p. 1043

  • “Immanuel Kant , Kant's Critique of Judgment (1892) Tr. J.H. Bernard”

    Moral Teleology supplies the deficiency in physical Teleology , and first establishes a Theology ; because the latter, if it did not borrow from the former without being observed, but were to proceed consistently, could only found a Demonology , which is incapable of any definite concept.

  • “Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Ethics by Immanuel Kant, trans. J.W. Semple, ed. with Iintroduction by Rev. Henry Calderwood (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1886) (3rd edition). Chapter: GENERAL DIVISION OF JURISPRUDENCE.”

    Freedom is the alone unoriginated birthright of man, and belongs to him by force of his humanity ; and is independence on the will and co-action of every other in so far as this consists with every other person’s freedom.

All 7 Immanuel Kant quotes on knowledge →

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