1001Philosophers

David Hume vs Rene Descartes

Hume and Descartes are usually presented as the paradigmatic figures of the empiricist and rationalist responses to early modern epistemology. Their disagreement structures the early modern debate over what we can know and how.

At a glance

David HumeRene Descartes
Dates1711 – 17761596 – 1650
NationalityScottishFrench
EraModernModern
Movements Empiricism, Scottish Enlightenment Rationalism, Early Modern Philosophy
Profile David Hume → Rene Descartes →

Where they agree

Both treated the question of certain knowledge as the central problem of philosophy, both took the methods of the new natural sciences as a model, and both worked outside the universities and in the vernacular. Both produced philosophical autobiographies that fix philosophical inquiry in a first-person voice.

Where they disagree

Descartes held that certain knowledge requires a foundation in clear and distinct ideas accessible to reason alone, and the cogito provides that foundation: the existence of the thinking self is indubitable. Hume rejected the project: there is no impression of the self, only a bundle of perceptions; reason cannot establish the existence of necessary connections in nature; and the rational foundation Descartes sought is not available. Hume's empiricism dissolves the very metaphysical questions Descartes thought philosophy was for.

Representative quotes

David Hume

  • “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.”

    Part 3, Section 3

  • “Custom, then, is the great guide of human life.”

    Variant (perhaps a paraphrase of this passage): It is not reason which is the guide of life, but custom.

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

    Section X: Of Miracles; Part I. 87

Rene Descartes

  • “I think, therefore I am.”

    Je pense, donc je suis.

  • “If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.”

    In order to seek truth, it is necessary once in the course of our life, to doubt, as far as possible, of all things.

  • “No doubt you know that Galileo had been convicted not long ago by the Inquisition, and that his opinion on the movement of the Earth had been condemned as heresy. Now I will tell you that all things I explain in my treatise , among which is also that same opinion about the movement of the Earth, all depend on one another, and are based upon certain evident truths. Nevertheless, I will not for the world stand up against the authority of the Church. ...I have the desire to live in peace and to continue on the road on which I have started.”

    Letter to Marin Mersenne (end of Feb., 1634) as quoted by Amir Aczel , Pendulum: Leon Foucault and the Triumph of Science (2003)

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