Studies On David Hume's Skepticism And Its Contemporary Value

In the history of western philosophy, the skepticism as a theory which doubts and denies the existence of the objective world and objective truth has been denied and criticized by people all the time because it regard suspecting as primary principle of thinking and starting points of all things and this may cause the nihilism on philosophy and on knowledge. David Hume as the most influential skeptic in Britain in the 18th century all the time he has been focused on in the history of western philosophy. The suspecting of David Hume's Skepticism includes suspecting the possibility of knowledge of mankind gaining the existing faith and the proper of judgment. This kind of suspicion is on the basis of proving in experience. It includes two facets: On one side, it carry out and develop the Empiricism principle of John Locke .His prove make the English Empiricism to its logic result and uncover the suspicion doctrine that it contains .On the other side, by analyzing the experience and psychology, it has proved that mankind has "unpredictable natural faith"such as the existence of the external object, agreement of oneself and causality. But they had no foundation of the objective reality and only had the foundation of subjective psychology. So they can only describe the psychological course-taking place, and they can't defend their objective validity. This is Skepticism, namely the suspicion of the objective foundation of human general knowledge faith. The demonstration of two above-mentioned respects divides his skepticism into four parts naturally. First, through investigating nature of Empiricism principle and human ability, he put forward to the suspicion of feeling impression source and deducing rationality thoroughly. Second, through the explanation of mankind's natural psychology discrimination, he propose the suspicion of external existence and the soul of entity of object (entity ). Even if David Hume's Skepticism is true, it can't break away from the soil offered to him in his era, and can't surpass limitation in his era. David Hume is the representatives of Europe's enlightens from 17th to 19th century in Scotland. At that time, the victory of natural science in the theory and practice has promoted the development of the humanities including philosophy, made enlightens thought drawn rich nutrition from the theory and method of natural science, and make scientific spirit become spirit of the times, become motive force of academy progress. David Hume's Skepticism was born under such background and atmosphere. Just like what Engel said: "Every philosophy of each era as a specific field, has specific thought materials which sets out from this. "The skepticism has its thought sources too, there are the following aspects mainly: 1, Principle and method of the scientific experiment represented by Newton. 2, The modern empiricism and rationalism in Europe, which is the most direct thought source of David Hume's philosophy. 3, Inevitable result which the modern Britain's empiricism develops into, he insist to experience when David Hume developed and remove out Locke and Baker's contradiction and completeness, but he has moved towards Skepticism. He put forward to the suspicion of feeling the impression source in principle, the suspicion of the existence to the external object, the suspicion where the soul entity exists and suspicion to the cause and effect on the more complete and extreme basis form of the theoretical system of Skepticism. David Hume's Skepticism system, had the important positions in the history of thought. There are some reasons. 1, Skepticism philosophy is suitable for the need against metaphysics of European philosophy at that time, and has criticized the past arbitrary theory of metaphysics, has opened a new road for the philosophy development. 2, The attitude criticizing and denying the religious theology which was advocated in the Skepticism had raised the suspicion and criticism to the religion of Europe at that time, and made the fashionable religious theory collapse from then on. 3, Having promoted the forming of Kant's criticism philosophy, which was one of most directly and important function on western philosophy. 4, Becoming the theory guide of some ideological trends in modern western philosophy, for instance early positivism, Machismo, nutritional doctrine, logic positivism and analyzing the ideological trend, etc. Seeing from Marxist philosophy field, the philosopher Hegel before the formation of Marx only criticize and refute the Skepticism from the logic theory, but can not deny the Skepticism. Only Marx, Engel and Lenin just on the position of dialectical materialism, have uncovered the nature of metaphysics and subjective idealism with the point of practicing, have denied the Skepticism completely. The nature of subjective idealism and metaphysics of David Hume's skepticism make the rationality to be historical. With the development of the mankind's practicing and acknowledgement, its rationality in David Hume's Skepticism should be surpassed by more scientific and reasonable thoughts and criticizing spirits. This is obviously salvation to David Hume's skepticism. Specially to such fast changing society nowadays, they have obvious contemporary value (1) It is one of the qualities that the talent people should possess in the information society nowadays.(2)It can excite human thinking to get deeply to the high level, enables knowing to reach dialectical unity, and promotes the development which ones should know.(3)It can help to do away with superstitions and train innovative thinking .