Hume's Thoughts On The Limit Of Reason In The Context Of Scotish Enlightenment

Against the Western rationalist tradition, thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment believed that reason is not able to create a future which is completely rational.Reason does not have this ability, but reason is important.They were not against to reason itself. They wanted to show the limit of reason by means of reason.In their view, the French Enlightenment misunderstood and abuse reason by promoting the rational supremacy, but reason had its own limit, it was not omnipotent.Hume was a great philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment. He, from a empiricist point of view, argued for the limit of reason in theory of knowledge, moral philosophy, legal philosophy and political philosophy. In his view, the most important elements in knowledge were cause and effect theory,imagination theory. But both were inseparable from the human perceptions and psychological habits rather than rational products.In moral philosophy, he opposed "yes" is equal to "should be". "yes"or "no" does not mean" should be" or "should not be",because they are not necessarily linked.So we did not understand the ethical issues by the methods of the Epistemology.In legal philosophy and political philosophy, reason could not solve all the rational and political problemwhich should thorough the civilization,traditions,customs and irrational factors and so on.Although Hume's philosophy has relativism,skepticism,psychological and emotionalism tendency, he opened up a new direction for non-rationalism,existentialism philosophy.His thoughts had a great impact on Kant and Hayek.