An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding is a book by the Scottish empiricist philosopher David Hume published in English in 1748. It was a revision of an earlier effort Humes A Treatise of Human Nature published anonymously in London in 1739-40. Hume was disappointed with the reception of the Treatise which fell dead-born from the press as he put it and so tried again to disseminate his more developed ideas to the public by writing a shorter and more polemical work. The end product of his labours was the Enquiry. The Enquiry dispensed with much of the material from the Treatise in favor of clarifying and emphasizing its most important aspects. For example Humes views on personal identity do not appear. However more vital propositions such as Humes argument for the role of habit in a theory of knowledge are retained. This book has proven highly influential both in the years that would immediately follow and today. Immanuel Kant points to it as the book which woke him from his self-described dogmatic slumber. The Enquiry is widely regarded as a classic in modern philosophical literature.