Hume’s Skeptical Naturalism

Peter S. Fosl

Transylvania University

This essay attempts to describe Hume’s skepticism and its relationship to his naturalism. Interpreters like Gilles Deleuze have misunderstood Hume’s skepticism by selectively emphasizing its non-foundational character and its acceptance of radical contingency. Interpreters like Richard H. Popkin, Barry Stroud and others have misunderstood Hume’s naturalism and erroneously presented his appeal to ‘nature’ as overcoming or supplanting his skepticism.  The account presented in this essay offers a more comprehensive view of Hume’s project by articulating his distinctive understanding of ‘nature’ and ‘theory,’ an understanding that is in fact an extension of something like what Donald W. Livingston calls Hume’s ‘common life’ skepticism.  In presenting this reading, this essay will also articulate the ways in which Hume both appropriates and deviates from Academic and Pyrrhonian skepticism. It will offer suggestions about ways in which Hume’s skeptical achievement remains relevant to both philosophy and the larger culture today.