An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

David Hume recast the arguments of his early Treatise of Human Nature into this shorter, sharper book, and it became the clearest statement of his empiricism. He argues that everything in the mind begins with sense impressions, that our idea of cause and effect rests on habit rather than reason, and that no amount of past experience can logically guarantee the future. Along the way he turns the same skeptical eye on miracles and religious belief, questions that made the work notorious in its day. Written in plain, patient prose, the Enquiry shaped Kant and the empiricist tradition and still frames modern debates about knowledge and science. Free to read here in PDF and EPUB.