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From Descartes to Hume: Existence Cognition in the Context of Pre-Kantian Epistemology
- 1 Shanxi Experimental Secondary School
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Abstract
In order to explore the function of Kant as a ‘reservoir’ in the history of philosophy, this paper reviews the thought of several important philosophers who preceded him from an interpretive perspective. It analyses Descartes’ ‘I think, therefore I am’, mainly in terms of the ‘unity of subject and object’, and then examines how Hume’s refinement of empiricism was transformed by the influence of purely theoretical thinking. Finally, the two are explained in the context of Kant’s thought, which leads to subsequent developments.
Keywords
epistemology, reason, being cognition, Descartes, Hume, Kant
[1]. Descartes, First Philosophical Meditations, 1641, Second Meditations: On the Nature of Man’s Spirit and the Fact that Spirits are Easier to Know than Objects.
[2]. Descartes, First Philosophical Meditations, 1641: “If I ever persuade myself to believe in something, or merely think of something, then there is no doubt that I exist.”
[3]. Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, 1968, Chapter 10: Spinoza’s Criticism of Descartes.
[4]. David Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature, 1738, Chapter 2, Section 6: On the Idea of Being and the Idea of External Being.
[5]. Dieter Henrich, Between Kant and Hegel: Lectures on German Idealism, 2008, Lecture 2: Inner Experience and Philosophical Theory.
[6]. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1739-40, Section 4, Part 1.
[7]. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Second Edition 1787, Introduction V: In all theoretical sciences of reason, there is a priori synthetic judgment as a principle.
[8]. Deng Anqing, From “Metaphysics” to “Learning by Doing”: The Essence of the Copernican Revolution in Kant’s Philosophy, 2009, IV: The Significance of the Copernican Revolution by Learning by Doing.
Cite this article
Wang,X. (2023). From Descartes to Hume: Existence Cognition in the Context of Pre-Kantian Epistemology. Communications in Humanities Research,7,43-48.
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Volume title: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Educational Innovation and Philosophical Inquiries
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