Compare & Contrast Reflection between Kant and Hume

Among the score or more of Enlightenment thinkers most significant to what is now philosophy of art? pride of place must go to David Hume (1711-1776) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Their complex proposals for bringing the various arts under a comprehensive doctrine are an important source of concepts? issues and arguments that underlie debates in our own century. (Melnick p45)

However? the two writers are fundamentally at odds over proper philosophical methodology. Ever the empiricist? Hume is sceptical about reason's powers. So there is some irony in the fact that he defends a sharp distinction between better and worse tastes? and between true and pretend judges. More importantly? he believes that we can reliably identify better critics and so can determine which of two works is better than the other. Although Kant defends the necessity of a common sense? he remains sceptical about determining whether it is operating in any specific case. Worse yet? he does not see how Hume's starting point in contingent agreements of feeling can generate any useful distinction between agreeable and beautiful objects. Without a distinction between the agreeable and the beautiful? Kant sees no escape from the radical subjectivity of aesthetic response? nor any way to associate culpability with taste. (Melnick p45)

Kant's moral system seems excessively cruel in comparison with Hume's? although cruelty is admittedly a Humean criterion for judging morality. Humean scorn and ridicule could become a subtler form of cruelty? but Hume focused on criticism of character types rather than specific living persons. (Allison pp98-115)

Kant famously attempted to “answer” what he took to be Hume's sceptical view of causality? most explicitly in the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783); and? because causality? for Kant? is a central example of a category or pure concept of the understanding? his relationship to Hume on this topic is central to his philosophy as a whole. Moreover? because Hume's famous discussion of causality and induction is equally central to his philosophy? understanding the relationship between the two philosophers on this issue is crucial for a proper understanding of modern philosophy more generally. There is no consensus? of course? over whether Kant's response succeeds? but there is no more consensus about what this response is supposed to be. There has been sharp disagreement concerning Kant's conception of causality? as well as Hume's? and? accordingly? there has also been controversy over whether the two conceptions really significantly differ.

Hume adopts a (very broadly speaking) Platonic approach to reason: it is something that philosophic types can use to order society? while leaving humans to their passionate? appetitive lives. Kant? on the other hand? uses reason as a potential liberator of humanity from reliance on heteronomous passions and appetites. (Baier p36)

Hume notes that sense perception is variable? both from person to person and for a single person at different times. But the fact that honey is sweet and lemons are not remains as much a matter of fact as our empirical generalizations that fire can burn ...