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Hume's attack on theology and the origin of Kant's Antinomy
Kant says that it was "the objection of David Hume that first interrupted my dogmatic slumber." He also says that "it was the fourfold Antinomy that first woke me from dogmatic slumber." These statements raise a serious problem. How can the Critique of Pure Reason be at once a response to Hume's skepticism and the result of the Antinomy, which attacks dogmatic metaphysics? Hume's Attack on Theology and the Origin of Kant's Antinomy resolves this problem by showing that the Antinomy is the product of Hume's skepticism, whose primary target is metaphysics and theology. Hume in the Enquiry hints that Clarke's Demonstration issues in an antithetic. Both the dogmatic theism of Clarke and the dogmatic materialism of his opponents, Hume indicates, were underwritten by the principle that nothing comes from nothing. This hint inspired Kant's conception of the Antinomy as a conflict between rival applications of the rationalist principle of sufficient reason (psr). Hume's Dialogues led Kant in the Critique to embrace Hume's conception of Clarke's Demonstration as an antithetic, to interpret that antithetic as an antinomy, and to resolve that antinomy by denying that we are entitled to the psr. Like Hume's Enquiry and Dialogues and Rousseau's Émile, the Critique is part of the battle for Enlightenment, the struggle against the 'despotic' reign of theological dogmatism. The victory of philosophy in this battle has made this hard to see; Hume and the Origin of Kant's Antinomy aims to bring it back into view.
Includes bibliographical references (pages [161]-175) and index.