David Hume

David Hume was a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher whose thoroughgoing empiricism led him to sceptical conclusions about causation, the self, and the foundations of morality. Kant said that reading Hume awakened him from his "dogmatic slumber."

Hume argued that all knowledge derives from sensory experience and that reason alone can establish nothing about the world. His analysis of causation — we observe constant conjunction, not necessary connection — remains one of the most powerful challenges in the history of epistemology.