Compare and contrast between the ontology and epistemology of Descartes
and Hume.
Both Descartes and Hume have produced renowned works in the field of ontology and
epistemology. The debate related to the existence of God has ever been so heated that even
philosophers like Descartes and Hume couldn’t help but manifest their contribution. Moreover as
far as the philosophy and understanding of nature of human knowledge is concerned Descartes
seems more interested in comparison to Hume.
Descartes’ and Hume’s Ontology:
Descartes was a pure skeptic in this regard. He started to doubt everything and while doing that
he came to doubt his own existence as well and it’s there that he develops the first principle of
philosophy namely, cogito. He concluded that if I doubt then definitely I am thinking about what
I doubt. Therefore if I doubt my own existence then certainly I naturally exist. He had this urge
to prove the existence of God and then based on that, wanted to prove other things’ existence but
as far as Hume is concerned although not clearly mentioned or described but Hume’s works
show that he does not believe in an all omnipotent God (as he refuses all theologies of natural
religion). Instead he intimates that the whole natural theology can be reduced to one “ambiguous
or undefined” proposition, namely “that the cause or causes of order in the universe bear some
remote analogy to human intelligence” (Dialogues, p. 227). Even history shows great signs of
empiricism in 18th century (Hume’s times), therefore Hume also doubts the existence of an all
good, all knowing perfect God (as presented in Christianity at that time) and hence he is also a
skeptic.
But the skepticism of both the philosophers as far as ontology is concerned is a bit different
which we will discuss in the later section of epistemology.
Moreover for the human existence Descartes gave the concept of body and mind (or soul). As
two separate existences and says that mind can exist even in the absence of body and thus gives
the concept of two distinctive conscious states namely, “thinking and un-extended” (mind) and
“non-thinking and extended” (body) where as Hume distinguishes it into two classes, namely,
“Impressions” and “Ideas”.
Descartes’ and Hume’s Epistemology:
Descartes’ epistemology is as mentioned above originates from the sole use of skeptic ideas but
it also spans over the broad paradigm of rationalism. As said above he used to think and reason
and so he deduced the “cogito”, this implies his reasoning methodology in philosophical
deductions. Moreover he applies a criterion of “Clarity and Distinctness” for deducing the
truthiness of knowledge which again refers to the very concept of rationalism / Foundationalism.
Whereas Hume’s epistemology though having its basics in skepticism only, makes use of
empirical deductions in order to present his theories.
Other interpretations of Hume’s philosophical works classifies him as naturalistic (at times) and
anti-rationalist.