This is the fourth of Peter Kreeft's six Socrates Meets... books that I've read, and certainly the most difficult so far. David Hume, the "father of modern skepticism," was an important figure not only in his own day but down to the present, having influenced other thinkers like Immanuel Kant. Hume, writes Kreeft, "is the most formidable, serious, difficult-to-refute skeptic" in modern philosophy, "an unhappy skeptic, an honest skeptic," one who "deserves to be taken very seriously and answered very carefully."
If you are not familiar with Kreeft's Socrates books, the premise is fairly simple. The books are dialogues between Socrates and the thinker in question, and they discuss one or more of the philosopher's greatest books in a purgatorial world beyond the grave. They are fun but insightful introductions to the ideas and problems of major philosophers, and Socrates Meets Hume is no exception.
But this book is different from the others in the series in that Kreeft, in order to deal with some of Hume's very complex ideas, has shortened the usual Socratic method employed by his fictional Socrates, moving more quickly between major concepts with fewer stops to discuss terms and definitions or other important steps in Socrates's philosophical progress. I understand that Kreeft had an enormous amount of material to cover, but this book felt less like the others in the series. Socrates's witty, amiable personality was a little blunted, for instance, and there was less conversational quality in the dialogue between Socrates and Hume. They get right down to ideas and mostly stay there.
That's a minor complaint, really, because the book is good. But, as I said above, this is certainly the most difficult of the series so far, and that has much to do with Hume's ideas. The first two-thirds of the book deal primarily with epistemology and difficult issues like Nominalism. The final third, however, in which Kreeft's Socrates deals with Hume's attitudes toward religion, the miraculous, morality, causation, and the self, is solid, the strongest part of the book and the part most like the other Socrates books.
Socrates Meets Hume may not be as witty or accessible as the other books in Kreeft's excellent series, but it is nonetheless a good introduction to beliefs, arguments, and philosophical flaws of an important thinker.
Recommended.
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