The Skeptical Roots of Critique Hume's Attack on Theology and the Origin of Kant's Antinomy

"It was the objection of David Hume," Kant wrote, "that first [. . .] interrupted my dogmatic slumber"; "it was the fourfold Antinomy [. . .]", he wrote later, "that first woke me from dogmatic slumber." How can Kant have been woken both by Hume and by the Antinomy? In The Skeptical Roots of Critique, Abraham Anderson solves this problem by showing that the Antinomy was inspired by Hume's skepticism, whose primary target was metaphysics and especially theology. The Critique is not the refutation of that skepticism, but "the execution of Hume's problem in its broadest possible elaboration." In showing that the Antinomy flows from Hume, this work connects Kant with the skeptical tradition, and particularly with the antitheological skepticism of Hume's master Bayle. Like Hume's Enquiry and Dialogues, the Critique is part of the battle for Enlightenment, the struggle against the "despotic" reign of theological dogmatism.

Abraham Anderson is Professor of Philosophy at Sarah Lawrence College. He held graduate fellowships at the École normale supérieure (rue d'Ulm) and the University of Munich. He has also taught at the University of New Mexico, the Universidad Autónoma de México, St. John's College (Santa Fe) and the American University in Cairo. He is the author of The Treatise of the Three Impostors and the Problem of Enlightenment and of Kant, Hume, and the Interruption of Dogmatic Slumber.