Essay on Hume

David Hume is concerned as the brightest representative of the empiricism of the eighteenth century. He is famous for his phenomenal understanding of the world that definitely contradicted with the moral and ethical views established before. People are aware of his thoughts according to the writings of the philosopher. On of the most significant works of the author is `An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding`. There the problem the connection the experience and ideas is discussed.

In the beginning, Hume` s principle provide the reader with such description to the ideas and impressions. Naturally, impressions and ideas represent the same information according to Hume. The philosopher confirmed that impressions are derived from experience and should determine the knowledge about the things observed. This is the way in which the experience is collected and, therefore, this is the concept of obtaining the true knowledge. Moreover, Hume supposed that idea is only a representative of the past experience, which is saved in our mind, so that the idea seems to be the copy of the original impression. This thought was called the concept of copy. In fact, Hume considered copying principle as the explanation of the strong connection of the impression and reason. Therefore, in order to identify the ideas the person should search for the source of this knowledge, which is, actually, the original impression. The empirical foundation of this theory is that idea, according to Hume, is only derived from the experience and there is no other way to obtain the knowledge.

Since certain ideas are supported by the certain impressions, in that case, they are separated from each other. However, they can be linked with the help of associations. For instance, when the person faces up with the familiar event or thing he can make a clue about what it can result in or what it is like applying to his previous experience. So, association appears when the impression is repeated and begins to...