Hume’s empiricism undermined the self and causality that liberalism presupposed
Evidence
Hume, to his credit, at least pushed empiricism to the point where it dismantled itself. It turns out, Hume showed, that when pursued to its logical conclusions, empiricism leaves us with none of the presuppositions upon which the emergent secular liberalism relied. There is no self (there is no impression that corresponds with what we call the self — a double scandal for empiricism, since all ideas were supposed to be rooted in impressions) just as there is no causality (we don’t experience cause and effect, only constant conjunction). Hume, stunned by the spider scepticism, offered a kind of homeopathic remedy against reason’s tendency to evacuate the human world of all its fetishes, touchstones and commonplaces. Reason, Hume argued, slumping into his backgammon chair, only has a very limited dominion over our lives. Emotion and habit dictate most of what we think and do. Thus, the self and causality are back, and Kant’s transcendental critique arrives to clear up the mess. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1987
Categorization
- XREF: Ties into the Radical Enlightenment framing of later paragraphs and prior reading on empiricism vs. continental rationalism. — connects to: Hume’s skeptical critiques fought ideology; modern successors ratify established thought — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 649; Interwar neoliberals broke with laissez-faire empiricism to build a conventionalist science of liberalism — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 52; Empiricism’s atomism prevents followers from connecting facts into political conclusions — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 12
Broader Connections
- Hume’s skeptical critiques fought ideology; modern successors ratify established thought
#expands(0.90) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 649 - Empiricism’s atomism prevents followers from connecting facts into political conclusions
#expands(0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 12 - Interwar neoliberals broke with laissez-faire empiricism to build a conventionalist science of liberalism
#qualifies(0.75) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 52