This research compares and contrasts the theories of knowledge of David Hume and Immanuel Kant. First, each philosopher's general views are discussed individually. Then their specific theories of knowledge are discussed individually. Finally, their theories are compared and contrasted.
David Hume was a philosopher and historian. He wrote A Treatise of Human Nature in 1739, which was considered his most important work for psychology; he later changed the beginning of the Treatise into what was called An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Hume defined his investigation as the science of human nature. He believed that people were natural objects in the world of nature which could be studied by methods of natural science. He believed that the operations of mental life could be more than described and that principles upon which these operations are based could be determined. He stated that the law of association of ideas was the universal principle of human nature (Watson 201-202).
Hume agreed with Locke's idea regarding the compounding of simple ideas into complex ones; he developed the theory of association and made it more explicit. He agreed that the material world did not exist until it was perceived; he expanded on this concept and abolished the mind as a substance. The mind was observable only through perception; it was a flow of ideas, sensations, and memories (Schultz & Schultz 45).
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher whose work dominated philosophical thinking for more than a generation. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Kant insisted that psychology would never become a science since experimenting with or measuring psychological phenomena and processes was impossible. The basis of the Gestalt position, with its focus on the unity of the perceptual act, is found in the work of Kant (Schultz 73, 375).
Kant's work most relevant to psychology was Critique of Pure Reason in 1781; this wa...