ABSTRACT
David Hume is emphatically a philosopher of the critical kind. As soon as philosophy begins to attempt a selection between rival principles and a justification of its selection, it begins to manifest one of its two major characteristics; it appears as a recommendation of a way of life, a practical philosophy. The other major characteristic the philosophy manifests is that of providing a reasoned account of the nature of the universe and of man’s place in it. This chapter considers what Hume can have meant when he said that philosophical decisions are nothing but the reflections of common life methodised and corrected. If philosophers did possess some powers, they would be none the better off for philosophical purposes; for the philosophical powers and faculties would in turn need analysis and justification and so on ad infinitum.
