Abstract

In this article the author analyzes the scope and limits of Moses Mendelssohn’s approach to the issue of probability in response to Hume’s empiricism in Germany in the first decades of the 18th century. In the Gedanken von der Wahrscheinlichkeit of 1756, Mendelssohn, against Hume, aims to show that empirical knowledge is certain knowledge, rationally founded and, as such, a source of truth. According to the German philosopher, Hume, more than a great thinker, is a subtle “psychologistµ or an acute observer of mental phenomena, who nevertheless fails to undermine the foundations of reality. And yet the “Hume questionµ could not have been of such a simple solution if it would soon force Kant and all subsequent critical literature to a profound questioning and a rethinking of Hume’s epistemological skepticism.