An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding was a simplification of an earlier effort, Hume was disappointed with the reception of the Treatise of Human Nature He felt that if "fell dead-born from the press," as he put it, and so tried again to disseminate his ideas to the public by writing a shorter and more polemical work. The Enquiry dispensed with much of the material from the Treatise, in favor of clarifying and emphasizing its most important aspects. This book was highly influential, Immanuel Kant points to it as the book which woke him from his "dogmatic slumber." The Enquiry is widely regarded as a classic in modern philosophical literature.