Hume and Maimonides on Imaginability and Possibility

Abstract

Much of David Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature is based on the following axiom: Possibility is identical to imaginability. From this axiom, he derives his notorious view that there are no necessary connections between events, as well as his anti-Euclidean propositions that there are minimal distances and times. Maimonides explicitly denounced this axiom as being the central doctrine of the Kalamist theologians of Islam. He proceeds to show the “absurdities” that flow from it, and works out an entire philosophy which he attributes to the Kalam—including the Humean doctrines mentioned above. Since scholars deny the historicity of Maimonides’ “Kalam,” and say that Maimonides was only caricaturing the Kalam in order to discredit it, one arrives at the startling conclusion that Maimonides, hundreds of years before the birth of David Hume, discovered Hume’s philosophy.