Did Kant Appreciate Hume? Perception and Repetition as Separate Aspects of Experience

Abstract

The concept of experience has two sides: it implies that knowledge is acquired through the senses, and it implies that knowledge is acquired over time. Different traditions of thought have emphasized either one or the other of these two aspects of experience, with epistemology gravitating toward an idea of experience as perception and political philosophy gravitating toward an idea of experience as repetition. In this paper, I argue that Hume's great innovation consisted in taking the notion of experience traditionally associated with political philosophy and applying it to epistemology. Meanwhile, Kant aimed his critique at the traditional epistemological notion of experience and thus failed to appreciate Hume's originality.