bottom of Hume's attack on metaphysics. That his attack on this principle should be what first interrupted Kant's dogmatic slumber presupposes that Kant considered it a keystone of metaphysics. In 1755 he made the attempt of proving a particular version of that principle valid for the cause of contingently existing things. In the early 1760s he rejected this view, and there is no evidence that his pre-Critical conception of metaphysics was essentially connected with and based upon the principle of sufficient reason. Anderson emphasizes that the principle in this 'unrestricted' version applied to things beyond experience (cf. pp. xiv-xv), but this holds as well for the metaphysical concepts of pure reason in the Inaugural Dissertation (2: 395), and in any case the principle is not mentioned there at all. Anderson claims that 'Hume roused Kant by challenging the unrestricted principle of sufficient reason, since it is this principle that is used in theology, to prove the existence of God' (p. xv), but the theological use of the principle was not at the very centre of the pre-Critical notion of metaphysics. Kant's own proof of the existence of God is a so-called 'ontological proof' in the Der einzig mögliche Beweisgrund, published in 1763, and does not invoke that principle. Anderson claims that this text contains 'an attack on theology' (p. 86), and that it is 'clearly influenced by Hume's critique of theology' (pp. 161-2), but he gives no arguments for these claims. Thus, there is no evidence that Kant was roused by Hume through his alleged challenge to the principle of sufficient reason.The story told by Kant about the interruption of his dogmatic slumber in the preface of the Prolegomena leads easily to the view that Hume was in some way his 'predecessor' (4: 260). But only two pages later we are told by Kant that he considered his own approach as an alternative to Hume's way of proceeding (4: 262). Later on he compares the account of the connection between cause and experience, given by Hume, with his own account and points out that the latter is 'a completely reversed type of connection that never occurred to Hume' (4: 313). Thus, even in the Prolegomena Kant presents Hume not only as a 'predecessor', but as a real and fundamental alternativea view which is very much emphasized in the second edition of the Critique (B127-8). Regrettably, the simple picture of Kant 'as a devoted heir to Hume' (p. xx) or of Hume as 'the forerunner of the Critique' (p. 158) neither accounts for the differing assessments of the Critical Kant, nor does it allow for an adequate understanding of the variety of problems the pre-Critical Kant attempted to solve.
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