The Scottish philosopher who pushed Enlightenment empiricism to its radical conclusions — showing that reason alone cannot prove causation, establish the self, or justify belief in miracles — and who produced the most systematic challenge to religious belief and rationalist philosophy that the Western tradition has faced.
Hume took the Enlightenment's commitment to experience over authority and followed it to conclusions the Enlightenment found uncomfortable. If we can only know what experience gives us, reason cannot prove that the sun will rise tomorrow, that the self exists, or that God is real. Kant said Hume woke him from his 'dogmatic slumber.' The slumber was comfortable. Hume was not.