120 Kant: A Biographyof our "folly and ignorance" in all matters. Hume argued that we cannot
"eat an egg and drink a glass of water without" believing. Philosophy there¬
fore leads to a fideistic position.
Hamann used the German word "Glaube" here, and "Glaube" means
both "belief" and "faith." Ingeniously (or perversely) exploiting the am¬
biguity, Hamann asked: If Hume needs such Glaube "for food and drink,
why does he deny Glaube when he judges of matters that are higher than
sensuous eating and drinking?"^92 Indeed, he later said that he was "full of
Hume" when he wrote this, and that it was Hume who had shown this to
him. This invocation of Hume for his fideistic conclusion was also a direct
attack on Kant, whose lectures had been given a new impetus by Hume
just then, but in a quite different direction.
In the aftermath of this episode Hamann published in 1759 an essay en¬
titled Socratic Memorabilia.^93 In it, he tried to show, among other things,
that Berens and Kant, together with all of their contemporaries, were wrong
in trying to supply a rational justification of experience. Renewing the
argument of the letter, he claimed that experience involves belief at its
most fundamental level. "Our own existence and the existence of all things
outside us must be believed, and cannot be determined in any other way,"
he claimed, and he argued that if "there are proofs of truth which are of as
little value as the application which can be made of the truths themselves,
indeed, one can believe the proof of a proposition without giving approval
to the proposition itself."^94
Hamann believed that any consistent reading of Hume leads to viewing
his philosophy as a defense of fideism.^95 This was not entirely unreason¬
able. Hume found, for instance, that "upon the whole... the Christian Re¬
ligion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day
cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. Mere reason is
insufficient to convince us of its veracity: And whoever is moved by Faith
to assent to it is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person .. ,"^96
This seems to sum up what has sometimes been discussed under the title
of "Hume's fideism." Hume can be — and has been — taken to endorse the
view that religious beliefs are unjustifiable, and that they therefore require
something like a "leap of faith." Hume's critique of rationalist theology
can thus be taken as purely orthodox Protestant teaching. Hume himself
invited such a reaction when he observed: "I am the better pleased with
the method of reasoning here delivered, as I think it may serve to confound
those dangerous friends or disguised enemies to the Christian Religion,