How did David Hume’s skepticism influence Immanuel Kant?

David Hume’s skepticism served as the primary catalyst for Immanuel Kant’s critical philosophy, with Kant famously stating that Hume had awakened him from his "dogmatic slumber."12

Hume challenged the foundations of human knowledge by arguing that causality and induction could not be rationally justified, as they rely on habit and custom rather than necessary connections observable in experience. Kant recognized this as a fundamental challenge to all knowledge claims.34

To address Hume’s skepticism, Kant shifted the focus of epistemology from how the mind conforms to objects to how objects must conform to the mind—a "Copernican" revolution in philosophy. Kant argued that while we cannot know "things-in-themselves" (noumena), human experience is structured by a priori forms, such as space, time, and the categories of the understanding (including causality). By demonstrating that these categories are necessary conditions for any possible experience, Kant sought to vindicate the possibility of objective knowledge while simultaneously limiting the scope of reason to the phenomenal world.253