David Hume (1711 - 1776) was a Scottish philosopher, historian, and economist who ranks among the most important figures of the Scottish Enlightenment and Western philosophy. [1] He argued that human knowledge arises from sensory experience rather than reason, and his skeptical analysis of causation, induction, and personal identity became foundational to modern empiricism. [2] Though celebrated in his own lifetime chiefly as the author of a bestselling History of England, he is now regarded above all as a philosopher. [3]
Early life and education
Hume was born on 26 April 1711 in Edinburgh into a family of modest landed gentry. [1] He entered the University of Edinburgh at an unusually early age, around ten or twelve, and though his family intended him for the law, he found himself drawn instead to philosophy and general learning. [3] In his early twenties he moved to France, settling for a time near the Jesuit college of La Flèche, where he composed his first and most ambitious work.
Philosophical works
That work, A Treatise of Human Nature, appeared anonymously in 1739–40. Hume later remarked that it “fell dead-born from the press,” attracting little notice, and he recast its arguments in the more accessible An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) and An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751). [2] At the center of his philosophy is a rigorous empiricism: all ideas, he held, are ultimately copies of sensory impressions. From this he mounted a famous skeptical challenge to causation, arguing that we never observe a necessary connection between events but only their constant conjunction, and that inductive inference rests on custom and habit rather than reason. [2] He also treated the self as a “bundle” of fleeting perceptions and drew a sharp distinction between statements of fact and statements of value.
Essays, economics, and history
Hume ranged well beyond metaphysics. His Essays, Moral and Political (1741–42) addressed politics, aesthetics, and economics, and his monetary essays anticipated later theories of trade and the flow of specie. [3] His six-volume History of England (1754–61) became a commercial success that brought him wealth and wide fame, and for generations he was known to the reading public primarily as a historian. [1]
Later life
Hume worked as keeper of the Advocates Library in Edinburgh and later served in Paris, where he was lionized in the salons of the philosophes and became acquainted with Jean-Jacques Rousseau. [1] He returned to Edinburgh and died there on 25 August 1776, reportedly facing his end with notable calm and good humor. His Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, a searching critique of arguments for God’s existence, was published posthumously in 1779. [3]
Legacy
Hume’s skepticism famously roused Immanuel Kant from what Kant called his “dogmatic slumber,” and Hume’s influence extends through empiricism, naturalism, ethics, and the philosophy of religion into contemporary work on causation and the mind. [2]
