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David Hume
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David Hume was the son of a minor Scottish landowner. His family wanted him to become a lawyer, but he felt an "insurmountable resistance to everything but philosophy and learning". Mr. Hume attended Edinburgh University, and in 1734 he moved to a French town called La Fleche to pursue philosophy. He later returned to Britain and began his literary career. As Hume built up his reputation, he gained more and more political power.
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David Hume, a Scottish philosopher and historian, was one of the most influential figures in 18th century philosophy. Working in the empiricist tradition, he held the view that all ideas are derived from impressions. Hume reached notoriously skeptical conclusion about the powers of the understanding and about traditional metaphysical notions such as cause and effect, substance, and the self. However, his project was not merely skeptical, as he attempted to explain in naturalistic terms how beliefs not grounded in reason are ... generated by the imagination. In his moral philosophy, Hume also emphasized the limits of the understanding, arguing that moral judgments are based not on reason but on sentiment. In addition to his work in epistemology and moral philosophy, Hume wrote on aesthetics, religion, and political philosophy.
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David Hume (1711-1776) lived most of his life in Edinburgh, at the time a flourishing centre of intellectual life. One of his closest friends was Adam Smith. Hume wrote on philosophy, economics, history and other subjects. His most important philosophical work was A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40); he reworked its argument in more popular form in An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), and An Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (1751). His Essays, Moral and Political (1741-2) deal with many matters, including economics and politics. In his political essays one of his purposes seems to have been to moderate the antagonism between the pro-Stuart and anti-Stuart parties (in 1715 and 1745 there had been pro-Stuart rebellions in Scotland).
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Soon after completing his studies at Edinburgh, Scottish philosopher David Hume began writing his comprehensive statement of the views he believed would contribute to philosophy no less than Newton's had to science. But the public reception for the three books of his magisterial Treatise of Human Nature (1739) was less than cordial, and Hume abandoned his hopes of a philosophical career in order to support his family as a librarian, historian, diplomat, and political essayist, a course of action he described in the autobiographical My Own Life (1776). Hume's Essays Moral and Political (1741-1742) found some success, and the multi-volume History of England (1754-1762) finally secured the modest livelihood for which he had hoped. Although he spent most of his life trying to produce more effective statements of his philosophical views, he did not live to see the firm establishment of his reputation by the criticisms of Kant and much later appreciation of the logical positivists.
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David Hume was born on May 7, 1711 near Edinburgh, Scotland. He was educated at home, and then at the University of Edinburgh, where he was admitted at the age of 12. From 1737 to 1743 he was mainly interested in speculative philosophy. In 1739 he published A Treatise of Human Nature, his most well-known work. This work was unpopular at the time, probably because of its dry style - Hume himself said it was "Dead-born from the press."
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Generally regarded as the most important philosopher ever to write in English, David Hume (1711-1776) -- the last of the great triumvirate of "British empiricists" -- was ... noted as an historian and essayist. A master stylist in any genre, Hume's major philosophical works -- A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-1740), the Enquiries concerning Human Understanding (1748) and concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), as well as the posthumously published Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779) -- remain widely and deeply influential, despite their being denounced by many of his contemporaries as works of scepticism and atheism. While Hume's influence is evident in the moral philosophy and economic writings of his close friend Adam Smith, he also awakened Immanuel Kant from his "dogmatic slumbers" and "caused the scales to fall" from Jeremy Bentham's eyes. Charles Darwin counted Hume as a central influence, as did "Darwin's bulldog," Thomas Henry Huxley. The diverse directions in which these writers took what they gleaned from reading Hume reflect not only the richness of their sources but also the wide range of Hume's empiricism. Comtemporary philosophers recognize Hume as one of the most thoroughgoing exponents of philosophical naturalism.
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David Hume