David Hume

Statue of David Hume. "Man is a reasonable being; and as such, receives from science his proper food and nourishment: But so narrow are the bounds of human understanding, that little satisfaction can be hoped for in this particular..." Hume recognised clearly the difficulties in gaining a general understanding merely by accumulating observations.

David Hume (April 26, 1711 – August 25, 1776) was a Scottish philosopher, economist, and historian. He is considered one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment. Although in recent years interest in Hume's work has centred on his philosophical writing, it was as an historian that he first gained recognition and respect.

Biography

Hume was the second son of a middle-class country family who lived in the south of Scotland. He studied at the University of Edinburgh for three to four years, left at age sixteen in preparation to become a lawyer, but soon gave that up. Two years later he had a nervous breakdown from his uninterrupted and passionate study of philosophy, and after recovering went to France for three years to write a book he published anonymously; A Treatise of Human Nature. It wasn't very well received at the time and Hume, having failed to make an impact in London retired to his family home for the next eight years, producing at that time his volume of Essays. There were better received, but Hume's criticism of religion prevented him from becoming a professor of philosophy in Edinburgh in 1744. His convictions also prevented him from advancement in Glasgow years later.

In the following years Hume spent time tutoring a nobleman who was later certified as insane. However, Hume's prospects improved. He became secretary to a general who led a military expedition to the French coast and shortly after a secret mission to Vienna and Turin. These posts made Hume wealthy and he returned to Scotland, living comfortably with his brother and then, in Edinburgh, with his sister. During the next fifteen years he wrote his major works; The two Inquiries, the remainder of his Essays, two books on religion and the six volumes of the History of England.

From 1763 to 1766 he served as secretary to the British ambassador in Paris. Returning to London, he was appointed Undersecretary of State. He resigned two years later as a result of poor health and spent the rest of his years in Edinburgh, revising his essays, conducting a large correspondence with many distinguished friends and became increasingly famous as an essayist and historian. He died from bowel cancer, maintaining his atheism to his last breath. He is buried on the eastern slope of Calton Hill, overlooking his home at No.1 St David Street, in Edinburgh's New Town; his tomb bears the epitaph that he wrote for himself: "Born 1711, Died [----]. Leaving it to posterity to add the rest."

"I am, or rather was (for that is the style I must now use in speaking of myself, which emboldens me the more to speak my sentinients),—I was, I say, a man of mild dispositions, of command of temper, of an open, social, and cheerful humour, capable of attachment, but little susceptible of enmity, and of great moderation ill all my passions. Even my love of literary fame, my ruling passion, never soured my temper, notwithstanding my fre-quent disappointments. My company was not unacceptable to the young and careless, as well as to the studious and literary; and as I took a particular pleasure in the company of modest women, I had no reason to be displeased with the reception I met with from them. In a word, though most men anywise eminent have found reason to complain of calumny, I never was touched, or even attacked, by her baleful tooth; and, though I wantonly exposed myself to the rage of both civil and religious factions, they seem to be disarmed on my behalf of their wonted fury. My friends never bad occasion to vindicate any one circumstance of my character and conduct; not but that the zealots, we may well suppose, would have been glad to invent and propagate any story to my disadvantage, but they could never find any which they thought would wear the face of proba-bility. I cannot say there is no vanity in making this funeral oration of myself, but I hope it is not a misplaced one and this is a matter of fact which is easily cleansed and ascertained." David Hume