OF THE DIGNITY OR MEANNESS OF HUMAN NATURE

- By David Hume
Font Size
Scottish philosopher, historian, economist and essayist (1711–1776) For other people named David Hume, see David Hume (disambiguation). David HumePortrait by Allan Ramsay, 1754BornDavid Home7 May NS [26 April OS] 1711Lawnmarket, Edinburgh, ScotlandDied25 August 1776(1776-08-25) (aged 65)New Town, Edinburgh, ScotlandEducationUniversity of EdinburghEra18th-century philosophyRegionWestern philosophySchool Scottish Enlightenment Humeanism Naturalism[1] Scepticism Empiricism Irreligion Foundationalism[2] Newtonianism[3] Conceptualism[4] Indirect realism[5] Correspondence theory of truth[6] Moral sentimentalism Main interests Aesthetics Economics Epistemology Ethics Metaphysics Philosophy of mind Philosophy of religion Political philosophy Notable ideas List Problem of causation Problem of induction Constant conjunction Bundle theory Association of ideas Is–ought problem Fact–value distinction Impression–idea distinction Personal Identity Hume's fork Deductive and inductive reasoning Science of man Moral sentiments David Hume (/hjuːm/; born David Home; 7 May 1711 – 25 August 1776) was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist who was best known for his highly influential system of empiricism, philosophical scepticism and metaphysical naturalism.[1] Beginning with A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40), Hume strove to create a naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature. Hume followed John Locke in rejecting the existence of innate ideas, concluding that all human knowledge derives solely from experience. This places him with Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and George Berkeley as an empiricist.[7][8][9] Hume argued that inductive reasoning and belief in causality cannot be justified rationally; instead, they result from custom and mental habit. We never actually perceive that one event causes another but only experience the "constant conjunction" of events. This problem of induction means that to draw any causal inferences from past experience, it is necessary to presuppose that the future will resemble the past; this metaphysical presupposition cannot itself be grounded in prior experience.[10] An opponent of philosophical rationalists, Hume held that passions rather than reason govern human behaviour, famously proclaiming that "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions."[7][11] Hume was also a sentimentalist who held that ethics are based on emotion or sentiment rather than abstract moral principle. He maintained an early commitment to naturalistic explanations of moral phenomena and is usually accepted by historians of European philosophy to have first clearly expounded the is–ought problem, or the idea that a statement of fact alone can never give rise to a normative conclusion of what ought to be done.[12] Hume denied that humans have an actual conception of the self, positing that we experience only a bundle of sensations, and that the self is nothing more than this bundle of perceptions connected by an association of ideas. Hume's compatibilist theory of free will takes causal determinism as fully compatible with human freedom.[13] His philosophy of religion, including his rejection of miracles, and of the argument from design for God's existence, were especially controversial for their time. Hume left a legacy that affected utilitarianism, logical positivism, the philosophy of science, early analytic philosophy, cognitive science, theology, and many other fields and thinkers. Immanuel Kant credited Hume as the inspiration that had awakened him from his "dogmatic slumbers." Early life[edit] Hume was born on 26 April 1711, as David Home, in a tenement on the north side of Edinburgh's Lawnmarket. He was the second of two sons born to Catherine Home (née Falconer), daughter of Sir David Falconer of Newton, Midlothian and his wife Mary Falconer (née Norvell),[14] and Joseph Home of Chirnside in the County of Berwick, an advocate of Ninewells. Joseph died just after David's second birthday. Catherine, who never remarried, raised the two brothers and their sister on her own.[15] Hume changed his family name's spelling in 1734, as the surname 'Home' (pronounced as 'Hume') was not well-known in England. Hume never married and lived partly at his Chirnside family home in Berwickshire, which had belonged to the family since the 16th century. His finances as a young man were very "slender", as his family was not rich; as a younger son he had little patrimony to live on.[16] Hume attended the University of Edinburgh at an unusually early age—either 12 or possibly as young as 10—at a time when 14 was the typical age. Initially, Hume considered a career in law, because of his family. However, in his words, he came to have:[16] ...an insurmountable aversion to everything but the pursuits of Philosophy and general Learning; and while [my family] fanceyed I was poring over Voet and Vinnius, Cicero and Virgil were the Authors which I was secretly devouring. He had little respect for the professors of his time, telling a friend in 1735 that "there is nothing to be learnt from a Professor, which is not to be met with in Books".[17] He did not graduate.[18] "Disease of the learned"[edit] At around age 18, Hume made a philosophical discovery that opened up to him "a new Scene of Thought", inspiring him "to throw up every other Pleasure or Business to apply entirely to it".[19] As he did not recount what this scene exactly was, commentators have offered a variety of speculations.[20] One prominent interpretation among contemporary Humean scholarship is that this new "scene of thought" was Hume's realisation that Francis Hutcheson's theory of moral sense could be applied to the understanding of morality as well. From this inspiration, Hume set out to spend a minimum of 10 years reading and writing. He soon came to the verge of a mental breakdown, first starting with a coldness—which he attributed to a "Laziness of Temper"—that lasted about nine months. Scurvy spots later broke out on his fingers, persuading Hume's physician to diagnose him with the "Disease of the Learned".[citation needed] Hume wrote that he "went under a Course of Bitters and Anti-Hysteric Pills", taken along with a pint of claret every day. He also decided to have a more active life to better continue his learning.[21] His health improved somewhat, but in 1731, he was afflicted with a ravenous appetite and palpitations. After eating well for a time, he went from being "tall, lean and raw-bon'd" to being "sturdy, robust [and] healthful-like."[22][23][24] Indeed, Hume would become well known for being obese and having a fondness for good port and cheese, often using them as philosophical metaphors for his conjectures.[25] Career[edit] Despite having noble ancestry, Hume had no source of income and no learned profession by age 25. As was common at his time, he became a merchant's assistant, despite having to leave his native Scotland. He travelled via Bristol to La Flèche in Anjou, France. There he had frequent discourse with the Jesuits of the College of La Flèche.[26] Hume was derailed in his attempts to start a university career by protests over his alleged "atheism",[27][28] also lamenting that his literary debut, A Treatise of Human Nature, "fell dead-born from the press."[14] However, he found literary success in his lifetime as an essayist, and a career as a librarian at the University of Edinburgh. These successes provided him much needed income at the time. His tenure there, and the access to research materials it provided, resulted in Hume's writing the massive six-volume The History of England, which became a bestseller and the standard history of England in its day. For over 60 years, Hume was the dominant interpreter of English history.[29]: 120  He described his "love for literary fame" as his "ruling passion"[14] and judged his two late works, the so-called "first" and "second" enquiries, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, as his greatest literary and philosophical achievements.[14] He would ask of his contemporaries to judge him on the merits of the later texts alone, rather than on the more radical formulations of his early, youthful work, dismissing his philosophical debut as juvenilia: "A work which the Author had projected before he left College."[30] Despite Hume's protestations, a consensus exists today that his most important arguments and philosophically distinctive doctrines are found in the original form they take in the Treatise. Though he was only 23 years old when starting this work, it is now regarded as one of the most important in the history of Western philosophy.[12] 1730s[edit] Hume worked for four years on his first major work, A Treatise of Human Nature, subtitled "Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects", completing it in 1738 at age 28. Although many scholars today consider the Treatise to be Hume's most important work and one of the most important books in Western philosophy, critics in Great Britain at the time described it as "abstract and unintelligible".[31] As Hume had spent most of his savings during those four years,[21] he resolved "to make a very rigid frugality supply [his] deficiency of fortune, to maintain unimpaired [his] independency, and to regard every object as contemptible except the improvements of [his] talents in literature".[32]: 352  Despite the disappointment, Hume later wrote: "Being naturally of a cheerful and sanguine temper, I soon recovered from the blow and prosecuted with great ardour my studies in the country."[32]: 352  There, in an attempt to make his larger work better known and more intelligible, he published the An Abstract of a Book lately Published as a summary of the main doctrines of the Treatise, without revealing its authorship.[33] This work contained the same ideas, but with a shorter and clearer explanation. Although there has been some academic speculation as to the pamphlet's true author,[34] it is generally regarded as Hume's creation.[35] 1740s[edit] After the publication of Essays Moral and Political in 1741—included in the later edition as Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary—Hume applied for the Chair of Pneumatics and Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. However, the position was given to William Cleghorn[36] after Edinburgh ministers petitioned the town council not to appoint Hume because he was seen as an atheist.[37] An engraving of Hume from the first volume of his The History of England, 1754 In 1745, during the Jacobite risings, Hume tutored the Marquess of Annandale, an engagement that ended in disarray after about a year. The Marquess could not follow with Hume's lectures, his father saw little need for philosophy, and on a personal level, the Marquess found Hume's dietary tendencies to be bizarre.[38] Hume then started his great historical work, The History of England, which took fifteen years and ran to over a million words. During this time, he was also involved with the Canongate Theatre through his friend John Home, a preacher.[39] In this context, he associated with Lord Monboddo and other thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment in Edinburgh. From 1746, Hume served for three years as secretary to General James St Clair, who was envoy to the courts of Turin and Vienna. At that time Hume wrote Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding, later published as An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Often called the First Enquiry, it proved little more successful than the Treatise, perhaps because of the publication of his short autobiography My Own Life, which "made friends difficult for the first Enquiry".[40] By the end of this period Hume had attained his well-known corpulent stature; "the good table of the General and the prolonged inactive life had done their work", leaving him "a man of tremendous bulk".[25] In 1749 he went to live with his brother in the countryside, although he continued to associate with the aforementioned Scottish Enlightenment figures. 1750s–1760s[edit] Hume's religious views were often suspect and, in the 1750s, it was necessary for his friends to avert a trial against him on the charge of heresy, specifically in an ecclesiastical court. However, he "would not have come and could not be forced to attend if he said he was not a member of the Established Church".[41] Hume failed to gain the chair of philosophy at the University of Glasgow due to his religious views. By this time, he had published the Philosophical Essays, which were decidedly anti-religious. This represented a turning point in his career and the various opportunities made available to him. Even Adam Smith, his personal friend who had vacated the Glasgow philosophy chair, was against his appointment out of concern that public opinion would be against it.[42] In 1761, all his works were banned on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.[43] Hume returned to Edinburgh in 1751. In the following year, the Faculty of Advocates hired him to be their Librarian, a job in which he would receive little to no pay, but which nonetheless gave him "the command of a large library".[i][14]: 11  This resource enabled him to continue historical research for The History of England. Hume's volume of Political Discourses, written in 1749 and published by Kincaid & Donaldson in 1752,[44] was the only work he considered successful on first publication.[14]: 10  In 1753, Hume moved from his house on Riddles Court on the Lawnmarket to a house on the Canongate at the other end of the Royal Mile. Here he lived in a tenement known as Jack's Land, immediately west of the still surviving Shoemakers Land.[45] Eventually, with the publication of his six-volume The History of England between 1754 and 1762, Hume achieved the fame that he coveted.[46] The volumes traced events from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688 and was a bestseller in its day. Hume was also a longtime friend of bookseller Andrew Millar, who sold Hume's History (after acquiring the rights from Scottish bookseller Gavin Hamilton[47]), although the relationship was sometimes complicated. Letters between them illuminate both men's interest in the success of the History. In 1762 Hume moved from Jack's Land on the Canongate to James Court on the Lawnmarket. He sold the house to James Boswell in 1766.[48] Later life[edit] From 1763 to 1765, Hume was invited to attend Lord Hertford in Paris, where he became secretary to the British embassy in France.[49] Hume was well received among Parisian society, and while there he met with Isaac de Pinto.[50] In 1765, Hume served as a chargé d'affaires in Paris, writing "despatches to the British Secretary of State".[51] He wrote of his Paris life, "I really wish often for the plain roughness of The Poker Club of Edinburgh... to correct and qualify so much lusciousness."[52] Upon returning to Britain in 1766, Hume wrote a letter to Lord Hertford after being asked to by George Colebrooke; the letter informed Lord Hertford that he had an opportunity to invest in one of Colebrooke's slave plantations in the West Indies, though Hertford ultimately decided not to do so.[53] In June of that year, Hume facilitated the purchase of a slave plantation in Martinique on behalf of his friend, the wine merchant John Stewart, by writing to the colony's governor Victor-Thérèse Charpentier.[citation needed] According to Felix Waldmann, a former Hume Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, Hume's "puckish scepticism about the existence of religious miracles played a significant part in defining the critical outlook which underpins the practice of modern science." Waldmann also argued that Hume's views "served to reinforce the institution of racialised slavery in the later 18th century."[54][55][56] In 1766, Hume left Paris to accompany Jean-Jacques Rousseau to England. Once there, he and Rousseau fell out,[57] leaving Hume sufficiently worried about the damage to his reputation from the quarrel with Rousseau that he would author an account of the dispute, titling it "A concise and genuine account of the dispute between Mr. Hume and Mr. Rousseau".[58] In 1767, Hume was appointed Under Secretary of State for the Northern Department. Here, he wrote that he was given "all the secrets of the Kingdom". In 1769 he returned to James' Court in Edinburgh, where he would live from 1771 until his death in 1776. Hume's nephew and namesake, David Hume of Ninewells (1757–1838), was a co-founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783. He was a Professor of Scots Law at Edinburgh University and rose to be Principal Clerk of Session in the Scottish High Court and Baron of the Exchequer. He is buried with his uncle in Old Calton Cemetery.[59] Autobiography[edit] In the last year of his life, Hume wrote an extremely brief autobiographical essay titled "My Own Life",[14] summing up his entire life in "fewer than 5 pages";[60] it contains many interesting judgments that have been of enduring interest to subsequent readers of Hume.[61][62] Donald Seibert (1984), a scholar of 18th-century literature, judged it a "remarkable autobiography, even though it may lack the usual attractions of that genre. Anyone hankering for startling revelations or amusing anecdotes had better look elsewhere."[61] Despite condemning vanity as a dangerous passion,[63] in his autobiography Hume confesses his belief that the "love of literary fame" had served as his "ruling passion" in life, and claims that this desire "never soured my temper, notwithstanding my frequent disappointments". One such disappointment Hume discusses in this account is in the initial literary reception of the Treatise, which he claims to have overcome by means of the success of the Essays: "the work was favourably received, and soon made me entirely forget my former disappointment". Hume, in his own retrospective judgment, argues that his philosophical debut's apparent failure "had proceeded more from the manner than the matter". He thus suggests that "I had been guilty of a very usual indiscretion, in going to the press too early." Hume also provides an unambiguous self-assessment of the relative value of his works: that "my Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals; which, in my own opinion (who ought not to judge on that subject) is of all my writings, historical, philosophical, or literary, incomparably the best." He also wrote of his social relations: "My company was not unacceptable to the young and careless, as well as to the studious and literary", noting of his complex relation to religion, as well as to the state, that "though I wantonly exposed myself to the rage of both civil and religious factions, they seemed to be disarmed in my behalf of their wonted fury". He goes on to profess of his character: "My friends never had occasion to vindicate any one circumstance of my character and conduct." Hume concludes the essay with a frank admission:[14] 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 cleared and ascertained. Death[edit] David Hume's mausoleum by Robert Adam in the Old Calton Burial Ground, Edinburgh Diarist and biographer James Boswell saw Hume a few weeks before his death from a form of abdominal cancer. Hume told him that he sincerely believed it a "most unreasonable fancy" that there might be life after death.[64][65] Hume asked that his body be interred in a "simple Roman tomb", requesting in his will that it be inscribed only with his name and the year of his birth and death, "leaving it to Posterity to add the Rest".[66] David Hume died at the southwest corner of St. Andrew's Square in Edinburgh's New Town, at what is now 21 Saint David Street.[67] A popular story, consistent with some historical evidence and with the help of coincidence, suggests that the street was named after Hume.[68] His tomb stands, as he wished it, on the southwestern slope of Calton Hill, in the Old Calton Cemetery. Adam Smith later recounted Hume's amusing speculation that he might ask Charon, Hades' ferryman, to allow him a few more years of life in order to see "the downfall of some of the prevailing systems of superstition". The ferryman replied, "You loitering rogue, that will not happen these many hundred years.… Get into the boat this instant."[69] Writings[edit] A Treatise of Human Nature begins with the introduction: "'Tis evident, that all the sciences have a relation, more or less, to human nature.… Even Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Natural Religion, are in some measure dependent on the science of Man."[70] The science of man, as Hume explains, is the "only solid foundation for the other sciences" and that the method for this science requires both experience and observation as the foundations of a logical argument.[70]: 7  In regards to this, philosophical historian Frederick Copleston (1999) suggests that it was Hume's aim to apply to the science of man the method of experimental philosophy (the term that was current at the time to imply natural philosophy), and that "Hume's plan is to extend to philosophy in general the methodological limitations of Newtonian physics."[71] Until recently, Hume was seen as a forerunner of logical positivism, a form of anti-metaphysical empiricism. According to the logical positivists (in summary of their verification principle), unless a statement could be verified by experience, or else was true or false by definition (i.e., either tautological or contradictory), then it was meaningless. Hume, on this view, was a protopositivist, who, in his philosophical writings, attempted to demonstrate the ways in which ordinary propositions about objects, causal relations, the self, and so on, are semantically equivalent to propositions about one's experiences.[72] Many commentators have since rejected this understanding of Humean empiricism, stressing an epistemological (rather than a semantic) reading of his project.[ii] According to this opposing view, Hume's empiricism consisted in the idea that it is our knowledge, and not our ability to conceive, that is restricted to what can be experienced. Hume thought that we can form beliefs about that which extends beyond any possible experience, through the operation of faculties such as custom and the imagination, but he was sceptical about claims to knowledge on this basis. Impressions and ideas[edit] A central doctrine of Hume's philosophy, stated in the very first lines of the Treatise of Human Nature, is that the mind consists of perceptions, or the mental objects which are present to it, and which divide into two categories: "All the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds, which I shall call impressions and ideas." Hume believed that it would "not be very necessary to employ many words in explaining this distinction", which commentators have generally taken to mean the distinction between feeling and thinking.[73] Controversially, Hume, in some sense, may regard the distinction as a matter of degree, as he takes impressions to be distinguished from ideas on the basis of their force, liveliness, and vivacity—what Henry E. Allison (2008) calls the "FLV criterion."[74] Ideas are therefore "faint" impressions. For example, experiencing the painful sensation of touching a hot pan's handle is more forceful than simply thinking about touching a hot pan. According to Hume, impressions are meant to be the original form of all our ideas. From this, Don Garrett (2002) has coined the term copy principle,[73] referring to Hume's doctrine that all ideas are ultimately copied from some original impression, whether it be a passion or sensation, from which they derive.[74] Simple and complex[edit] After establishing the forcefulness of impressions and ideas, these two categories are further broken down into simple and complex: "simple perceptions or impressions and ideas are such as admit of no distinction nor separation", whereas "the complex are the contrary to these, and may be distinguished into parts".[70] When looking at an apple, a person experiences a variety of colour-sensations—what Hume notes as a complex impression. Similarly, a person experiences a variety of taste-sensations, tactile-sensations, and smell-sensations when biting into an apple, with the overall sensation—again, a complex impression. Thinking about an apple allows a person to form complex ideas, which are made of similar parts as the complex impressions they were developed from, but which are also less forceful. Hume believes that complex perceptions can be broken down into smaller and smaller parts until perceptions are reached that have no parts of their own, and these perceptions are thus referred to as simple. Principles of association[edit] Regardless of how boundless it may seem; a person's imagination is confined to the mind's ability to recombine the information it has already acquired from the body's sensory experience (the ideas that have been derived from impressions). In addition, "as our imagination takes our most basic ideas and leads us to form new ones, it is directed by three principles of association, namely, resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect":[75] The principle of resemblance refers to the tendency of ideas to become associated if the objects they represent resemble one another. For example, someone looking at an illustration of a flower can conceive an idea of the physical flower because the idea of the illustrated object is associated with the physical object's idea. The principle of contiguity describes the tendency of ideas to become associated if the objects they represent are near to each other in time or space, such as when the thought of a crayon in a box leads one to think of the crayon contiguous to it. The principle of cause and effect refers to the tendency of ideas to become associated if the objects they represent are causally related, which explains how remembering a broken window can make someone think of a ball that had caused the window to shatter. Hume elaborates more on the last principle, explaining that, when somebody observes that one object or event consistently produces the same object or event, that results in "an expectation that a particular event (a 'cause') will be followed by another event (an 'effect') previously and constantly associated with it".[76] Hume calls this principle custom, or habit, saying that "custom...renders our experience useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past".[28] However, even though custom can serve as a guide in life, it still only represents an expectation. In other words:[77] Experience cannot establish a necessary connection between cause and effect, because we can imagine without contradiction a case where the cause does not produce its usual effect…the reason why we mistakenly infer that there is something in the cause that necessarily produces its effect is because our past experiences have habituated us to think in this way. Continuing this idea, Hume argues that "only in the pure realm of ideas, logic, and mathematics, not contingent on the direct sense awareness of reality, [can] causation safely…be applied—all other sciences are reduced to probability".[78][28] He uses this scepticism to reject metaphysics and many theological views on the basis that they are not grounded in fact and observations, and are therefore beyond the reach of human understanding. Induction and causation[edit] The cornerstone of Hume's epistemology is the problem of induction. This may be the area of Hume's thought where his scepticism about human powers of reason is most pronounced.[79] The problem revolves around the plausibility of inductive reasoning, that is, reasoning from the observed behaviour of objects to their behaviour when unobserved. As Hume wrote, induction concerns how things behave when they go "beyond the present testimony of the senses, or the records of our memory".[80] Hume argues that we tend to believe that things behave in a regular manner, meaning that patterns in the behaviour of objects seem to persist into the future, and throughout the unobserved present.[81] Hume's argument is that we cannot rationally justify the claim that nature will continue to be uniform, as justification comes in only two varieties—demonstrative reasoning and probable reasoning[iii]—and both of these are inadequate. With regard to demonstrative reasoning, Hume argues that the uniformity principle cannot be demonstrated, as it is "consistent and conceivable" that nature might stop being regular.[82] Turning to probable reasoning, Hume argues that we cannot hold that nature will continue to be uniform because it has been in the past. As this is using the very sort of reasoning (induction) that is under question, it would be circular reasoning.[83] Thus, no form of justification will rationally warrant our inductive inferences. Hume's solution to this problem is to argue that, rather than reason, natural instinct explains the human practice of making inductive inferences. He asserts that "Nature, by an absolute and uncontroulable [sic] necessity has determin'd us to judge as well as to breathe and feel." In 1985, and in agreement with Hume, John D. Kenyon writes:[84] Reason might manage to raise a doubt about the truth of a conclusion of natural inductive inference just for a moment ... but the sheer agreeableness of animal faith will protect us from excessive caution and sterile suspension of belief. Others, such as Charles Sanders Peirce, have demurred from Hume's solution,[85] while some, such as Kant and Karl Popper, have thought that Hume's analysis has "posed a most fundamental challenge to all human knowledge claims".[86] The notion of causation is closely linked to the problem of induction. According to Hume, we reason inductively by associating constantly conjoined events. It is the mental act of association that is the basis of our concept of causation. At least three interpretations of Hume's theory of causation are represented in the literature:[87] the logical positivist; the sceptical realist; and the quasi-realist. Hume acknowledged that there are events constantly unfolding, and humanity cannot guarantee that these events are caused by prior events or are independent instances. He opposed the widely accepted theory of causation that 'all events have a specific course or reason'. Therefore, Hume crafted his own theory of causation, formed through his empiricist and sceptic beliefs. He split causation into two realms: "All the objects of human reason or enquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit, Relations of Ideas, and Matters of Fact."[28] Relations of Ideas are a priori and represent universal bonds between ideas that mark the cornerstones of human thought. Matters of Fact are dependent on the observer and experience. They are often not universally held to be true among multiple persons. Hume was an Empiricist, meaning he believed "causes and effects are discoverable not by reason, but by experience".[28] He goes on to say that, even with the perspective of the past, humanity cannot dictate future events because thoughts of the past are limited, compared to the possibilities for the future. Hume's separation between Matters of Fact and Relations of Ideas is often referred to as "Hume's fork."[1] Hume explains his theory of causation and causal inference by division into three different parts. In these three branches he explains his ideas and compares and contrasts his views to his predecessors. These branches are the Critical Phase, the Constructive Phase, and Belief.[88] In the Critical Phase, Hume denies his predecessors' theories of causation. Next, he uses the Constructive Phase to resolve any doubts the reader may have had while observing the Critical Phase. "Habit or Custom" mends the gaps in reasoning that occur without the human mind even realising it. Associating ideas has become second nature to the human mind. It "makes us expect for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past".[28] However, Hume says that this association cannot be trusted because the span of the human mind to comprehend the past is not necessarily applicable to the wide and distant future. This leads him to the third branch of causal inference, Belief. Belief is what drives the human mind to hold that expectancy of the future is based on past experience. Throughout his explanation of causal inference, Hume is arguing that the future is not certain to be repetition of the past and that the only way to justify induction is through uniformity. The logical positivist interpretation is that Hume analyses causal propositions, such as "A causes B", in terms of regularities in perception: "A causes B" is equivalent to "Whenever A-type events happen, B-type ones follow", where "whenever" refers to all possible perceptions.[89] In his Treatise of Human Nature, Hume wrote:[90] Power and necessity…are…qualities of perceptions, not of objects…felt by the soul and not perceiv'd externally in bodies. This view is rejected by sceptical realists, who argue that Hume thought that causation amounts to more than just the regular succession of events.[ii] Hume said that, when two events are causally conjoined, a necessary connection underpins the conjunction:[91] Shall we rest contented with these two relations of contiguity and succession, as affording a complete idea of causation? By no means…there is a necessary connexion to be taken into consideration. Angela Coventry writes that, for Hume, "there is nothing in any particular instance of cause and effect involving external objects which suggests the idea of power or necessary connection" and "we are ignorant of the powers that operate between objects".[92] However, while denying the possibility of knowing the powers between objects, Hume accepted the causal principle, writing: "I never asserted so absurd a proposition as that something could arise without a cause."[93] It has been argued that, while Hume did not think that causation is reducible to pure regularity, he was not a fully-fledged realist either. Simon Blackburn calls this a quasi-realist reading,[94] saying that "Someone talking of cause is voicing a distinct mental set: he is by no means in the same state as someone merely describing regular sequences."[95] In Hume's words, "nothing is more usual than to apply to external bodies every internal sensation, which they occasion".[96] 'Self'[edit] Empiricist philosophers, such as Hume and Berkeley, favoured the bundle theory of personal identity.[97] In this theory, "the mind itself, far from being an independent power, is simply 'a bundle of perceptions' without unity or cohesive quality".[98] The self is nothing but a bundle of experiences linked by the relations of causation and resemblance; or, more accurately, the empirically warranted idea of the self is just the idea of such a bundle. According to Hume:[70] For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. When my perceptions are removed for any time, as by sound sleep; so long I am insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist.— A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I.iv, section 6 This view is supported by, for example, positivist interpreters, who have seen Hume as suggesting that terms such as "self", "person", or "mind" refer to collections of "sense-contents".[99] A modern-day version of the bundle theory of the mind has been advanced by Derek Parfit in his Reasons and Persons.[100] However, some philosophers have criticised Hume's bundle-theory interpretation of personal identity. They argue that distinct selves can have perceptions that stand in relation to similarity and causality. Thus, perceptions must already come parcelled into distinct "bundles" before they can be associated according to the relations of similarity and causality. In other words, the mind must already possess a unity that cannot be generated, or constituted, by these relations alone. Since the bundle-theory interpretation portrays Hume as answering an ontological question, philosophers like Galen Strawson see Hume as not very concerned with such questions and have queried whether this view is really Hume's. Instead, Strawson suggests that Hume might have been answering an epistemological question about the causal origin of our concept of the self.[101] In the Appendix to the Treatise, Hume declares himself dissatisfied with his earlier account of personal identity in Book 1. Corliss Swain notes that "Commentators agree that if Hume did find some new problem" when he reviewed the section on personal identity, "he wasn't forthcoming about its nature in the Appendix."[102] One interpretation of Hume's view of the self, argued for by philosopher and psychologist James Giles, is that Hume is not arguing for a bundle theory, which is a form of reductionism, but rather for an eliminative view of the self. Rather than reducing the self to a bundle of perceptions, Hume rejects the idea of the self altogether. On this interpretation, Hume is proposing a "no-self theory" and thus has much in common with Buddhist thought (see anattā).[103] Psychologist Alison Gopnik has argued that Hume was in a position to learn about Buddhist thought during his time in France in the 1730s.[104][105] Practical reason[edit] Practical reason relates to whether standards or principles exist that are also authoritative for all rational beings, dictating people's intentions and actions. Hume is mainly considered an anti-rationalist, denying the possibility for practical reason, although other philosophers such as Christine Korsgaard, Jean Hampton, and Elijah Millgram claim that Hume is not so much of an anti-rationalist as he is just a sceptic of practical reason.[106] Hume denied the existence of practical reason as a principle because he claimed reason does not have any effect on morality, since morality is capable of producing effects in people that reason alone cannot create. As Hume explains in A Treatise of Human Nature (1740):[70]: 457  Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason." Since practical reason is supposed to regulate our actions (in theory), Hume denied practical reason on the grounds that reason cannot directly oppose passions. As Hume puts it, "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them." Reason is less significant than any passion because reason has no original influence, while "A passion is an original existence, or, if you will, modification of existence."[70]: 415  Practical reason is also concerned with the value of actions rather than the truth of propositions,[107] so Hume believed that reason's shortcoming of affecting morality proved that practical reason could not be authoritative for all rational beings, since morality was essential for dictating people's intentions and actions. Ethics[edit] See also: is–ought problem Hume's writings on ethics began in the 1740 Treatise and were refined in his An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751). He understood feeling, rather than knowing, as that which governs ethical actions, stating that "moral decisions are grounded in moral sentiment."[108] Arguing that reason cannot be behind morality, he wrote:[109] Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason. Hume's moral sentimentalism was shared by his close friend Adam Smith,[110][failed verification] and the two were mutually influenced by the moral reflections of their older contemporary, Francis Hutcheson.[111] Peter Singer claims that Hume's argument that morals cannot have a rational basis alone "would have been enough to earn him a place in the history of ethics."[112] Hume also put forward the is–ought problem, later known as Hume's Law,[112] denying the possibility of logically deriving what ought to be from what is. According to the Treatise (1740), in every system of morality that Hume has read, the author begins by stating facts about the world as it is but always ends up suddenly referring to what ought to be the case. Hume demands that a reason should be given for inferring what ought to be the case, from what is the case. This is because it "seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others."[113] Hume's theory of ethics has been influential in modern-day meta-ethical theory,[114] helping to inspire emotivism,[115] and ethical expressivism and non-cognitivism,[116][failed verification] as well as Allan Gibbard's general theory of moral judgment and judgments of rationality.[117] Aesthetics[edit] Hume's ideas about aesthetics and the theory of art are spread throughout his works, but are particularly connected with his ethical writings, and also the essays "Of the Standard of Taste" and "Of Tragedy" (1757). His views are rooted in the work of Joseph Addison and Francis Hutcheson.[118] In the Treatise (1740), he touches on the connection between beauty and deformity and vice and virtue.[119] His later writings on the subject continue to draw parallels of beauty and deformity in art with conduct and character.[120] In "Standard of Taste", Hume argues that no rules can be drawn up about what is a tasteful object. However, a reliable critic of taste can be recognised as objective, sensible and unprejudiced, and as having extensive experience.[121] "Of Tragedy" addresses the question of why humans enjoy tragic drama. Hume was concerned with the way spectators find pleasure in the sorrow and anxiety depicted in a tragedy. He argued that this was because the spectator is aware that he is witnessing a dramatic performance. There is pleasure in realising that the terrible events that are being shown are actually fiction.[122] Furthermore, Hume laid down rules for educating people in taste and correct conduct, and his writings in this area have been very influential on English and Anglo-Saxon aesthetics.[123] Free will, determinism, and responsibility[edit] Statue of Hume, sculpted by Alexander Stoddart, on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh Hume, along with Thomas Hobbes, is cited as a classical compatibilist about the notions of freedom and determinism.[124][125] Compatibilism seeks to reconcile human freedom with the mechanist view that human beings are part of a deterministic universe, which is completely governed by physical laws. Hume, on this point, was influenced greatly by the scientific revolution, particularly by Sir Isaac Newton.[126] Hume argued that the dispute between freedom and determinism continued over 2000 years due to ambiguous terminology. He wrote: "From this circumstance alone, that a controversy has been long kept on foot…we may presume that there is some ambiguity in the expression," and that different disputants use different meanings for the same terms.[127][128] Hume defines the concept of necessity as "the uniformity, observable in the operations of nature; where similar objects are constantly conjoined together,"[129] and liberty as "a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will."[130] He then argues that, according to these definitions, not only are the two compatible, but liberty requires necessity. For if our actions were not necessitated in the above sense, they would "have so little in connexion with motives, inclinations and circumstances, that one does not follow with a certain degree of uniformity from the other." But if our actions are not thus connected to the will, then our actions can never be free: they would be matters of "chance; which is universally allowed to have no existence."[131] Australian philosopher John Passmore writes that confusion has arisen because "necessity" has been taken to mean "necessary connexion." Once this has been abandoned, Hume argues that "liberty and necessity will be found not to be in conflict one with another."[128] Moreover, Hume goes on to argue that in order to be held morally responsible, it is required that our behaviour be caused or necessitated, for, as he wrote:[132] Actions are, by their very nature, temporary and perishing; and where they proceed not from some cause in the character and disposition of the person who performed them, they can neither redound to his honour, if good; nor infamy, if evil. Hume describes the link between causality and our capacity to rationally make a decision from this an inference of the mind. Human beings assess a situation based upon certain predetermined events and from that form a choice. Hume believes that this choice is made spontaneously. Hume calls this form of decision making the liberty of spontaneity.[133] Education writer Richard Wright considers that Hume's position rejects a famous moral puzzle attributed to French philosopher Jean Buridan. The Buridan's ass puzzle describes a donkey that is hungry. This donkey has separate bales of hay on both sides, which are of equal distances from him. The problem concerns which bale the donkey chooses. Buridan was said to believe that the donkey would die, because he has no autonomy. The donkey is incapable of forming a rational decision as there is no motive to choose one bale of hay over the other. However, human beings are different, because a human who is placed in a position where he is forced to choose one loaf of bread over another will make a decision to take one in lieu of the other. For Buridan, humans have the capacity of autonomy, and he recognises the choice that is ultimately made will be based on chance, as both loaves of bread are exactly the same. However, Wright says that Hume completely rejects this notion, arguing that a human will spontaneously act in such a situation because he is faced with impending death if he fails to do so. Such a decision is not made on the basis of chance, but rather on necessity and spontaneity, given the prior predetermined events leading up to the predicament.[126] Hume's argument is supported by modern-day compatibilists such as R. E. Hobart, a pseudonym of philosopher Dickinson S. Miller.[134] However, P. F. Strawson argued that the issue of whether we hold one another morally responsible does not ultimately depend on the truth or falsity of a metaphysical thesis such as determinism. This is because our so holding one another is a non-rational human sentiment that is not predicated on such theses.[135][136] Religion[edit] Philosopher Paul Russell (2005) contends that Hume wrote "on almost every central question in the philosophy of religion", and that these writings "are among the most important and influential contributions on this topic."[137] Touching on the philosophy, psychology, history, and anthropology of religious thought, Hume's 1757 dissertation "The Natural History of Religion" argues that the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all derive from earlier polytheistic religions. He went on to suggest that all religious belief "traces, in the end, to dread of the unknown".[138] Hume had also written on religious subjects in the first Enquiry, as well as later in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.[137] Religious views[edit] Although he wrote a great deal about religion, Hume's personal views have been the subject of much debate.[iv] Some modern critics have described Hume's religious views as agnostic or have described him as a "Pyrrhonian skeptic".[139] Contemporaries considered him to be an atheist, or at least un-Christian, enough so that the Church of Scotland seriously considered bringing charges of infidelity against him.[140] Evidence of his un-Christian beliefs can especially be found in his writings on miracles, in which he attempts to separate historical method from the narrative accounts of miracles.[139] Nevertheless, modern scholars have tended to dismiss the claims of Hume's contemporaries describing him as an atheist as coming from religiously intolerant people who did not understand Hume’s philosophy.[141] The fact that contemporaries suspected him of atheism is exemplified by a story Hume liked to tell:[142] The best theologian he ever met, he used to say, was the old Edinburgh fishwife who, having recognized him as Hume the atheist, refused to pull him out of the bog into which he had fallen until he declared he was a Christian and repeated the Lord's prayer. However, in works such as "Of Superstition and Enthusiasm", Hume specifically seems to support the standard religious views of his time and place.[143] This still meant that he could be very critical of the Catholic Church, dismissing it with the standard Protestant accusations of superstition and idolatry,[144][143]: 70  as well as dismissing as idolatry what his compatriots saw as uncivilised beliefs.[145] He also considered extreme Protestant sects, the members of which he called "enthusiasts", to be corrupters of religion.[146] By contrast, in "The Natural History of Religion", Hume presents arguments suggesting that polytheism had much to commend it over monotheism.[147] Additionally, when mentioning religion as a factor in his History of England, Hume uses it to show the deleterious effect it has on human progress. In his Treatise of Human Nature, Hume wrote: "Generally speaking, the errors in religions are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous."[139] Lou Reich (1998) argues that Hume was a religious naturalist and rejects interpretations of Hume as an atheist.[148] Paul Russell (2008) writes that Hume was plainly sceptical about religious belief, although perhaps not to the extent of complete atheism. He suggests that Hume's position is best characterised by the term "irreligion,"[149] while philosopher David O'Connor (2013) argues that Hume's final position was "weakly deistic". For O'Connor, Hume's "position is deeply ironic. This is because, while inclining towards a weak form of deism, he seriously doubts that we can ever find a sufficiently favourable balance of evidence to justify accepting any religious position." He adds that Hume "did not believe in the God of standard theism ... but he did not rule out all concepts of deity", and that "ambiguity suited his purposes, and this creates difficulty in definitively pinning down his final position on religion".[150] Design argument[edit] One of the traditional topics of natural theology is that of the existence of God, and one of the a posteriori arguments for this is the argument from design or the teleological argument. The argument is that the existence of God can be proved by the design that is obvious in the complexity of the world, which Encyclopædia Britannica states is "the most popular", because it is:[151][unreliable source?] ...the most accessible of the theistic arguments ... which identifies evidences of design in nature, inferring from them a divine designer ... The fact that the universe as a whole is a coherent and efficiently functioning system likewise, in this view, indicates a divine intelligence behind it. In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume wrote that the design argument seems to depend upon our experience, and its proponents "always suppose the universe, an effect quite singular and unparalleled, to be the proof of a Deity, a cause no less singular and unparalleled".[152] Philosopher Louise E. Loeb (2010) notes that Hume is saying that only experience and observation can be our guide to making inferences about the conjunction between events. However, according to Hume:[153] We observe neither God nor other universes, and hence no conjunction involving them. There is no observed conjunction to ground an inference either to extended objects or to God, as unobserved causes. Hume also criticised the argument in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779). Hume proposes a finite universe with a finite number of particles. Given infinite time, these particles could randomly fall into any arrangement, including our seemingly designed world.[1] A century later, the idea of order without design was rendered more plausible by Charles Darwin's discovery that the adaptations of the forms of life result from the natural selection of inherited characteristics.[151][unreliable source?] For philosopher James D. Madden, it is "Hume, rivaled only by Darwin, [who] has done the most to undermine in principle our confidence in arguments from design among all figures in the Western intellectual tradition".[154] Finally, Hume discussed a version of the anthropic principle, which is the idea that theories of the universe are constrained by the need to allow for man's existence in it as an observer. Hume has his sceptical mouthpiece Philo suggest that there may have been many worlds, produced by an incompetent designer, whom he called a "stupid mechanic". In his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Hume wrote:[155] Many worlds might have been botched and bungled throughout an eternity, ere this system was struck out: much labour lost: many fruitless trials made: and a slow, but continued improvement carried on during infinite ages in the art of world-making. American philosopher Daniel Dennett has suggested that this mechanical explanation of teleology, although "obviously ... an amusing philosophical fantasy", anticipated the notion of natural selection, the 'continued improvement' being like "any Darwinian selection algorithm".[156] Problem of miracles[edit] Main article: Of Miracles In his discussion of miracles, Hume argues that we should not believe miracles have occurred and that they do not therefore provide us with any reason to think God exists.[157] In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Section 10), Hume defines a miracle as "a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent". Hume says we believe an event that has frequently occurred is likely to occur again, but we also take into account those instances where the event did not occur:[158] A wise man ... considers which side is supported by the greater number of experiments. ... A hundred instances or experiments on one side, and fifty on another, afford a doubtful expectation of any event; though a hundred uniform experiments, with only one that is contradictory, reasonably beget a pretty strong degree of assurance. In all cases, we must balance the opposite experiments ... and deduct the smaller number from the greater, in order to know the exact force of the superior evidence. Hume discusses the testimony of those who report miracles. He wrote that testimony might be doubted even from some great authority in case the facts themselves are not credible: "[T]he evidence, resulting from the testimony, admits of a diminution, greater or less, in proportion as the fact is more or less unusual."[159] Although Hume leaves open the possibility for miracles to occur and be reported, he offers various arguments against this ever having happened in history.[160] He points out that people often lie, and they have good reasons to lie about miracles occurring either because they believe they are doing so for the benefit of their religion or because of the fame that results. Furthermore, people by nature enjoy relating miracles they have heard without caring for their veracity and thus miracles are easily transmitted even when false. Also, Hume notes that miracles seem to occur mostly in "ignorant and barbarous nations"[161] and times, and the reason they do not occur in the civilised societies is such societies are not awed by what they know to be natural events. Hume recognizes that over a long period of time, various coincidences can provide the appearance of intention. Finally, the miracles of each religion argue against all other religions and their miracles, and so even if a proportion of all reported miracles across the world fit Hume's requirement for belief, the miracles of each religion make the other less likely.[162] Hume was extremely pleased with his argument against miracles in his Enquiry. He states, "I flatter myself, that I have discovered an argument of a like nature, which, if just, will, with the wise and learned, be an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion, and consequently, will be useful as long as the world endures."[163] Thus, Hume's argument against miracles had a more abstract basis founded upon the scrutiny, not just primarily of miracles, but of all forms of belief systems. It is a commonsense notion of veracity based upon epistemological evidence, and founded on a principle of rationality, proportionality and reasonability.[162] The criterion for assessing Hume's belief system is based on the balance of probability whether something is more likely than not to have occurred. Since the weight of empirical experience contradicts the notion for the existence of miracles, such accounts should be treated with scepticism. Further, the myriad of accounts of miracles contradict one another, as some people who receive miracles will aim to prove the authority of Jesus, whereas others will aim to prove the authority of Muhammad or some other religious prophet or deity. These various differing accounts weaken the overall evidential power of miracles.[164][failed verification] Despite all this, Hume observes that belief in miracles is popular, and that "the gazing populace… receive greedily, without examination, whatever soothes superstition, and promotes wonder."[165] Critics have argued that Hume's position assumes the character of miracles and natural laws prior to any specific examination of miracle claims, thus it amounts to a subtle form of begging the question. To assume that testimony is a homogeneous reference group seems unwise- to compare private miracles with public miracles, unintellectual observers with intellectual observers and those who have little to gain and much to lose with those with much to gain and little to lose is not convincing to many. Indeed, many have argued that miracles not only do not contradict the laws of nature but require the laws of nature to be intelligible as miraculous, and thus subverting the law of nature. For example, William Adams remarks that "there must be an ordinary course of nature before anything can be extraordinary. There must be a stream before anything can be interrupted."[166] They have also noted that it requires an appeal to inductive inference, as none have observed every part of nature nor examined every possible miracle claim, for instance those in the future. This, in Hume's philosophy, was especially problematic.[167] Little appreciated is the voluminous literature either foreshadowing Hume, in the likes of Thomas Sherlock[168] or directly responding to and engaging with Hume—from William Paley,[169] William Adams,[170] John Douglas,[171] John Leland,[172] and George Campbell,[173] among others. Regarding the latter, it is rumoured that, having read Campbell's Dissertation, Hume remarked that "the Scotch theologue had beaten him."[174] Hume's main argument concerning miracles is that miracles by definition are singular events that differ from the established laws of nature. Such natural laws are codified as a result of past experiences. Therefore, a miracle is a violation of all prior experience and thus incapable on this basis of reasonable belief. However, the probability that something has occurred in contradiction of all past experience should always be judged to be less than the probability that either one's senses have deceived one, or the person recounting the miraculous occurrence is lying or mistaken, Hume would say, all of which he had past experience of. For Hume, this refusal to grant credence does not guarantee correctness. He offers the example of an Indian Prince, who, having grown up in a hot country, refuses to believe that water has frozen. By Hume's lights, this refusal is not wrong and the prince "reasoned justly;" it is presumably only when he has had extensive experience of the freezing of water that he has warrant to believe that the event could occur.[159] So, for Hume, either the miraculous event will become a recurrent event or else it will never be rational to believe it occurred. The connection to religious belief is left unexplained throughout, except for the close of his discussion where Hume notes the reliance of Christianity upon testimony of miraculous occurrences. He makes an ironic remark that anyone who "is moved by faith to assent" to revealed testimony "is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience."[175][176] Hume writes that "All the testimony whichever was really given for any miracle, or ever will be given, is a subject of derision."[159] As a historian of England[edit] David Hume by Allan Ramsay, 1766; "Where men are the most sure and arrogant, they are commonly the most mistaken, and have there given reins to passion, without that proper deliberation and suspense, which can alone secure them from the grossest absurdities." —An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, § 9.13 : Conclusion, Pt. 1 (1751) From 1754 to 1762 Hume published The History of England, a six-volume work, that extends (according to its subtitle) "From the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688." Inspired by Voltaire's sense of the breadth of history, Hume widened the focus of the field away from merely kings, parliaments, and armies, to literature and science as well. He argued that the quest for liberty was the highest standard for judging the past, and concluded that after considerable fluctuation, England at the time of his writing had achieved "the most entire system of liberty that was ever known amongst mankind".[177] It "must be regarded as an event of cultural importance. In its own day, moreover, it was an innovation, soaring high above its very few predecessors."[178] Hume's History of England made him famous as a historian before he was ever considered a serious philosopher. In this work, Hume uses history to tell the story of the rise of England and what led to its greatness and the disastrous effects that religion has had on its progress. For Hume, the history of England's rise may give a template for others who would also like to rise to its current greatness.[139] Hume's The History of England was profoundly impacted by his Scottish background. The science of sociology, which is rooted in Scottish thinking of the eighteenth century, had never before been applied to British philosophical history. Because of his Scottish background, Hume was able to bring an outsider's lens to English history that the insulated English whigs lacked.[29]: 122  Hume's coverage of the political upheavals of the 17th century relied in large part on the Earl of Clarendon's History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England (1646–69). Generally, Hume took a moderate royalist position and considered revolution unnecessary to achieve necessary reform. Hume was considered a Tory historian and emphasised religious differences more than constitutional issues. Laird Okie explains that "Hume preached the virtues of political moderation, but ... it was moderation with an anti-Whig, pro-royalist coloring."[179] For "Hume shared the ... Tory belief that the Stuarts were no more high-handed than their Tudor predecessors".[180] "Even though Hume wrote with an anti-Whig animus, it is, paradoxically, correct to regard the History as an establishment work, one which implicitly endorsed the ruling oligarchy".[181] Historians have debated whether Hume posited a universal unchanging human nature, or allowed for evolution and development.[182] The debate between Tory and the Whig historians can be seen in the initial reception to Hume's History of England. The whig-dominated world of 1754 overwhelmingly disapproved of Hume's take on English history. In later editions of the book, Hume worked to "soften or expunge many villainous whig strokes which had crept into it."[29]: 121  Hume did not consider himself a pure Tory. Before 1745, he was more akin to an "independent whig." In 1748, he described himself as "a whig, though a very skeptical one." This description of himself as in between whiggism and toryism, helps one understand that his History of England should be read as his attempt to work out his own philosophy of history.[29]: 122  Robert Roth argues that Hume's histories display his biases against Presbyterians and Puritans. Roth says his anti-Whig pro-monarchy position diminished the influence of his work, and that his emphasis on politics and religion led to a neglect of social and economic history.[183] Hume was an early cultural historian of science. His short biographies of leading scientists explored the process of scientific change. He developed new ways of seeing scientists in the context of their times by looking at how they interacted with society and each other. He covers over forty scientists, with special attention paid to Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton. Hume particularly praised William Harvey, writing about his treatise of the circulation of the blood: "Harvey is entitled to the glory of having made, by reasoning alone, without any mixture of accident, a capital discovery in one of the most important branches of science."[184] The History became a best-seller and made Hume a wealthy man who no longer had to take up salaried work for others.[185] It was influential for nearly a century, despite competition from imitations by Smollett (1757), Goldsmith (1771) and others. By 1894, there were at least 50 editions as well as abridgements for students, and illustrated pocket editions, probably produced specifically for women.[186] Political theory[edit] Part of a series onUtilitarianism Predecessors Mozi Shantideva David Hume Claude Adrien Helvétius Cesare Beccaria William Godwin Francis Hutcheson William Paley Key proponents Jeremy Bentham John Stuart Mill Henry Sidgwick R. M. Hare Peter Singer Types of utilitarianism Negative Rule Act Two-level Total Average Preference Classical Key concepts Pain Suffering Pleasure Utility Happiness Eudaimonia Consequentialism Equal consideration Felicific calculus Utilitarian social choice rule Problems Demandingness objection Mere addition paradox Paradox of hedonism Replaceability argument Utility monster Works An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1780) On Liberty (1859) Utilitarianism (1861) Related topics Rational choice theory Game theory Neoclassical economics Population ethics Effective altruism Philosophy portalvteThis article is part of a series onConservatismin the United Kingdom Ideologies Burkean Cameronism Muscular liberalism Civic Compassionate Faragism Goveism Green Liberal Classical Thatcherism Neo One-nation Powellism Progressive Toryism High Red Social Ultra Principles Anglo-Saxonism British unionism Elitism Aristocracy Meritocracy Noblesse oblige Familialism Imperialism Loyalism Moral absolutism Victorian Nationalism British English Ordered liberty Protectionism Royalism Social hierarchy Social market economy Sovereignty State church Tradition History Cavalier Stuart Restoration Tories Jacobitism 1794 Treason Trials Old Whigs Corn Laws Oxford Movement Young England Neo-Jacobite Revival New Right Wets and dries Brexit Intellectuals Bagehot Belloc Burke Butterfield Carlyle Chesterton Clark Coleridge Conquest Cowling Dalrymple Dawson Eliot Ferguson Filmer Galton Gibbon Gray Hayek Johnson (Paul) Hume Johnson (Samuel) Kemp Kipling Laslett Lawrence Ludovici More Newman Oakeshott (Michael) Parvini Ruskin Scott Scruton Southey Stephen Unwin Waugh Wordsworth Politicians Anderson Badenoch Baldwin Balfour Braverman Burke Butler Cameron Canning Cates Cazalet Chamberlain Churchill Clarke Disraeli Farage Gove Hannan Hayes Hogg Johnson (Boris) Joseph Leigh Macmillan May Peel Pitt (the Younger) Powell Rees-Mogg Salisbury Thatcher Willetts Commentators Amis Benjamin Bowden Clarkson Cohen Cole Evans Forsyth (Frederick) Gale Goodwin Hanbury-Tracy Hitchens Johnson (Paul) Kisin Liddle Lunn Moore Morgan Murray Nelson Oakeshott (Isabel) O'Sullivan Pearce Perry Pryce-Jones Roberts Smith Staines Starkey Sullivan Tominey Turner Veitch Verity Watson West Welch Worsthorne Young Literature Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) "Tamworth Manifesto" (1834) On Heroes (1841) Coningsby (1844) Sybil (1845) Culture and Anarchy (1867–68) Orthodoxy (1908) The Servile State (1912) "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1919) The Whig Interpretation of History (1931) The Abolition of Man (1943) The Left Was Never Right (1945) "Rivers of Blood" (1968) The Children of Men (1992) Our Culture, What's Left of It (2005) Black Mass (2007) The Rage Against God (2010) The Great Degeneration (2013) The Son Also Rises (2014) How to Be a Conservative (2014) Conservatism (2017) The Strange Death of Europe (2017) The Madness of Crowds (2019) PartiesActive Alliance EPP: European People's Party UK Christian Party Christian Peoples Alliance Conservative and Unionist Party Common Sense Group Conservative Future (Defunct) Young Conservatives Democratic Unionist Party Heritage Party Reform UK Traditional Unionist Voice UK Independence Party Ulster Unionist Party Defunct For Britain Movement Tories Veterans and People's Party Activists Booth-Smith Bowden Forsyth (James) Hitchens Keen-Minshull Littlewood Marshall Montgomerie Murray Payne Shawcross Stroud Sullivan Worsthorne Organisations 55 Tufton Street Centre for Policy Studies IEA LGB Alliance Migration Watch UK Policy Exchange Bright Blue Blue Collar Conservativism Conservative Democratic Alliance (Defunct) Conservative Philosophy Group Cornerstone Group European Research Group The Freedom Association Free Speech Union Henry Jackson Society London Swinton Circle Monday Club (Defunct) NATCON One Nation Conservatives Orange Order Oxford University Conservative Association Right Book Club (Defunct) Revolutionary Conservative Caucus (Defunct) Social Affairs Unit Tory Reform Group Traditional Britain Group Turning Point UK Western Goals Institute (Defunct) Media Anti-Jacobin Review (Defunct) Catholic Herald ConservativeHome The Critic Daily Express Sunday Express Daily Mail The Daily Sceptic The Daily Telegraph Evening Standard GB News Guido Fawkes The Mail on Sunday The Salisbury Review The Spectator The Sun The Sun on Sunday The Sunday Telegraph The Sunday Times Talk The Times UnHerd Related Anglo-Catholicism Antidisestablishmentarianism Blue Labour Cambridge Analytica Censorship in the UK Hate speech legislation "Constructive conservatism" English Defence League Great man theory List of British conservatives Merry England O'Sullivan's first law Philosophy of Thomas Carlyle Politics of the United Kingdom Liberalism Libertarianism Socialism Public schools in the UK Remigration Conservatism portal United Kingdom portalvte Many of Hume's political ideas, such as limited government, private property when there is scarcity, and constitutionalism, are first principles of liberalism.[187] Thomas Jefferson banned the History from University of Virginia, feeling that it had "spread universal toryism over the land."[188] By comparison, Samuel Johnson thought Hume to be "a Tory by chance [...] for he has no principle. If he is anything, he is a Hobbist."[189] A major concern of Hume's political philosophy is the importance of the rule of law. He also stresses throughout his political essays the importance of moderation in politics, public spirit, and regard to the community.[190] Throughout the period of the American Revolution, Hume had varying views. For instance, in 1768 he encouraged total revolt on the part of the Americans. In 1775, he became certain that a revolution would take place and said that he believed in the American principle and wished the British government would let them be. Hume's influence on some of the Founders can be seen in Benjamin Franklin's suggestion at the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 that no high office in any branch of government should receive a salary, which is a suggestion Hume had made in his emendation of James Harrington's Oceana.[191] The legacy of religious civil war in 18th-century Scotland, combined with the relatively recent memory of the 1715 and 1745 Jacobite risings, had fostered in Hume a distaste for enthusiasm and factionalism. These appeared to him to threaten the fragile and nascent political and social stability of a country that was deeply politically and religiously divided.[192][failed verification] Hume thought that society is best governed by a general and impartial system of laws; he is less concerned about the form of government that administers these laws, so long as it does so fairly. However, he also clarified that a republic must produce laws, while "monarchy, when absolute, contains even something repugnant to law."[193] Hume expressed suspicion of attempts to reform society in ways that departed from long-established custom, and he counselled peoples not to resist their governments except in cases of the most egregious tyranny.[194] However, he resisted aligning himself with either of Britain's two political parties, the Whigs and the Tories, explaining that "my views of things are more conformable to Whig principles; my representations of persons to Tory prejudices".[195] The scholar Jerry Z. Muller argues that Hume's political thoughts have characteristics that later became typical for American and British conservatism, which contain more positive views of capitalism than conservatism does elsewhere.[196] Canadian philosopher Neil McArthur writes that Hume believed that we should try to balance our demands for liberty with the need for strong authority, without sacrificing either. McArthur characterises Hume as a "precautionary conservative,"[197]: 124  whose actions would have been "determined by prudential concerns about the consequences of change, which often demand we ignore our own principles about what is ideal or even legitimate."[197][failed verification] Hume supported the liberty of the press, and was sympathetic to democracy, when suitably constrained. American historian Douglass Adair has argued that Hume was a major inspiration for James Madison's writings, and the essay "Federalist No. 10" in particular.[198] Hume offered his view on the best type of society in an essay titled "Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth", which lays out what he thought was the best form of government. He hoped that "in some future age, an opportunity might be afforded of reducing the theory to practice, either by a dissolution of some old government, or by the combination of men to form a new one, in some distant part of the world". He defended a strict separation of powers, decentralisation, extending the franchise to anyone who held property of value and limiting the power of the clergy. The system of the Swiss militia was proposed as the best form of protection. Elections were to take place on an annual basis and representatives were to be unpaid.[199] Political philosophers Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, writing of Hume's thoughts about "the wise statesman", note that he "will bear a reverence to what carries the marks of age." Also, if he wishes to improve a constitution, his innovations will take account of the "ancient fabric", in order not to disturb society.[200] In the political analysis of philosopher George Holland Sabine, the scepticism of Hume extended to the doctrine of government by consent. He notes that "allegiance is a habit enforced by education and consequently as much a part of human nature as any other motive."[201] In the 1770s, Hume was critical of British policies toward the American colonies and advocated for American independence. He wrote in 1771 that "our union with America…in the nature of things, cannot long subsist."[57] Contributions to economic thought[edit] Statues of David Hume and Adam Smith by David Watson Stevenson on the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh Hume expressed his economic views in his Political Discourses, which were incorporated in Essays and Treatises as Part II of Essays, Moral and Political.[8] To what extent he was influenced by Adam Smith is difficult to assess; however, both of them had similar principles supported from historical events.[8] At the same time Hume did not demonstrate concrete system of economic theory which could be observed in Smith's Wealth of Nations. However, he introduced several new ideas around which the "classical economics" of the 18th century was built.[8] Through his discussions on politics, Hume developed many ideas that are prevalent in the field of economics. This includes ideas on private property, inflation, and foreign trade.[202] Referring to his essay "Of the Balance of Trade", economist Paul Krugman (2012) has remarked that "David Hume created what I consider the first true economic model."[203] In contrast to Locke, Hume believes that private property is not a natural right. Hume argues it is justified, because resources are limited. Private property would be an unjustified, "idle ceremonial," if all goods were unlimited and available freely.[204] Hume also believed in an unequal distribution of property, because perfect equality would destroy the ideas of thrift and industry. Perfect equality would thus lead to impoverishment.[205][206] David Hume anticipated modern monetarism. First, Hume contributed to the theory of quantity and of interest rate. Hume has been credited with being the first to prove that, on an abstract level, there is no quantifiable amount of nominal money that a country needs to thrive. He understood that there was a difference between nominal and real money. Second, Hume has a theory of causation which fits in with the Chicago-school "black box" approach. According to Hume, cause and effect are related only through correlation. Hume shared the belief with modern monetarists that changes in the supply of money can affect consumption and investment. Lastly, Hume was a vocal advocate of a stable private sector, though also having some non-monetarist aspects to his economic philosophy. Having a stated preference for rising prices, for instance, Hume considered government debt to be a sort of substitute for actual money, referring to such debt as "a kind of paper credit." He also believed in heavy taxation, believing that it increases effort. Hume's economic approach evidently resembles his other philosophies, in that he does not choose one side indefinitely, but sees gray in the situation[207] Legacy[edit] Hume's statue on Edinburgh's Royal Mile, sculpted by Alexander Stoddart Due to Hume's vast influence on contemporary philosophy, a large number of approaches in contemporary philosophy and cognitive science are today called "Humean."[12] The writings of Thomas Reid, a Scottish philosopher and contemporary of Hume, were often critical of Hume's scepticism. Reid formulated his common sense philosophy, in part, as a reaction against Hume's views.[208] Hume influenced, and was influenced by, the Christian philosopher Joseph Butler. Hume was impressed by Butler's way of thinking about religion, and Butler may well have been influenced by Hume's writings.[209][137] Attention to Hume's philosophical works grew after the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, in his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783), credited Hume with awakening him from his "dogmatic slumber."[210] According to Arthur Schopenhauer, "there is more to be learned from each page of David Hume than from the collected philosophical works of Hegel, Herbart and Schleiermacher taken together."[211] A. J. Ayer, while introducing his classic exposition of logical positivism in 1936, claimed that his views were "the logical outcome of the empiricism of Berkeley and David Hume".[212] Albert Einstein, in 1915, wrote that he was inspired by Hume's positivism when formulating his theory of special relativity.[213][214] Hume's problem of induction was also of fundamental importance to the philosophy of Karl Popper. In his autobiography, Unended Quest, he wrote: "Knowledge ... is objective; and it is hypothetical or conjectural. This way of looking at the problem made it possible for me to reformulate Hume's problem of induction." This insight resulted in Popper's major work The Logic of Scientific Discovery.[215] In his Conjectures and Refutations, he wrote that he "approached the problem of induction through Hume", since Hume was "perfectly right in pointing out that induction cannot be logically justified".[216] Hume's rationalism in religious subjects influenced, via German-Scottish theologian Johann Joachim Spalding, the German neology school and rational theology, and contributed to the transformation of German theology in the Age of Enlightenment.[217][218] Hume pioneered a comparative history of religion,[219][220] tried to explain various rites and traditions as being based on deception[221][222] and challenged various aspects of rational and natural theology, such as the argument from design.[219] Danish theologian and philosopher Søren Kierkegaard adopted "Hume's suggestion that the role of reason is not to make us wise but to reveal our ignorance," though taking it as a reason for the necessity of religious faith, or fideism. The "fact that Christianity is contrary to reason…is the necessary precondition for true faith."[223] Political theorist Isaiah Berlin, who has also pointed out the similarities between the arguments of Hume and Kierkegaard against rational theology,[223] has written about Hume's influence on what Berlin calls the counter-Enlightenment and on German anti-rationalism.[224] Berlin has also once said of Hume that "no man has influenced the history of philosophy to a deeper or more disturbing degree."[225] In 2003, philosopher Jerry Fodor described Hume's Treatise as "the founding document of cognitive science."[226][227] Hume engaged with contemporary intellectuals including Jean-Jacques Rousseau, James Boswell, and Adam Smith (who acknowledged Hume's influence on his economics and political philosophy). Morris and Brown (2019) write that Hume is "generally regarded as one of the most important philosophers to write in English."[1] In September 2020, the David Hume Tower, a University of Edinburgh building, was renamed to 40 George Square; this was following a campaign led by students of the university to rename it, in objection to Hume's writings related to race.[228][229][230][231] Works[edit] 1734. A Kind of History of My Life. – MSS 23159 National Library of Scotland.[32][76] A letter to an unnamed physician, asking for advice about "the Disease of the Learned" that then afflicted him. Here he reports that at the age of eighteen "there seem'd to be open'd up to me a new Scene of Thought" that made him "throw up every other Pleasure or Business" and turned him to scholarship.[32] 1739–1740. A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to introduce the experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects.[70] Hume intended to see whether the Treatise of Human Nature met with success, and if so, to complete it with books devoted to Politics and Criticism. However, as Hume explained, "It fell dead-born from the press, without reaching such distinction as even to excite a murmur among the zealots"[14]: 352  and so his further project was not completed. 1740. An Abstract of a Book lately Published: Entitled A Treatise of Human Nature etc. Anonymously published, but almost certainly written by Hume[v] in an attempt to popularise his Treatise. This work is of considerable philosophical interest as it spells out what Hume considered "The Chief Argument" of the Treatise, in a way that seems to anticipate the structure of the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. 1741. Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (2nd ed.)[232] A collection of pieces written and published over many years, though most were collected together in 1753–54. Many of the essays are on politics and economics; other topics include aesthetic judgement, love, marriage and polygamy, and the demographics of ancient Greece and Rome. The Essays show some influence from Addison's Tatler and The Spectator, which Hume read avidly in his youth. 1745. A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh: Containing Some Observations on a Specimen of the Principles concerning Religion and Morality, said to be maintain'd in a Book lately publish'd, intituled A Treatise of Human Nature etc. Contains a letter written by Hume to defend himself against charges of atheism and scepticism, while applying for a chair at Edinburgh University. 1742. "Of Essay Writing."[233] 1748. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Contains reworking of the main points of the Treatise, Book 1, with the addition of material on free will (adapted from Book 2), miracles, the Design Argument, and mitigated scepticism. Of Miracles, section X of the Enquiry, was often published separately. 1751. An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. A reworking of material on morality from Book 3 of the Treatise, but with a significantly different emphasis. It "was thought by Hume to be the best of his writings."[234] 1752. Political Discourses (part II of Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary within the larger Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects, vol. 1). Included in Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects (1753–56) reprinted 1758–77. 1752–1758. Political Discourses/Discours politiques 1757. Four Dissertations – includes 4 essays: "The Natural History of Religion" "Of the Passions" "Of Tragedy" "Of the Standard of Taste" 1754–1762. The History of England – sometimes referred to as The History of Great Britain.[235] More a category of books than a single work, Hume's history spanned "from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688" and went through over 100 editions. Many considered it the standard history of England in its day. 1760. "Sister Peg" Hume claimed to have authored an anonymous political pamphlet satirizing the failure of the British Parliament to create a Scottish militia in 1760. Although the authorship of the work is disputed, Hume wrote Alexander Carlyle in early 1761 claiming authorship. The readership of the time attributed the work to Adam Ferguson, a friend and associate of Hume's who has been sometimes called "the founder of modern sociology." Some contemporary scholars concur in the judgment that Ferguson, not Hume, was the author of this work. 1776. "My Own Life."[14] Penned in April, shortly before his death, this autobiography was intended for inclusion in a new edition of Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects. It was first published by Adam Smith, who claimed that by doing so he had incurred "ten times more abuse than the very violent attack I had made upon the whole commercial system of Great Britain."[236] 1777. "Essays on Suicide and the Immortality of the Soul."[237] 1779. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Published posthumously by his nephew, David Hume the Younger. Being a discussion among three fictional characters concerning the nature of God, and is an important portrayal of the argument from design. Despite some controversy, most scholars agree that the view of Philo, the most sceptical of the three, comes closest to Hume's own. See also[edit] Conservatism portalPhilosophy portalLibertarianism portal Age of Enlightenment George Anderson Human science Hume Studies Hume's principle Humeanism Mencius Scientific scepticism The Missing Shade of Blue References[edit] Notes[edit] ^ "The Faculty of Advocates chose me their Librarian, an office from which I received little or no emolument, but which gave me the command of a large library." (Hume 1776:11). ^ a b For example, see Craig (1987, Ch. 2); Strawson (2014); and Wright (1983). ^ These are Hume's terms. In modern parlance, demonstration may be termed deductive reasoning, while probability may be termed inductive reasoning. Millican, Peter. 1996. Hume, Induction and Probability. Leeds: University of Leeds. Archived from the original on 20 October 2017. Retrieved 6 June 2014. ^ For example, see Russell (2008); O'Connor (2013); and Norton (1993). ^ For this, see: Keynes, J. M. and P. Sraffa. 1965. "Introduction." In An Abstract of A Treatise of Human Nature, by D. Hume (1740). Connecticut: Archon Books Citations[edit] ^ a b c d Morris, William Edward, and Charlotte R. Brown. 2019 [2001]. "David Hume." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford: Metaphysics Research Lab. Retrieved 18 May 2020. ^ Fumerton, Richard (21 February 2000). "Foundationalist Theories of Epistemic Justification". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 19 August 2018. ^ Demeter, Tamás (2016). David Hume and the culture of Scottish Newtonianism : methodology and ideology in Enlightenment inquiry. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-32731-3. OCLC 960722703. ^ David Bostock, Philosophy of Mathematics: An Introduction, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, p. 43: "All of Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume supposed that mathematics is a theory of our ideas, but none of them offered any argument for this conceptualist claim, and apparently took it to be uncontroversial." ^ The Problem of Perception (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy): "Paraphrasing David Hume (1739...; see also Locke 1690, Berkeley 1710, Russell 1912): nothing is ever directly present to the mind in perception except perceptual appearances." ^ David, Marian (3 October 2018). "The Correspondence Theory of Truth". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University – via Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. ^ a b Atherton 1999, p. ?. ^ a b c d Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 [1999] "David Hume." Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 18 May 2020. ^ Harris, M. H. 1966. "David Hume". Library Quarterly 36 (April): 88–98. ^ Berlin, Isaiah (2013). The Roots of Romanticism (2nd ed.). Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691156200. ^ Hume 1739, p. 415. ^ a b c Garrett, Don. 2015. Hume (reprint ed.). London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-28334-2. ^ "Hume on Free Will". stanford.edu. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. 2016. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Hume, David. 1778 [1776]. "My Own Life." In The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Cæsar to the Revolution in 1688 1. London. Archived from the original on 13 August 2015. Also available via Rutgers University. Retrieved 18 May 2020. ^ Morris, Ted. 2018 [2013]. "David Hume Biography." The Hume Society. Retrieved 18 May 2020. ^ a b Hume 1778, p. 3. ^ Mossner 1958, pp. 30–33, quoted in Wright (2009, p. 10) ^ Harris 2004, p. 35. ^ Hume 1993, p. 346. ^ Johnson 1995, pp. 8–9. ^ a b Mossner 1950, p. 193. ^ Hume, David. 1932 [1734] "Letter to a [Dr George Cheyne]". pp. 13–15 in The Letters of David Hume 1, edited by J. Y. T. Greig. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-186158-1. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780199693245.book.1. ^ Mossner 1980, p. 204. ^ Wright, John P. 2003. "Dr. George Cheyne, Chevalier Ramsay, and Hume's Letter to a Physician." Hume Studies 29(1):125–141. – via Project MUSE. doi:10.1353/hms.2011.0100. ^ a b Mossner 1980, p. 204. ^ Huxley, Thomas Henry (2011) [1879]. Hume. English Men of Letters. Vol. 39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 7–8. ISBN 978-1-108-03477-7. ^ Hume, David. 2007 [1748]. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, edited by P. Millican. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-152635-0. OCLC 314220887. pp. lxiii–lxiv. ^ a b c d e f Hume, David. 1990 [1748]. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. New York: Anchor/Doubleday. ^ a b c d Trevor-Roper, Hugh (2010). History and the Enlightenment. Yale University Press. ^ Hume, David. 1777. Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects 2. London. Archived from the original on 13 August 2015. Retrieved 18 May 2020. ^ Mossner 1950, p. 195. ^ a b c d Hume, David. 1993 [1734]. "A Kind of History of My Life." In The Cambridge Companion to Hume, edited by D. F. Norton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-38710-1. ^ Hume 1740. ^ Norton 1993, p. 31. ^ Redman 1997, p. 175, footnote 19. ^ Nobbs, Douglas. 1965. "The Political Ideas of William Cleghorn, Hume's Academic Rival." Journal of the History of Ideas 26(4):575–586. doi:10.2307/2708501. JSTOR 2708501. p. 575. ^ Lorkowski, C. M. "David Hume: Religion." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. ^ Mossner 1950, p. 172. ^ Fieser 2005, p. xxii. ^ Buckle, Stephen. 1999. "Hume's biography and Hume's philosophy." Australasian Journal of Philosophy 77:1–25. doi:10.1080/00048409912348781. ^ Emerson 2009, p. 244. ^ Rivers, Isabel. 2000. Reason, Grace, and Sentiment: A Study of the Language of Religion and Ethics in England, 1660–1780 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-511-48447-6. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511484476. p. 255. ^ "BFE – Censored publications – Search result". search.beaconforfreedom.org. Archived from the original on 2 December 2021. Retrieved 2 December 2021. ^ Sher, Richard B. 2008. The Enlightenment and the Book: Scottish Authors and Their Publishers in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and America, (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology Series). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-75254-9. p. 312. ^ grant's Old and New Edinburgh vol.3 p.9 ^ Emerson 2009, p. 98. ^ "The manuscripts, Letter from David Hume to Andrew Millar, 12 April, 1755". millar-project.ed.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 15 January 2016. Retrieved 1 June 2016. ^ Grants Old and New Edinburgh vol 1, p. 97 ^ Klibansky, Raymond, and Ernest C. Mossner, eds. 1954. New Letters of David Hume. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 77–79. ^ Popkin, Richard H. (1970). "Hume and Isaac de Pinto". Texas Studies in Literature and Language. 12 (3): 417–430. JSTOR 40754109. ^ Fieser, James. 2005 [2003]. A Bibliography of Hume's Writings and Early Responses Archived 3 February 2021 at the Wayback Machine. Bristol: Thoemmes Press. – via Academia.edu. p. 59. ^ Mossner 1980, p. 285. ^ Waldmann, Felix, ed. 2014. Further Letters of David Hume Archived 27 April 2021 at the Wayback Machine. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Bibliographical Society. pp. 65–69. – via Academia.edu. ^ Waldmann, Felix (17 July 2020). "David Hume was a brilliant philosopher but also a racist involved in slavery". The Scotsman. Retrieved 14 September 2020. ^ Ashton, David; Hutton, Peter (28 December 2023). "Edinburgh University rush to condemn David Hume shames it". The Herald (Glasgow). Retrieved 25 January 2024. ^ Ashton, David; Hutton, Peter (2023). "David Hume – An Apologia". Scottish Affairs. 32 (3): 347–364. doi:10.3366/scot.2023.0468. S2CID 259961720. Retrieved 25 January 2024. ^ a b Scurr, Ruth. 4 November 2017. "An Enlightened Friendship." Wall Street Journal. ^ Becker, T., and P. A. de Hondt, trans. 1766. A concise and genuine account of the dispute between Mr. Hume and Mr. Rousseau: with the letters that passed between them during their controversy. London. Available in full text. Retrieved 19 May 2020. ^ Biographical Index of Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783–2002 (PDF). The Royal Society of Edinburgh. 2006. ISBN 978-0-902198-84-5. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 January 2013. Retrieved 14 November 2016. ^ Stanley, Liz. 2006. "The Writing of David Hume’s 'My Own Life': The Persona of the Philosopher and the Philosopher Manqué." Auto/Biography 14:1–19. doi:10.1191/0967550706ab051oa. ^ a b Siebert, Donald T. 1984. "David Hume's Last Words: The Importance of My Own Life." Studies in Scottish Literature 19(1):132–147. Retrieved 18 May 2020. ^ Buckle, Stephen (1999). "Hume's biography and Hume's philosophy". Australasian Journal of Philosophy. 77: 1–25. doi:10.1080/00048409912348781. ^ Galvagni, Enrico (1 June 2020). "Hume on Pride, Vanity and Society". Journal of Scottish Philosophy. 18 (2): 157–173. doi:10.3366/jsp.2020.0265. ISSN 1479-6651. S2CID 225800023. ^ Weis, Charles M., and Frederick A. Pottle, eds. 1970. Boswell in Extremes, 1776–1778. New York, McGraw-Hill. 1970. New York: McGraw Hill. OL 5217786M. LCCN 75-102461. ^ Bassett 2012, p. 272: this meeting was dramatised in semi-fictional form for the BBC by Michael Ignatieff as Dialogue in the Dark. ^ Mossner 1980, p. 591. ^ Burton 1846, pp. 384–385. ^ Burton 1846, p. 436, footnote 1. ^ Smith, Adam. 1789 [1776]. "Letter from Adam Smith, LL.D. to William Strathan, Esq." pp. xix–xxiv in The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Cæsar to the Revolution in 1688 1. London: Thomas Cadell and Longman. p. xxi. ^ a b c d e f g Hume, David. 1739. A Treatise of Human Nature 1. London: John Noon. Retrieved 19 May 2020. ^ Copleston, Frederick. 1999 [1960]. A History of Philosophy 6. Kent: Burns & Oats. ISBN 978-0-86012-299-9. Lay summary via Google Books. pp. 405–406. ^ Hume, David. 2007 [1748]. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, edited by P. Millican. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-152635-0. OCLC 314220887. pp. xii-xv. ^ a b Garrett, Don. 2002. Cognition and Commitment in Hume's Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-515959-2. ^ a b Allison, Henry E. 2008. Custom and Reason in Hume: A Kantian Reading of the First Book of the Treatise. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-953288-9. ^ Fieser, James. 2011. "David Hume (1711–1776)." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 19 May 2020. ^ a b Norton, David Fate. 1999 [1993]. "Hume, David." Pp. 398–403 in Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (2nd ed.), edited by R. Audi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved 18 May 2020. – via Gale. ^ Drefcinski, Shane. (1998). "A Very Brief Summary of David Hume." Dr. Shane Drefcinski. US: University of Wisconsin–Platteville. Archived 9 May 2017 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 19 May 2020. ^ Hume, David. 2010 [1778]. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. In Masterplots (4th ed.). pp. 1–3. ^ Kenyon & Craig 1985, p. ?. ^ Hume 1777, p. 26. ^ Atherton 1999, pp. 202–203. ^ Hume 1777, p. 111. ^ Hume 1777, p. 115. ^ Kenyon & Craig 1985, p. 254. ^ Harris 2004, p. 42. ^ Popkin 2014. ^ Read & Richman 2002, pp. 13–14, 69. ^ "Davidhume.org." Texts – An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (1748, 1777). Web. 19 March 2017. ^ For this account of Hume's views on causation cf. Ayer (1946, pp. 40–42) ^ Hume 1739, p. 167. ^ Hume 1739, p. 78, original emphasis ^ Coventry 2006, pp. 91–92. ^ Hume 2011, p. 187. ^ Blackburn 1990, p. ?. ^ Quoted by Dauer (2010, p. 97) ^ Hume 1777, p. 78, fn 17. ^ Dicker 2002, p. 15. ^ Maurer 2013. ^ Ayer 1946, pp. 135–136. ^ Parfit 1984, p. ?. ^ Strawson 2011, p. ?. ^ Swain 2008, p. 142. ^ Giles 1993, p. ?. ^ Gopnik 2009, p. ?. ^ Garfield 2015, pp. 45, 107. ^ Mason, Michelle (September 2005). "Hume and Humeans on Practical Reason" (PDF). 31 (2). Hume Studies. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 June 2016. Retrieved 27 May 2016. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help) ^ Wallace, Jay (2014). "Practical Reason". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 29 April 2016. ^ Cranston 2014, p. 4. ^ Hume 1739, p. 458. ^ Hume 2013, p. 548. ^ Taylor 1965, p. ?. ^ a b Singer 2015. ^ Hume 1739, p. 470. ^ Edwards 2002, p. 44. ^ Humber 2008, p. 136. ^ Brown 2005, pp. 97–100. ^ Angier 2012, p. 114. ^ Gracyk 2011, ch. 1. ^ Hume 1739, Sect. VII and Sect VIII, pp. 295–304. ^ Costelloe 2013, p. viii. ^ Harris 2013, p. 401. ^ Schmidt 2010, pp. 325–326. ^ Scruton 2014, p. 18. ^ McKenna & Coates 2015, Ch. 3. ^ Russell 1995. ^ a b Wright 2010, p. ?. ^ Hume 1777, p. 81. ^ a b Passmore 2013, p. 73. ^ Hume 1777, p. 82. ^ Hume 1777, p. 95. ^ Hume 1777, p. 96. ^ Hume 1777, p. 98, original emphasis ^ Mounce & Mounce 2002, p. 66. ^ See e.g. Hobart (1934, p. ?) and Carroll & Markosian (2010, p. 54, note 11) ^ Strawson 2008, p. ?. ^ Prasad 1995, p. 348. ^ a b c Russel, Paul (2010) [2005]. "Hume on Religion". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2008 ed.). Retrieved 19 May 2020. ^ O'Connor 2013, pp. 7–8. ^ a b c d Mullen, Shirley (2003). "David Hume and a Christian Perspective on History". Fides et Historia. XXXV: 49–60. ^ Mossner 1980, p. 206. ^ Russell, Paul; Kraal, Anders (2021), "Hume on Religion", in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2021 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved 31 May 2022 ^ Scharfstein 1998, p. 454, footnote. ^ a b Hume, David. 1777 [1741]. "Of Superstition and Enthusiasm." Essay X in Essays Moral, Political, and Literary (1742–1754). Retrieved 19 May 2020. Archived. Also available: Full text and Liberty Fund edition. ^ Hume 1777, p. 51. ^ Hume 1757, p. 34. ^ Hume 1741, pp. 73–76. ^ Hume 1757, p. 63. ^ Reich, Lou (1998). Hume's Religious Naturalism. University Press of America. pp. 1–3, 41–42. ISBN 978-0-7618-0982-1. ^ Russell, Paul. 2008. The Riddle of Hume's Treatise: Skepticism, Naturalism, and Irreligion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-975152-5. ^ O'Connor 2013, pp. 11, 19. ^ a b RE ^ Hume 1777, p. 148. ^ Loeb 2010, p. 118. ^ Madden 2005, p. 150, emphasis removed.. ^ Hume 1779, p. 167. ^ Dennett 2009, pp. 620–621. ^ Bailey & O'Brien 2006, p. 101. ^ Hume 1777, pp. 110–111. ^ a b c Hume 1777, p. 113. ^ Hume 1777, pp. 116–131, Part II of Section X ^ Hume 1777, p. 119. ^ a b Bailey & O'Brien 2006, pp. 105–108. ^ Hume 1777, p. 110. ^ Ahluwalia 2008, pp. 104–106. ^ Hume 1777, p. 126. ^ An essay in answer to Mr. Hume's Essay on miracles. London : White. 1767. Retrieved 16 March 2017. ^ Levine 1989, p. 3. ^ Sherlock, Thomas (1809). The Trial of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus – Internet Archive. John Eliot. Retrieved 16 March 2017. witnesses Thomas SHerlock. ^ Paley, William; Nairne, Charles Murray (1858). "Paley's Evidences of Christianity: With Notes and Additions – William Paley, Charles Murray Nairne". Retrieved 16 March 2017 – via Google Books. ^ An essay in answer to Mr. Hume's Essay on miracles : Adams, William, 1706–1789. London : White. 1767. Retrieved 16 March 2017. ^ Douglas, John (1832). "The criterion: or, Miracles examined with a view to expose the pretensions ... – John Douglas, John Douglas (bp. of Salisbury.)". Retrieved 16 March 2017 – via Google Books. ^ Leland, John; Brown, William Laurence (1837). "A view of the principal deistical writers that have appeared in England in ... – John Leland, William Laurence Brown". Retrieved 16 March 2017 – via Google Books. ^ Campbell, George (1823). "A Dissertation on Miracles: Containing an Examination of the Principles ... – George Campbell". Retrieved 16 March 2017 – via Google Books. ^ Huitt, Kyle (25 December 2016). "Campbell, George". Library of Historical Apologetics. Retrieved 16 May 2020. ^ Hume 1777, p. 131, emphasis removed ^ MacKie 1982, p. 29. ^ Hume's History of England, vol, 6, p. 531 cited in Kenyon (1984, p. 42) ^ Jessop 2015. ^ Okie 1985, p. 16. ^ Okie 1985, p. 25. ^ Okie 1985, p. 27. ^ Wertz 1975, p. ?. ^ Roth 1991, p. ?. ^ Wertz 1993, p. ?. ^ Morris & Brown 2011, Chapter Life and Works. ^ Phillipson 2012, p. 131. ^ David Hume's Classical Liberalism, Thomas W. Merrill ^ So quoted in Livingston (1965) ^ Hume 1888, note 13 to letter LXXXIV. ^ Forbes 1985, p. 150. ^ Werner, John (1972). "David Hume and America". Journal of the History of Ideas. 33 (3): 439–456. doi:10.2307/2709045. JSTOR 2709045. ^ Wiley 2012, p. 211. ^ Hume 1741, p. 119. ^ Hume 1739, p. 550. ^ So quoted in Mossner (1980, p. 311), original emphasis. ^ Jerry Z. Muller, ed. (1997). Conservatism: An Anthology of Social and Political Thought from David Hume to the Present. Princeton U.P. pp. 25–26. ISBN 978-0-691-03711-0. ^ a b McArthur, Neil. 2007. David Hume's Political Theory: Law, Commerce, and the Constitution of Government. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0-8020-9335-6. ^ Adair 1957, p. ?. ^ Hume 1987. ^ Strauss, Leo; Cropsey, Joseph (2012). Strauss, L. and Cropsey, J., History of Political Philosophy. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-92471-7. Retrieved 16 March 2017. ^ Sabine, George H. 1973 [1937]. A History of Political Theory. US: Dryden Press. p. 603. ^ Robbins, Lionel A History of Economic Thought: The LSE Lectures edited by Medema and Samuels. Ch 11 and 12 ^ Krugman, Paul (20 November 2012). "How We Know The Earth Is Old". The New York Times. Retrieved 21 November 2012. ^ Richards, H. Understanding the Global Economy, Peace Education Books, 2004, p. 322. ^ Hume, David. 1751. An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. ^ Stewart, J. B. 2014. Opinion and Reform in Hume's Political Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp. 163–164. ^ Mayer, Thomas (1980). "David Hume and Monetarism". The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 95 (1): 89–101. doi:10.2307/1885350. JSTOR 1885350. ^ Nichols, Ryan, and Gideon Yaffe. 2014 [2000]."Thomas Reid." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford: Metaphysics Research Lab. ^ Savage, R. 2012. Philosophy and Religion in Enlightenment Britain: New Case Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 170. ^ Kant, Immanuel. 1783. "'Introduction." In Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. ^ Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Representation 2. Ch. 46, p. 582. ^ Ayer, A. J. (2001). Language, Truth and Logic. Penguin Books Limited. ISBN 978-0-14-191180-9. Retrieved 14 August 2019. ^ Einstein, Albert. 1998 [1915]. "Letter to Moritz Schlick." The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein 8A, edited by R. Schulmann, A. J. Fox, and J. Illy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. p. 220. ^ Schwarzschild, Bertram, trans. 2004. "Albert Einstein to Moritz Schlick." Physics Today 58(12):17. doi:10.1063/1.2169428. ^ Popper, Karl. 1976. Unended Quest; An Intellectual Autobiography. ISBN 978-0-415-28590-2. pp. 95–96. ^ Popper, Karl. 2014 [1963]. Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. London: Routledge. p. 55. ^ Hodge, Charles. 1873. Systematic Theology. New York: Scribner, Armstrong, and Co. p. 43. [[iarchive:systematictheol00hodggoog/page/n59|]] ^ Schröter, Marianne. 2011. "Transformationen des Theologiebegriffes in der Aufklärung." pp. 182–202 in Evangelische Theologie an Staatlichen Universitäten: Konzepte und Konstellationen Evangelischer Theologie und Religionsforschung, edited by S. Alkier and H. Heimbrock. Göttingen. ^ a b Joas, Hans. 14 November 2013. "Religionsgeschichte als Religionskritik? David Hume und die Folgen" (lecture). Beyond Myth and Enlightenment. Vienna: Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen. Title translation: 'Religious Studies as Criticism of Religion? David Hume and the Consequences' ^ Penelhum, T. 2012 [1983]. Penelhum, T. (2012). Skepticism, Parity, and Religion: The Case of Hume. Springer. ISBN 978-94-009-7083-0. pp. 120–145 in God and Skepticism: A Study in Skepticism and Fideism. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing. ^ de:Friedrich Wilhelm Graf: Von David Hume ließ er sich nicht die Butter vom Brot nehmen – Ein Ausweis der aufgeklärten protestantischen Theologenelite ist wieder zugänglich: Johann Joachim Spalding in vorzüglicher Edition (Spalding never let Hume get the better of him, about a new edition of a mainstake of the enlighted protestant theological elite), review of Graf of a new edition of Spaldings works, in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Feuilleton, print version Nr. 249 / Page 39, 27 October 2003 ^ Whelan, FG., Hume and Machiavelli: Political Realism and Liberal Thought, Lexington Books, 2004, p. 163. ^ a b Miles, T. 2009. "Hume: Kierkegaard and Hume on reason, faith, and the ethics of philosophy." In Kierkegaard and the Renaissance and Modern Traditions: Philosophy, edited by J. B Stewart. London: Ashgate Publishing. p. 27. ^ Berlin, Isaiah. 2013. "Hume and the Sources of German Anti-Rationalism." pp. 204–235 in Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas (2nd ed.). Princeton: Princeton University Press. ^ Berlin, Isaiah. 11 May 2014. "Impressions of David Hume" (podcast episode). Philosophy Now Radio Show 34, hosted by G. Bartley. ^ Jessop, T. E. (1955). "David Hume Biography". Biography Online. 175 (4460): 697–698. Bibcode:1955Natur.175..697J. doi:10.1038/175697a0. S2CID 4187913. ^ Fodor, Jerry A. Hume Variations. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 135. ^ "Campaign to rename Edinburgh University building named after David Hume wins Students' Union support". Edinburgh News. Retrieved 18 September 2020. ^ "Hume disciples back name change for university tower". The Times. Retrieved 18 September 2020. ^ Millie Lord (28 September 2020). "Renaming DHT was a necessary antiracist step, but only the first of many". The Student. Archived from the original on 13 January 2021. Retrieved 30 September 2020. ^ Immerwahr, John (1992). "Hume's Revised Racism". Journal of the History of Ideas. 53 (3): 481–486. doi:10.2307/2709889. ISSN 0022-5037. JSTOR 2709889. In 1753 Hume revised his essay "Of National Characters" by adding the following footnote: 'I am apt to suspect the negroes and in general all other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no science...' ^ Hume, David. 1741. Essays Moral, Political, and Literary 1. Retrieved 19 May 2020. Archived. See also Liberty Fund edition. ^ Hume, David. 1993 [1742]. "Of Essay Writing," translated by F. Grandjean. Mauvezin, France: Trans-Europ-Repress. ^ Sampson, George (1943). "Samson, G., The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature, CUP Archive, 1941, p. 548". Retrieved 16 March 2017. ^ Smith, Adam. 1789. The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Cæsar to the Revolution in 1688 1. London: Thomas Cadell and Longman. ^ Berry, Christopher J.; Paganelli, Maria Pia; Smith, Craig (2013). The Oxford Handbook of Adam Smith. Oxford University Press. p. 466. ISBN 978-0-19-960506-4. Retrieved 16 March 2017. ^ ESSAYS ON SUICIDE AND THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL http://public-library.uk/ebooks/47/13.pdf Bibliography[edit] Adair, Douglass (1957). ""That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science": David Hume, James Madison, and the Tenth Federalist". Huntington Library Quarterly. 20 (4): 343–360. doi:10.2307/3816276. JSTOR 3816276. Ahluwalia, Libby (2008). Understanding Philosophy of Religion (illustrated ed.). Folens. ISBN 978-1-85008-264-4. Anderson, R. F. (1966). Hume's First Principles, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln. Angier, Tom, ed. (2012). Ethics: The Key Thinkers. Vol. 12. A&C Black. ISBN 978-1-4411-4939-8. Atherton, Margaret, ed. (1999). The Empiricists: Critical Essays on Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Critical essays on the classics. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0-8476-8913-2. Ayer, Alfred Jules (1946). Language, Truth and Logic (reprint ed.). Penguin Books. Bailey, Alan; O'Brien, Dan (2006). Hume's 'Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding': A Reader's Guide. Continuum reader's guides. A&C Black. ISBN 978-0-8264-8509-0. Bassett, Kate (2012). In Two Minds: a Biography of Jonathan Miller. Oberon Books. ISBN 978-1-84943-738-7.[permanent dead link‍] "Great Thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment". BBC History. 14 September 2014. Blackburn, Simon (Autumn 1990). "Hume and Thick Connexions". Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. 50, Supplement: 237–250. doi:10.2307/2108041. JSTOR 2108041. Blackburn, Simon (October 1995). "Practical Tortoise Raising". Mind. 104 (416) (New Series ed.): 695–711. doi:10.1093/mind/104.416.695. JSTOR 2254478. Bongie, L. L. (1998). David Hume – Prophet of the Counter-Revolution. Liberty Fund, Indianapolis Boswell, James (1970). Weis, Charles McC.; Pottle, Frederick A. (eds.). Boswell in Extremes, 1776–1778. Yale editions of the private papers of James Boswell. Yale University. Broackes, Justin (1995). Hume, David, in Ted Honderich (ed.) The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, New York, Oxford University Press Brown, Stuart, ed. (2005). Dictionary of Twentieth-Century British Philosophers. A&C Black. ISBN 978-1-84371-096-7. Buckle, Stephen (March 1999). "Hume's biography and Hume's philosophy". Australasian Journal of Philosophy. 77 (1): 1–25. doi:10.1080/00048409912348781. Burton, John Hill (1846). Life and Correspondence of David Hume. Vol. 2. William Tait. Carroll, John W.; Markosian, Ned (2010). An Introduction to Metaphysics. Cambridge Introductions to Philosophy. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-82629-7. Copleston, Frederick (1999). A History of Philosophy. Vol. 6. A&C Black. ISBN 978-0-86012-299-9. Costelloe, Timothy M. (2013). Aesthetics and Morals in the Philosophy of David Hume. Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Philosophy. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-19787-2. Coventry, Angela M. (2006). Hume's Theory of Causation. Continuum Studies in British Philosophy. A&C Black. ISBN 978-1-84714-222-1. Craig, Edward (1987). The Mind of God and the Works of Man. Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-824933-7. Cranston, Maurice (16 November 2014). "David Hume – Scottish philosopher. Morals and historical writing". Encyclopædia Britannica. Daiches D., Jones P., Jones J. (eds). The Scottish Enlightenment: 1730–1790 A Hotbed of Genius The University of Edinburgh, 1986. In paperback, The Saltire Society, 1996 ISBN 978-0-85411-069-8 Dauer, Francis Watanabe (2010). "Hume on the Relation of Cause and Effect". In Radcliffe, Elizabeth S. (ed.). A Companion to Hume. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 89–105. doi:10.1002/9780470696583.ch5. ISBN 978-1-4443-3786-0. Dees, Richard H. (2010). "Chapter 21. 'One of the Finest and Most Subtle Inventions': Hume on Government". In Radcliffe, Elizabeth S. (ed.). A Companion to Hume. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 388–405. doi:10.1002/9780470696583.ch6. ISBN 978-1-4443-3786-0. Dennett, Daniel C. (2009). "Chapter 3. Atheism and Evolution". In Zagzebski, Linda; Miller, Timothy D. (eds.). Readings in Philosophy of Religion: Ancient to Contemporary. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 614–635. ISBN 978-1-4051-8092-4. Dicker, Georges (2002). Hume's Epistemology and Metaphysics: An Introduction. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-71425-4. Edwards, Peter (2002). "The future of ethics". In Leaman, Oliver (ed.). The Future of Philosophy: Towards the Twenty First Century. Routledge. pp. 41–61. ISBN 978-1-134-82457-1. Einstein, A. (1915) Letter to Moritz Schlick, Schwarzschild, B. (trans. & ed.) in The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, vol. 8A, R. Schulmann, A. J. Fox, J. Illy, (eds.) Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ (1998), p. 220. Emerson, Roger L. (2009). Essays on David Hume Medical Men and the Scottish Enlightenment: Industry Knowledge and Humanity. Science, Technology and Culture, 1700–1945. Ashgate Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7546-9338-3. Fieser, James (2003). A Bibliography of Hume's Writings and Early Responses. Thoemmes Press. Fieser, James (2005). Early Responses to Hume's Life And Reputation. Vol. 9/10. A & C Black. ISBN 978-1-84371-115-5. Fisher, A. R. J. (December 2011). "Causal and Logical Necessity in Malebranche's Occasionalism" (PDF). Canadian Journal of Philosophy. 41 (4): 523–548. doi:10.1353/cjp.2011.0043. ISSN 1911-0820. S2CID 55643409. Archived from the original (PDF) on 5 February 2015. Flew, A. (1986). David Hume: Philosopher of Moral Science, Basil Blackwell, Oxford. Fodor, Jerry A. (2003). Hume Variations. Lines of thought. Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-926405-6. Fogelin, R. J. (1993). Hume's scepticism. In Norton, D. F. (ed.) (1993). The Cambridge Companion to Hume, Cambridge University Press, pp. 90–116. Forbes, Duncan (1985). Hume's Philosophical Politics. Cambridge paperback library (reprint ed.). CUP Archive. ISBN 978-0-521-31997-3. Garfield, Jay L. (1995). The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way. Oxford University Press. Garfield, Jay L. (2015). Engaging Buddhism. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-020433-4. Giles, James (April 1993). "The No-Self Theory: Hume, Buddhism, and Personal Identity". Philosophy East and West. 43 (2): 175–200. doi:10.2307/1399612. JSTOR 1399612. S2CID 147497625. Gopnik, Alison (2009). "Could David Hume Have Known about Buddhism?: Charles François Dolu, the Royal College of La Flèche, and the Global Jesuit Intellectual Network". Hume Studies. 35 (1 and 2): 5–28. ISSN 0319-7336. Gracyk, Ted (2011). "Hume's Aesthetics". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Graham, R. (2004). The Great Infidel – A Life of David Hume. John Donald, Edinburgh. Harris, James A., ed. (2013). The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century. Oxford Handbooks in Philosophy. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-954902-3. Harris, James A. (2015). Hume: An Intellectual Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-83725-5. Harris, Errol E. (2004). Hypothesis and Perception: The Roots of Scientific Method. Vol. 10. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-0-415-29615-1. Harwood, Sterling (1996). "Moral Sensibility Theories", in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Supplement) (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co.). Hobart, R. E. (1934). "Free Will as Involving Determination and Inconceivable Without It". Mind. 43 (169): 1–27. doi:10.1093/mind/XLIII.169.1. JSTOR 2250169. Humber, James M. (2008). "Hume". In Arrington, Robert L. (ed.). The World's Great Philosophers. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 126–137. ISBN 978-0-470-69295-0. Hume, David (1740). An Abstract of a Book lately Published; Entitled, 'A Treatise of Human Nature', &c. Wherein the Chief Argument of that Book is farther Illustrated and Explained. London: C. Borbett. Archived from the original on 17 June 2018. Retrieved 28 February 2015. Hume, D. (1751). An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. David Hume, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary edited with preliminary dissertations and notes by T.H. Green and T.H. Grose, 1:1–8. London: Longmans, Green 1907. Hume, David (1777) [1748]. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. London: A. Millar. Archived from the original on 10 July 2018. Retrieved 14 March 2015. Hume, David (1739). A Treatise of Human Nature. London: John Noon. Archived from the original on 12 July 2018. Retrieved 11 March 2015. Hume, David (1779). Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Archived from the original on 24 June 2018. Retrieved 22 April 2015. Hume, David (1741). Essays, Moral and Political. Edinburgh: A. Kincaid. Archived from the original on 10 July 2018. Retrieved 7 April 2015. Hume, David (1987). "Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth". In Miller, Eugene F. (ed.). Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary. Indianapolis: Library Fund, Inc. Hume, David (1888). Hill, George Birkbeck Norman (ed.). Letters of David Hume to William Strahan. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hume, David (1757). "The Natural History of Religion". Four Dissertations. London: A. Millar. Archived from the original on 16 April 2015. Retrieved 7 April 2015. Hume, David (2013). "Appendix C: From Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)". In Falkenstein, Lorne; McArthur, Neil (eds.). Essays and Treatises on Philosophical Subjects. Broadview editions. Broadview Press. ISBN 978-1-55111-804-8. Hume, David (1993). "A Kind of History of My Life". In Norton, David Fate (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Hume. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-38710-1. Hume, D. (1752–1758). Political Discourses:Bilingual English-French (translated by Fabien Grandjean). Mauvezin, France, Trans-Europ-Repress, 1993, 22 cm, V-260 p. Bibliographic notes, index. Hume, David (2011). Greig, J.Y.T. (ed.). The Letters of David Hume: 1727–1765. Vol. 1. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-969324-5. Hume, David (1778). "My Own Life". The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Cæsar to the Revolution in 1688. Vol. 1. London: via Rutgers University, edited by Jack Lynch. pp. 1–21. Archived from the original on 16 January 2018. Retrieved 25 February 2015. Hume, David (1789). "Letter from Adam Smith, LL.D. to William Strathan, Esq.". The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Cæsar to the Revolution in 1688. Vol. 1. London: Thomas Cadell and Longman. pp. xix–xxiv. Husserl, E. (1970). The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Carr, D. (trans.), Northwestern University Press, Evanston. Huxley, Thomas Henry (2011). Hume. English Men of Letters. Vol. 39. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-03477-7. Jessop, Thomas Edmund (5 May 2015). "David Hume. Scottish philosopher. Significance and influence". Encyclopædia Britannica. Johnson, Oliver A. (1995). "The Mind of David Hume". University of Illinois Press: 8–9. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help) Kenyon, John D.; Craig, Edward (1985). "Doubts about the Concept of Reason". Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes. 59: 249–267 and 269–283. doi:10.1093/aristoteliansupp/59.1.249. JSTOR 4106756. Kenyon, John Philipps (1984). The history men: the historical profession in England since the Renaissance. University of Pittsburgh Press. p. 42. ISBN 978-0-8229-5900-7. Klibansky, Raymond and Mossner, Ernest C. (eds.) (1954). New Letters of David Hume. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kolakowski, L. (1968). The Alienation of Reason: A History of Positivist Thought. Doubleday: Garden City. Korsgaard, Christine M. (January 1996). "Skepticism about Practical Reason". The Journal of Philosophy. 83 (1): 5–25. doi:10.2307/2026464. JSTOR 2026464. Levine, Michael (1989). Hume and the Problem of Miracles: A Solution. Philosophical Studies Series. Vol. 41. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 978-0-7923-0043-4. Livingston, Donald (1965). "Foreword". David Hume: Prophet of the Counter-revolution. Oxford University Press. Loeb, Louis E. (2010). "Chapter 6. Inductive Inference in Hume's Philosophy". In Radcliffe, Elizabeth S. (ed.). A Companion to Hume. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 106–125. doi:10.1002/9780470696583.ch6. ISBN 978-1-4443-3786-0. MacKie, John Leslie (1982). The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and Against the Existence of God (reprinted ed.). Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-824682-4. Madden, James D. (2005). "Chapter 8. Giving the devil his due". In Sennett, James F.; Groothuis, Douglas (eds.). In Defense of Natural Theology: A Post-Humean Assessment. InterVarsity Press. pp. 150–174. ISBN 978-0-8308-2767-1. Magee, Bryan (2000). The Great Philosophers: An Introduction to Western Philosophy. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-289322-2. Martin Orejana, Marina (1991). Jorge Luis Borges and David Hume: Their Epistemological Approach to the External World and the Self. University of Virginia. Maurer, The Reverend Armand (27 May 2013). "Western philosophy. Basic Science of Human Nature in Hume". Encyclopædia Britannica. McArthur, Neil (2007). David Hume's Political Theory: Law, Commerce, and the Constitution of Government. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0-8020-9335-6. McDowell, John (1981). "Non-cognitivism and rule-following". In Holtzman, Steven H.; Leich, Christopher M. (eds.). Wittgenstein: To Follow A Rule. International Library of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Method. Routledge & Kegan Paul. pp. 141–162. ISBN 978-0-7100-0760-5. McKenna, Michael; Coates, Justin D. (2015). "Compatibilism". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Millican, Peter (1996). Hume, Induction and Probability (PDF). University of Leeds. Archived from the original (PDF) on 20 October 2017. Retrieved 6 June 2014. Morris, William Edward; Brown, Charlotte R. (2011). "David Hume". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Mossner, Ernest Campbell (1958). "Hume at La Flèche, 1735: an unpublished letter". Studies in English. 37: 30–33. Mossner, Ernest Campbell (1950). "Philosophy and Biography: The Case of David Hume". The Philosophical Review. 59 (2): 184–201. doi:10.2307/2181501. JSTOR 2181501. Mossner, Ernest Campbell (1980). The Life of David Hume. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-924336-5. Mounce, Howard; Mounce, H.O. (2002). Hume's Naturalism. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-65446-8. Nobbs, Douglas (1965). "The Political Ideas of William Cleghorn, Hume's Academic Rival". Journal of the History of Ideas. 26 (4): 575–586. doi:10.2307/2708501. JSTOR 2708501. Norton, David Fate (1993). "Introduction to Hume's thought". In Norton, David Fate (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Hume. Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–32. ISBN 978-0-521-38710-1. O'Connor, David (2013). Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Hume on Religion. Routledge Philosophy GuideBooks. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-63409-5. Okie, Laird (1985). "Ideology and Partiality in David Hume's History of England" (PDF). Hume Studies. 11 (1): 1–32. doi:10.1353/hms.2011.0052. S2CID 170693611. Archived from the original (PDF) on 8 December 2014. Retrieved 8 July 2013. Parfit, Derek (1984). Reasons and Persons. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-162244-1. Passmore, John A. (2013). Hume's Intentions. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-69786-7. Penelhum, T. (1993). Hume's moral philosophy. In Norton, D. F. (ed.), (1993). The Cambridge Companion to Hume, Cambridge University Press, pp. 117–147. Phillipson, N. (1989). Hume, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London. Phillipson, Nicholas (2012). David Hume: The Philosopher As Historian. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-18166-1. Popkin, Richard H. (3 December 2014). "Skepticism. The 18th century". Encyclopædia Britannica. Popkin, Richard H. (1993) "Sources of Knowledge of Sextus Empiricus in Hume's Time" Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 54, No. 1. (Jan. 1993), pp. 137–141. Popkin, R. & Stroll, A. (1993) Philosophy. Reed Educational and Professional Publishing Ltd, Oxford. Popper. K. (1960). Knowledge without authority. In Miller D. (ed.), (1983). Popper, Oxford, Fontana, pp. 46–57. Prasad, Rajendra (1995). "Reactive Attitudes, Rationality and Determinism". In Sen, Pranab Kumar; Verma, Roop Rekha (eds.). The Philosophy of P.F. Strawson. Allied Publishers. pp. 346–376. ISBN 978-81-85636-16-0. Read, Rupert; Richman, Kenneth, eds. (2002). The New Hume Debate. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-55528-4. Redman, Deborah A. (1997). The Rise of Political Economy as a Science: Methodology and the Classical Economists. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ISBN 978-0-262-26425-9. "Arguments for the existence of God. The design (or teleological) argument". Religiouseducation.co.uk. Archived from the original on 14 April 2015. Retrieved 22 April 2015. Rivers, Isabel (2000). Reason, Grace, and Sentiment: Volume 2, Shaftesbury to Hume: A Study of the Language of Religion and Ethics in England, 1660–1780. Cambridge Studies in Eighteenth-Century English Literature and Thought. Vol. 37. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-42500-1. Robbins, Lionel (1998). A History of Economic Thought: The LSE Lectures. Edited by Steven G. Medema and Warren J. Samuels. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Robinson, Dave & Groves, Judy (2003). Introducing Political Philosophy. Icon Books. ISBN 978-1-84046-450-4. Roth, Robert J. (1991). "David Hume on Religion in England". Thought: Fordham University Quarterly. 66 (260): 51–64. doi:10.5840/thought199166142. Russell, B. (1946). A History of Western Philosophy. London, Allen and Unwin. Russell, Paul (1995). Freedom and Moral Sentiment: Hume's Way of Naturalizing Responsibility. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-509501-2. Russell, Paul (2014). "Hume on Religion". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Russell, Paul, "Hume on Free Will", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), online. Russell, Paul (2008). The Riddle of Hume's Treatise: Skepticism, Naturalism, and Irreligion. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-975152-5. Scharfstein, Ben-Ami (1998). A Comparative History of World Philosophy: From the Upanishads to Kant. EBSCO eBook Collection. SUNY Press. ISBN 978-0-7914-3683-7. Schmidt, Claudia M. (2010). David Hume: Reason in History. Penn State Press. ISBN 978-0-271-04697-6. Scruton, Roger (14 December 2014). "Aesthetics: Major concerns of 18th-century aesthetics". Encyclopædia Britannica. Sgarbi, M. (2012). "Hume's Source of the 'Impression-Idea' Distinction", Anales del Seminario de Historia de la Filosofía, 2: 561–576 Sher, Richard B. (2008). The Enlightenment and the Book: Scottish Authors and Their Publishers in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and America. Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology Series. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-75254-9. Singer, Peter (4 March 2015). "The climax of moral sense theory: Hutcheson and Hume". Encyclopædia Britannica. Smith, Michael Andrew (January 1987). "The Humean Theory of Motivation". Mind. 96 (381) (New Series ed.): 36–61. doi:10.1093/mind/XCVI.381.36. Spencer, Mark G., ed. David Hume: Historical Thinker, Historical Writer (Penn State University Press; 2013) 282 pages; Interdisciplinary essays that consider his intertwined work as historian and philosopher Spiegel, Henry William, (1991). The Growth of Economic Thought, 3rd Ed., Durham: Duke University Press. Strawson, Galen (2011). The Evident Connexion: Hume on Personal Identity. Oxford Scholarship Online. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199608508.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-960850-8. Strawson, Galen (2014). The Secret Connexion: Causation, Realism, and David Hume. Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology Series. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-960585-9. Strawson, Sir Peter Frederick (2008). Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-06087-0. Stroud, B. (1977). Hume, Routledge: London & New York. Swain, Corliss Gaida (2008). "Personal Identity". In Traiger, Saul (ed.). The Blackwell Guide to Hume's Treatise. Blackwell Guides to Great Works. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-4051-5313-3. Taylor, A. E. (1927). David Hume and the Miraculous, Leslie Stephen Lecture. Cambridge, pp. 53–54. reprinted in his Philosophical Studies (1934) Taylor, W. L. (1965). Francis Hutcheson and David Hume as Predecessors of Adam Smith. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Waldmann, Felix (2014). Further Letters of David Hume. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Bibliographical Society. Wertz, S. K. (1975). "Hume, History, and Human Nature". Journal of the History of Ideas. 36 (3): 481–496. doi:10.2307/2708658. JSTOR 2708658. Wertz, S. K. (1993). "Hume and the Historiography of Science". Journal of the History of Ideas. 54 (3): 411–436. doi:10.2307/2710021. JSTOR 2710021. Wiley, James (2012). Theory and Practice in the Philosophy of David Hume. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-137-02643-9. Wright, John P. (2009). Hume's 'A Treatise of Human Nature': An Introduction. Cambridge Introductions to Key Philosophical Texts. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-83376-9. Wright, John P. (1983). The Sceptical Realism of David Hume. Studies in intellectual history and the history of philosophy. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-0882-5. Wright, Richard (2010). Understanding Religious Ethics: A Complete Guide for OCR AS and A2. Studies in intellectual history and the history of philosophy. Oxford University Press. Further reading[edit] Library resources about David Hume Online books Resources in your library Resources in other libraries By David Hume Online books Resources in your library Resources in other libraries Adamson, Robert; Mitchell, John Malcolm (1911). "Hume, David" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 13 (11th ed.). pp. 876–884. Ardal, Pall (1966). Passion and Value in Hume's Treatise, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press. Bailey, Alan & O'Brien, Dan (eds.) (2012). The Continuum Companion to Hume, New York: Continuum. Bailey, Alan & O'Brien, Dan. (2014). Hume's Critique of Religion: Sick Men's Dreams, Dordrecht: Springer. Beauchamp, Tom & Rosenberg, Alexander (1981). Hume and the Problem of Causation, New York, Oxford University Press. Beveridge, Craig (1982), review of The Life of David Hume by Ernest Campbell Mossner, in Murray, Glen (ed.), Cencrastus No. 8, Spring 1982, p. 46, ISSN 0264-0856 Campbell Mossner, Ernest (1980). The Life of David Hume, Oxford University Press. Gilles Deleuze (1953). Empirisme et subjectivité. Essai sur la Nature Humaine selon Hume, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France; trans. Empiricism and Subjectivity, New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. Demeter, Tamás (2012). "Hume's Experimental Method". British Journal for the History of Philosophy. 20 (3): 577. doi:10.1080/09608788.2012.670842. hdl:11858/00-001M-0000-002A-7F3A-B. S2CID 170120193. Demeter, Tamás (2014). "Natural Theology as Superstition: Hume and the Changing Ideology of Moral Inquiry." In Demeter, T. et al. (eds.), Conflicting Values of Inquiry, Leiden: Brill. Garrett, Don (1996). Cognition and Commitment in Hume's Philosophy. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gaskin, J.C.A. (1978). Hume's Philosophy of Religion. Humanities Press International. Harris, James A. (2015). Hume: An Intellectual Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hesselberg, A. Kenneth (1961). Hume, Natural Law and Justice. Duquesne Review, Spring 1961, pp. 46–47. Kail, P. J. E. (2007) Projection and Realism in Hume's Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kemp Smith, Norman (1941). The Philosophy of David Hume. London: Macmillan. Narveson, Jan; Trenchard, David (2008). "Hume, David (1711–1776)". In Hamowy, Ronald (ed.). Nozick, Robert (1938–2002). The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE; Cato Institute. pp. 230–231. doi:10.4135/9781412965811.n220. ISBN 978-1412965804. Norton, David Fate (1982). David Hume: Common-Sense Moralist, Sceptical Metaphysician. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Norton, David Fate & Taylor, Jacqueline (eds.) (2009). The Cambridge Companion to Hume, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Radcliffe, Elizabeth S. (ed.) (2008). A Companion to Hume, Malden: Blackwell. Rosen, Frederick (2003). Classical Utilitarianism from Hume to Mill (Routledge Studies in Ethics & Moral Theory). ISBN 978-0-415-22094-1 Russell, Paul (1995). Freedom and Moral Sentiment: Hume's Way of Naturalizing Responsibility. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. Russell, Paul (2008). The Riddle of Hume's Treatise: Skepticism, Naturalism and Irreligion. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stroud, Barry (1977). Hume, London & New York: Routledge. (Complete study of Hume's work parting from the interpretation of Hume's naturalistic philosophical programme). Wei, Jua (2017). Commerce and Politics in Hume’s History of England, Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer online review Willis, Andre C (2015). Toward a Humean True Religion: Genuine Theism, Moderate Hope, and Practical Morality, University Park: Penn State University Press. Wilson, Fred (2008). The External World and Our Knowledge of It : Hume's critical realism, an exposition and a defence, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. External links[edit] Wikimedia Commons has media related to David Hume. Wikisource has original text related to this article: David Hume Wikiquote has quotations related to David Hume. Works by David Hume in eBook form at Standard Ebooks Works by David Hume at Project Gutenberg Works by David Hume at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks) The David Hume Collection at McGill University Library Works by or about David Hume at the Internet Archive Books by David Hume at the Online Books Page Hume Texts Online searchable texts, with related resources Peter Millican. Papers and Talks on Hume Peter Millican. Research Bennett, Jonathan. "David Hume". Texts From Early Modern Philosophy. PDF, EPUB, MP3, MOBI Translations of philosophical classics into contemporary English, from English, Latin, French and German. David Hume: My Own Life and Adam Smith: obituary of Hume Bibliography of Hume's influence on Utilitarianism The Hume Society, publishes Hume Studies and holds conferences vteDavid HumeBooks A Treatise of Human Nature An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary Four Dissertations Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion The History of England The History of Great Britain Criticism Argument for the existence of God from design Problem of induction Is–ought problem Philosophy Hume's principle Hume's law Hume's fork The Missing Shade of Blue "Of Miracles" Scottish Enlightenment Empiricism Price–specie flow mechanism Related Hume Studies A Treatise of Human Nature (Abstract) Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence Links to related articles vteAge of EnlightenmentTopics Atheism Capitalism Civil liberties Classicism Counter-Enlightenment Critical thinking Deism Democracy Empiricism Encyclopédistes Enlightened absolutism Haskalah Humanism Human rights Individualism Liberalism Liberté, égalité, fraternité Lumières Methodological skepticism Midlands Modernity Natural philosophy Objectivity Progressivism Rationality Rationalism Reason Reductionism Sapere aude Science Scientific method Spanish America Universality Utopianism ThinkersEngland Addison Ashley-Cooper Bacon Bentham Collins Gibbon Godwin Harrington Hooke Johnson Locke Milton Newton Pope Price Priestley Reynolds Sidney Tindal Wollstonecraft France d'Alembert d'Argenson Bayle Beaumarchais Chamfort Châtelet Condillac Condorcet Descartes Diderot Fontenelle Gouges Helvétius d'Holbach Jaucourt La Mettrie Lavoisier Leclerc Mably Maréchal Meslier Montesquieu Morelly Pascal Quesnay Raynal Sade Turgot Voltaire Geneva Abauzit Bonnet Burlamaqui Prévost Rousseau Saussure Germany Goethe Herder Humboldt Kant Leibniz Lessing Lichtenberg Mendelssohn Pufendorf Schiller Thomasius Weishaupt Wieland Wolff Greece Farmakidis Feraios Kairis Korais Ireland Berkeley Boyle Burke Swift Toland Italy Beccaria Galiani Galvani Genovesi Pagano Verri Vico Netherlands Bekker de la Court Grotius Huygens Koerbagh Leeuwenhoek Mandeville Meyer Nieuwentyt Spinoza Swammerdam Poland Kołłątaj Konarski Krasicki Niemcewicz Poniatowski Śniadecki Staszic Wybicki Portugal Carvalho e Melo Romania Budai-Deleanu Cantemir Maior Micu-Klein Șincai Russia Catherine II Fonvizin Kantemir Kheraskov Lomonosov Novikov Radishchev Vorontsova-Dashkova Serbia Obradović Mrazović Spain Cadalso Charles III Feijóo y Montenegro Moratín Jovellanos Villarroel Scotland Beattie Black Blair Boswell Burnett Burns Cullen Ferguson Hume Hutcheson Hutton Mill Newton Playfair Reid Smith Stewart United States Franklin Jefferson Madison Mason Paine Romanticism → Category vteClassical economists Francis Hutcheson Bernard Mandeville David Hume Adam Smith Anders Chydenius Jean-Baptiste Say Thomas Malthus James Mill Francis Place David Ricardo Henry Thornton John Ramsay McCulloch James Maitland, 8th Earl of Lauderdale Jeremy Bentham Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi Johann Heinrich von Thünen John Stuart Mill Nassau William Senior Edward Gibbon Wakefield Frédéric Bastiat Thomas Tooke Robert Torrens vteEpistemologyEpistemologists Thomas Aquinas Augustine of HippoлЬцУ William Alston Robert Audi A. J. Ayer George Berkeley Laurence BonJour Gilles Deleuze Keith DeRose René Descartes John Dewey Fred Dretske Edmund Gettier Alvin Goldman Nelson Goodman Paul Grice Anil Gupta Susan Haack David Hume Immanuel Kant Søren Kierkegaard Peter Klein Saul Kripke Hilary Kornblith David Lewis John Locke G. E. Moore John McDowell Robert Nozick Alvin Plantinga Plato Duncan Pritchard James Pryor Hilary Putnam W. V. O. Quine Thomas Reid Bertrand Russell Gilbert Ryle Wilfrid Sellars Susanna Siegel Ernest Sosa P. F. Strawson Baruch Spinoza Timothy Williamson Ludwig Wittgenstein Nicholas Wolterstorff Vienna Circle more... Theories Coherentism Constructivism Contextualism Empiricism Evolutionary epistemology Fallibilism Feminist epistemology Fideism Foundationalism Holism Infinitism Innatism Naïve realism Naturalized epistemology Phenomenalism Positivism Rationalism Reductionism Reliabilism Representational realism Skepticism Transcendental idealism Concepts A priori knowledge A posteriori knowledge Analysis Analytic–synthetic distinction Belief Common sense Descriptive knowledge Exploratory thought Epistemic injustice Epistemic virtue Gettier problem Induction Internalism and externalism Justification Knowledge Objectivity Privileged access Problem of induction Problem of other minds Perception Procedural knowledge Proposition Regress argument Simplicity Truth more... Related articles Outline of epistemology Faith and rationality Formal epistemology Metaepistemology Philosophy of perception Philosophy of science Social epistemology Virtue epistemology Category Task Force Stubs Discussion vtePhilosophy of religionConcepts in religion Afterlife Euthyphro dilemma Faith or religious belief Intelligent design Miracle Problem of evil Soul Spirit Theodicy Theological veto Conceptions of God Brahman Demiurge Divine simplicity Egoism Holy Spirit Misotheism Pandeism Personal god Process theology Supreme Being Unmoved mover God in Abrahamic religions Buddhism Christianity Hinduism Islam Jainism Judaism Mormonism Sikhism Baháʼí Faith Wicca Existence of GodFor Beauty Christological Consciousness Cosmological Kalam Contingency Degree Desire Experience Fine-tuning of the universe Love Miracles Morality Necessary existent Ontological Pascal's wager Proper basis and Reformed epistemology Reason Teleological Natural law Watchmaker analogy Transcendental Against 747 gambit Atheist's Wager Evil Free will Hell Inconsistent revelations Nonbelief Noncognitivism Occam's razor Omnipotence Poor design Russell's teapot Theology Acosmism Agnosticism Animism Antireligion Atheism Creationism Dharmism Deism Demonology Divine command theory Dualism Esotericism Exclusivism Existentialism Christian Atheistic Feminist theology Thealogy Womanist theology Fideism Fundamentalism Gnosticism Henotheism Humanism Religious Secular Christian Inclusivism Theories about religions Monism Monotheism Mysticism Naturalism Metaphysical Religious Humanistic New Age Nondualism Nontheism Pandeism Panentheism Pantheism Perennialism Polytheism Possibilianism Process theology Religious skepticism Spiritualism Shamanism Taoic Theism Transcendentalism more... Religious language Eschatological verification Language game Logical positivism Apophatic theology Verificationism Problem of evil Augustinian theodicy Best of all possible worlds Euthyphro dilemma Inconsistent triad Irenaean theodicy Natural evil Theodicy Philosophersof religion(by date active) Ancient andmedieval Anselm of Canterbury Augustine of Hippo Avicenna Averroes Boethius Gaudapada Gaunilo of Marmoutiers Pico della Mirandola Heraclitus King James VI and I Marcion of Sinope Maimonides Adi Shankara Thomas Aquinas William of Ockham Early modern Augustin Calmet René Descartes Blaise Pascal Desiderius Erasmus Baruch Spinoza Nicolas Malebranche Gottfried W Leibniz William Wollaston Thomas Chubb David Hume Baron d'Holbach Immanuel Kant Johann G Herder 18001850 Friedrich Schleiermacher Karl C F Krause Georg W F Hegel Thomas Carlyle William Whewell Ludwig Feuerbach Søren Kierkegaard Karl Marx Albrecht Ritschl Afrikan Spir 18801900 Ernst Haeckel W K Clifford Friedrich Nietzsche Harald Høffding William James Vladimir Solovyov Ernst Troeltsch Rudolf Otto Lev Shestov Sergei Bulgakov Pavel Florensky Ernst Cassirer Joseph Maréchal 1920postwar George Santayana Bertrand Russell Martin Buber René Guénon Paul Tillich Karl Barth Emil Brunner Rudolf Bultmann Gabriel Marcel Reinhold Niebuhr Charles Hartshorne Mircea Eliade Frithjof Schuon J L Mackie Walter Kaufmann Martin Lings Peter Geach George I Mavrodes William Alston Antony Flew 197019902010 William L Rowe Dewi Z Phillips Alvin Plantinga Anthony Kenny Nicholas Wolterstorff Richard Swinburne Robert Merrihew Adams Ravi Zacharias Peter van Inwagen Daniel Dennett Loyal Rue Jean-Luc Marion William Lane Craig Ali Akbar Rashad Alexander Pruss Related topics Criticism of religion Desacralization of knowledge Ethics in religion Exegesis History of religion Religion Religious language Religious philosophy Relationship between religion and science Faith and rationality more... Portal Category vtePhilosophy of scienceConcepts Analysis Analytic–synthetic distinction A priori and a posteriori Causality Mill's Methods Commensurability Consilience Construct Correlation function Creative synthesis Demarcation problem Empirical evidence Experiment design Explanatory power Fact Falsifiability Feminist method Functional contextualism Hypothesis alternative null Ignoramus et ignorabimus Inductive reasoning Intertheoretic reduction Inquiry Nature Objectivity Observation Paradigm Problem of induction Scientific evidence Evidence-based practice Scientific law Scientific method Scientific pluralism Scientific Revolution Testability Theory choice ladenness scientific Underdetermination Unity of science Variable control dependent and independent more... Theories Coherentism Confirmation holism Constructive empiricism Constructive realism Constructivist epistemology Contextualism Conventionalism Deductive-nomological model Epistemological anarchism Evolutionism Fallibilism Foundationalism Hypothetico-deductive model Inductionism Instrumentalism Model-dependent realism Naturalism Physicalism Positivism / Reductionism / Determinism Pragmatism Rationalism / Empiricism Received view / Semantic view of theories Scientific essentialism Scientific formalism Scientific realism / Anti-realism Scientific skepticism Scientism Structuralism Uniformitarianism Verificationism Vitalism Philosophy of... Biology Chemistry Physics Space and time Social science Archaeology Economics‎ Geography History Linguistics Psychology Related topics Criticism of science Descriptive science Epistemology Exact sciences Faith and rationality Hard and soft science History and philosophy of science Non-science Pseudoscience Normative science Protoscience Questionable cause Relationship between religion and science Rhetoric of science Science studies Sociology of scientific ignorance Sociology of scientific knowledge Philosophers of sciencePrecursors Roger Bacon Francis Bacon Galileo Galilei Isaac Newton David Hume Auguste Comte Henri Poincaré Pierre Duhem Rudolf Steiner Karl Pearson Charles Sanders Peirce Wilhelm Windelband Alfred North Whitehead Bertrand Russell Otto Neurath C. D. Broad Michael Polanyi Hans Reichenbach Rudolf Carnap Karl Popper Carl Gustav Hempel W. V. O. Quine Thomas Kuhn Imre Lakatos Paul Feyerabend Ian Hacking Bas van Fraassen Larry Laudan Category Philosophy portal Science portal vteSocial philosophyConcepts Agency Anomie Convention Cosmopolitanism Customs Cultural heritage Culturalism Inter Mono Multi Culture Counter Familialism History Honour Human nature Identity Formation Ideology Institutions Invisible hand Loyalty Modernity Morality Public Mores National character Natural law Personhood Reification Ressentiment Rights Sittlichkeit Social alienation Social norms Spontaneous order Stewardship Traditions Values Family Volksgeist Worldview Schools Budapest School Catholic social teaching Distributism Communitarianism Confucianism Conservatism Social Frankfurt School Personalism PhilosophersAncient Augustine Cicero Confucius Lactantius Laozi Mencius Mozi Origen Philo Plato Polybius Tertullian Thucydides Xunzi Medieval Alpharabius Aquinas Avempace Bruni Dante Gelasius Ibn Khaldun Maimonides Muhammad Photios Plethon Ibn Tufayl Early modern Calvin Erasmus Guicciardini Locke Luther Milton Montaigne Müntzer 18th and 19thcenturies Arnold Bentham Bonald Burke Carlyle Comte Condorcet Emerson Engels Fichte Fourier Franklin Hegel Helvétius Herder Hume Jefferson Kant Kierkegaard Le Bon Le Play Marx Mill Nietzsche Owen Renan Rousseau Royce Ruskin Smith Spencer de Staël Stirner Taine Thoreau Tocqueville Vico Vivekananda Voltaire 20th and 21stcenturies Adorno Agamben Arendt Aron Badiou Baudrillard Bauman Benoist Berlin Butler Camus de Beauvoir Debord Deleuze Dewey Du Bois Durkheim Eco Evola Foucault Fromm Gandhi Gehlen Gentile Gramsci Guénon Habermas Han Heidegger Hoppe Irigaray Kirk Kołakowski Kropotkin Land Lasch MacIntyre Marcuse Maritain Negri Niebuhr Nussbaum Oakeshott Ortega Pareto Polanyi Radhakrishnan Röpke Santayana Scruton Shariati Simmel Skinner Sombart Sowell Spengler Taylor Voegelin Walzer Weber Weil Zinn Žižek Works De Officiis (44 BC) Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486) A Vindication of Natural Society (1756) Democracy in America (1835–1840) Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935) The Second Sex (1949) One-Dimensional Man (1964) The Society of the Spectacle (1967) The History of Sexuality (1976) The Culture of Narcissism (1979) A Conflict of Visions (1987) The Closing of the American Mind (1987) Gender Trouble (1990) The Malaise of Modernity (1991) Intellectuals and Society (2010) See also Agnotology Axiology Critical theory Cultural criticism Cultural pessimism Ethics Historism Historicism Humanities Philosophy of culture Philosophy of education Philosophy of history Political philosophy Social criticism Social science Social theory Sociology Category vtePolitical philosophyTerms Authority Citizenship‎ Duty Elite Emancipation Freedom Government Hegemony Hierarchy Justice Law Legitimacy Liberty Monopoly Nation Obedience Peace People Pluralism Power Progress Propaganda Property Regime Revolution Rights Ruling class Society Sovereignty‎ State Utopia War Government Aristocracy Autocracy Bureaucracy Dictatorship Democracy Gerontocracy Meritocracy Monarchy Oligarchy Plutocracy Technocracy Theocracy Ideologies Agrarianism Anarchism Capitalism Christian democracy Colonialism Communism Communitarianism Confucianism Conservatism Corporatism Distributism Environmentalism Fascism Feminism Feudalism Imperialism Islamism Liberalism Libertarianism Localism Marxism Monarchism Multiculturalism Nationalism Nazism Populism Republicanism Social Darwinism Social democracy Socialism Third Way Concepts Balance of power Bellum omnium contra omnes Body politic Clash of civilizations Common good Consent of the governed Divine right of kings Family as a model for the state Monopoly on violence Natural law Negative and positive rights Night-watchman state Noble lie Noblesse oblige Open society Ordered liberty Original position Overton window Separation of powers Social contract State of nature Statolatry Tyranny of the majority PhilosophersAntiquity Aristotle Chanakya Cicero Confucius Han Fei Lactantius Mencius Mozi Plato political philosophy Polybius Shang Sun Tzu Thucydides Xenophon Middle Ages Alpharabius Aquinas Averroes Bruni Dante Gelasius al-Ghazali Ibn Khaldun Marsilius Muhammad Nizam al-Mulk Ockham Plethon Wang Early modernperiod Boétie Bodin Bossuet Calvin Campanella Filmer Grotius Guicciardini Hobbes political philosophy James Leibniz Locke Luther Machiavelli Milton More Müntzer Pufendorf Spinoza Suárez 18th and 19thcenturies Bakunin Bastiat Beccaria Bentham Bolingbroke Bonald Burke Carlyle Comte Condorcet Constant Cortés Engels Fichte Fourier Franklin Godwin Haller Hegel Herder Hume Iqbal political philosophy Jefferson Kant political philosophy Le Bon Le Play Madison Maistre Marx Mazzini Mill Montesquieu Nietzsche Owen Paine Renan Rousseau Sade Saint-Simon Smith Spencer de Staël Stirner Taine Thoreau Tocqueville Tucker Voltaire 20th and 21stcenturies Agamben Ambedkar Arendt Aron Badiou Bauman Benoist Berlin Bernstein Burnham Chomsky Dmowski Du Bois Dugin Dworkin Evola Foucault Fromm Fukuyama Gandhi Gentile Gramsci Guénon Habermas Hayek Hoppe Huntington Kautsky Kirk Kropotkin Laclau Lenin Luxemburg Mansfield Mao Marcuse Maurras Michels Mises Mosca Mouffe Negri Nozick Nussbaum Oakeshott Ortega Pareto Popper Qutb Rand Rawls Röpke Rothbard Russell Sartre Schmitt Scruton Shariati Sorel Spann Spengler Strauss Sun Taylor Voegelin Walzer Weber Works Republic (c. 375 BC) Politics (c. 350 BC) De re publica (51 BC) Treatise on Law (c. 1274) Monarchia (1313) The Prince (1532) Leviathan (1651) Two Treatises of Government (1689) The Spirit of Law (1748) The Social Contract (1762) Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) Rights of Man (1791) Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820) Democracy in America (1835–1840) The Communist Manifesto (1848) On Liberty (1859) The Revolt of the Masses (1929) The Road to Serfdom (1944) The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) A Theory of Justice (1971) The End of History and the Last Man (1992) Related Authoritarianism Collectivism and individualism Conflict theories Contractualism Critique of political economy Egalitarianism Elite theory Elitism History of political thought Institutional discrimination Jurisprudence Justification for the state Machiavellianism Political ethics Political spectrum Left-wing politics Centrism Right-wing politics Political theology Political violence Separation of church and state Separatism Social justice Statism Totalitarianism Index Category:Political philosophy vteAestheticsAreas Ancient Africa India Japanese Mathematics Medieval Music Nature Science Theology Schools Aestheticism Classicism Fascism Feminism Formalism Historicism Marxism Modernism Postmodernism Psychoanalysis Realism Romanticism Symbolism Theosophy more... Philosophers Abhinavagupta Adorno Alberti Aristotle Aquinas Balázs Balthasar Baudelaire Baudrillard Baumgarten Bell Benjamin Burke Coleridge Collingwood Coomaraswamy Danto Deleuze Dewey Fry Goethe Goodman Greenberg Hanslick Hegel Heidegger Hume Hutcheson Kant Kierkegaard Klee Langer Lipps Liu Lukács Lyotard Man Marcuse Maritain Merleau-Ponty Nietzsche Ortega y Gasset Orwell Pater Plato Rancière Rand Richards Ruskin Santayana Schiller Schopenhauer Scruton Tagore Tanizaki Vasari Wilde Winckelmann more... Concepts Appropriation Art for art's sake Art manifesto Artistic merit Avant-garde Beauty Feminine Masculine Camp Comedy Creativity Cuteness Depiction Disgust Ecstasy Elegance Emotions Entertainment Eroticism Fashion Gaze Harmony Humour Interpretation Judgment Kama Kitsch Life imitating art Magnificence Mimesis Perception Picturesque Quality Rasa Recreation Reverence Style Sublime Taste Tragedy Work of art Works Hippias Major (c. 390 BC) Poetics (c. 335 BC) The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons (c. 100) On the Sublime (c. 500) A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) Lectures on Aesthetics (1835) "The Critic as Artist" (1891) In Praise of Shadows (1933) Art as Experience (1934) "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935) "Avant-Garde and Kitsch" (1939) Critical Essays (1946) The Aesthetic Dimension (1977) Why Beauty Matters (2009) Related Aestheticization of politics Applied aesthetics Arts criticism Axiology Evolutionary aesthetics Mathematical beauty Neuroesthetics Patterns in nature Philosophy of design Philosophy of film Philosophy of music Psychology of art Theory of art Index Outline Category Philosophy portal vteHistorians of Europe Acton Blanning Braudel Burckhardt Davies Dawson Eisenstein Evans Hobsbawm Jacoby Judt Kagan Kershaw von Kuehnelt-Leddihn Lukacs Martin Mazower Ozment Pirenne Polybius von Ranke Roberts Roberts Spengler Stone Thucydides Unwin Zamoyski Belgium Pirenne de Schaepdrijver Bosnia andHerzegovina Peçevi Knežević Kreševljaković Redžić Vego Mesihović UnitedKingdom Adamson Allen Anderson Armstrong Bailyn Bede Briggs Butterfield Davies Duffy Elton Ferguson Firth Fraser Gardiner Geoffrey of Monmouth Hastings Hill Himmelfarb Hobsbawm Hume Hyde Johnson Lloyd Louis Macaulay Marshall Namier Morgan Roberts Seeley Starkey Stone Tawney Thomas Thompson Trevelyan Trevor-Roper Wedgwood Croatia Banac Gross Katičić Klaić (Nada) Klaić (Vjekoslav) Lucius Macan Rački Šišić Smičiklas Vitezović Finland Borodkin Ordin Porthan France Bainville Bloch Becker Carlyle Davis Duby Febvre Horne Johnson Ladurie Marrus Michelet Mousnier Palmer Paxton Renouvin Roberts Sternhell Taine de Tocqueville Weber Germanyand Austria Bock Bracher Broszat Bullock Citino Craig Evans Fest Fischer Görres Hildebrand Hillgruber House Hirschfeld Jäckel Kershaw Komlos Koonz Langewiesche Lower Mason Meinecke Moeller van den Bruck Mommsen (Hans) Mommsen (Wolfgang) Mosse Nolte Peukert Ritter Rothfels Stern Stahel Stürmer von Treitschke Taylor Trevor-Roper Wehler Wette Wolffsohn de Zayas Zitelmann Ireland Browne Byrne Cléirigh Hughes Keating Lyons Machtheni O'Curry O'Donovan Tírechán Ware Italy Arnone Sipari Bosworth Croce Cronin De Felice Gentile Ginsborg Ginzburg Petacco Salvemini Smith Moldova Cazacu Iorga Nistor King Netherlands Geyl Motley Israel Schama Poland Davies Jasienica Steed Portugal Hermano Saraiva Mattoso Oliveira Marques Rosas Romania Boia Hasdeu Iorga Kogalniceanu Mitrany Tismaneanu Xenopol Russia Applebaum Bethell Conquest Cronin Danilov Figes Fitzpatrick Grimsted Hjärne Hosking Hughes Karamzin Kenez Khlevniuk Lewin Medvedev Petrov Pipes Service Shearer Solzhenitsyn Taubman Ulam Werth Serbia Ćorović Ćirković Deretić Mihaljčić Novaković Stanojević Scotland Barrow Boece Buchanan Burnet John of Fordun Harvie Kidd Lynch Oram Scott Tranter Slovakia Deák Kamenec Kollár Marusiak Mintalová-Zubercová Šafárik Slovenia Grafenauer Melik Verginella Spain Altamira y Crevea Arié Beevor Bennassar John of Biclaro Carr Collins Elliott Florencio Gibson Ivars Kamen Parker Payne Pérez Preston de Rada Ribera y Tarragó Thomas Sweden Englund Fryxell Geijer Grimberg Harrison Hatton Hjärne Lönnroth Magnus von Pufendorf Ringmar Roberts Robinson Stolpe Weibull Weibull Yugoslavia Banac Glenny Jelavich Schwartz Tomasevich vteEthicsNormative Consequentialism Deontology Care Particularism Pragmatic Role Suffering-focused Utilitarianism Virtue Applied Animal Artificial intelligence Bio Business Computer Discourse Engineering Environmental Land Legal Machine Meat eating Media Medical Nursing Professional Programming Research Sexual Technology Terraforming Uncertain sentience Meta Absolutism Axiology Cognitivism Realism Naturalism Non-naturalism Subjectivism Ideal observer theory Divine command theory Constructivism Euthyphro dilemma Intuitionism Nihilism Non-cognitivism Emotivism Expressivism Quasi-realism Universal prescriptivism Rationalism Relativism Skepticism Universalism Value monism – Value pluralism Schools Buddhist Christian Confucian Epicurean Existentialist Feminist Islamic Jewish Kantian Rousseauian Stoic Tao Concepts Authority Autonomy Common sense Compassion Conscience Consent Culture of life Dignity Double standard Duty Equality Etiquette Eudaimonia Family values Fidelity Free will Good and evil Good Evil Problem of evil Happiness Honour Ideal Immorality Justice Liberty Loyalty Moral agency Moral courage Moral hierarchy Moral imperative Morality Norm Pacifism Political freedom Precept Rights Self-discipline Suffering Stewardship Sympathy Theodicy Torture Trust Value Intrinsic Japan Western Vice Virtue Vow Wrong Ethicists Laozi Socrates Plato Aristotle Diogenes Valluvar Cicero Confucius Augustine Mencius Mozi Xunzi Aquinas Spinoza Butler Hume Smith Kant Hegel Schopenhauer Bentham Mill Kierkegaard Sidgwick Nietzsche Moore Barth Tillich Bonhoeffer Foot Rawls Dewey Williams Mackie Anscombe Frankena MacIntyre Hare Singer Parfit Nagel Adams Taylor Azurmendi Korsgaard Nussbaum Works Nicomachean Ethics (c. 322 BC) Ethics (Spinoza) (1677) Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel (1726) A Treatise of Human Nature (1740) The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1780) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) Critique of Practical Reason (1788) Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820) Either/Or (1843) Utilitarianism (1861) The Methods of Ethics (1874) On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) Principia Ethica (1903) A Theory of Justice (1971) Practical Ethics (1979) After Virtue (1981) Reasons and Persons (1984) Related Axiology Casuistry Descriptive ethics Ethics in religion Evolutionary ethics History of ethics Human rights Ideology Moral psychology Philosophy of law Political philosophy Population ethics Rehabilitation Secular ethics Social philosophy Index Category vteEvolutionary biology Introduction Outline Timeline of evolution History of life Index Evolution Abiogenesis Adaptation Adaptive radiation Altruism Cheating Reciprocal Baldwin effect Cladistics Coevolution Mutualism Common descent Convergence Divergence Earliest known life forms Evidence of evolution Evolutionary arms race Evolutionary pressure Exaptation Extinction Event Homology Last universal common ancestor Macroevolution Microevolution Mismatch Non-adaptive radiation Origin of life Panspermia Parallel evolution Signalling theory Handicap principle Speciation Species Species complex Taxonomy Unit of selection Gene-centered view of evolution Populationgenetics Artificial selection Biodiversity Evolutionarily stable strategy Fisher's principle Fitness Inclusive Gene flow Genetic drift Kin selection Parental investment Parent–offspring conflict Mutation Population Natural selection Sexual dimorphism Sexual selection Flowering plants Fungi Mate choice Social selection Trivers–Willard hypothesis Variation Development Canalisation Evolutionary developmental biology Genetic assimilation Inversion Modularity Phenotypic plasticity Of taxa Bacteria Birds origin Brachiopods Molluscs Cephalopods Dinosaurs Fish Fungi Insects butterflies Life Mammals cats canids wolves dogs hyenas dolphins and whales horses Kangaroos primates humans lemurs sea cows Plants pollinator-mediated Reptiles Spiders Tetrapods Viruses Of organs Cell DNA Flagella Eukaryotes symbiogenesis chromosome endomembrane system mitochondria nucleus plastids In animals eye hair auditory ossicle nervous system brain Of processes Aging Death Programmed cell death Avian flight Biological complexity Cooperation Color vision in primates Emotion Empathy Ethics Eusociality Immune system Metabolism Monogamy Morality Mosaic evolution Multicellularity Sexual reproduction Gamete differentiation/sexes Life cycles/nuclear phases Mating types Meiosis Sex-determination Snake venom Tempo and modes Gradualism/Punctuated equilibrium/Saltationism Micromutation/Macromutation Uniformitarianism/Catastrophism Speciation Allopatric Anagenesis Catagenesis Cladogenesis Cospeciation Ecological Hybrid Non-ecological Parapatric Peripatric Reinforcement Sympatric History Renaissance and Enlightenment Transmutation of species David Hume Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion Charles Darwin On the Origin of Species History of paleontology Transitional fossil Blending inheritance Mendelian inheritance The eclipse of Darwinism Neo-Darwinism Modern synthesis History of molecular evolution Extended evolutionary synthesis Philosophy Darwinism Alternatives Catastrophism Lamarckism Orthogenesis Mutationism Saltationism Structuralism Spandrel Theistic Vitalism Teleology in biology Related Biogeography Ecological genetics Evolutionary medicine Group selection Cultural evolution Cultural group selection Dual inheritance theory Hologenome theory of evolution Missing heritability problem Molecular evolution Astrobiology Phylogenetics Tree Polymorphism Protocell Systematics Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance Category Portal vteEvolutionary psychologistsEvolutionary psychologyBiologists /neuroscientists Bernard Crespi John Crook Charles Darwin Richard Dawkins Jared Diamond W. D. Hamilton Alfred Kinsey Peter Kropotkin Gordon Orians Jaak Panksepp Margie Profet Peter Richerson Giacomo Rizzolatti Randy Thornhill Robert Trivers Carel van Schaik Claus Wedekind Mary Jane West-Eberhard Wolfgang Wickler George C. Williams David Sloan Wilson E. O. Wilson Richard Wrangham Anthropologists Jerome H. Barkow Christopher Boehm Robert Boyd Donald E. Brown Napoleon Chagnon Robin Dunbar Daniel Fessler Mark Flinn John D. Hawks Joseph Henrich Ruth Mace Daniel Nettle Stephen Shennan Donald Symons John Tooby Pierre van den Berghe Psychologists /cognitive scientists Mary Ainsworth Simon Baron-Cohen Justin L. Barrett Jay Belsky Jesse Bering David F. Bjorklund Paul Bloom John Bowlby Pascal Boyer Joseph Bulbulia David Buss Josep Call Anne Campbell Donald T. Campbell Peter Carruthers Noam Chomsky Leda Cosmides Martin Daly Paul Ekman Bruce J. Ellis Anne Fernald Aurelio José Figueredo Diana Fleischman Uta Frith Gordon G. Gallup David C. Geary Gerd Gigerenzer Peter Gray Jonathan Haidt Harry Harlow Judith Rich Harris Martie Haselton Stephen Kaplan Douglas T. Kenrick Simon M. Kirby Robert Kurzban Brian MacWhinney Michael T. McGuire Geoffrey Miller Darcia Narvaez Katherine Nelson Randolph M. Nesse Steven Neuberg David Perrett Henry Plotkin Steven Pinker Paul Rozin Mark Schaller David P. Schmitt Nancy Segal Todd K. Shackelford Roger Shepard Irwin Silverman Peter K. Smith Dan Sperber Anthony Stevens Frank Sulloway Michael Tomasello Joshua Tybur Mark van Vugt Andrew Whiten Glenn Wilson Margo Wilson Othersocial scientists Christopher Badcock Samuel Bowles Ernst Fehr Herbert Gintis Dominic D. P. Johnson Gad Saad Literary theorists /philosophers Edmund Burke Joseph Carroll Daniel Dennett Denis Dutton Thomas Hobbes David Hume Research centers/organizations Center for Evolutionary Psychology Human Behavior and Evolution Society Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences New England Complex Systems Institute Publications The Adapted Mind Evolution and Human Behavior The Evolution of Human Sexuality Evolution, Mind and Behaviour Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences Evolutionary Psychology  Evolutionary psychology  Psychology portal  Evolutionary biology portal vteConservatismSchoolsby regionInternational Authoritarian Corporatist Cultural Fiscal Green Liberal Moderate National Paternalistic Populist Pragmatic Progressive Reactionary Religious Social Traditionalist Ultra AsiaChina Chiangism Confucianism Neo New Neoauthoritarianism Iran Khomeinism Monarchist Principlist Israel Fundamentalist Jewish Kahanism Zionism Neo Religious Revisionist Japan Minzoku Neo Nippon Kaigi Shōwa Statism State Shinto South Korea Ilminism New Right Turkey Democratic Erdoğanism Neo-Ottomanism Other Bangladesh Hong Kong India Malaysia Pakistan Ziaism Singapore Taiwan Chiangism EuropeFrance Action Française Bonapartism Gaullism Integral nationalism Legitimism Maurrassisme Nouvelle Droite Orléanism Révolution nationale Sarkozysm Ultra-royalism Germany Agrarian Hegelian Historical School Neue Rechte Ordoliberalism Prussianism Cameralistic Socialist Revolutionary Young Ritter School Romanticism State Socialism Völkisch Italy Berlusconism Historical Right Italian school of elitism Neo-Bourbonism Sanfedismo Poland Golden Liberty Kaczyzm National Democracy Sarmatism Russia Duginism Eurasianism Monarchist Black-hundredism Tsarism Putinism Slavophilia Pochvennichestvo Spain Alfonsism Carlism Carloctavismo Carlo-francoism Francoism National Catholicism Integrism Mellismo Maurism Neocatholicism Noucentisme UnitedKingdom Cameronism Civic Compassionate Muscular liberalism Jacobitism Neo-Jacobite Revival Neo One-nationism Powellism Thatcherism Toryism High Red Social Other Austria Belgium Rexism Denmark Finland Georgia Monarchist Greece Metaxism Populist Hungary Iceland Luxembourg Netherlands Norway Portugal Miguelist Integralismo Lusitano Romania Monarchist Serbia Monarchist Sweden Switzerland Ukraine Latin AmericaArgentina Federal Peronism Maurrasismo Menemism Nacionalismo Orthodox Peronism Brazil Bolsonarism Coronelism Integralism Janismo Monarchist Patrianovism Populism Chile Gremialismo Pinochetism Other Belize Colombia Rojismo Uribism Cuba Guatemala Mexico Cristero Panama Peru Fujimorism  Odriismo Uruguay Herrerism Venezuela Perezjimenismo North AmericaCanada Populism Trumpism Clerico-nationalism Social Toryism Blue Red Pink UnitedStates Compassionate Libertarian Fusionism Paleo Tea Party Movement Neo Old Right Paleo Reaganism Social Traditionalist Trumpism Oceania Australia Centre Right National Right New Zealand PhilosophyPrinciples Ancestral worship Authority Traditional Class collaboration Consociationalism Clericalism Collective identity Confessionalism Cultural assimilation Cultural heritage Cultural values Culture of life Pro-Life Discipline Duty Elitism Aristocracy Meritocracy Noblesse oblige Ethical order Familialism Family values Fundamentalism Gender role Complementarianism Honour Imperialism Loyalty Monarchism Royalist Natural law Natural Order Norms Conventions Customs Mores Ordered liberty Organicism Organized religion Orthodoxy Patriotism Nationalism Personalism Philosophical realism Moral realism Private property Protectionism Public morality Rule of law Social hierarchy Social institutions Social order Solidarity Sovereignty State religion Stewardship Subsidiarity Tradition Intellectuals Bainville Barruel Belloc Bonald Buckley Jr. Burke Burnham Carlyle Chateaubriand Chesterton Coleridge Comte Cortés Dávila Dostoevsky Eliot Evola Fardid Gentz Haller Hitchens Hume Iorga Johnson Jünger Karamzin Kirk Kuehnelt-Leddihn La Mennais Le Bon Le Play Leontiev Lewis Maistre Mansfield Maurras Menéndez More Müller Newman Nisbet Novalis Oakeshott Corrêa de Oliveira Peterson Ranke Renan Rivarol Röpke Santayana Savigny Schlegel Schmitt Scruton Solzhenitsyn Sowell Spann Spengler Stahl Strauss Taine Tocqueville Uvarov Voegelin PoliticsOrganisations European Conservatives and Reformists Party European People's Party Identity and Democracy International Democrat Union International Monarchist League Muslim Brotherhood Tradition, Family, Property Politicians Abe Adams Adenauer Andreotti Berlusconi Bismarck Bolsonaro GW Bush Canning Chiang Churchill Diefenbaker Disraeli Dmowski Dollfuss Erdoğan Franco Fujimori de Gaulle Harper Horthy John Paul II Kaczyński Khamenei Khomeini Kohl Le Pen Lee Macdonald Mannerheim Marcos Maurras Menzies Metaxas Metternich Mobutu Modi Netanyahu Orbán Park Pérez Jiménez Pinochet Pitt Powell Prat de la Riba Putin Reagan Salazar Salisbury Smith Stolypin Suharto Thatcher Trujillo Trump Vajpayee de Valera Zia Zemmour Religion Christian democracy Christian politics Theonomy Christian right Theoconservatism Confucianism Hindutva Jewish conservatism Religious Zionism Islamism Islamic economics Theravada Buddhist economics Traditionalist Catholicism Catholic social teaching Distributism Integralism Ultramontanism Traditionalist School Historicalbackground Ancien régime Bourbon Restauration Congress of Vienna Concert of Europe Conservative Order Counter-Enlightenment German Romanticism Holy Alliance Ultra-royalism RelatedIdeologies Agrarianism Clerical fascism Communitarianism Conservative liberalism Corporatism Localism Anti-communism Anti-gender movement Anti-Masonry Aristocracy Black conservatism United States Desecularization Postsecularism Conservative feminism Conservative wave Counter-revolutionary Elite theory Ethnopluralism Hispanic and Latino conservatism in the United States LGBTQ conservatism Neo-feudalism Neo-medievalism Para-fascism Political Evangelicalism in Latin America Political theology Radical right Europe United States Reactionary Neo- Right realism Right-wing politics Authoritarianism New European Small-c conservatives Conservatism portal Politics portal Authority control databases InternationalISNIVIAFFASTWorldCatNationalGermanyUnited StatesFranceBnF dataJapanItalyAustraliaCzech RepublicSpainPortugalNetherlandsNorwayLatviaCroatiaChileGreeceKoreaSwedenPolandVaticanIsraelCataloniaBelgiumAcademicsCiNiiArtistsULANKulturNavPeopleTroveDeutsche BiographieDDBOtherIdRefSNAC

OF THE DIGNITY OR MEANNESS OF HUMAN NATURE

"David Hume" by Skara kommun is licensed under CC by 2.0.

There are certain sects, which secretly form themselves in the learned world, as well as factions in the political; and though sometimes they come not to an open rupture, they give a different turn to the ways of thinking of those who have taken part on either side. The most remarkable of this kind are the sects founded on the different sentiments with regard to the dignity of human nature; which is a point that seems to have divided philosophers and poets, as well as divines, from the beginning of the world to this day. Some exalt our species to the skies, and represent man as a kind of human demigod, who derives his origin from heaven, and retains evident marks of his lineage and descent. Others insist upon the blind sides of human nature, and can discover nothing, except vanity, in which man surpasses the other animals, whom he affects so much to despise. If an author possess the talent of rhetoric and declamation, he commonly takes part with the former: if his turn lie towards irony and ridicule, he naturally throws himself into the other extreme. I am far from thinking that all those who have depreciated our species have been enemies to virtue, and have exposed the frailties of their fellow-creatures with any bad intention. On the contrary, I am sensible that a delicate sense of morals, especially when attended with a splenetic temper, is apt to give a man a disgust of the world, and to make him consider the common course of human affairs with too much indignation. I must, however, be of opinion, that the sentiments of those who are inclined to think favourably of mankind, are more advantageous to virtue than the contrary principles, which give us a mean opinion of our nature. When a man is prepossessed with a high notion of his rank and character in the creation, he will naturally endeavour to act up to it, and will scorn to do a base or vicious action which might sink him below that figure which he makes in his own imagination. Accordingly, we find, that all our polite and fashionable moralists insist upon this topic, and endeavour to represent vice unworthy of man, as well as odious in itself. We find new disputes that are not founded on some ambiguity in the expression; and I am persuaded that the present dispute, concerning the dignity or meanness of human nature, is not more exempt from it than any other. It may therefore be worth while to consider what is real, and what is only verbal, in this controversy. That there is a natural difference between merit and demerit, virtue and vice, wisdom and folly, no reasonable man will deny, yet it is evident that, in affixing the term, which denotes either our approbation or blame, we are commonly more influenced by comparison than by any fixed unalterable standard in the nature of things. In like manner, quantity, and extension, and bulk, are by every one acknowledged to be real things: but when we call any animal great or little, we always form a secret comparison between that animal and others of the same species; and it is that comparison which regulates our judgment concerning its greatness. A dog and a horse may be of the very same size, while the one is admired for the greatness of its bulk, and the other for the smallness. When I am present, therefore, at any dispute, I always consider with myself whether it be a question of comparison or not that is the subject of controversy; and if it be, whether the disputants compare the same objects together, or talk of things that are widely different.
In forming our notions of human nature, we are apt to make a comparison between men and animals, the only creatures endowed with thought that fall under our senses. Certainly this comparison is favorable to mankind. On the one hand, we see a creature whose thoughts are not limited by any narrow bounds, either of place or time; who carries his researches into the most distant regions of this globe, and beyond this globe, to the planets and heavenly bodies; looks backward to consider the first origin, at least the history of the human race; casts his eye forward to see the influence of his actions upon posterity and the judgments which will be formed of his character a thousand years hence; a creature, who traces causes and effects to a great length and intricacy, extracts general principles from particular appearances; improves upon his discoveries; corrects his mistakes; and makes his very errors profitable. On the other hand, we are presented with a creature the very reverse of this; limited in its observations and reasonings to a few sensible objects which surround it; without curiosity, without foresight; blindly conducted by instinct, and attaining, in a short time, its utmost perfection, beyond which it is never able to advance a single step. What a wide difference is there between these creatures! And how exalted a notion must we entertain of the former, in comparison of the latter. There are two means commonly employed to destroy this conclusion: First, By making an unfair representation of the case, and insisting only upon the weakness of human nature. And, secondly, By forming a new and secret comparison between man and beings of the most perfect wisdom. Among the other excellences of man, this is one, that he can form an idea of perfections much beyond what he has experience of in himself; and is not limited in his conception of wisdom and virtue. He can easily exalt his notions, and conceive a degree of knowledge, which, when compared to his own, will make the latter appear very contemptible, and will cause the difference between that and the sagacity of animals, in a manner, to disappear and vanish. Now this being a point in which all the world is agreed, that human understanding falls infinitely short of perfect wisdom, it is proper we should know when this comparison takes place, that we may not dispute where there is no real difference in our sentiments. Man falls much more short of perfect wisdom, and even of his own ideas of perfect wisdom, than animals do of man; yet the latter difference is so considerable, that nothing but a comparison with the former can make it appear of little moment. It is also usual to compare one man with another; and finding very few whom we can call wise or virtuous, we are apt to entertain a contemptible notion of our species in general. That we may be sensible of the fallacy of this way of reasoning, we may observe, that the honorable appellations of wise and virtuous are not annexed to any particular degree of those qualities of wisdom and virtue, but arise altogether from the comparison we make between one man and another. When we find a man who arrives at such a pitch of wisdom, as is very uncommon, we pronounce him a wise man: so that to say there are few wise men in the world, is really to say nothing; since it is only by their scarcity that they merit that appellation. Were the lowest of our species as wise as Tully or Lord Bacon, we should still have reason to say that there are few wise men. For in that case we should exalt our notions of wisdom, and should not pay a singular homage to any one who was not singularly distinguished by his talents. In like manner, I have heard it observed by thoughtless people, that there are few women possessed of beauty in comparison of those who want it; not considering that we bestow the epithet of beautiful only on such as possess a degree of beauty that is common to them with a few. The same degree of beauty in a woman is called deformity, which is treated as real beauty in one of our sex. As it is usual, in forming a notion of our species, to compare it with the other species above or below it, or to compare the individuals of the species among themselves; so we often compare together the different motives or actuating principles of human nature, in order to regulate our judgment concerning it. And, indeed, this is the only kind of comparison which is worth our attention, or decides any thing in the present question. Were our selfish and vicious principles so much predominant above our social and virtuous, as is asserted by some philosophers, we ought undoubtedly to entertain a contemptible notion of human nature. There is much of a dispute of words in all this controversy. When a man denies the sincerity of all public spirit or affection to a country and community, I am at a loss what to think of him. Perhaps he never felt this passion in so clear and distinct a manner as to remove all his doubts concerning its force and reality. But when he proceeds afterwards to reject all private friendship, if no interest or self-love intermix itself; I am then confident that he abuses terms, and confounds the ideas of things; since it is impossible for any one to be so selfish, or rather so stupid, as to make no difference between one man and another, and give no preference to qualities which engage his approbation and esteem. Is he also, say I, as insensible to anger as he pretends to be to friendship? And does injury and wrong no more affect him than kindness or benefits? Impossible: he does not know himself: he has forgotten the movements of his heart; or rather, he makes use of a different language from the rest of his countrymen and calls not things by their proper names. What say you of natural affection? (I subjoin), Is that also a species of self-love? Yes; all is self-love. Your children are loved only because they are yours: your friend for a like reason; and your country engages you only so far as it has a connection with yourself. Were the idea of self removed, nothing would affect you: you would be altogether unactive and insensible: or, if you ever give yourself any movement, it would only be from vanity, and a desire of fame and reputation to this same self. I am willing, reply I, to receive your interpretation of human actions, provided you admit the facts. That species of self-love which displays itself in kindness to others, you must allow to have great influence over human actions, and even greater, on many occasions, than that which remains in its original shape and form. For how few are there, having a family, children, and relations, who do not spend more on the maintenance and education of these than on their own pleasures? This, indeed, you justly observe, may proceed from their self-love, since the prosperity of their family and friends is one, or the chief of their pleasures, as well as their chief honour. Be you also one of these selfish men, and you are sure of every one's good opinion and good-will; or, not to shock your ears with their expressions, the self-love of every one, and mine among the rest, will then incline us to serve you, and speak well of you.
In my opinion, there are two things which have led astray those philosophers that have insisted so much on the selfishness of man. In the first place, they found that every act of virtue or friendship was attended with a secret pleasure; whence they concluded, that friendship and virtue could not be disinterested. But the fallacy of this is obvious. The virtuous sentiment or passion produces the pleasure, and does not arise from it. I feel a pleasure in doing good to my friend, because I love him; but do not love him for the sake of that pleasure. In the second place, it has always been found, that the virtuous are far from being indifferent to praise; and therefore they have been represented as a set of vainglorious men, who had nothing in view but the applauses of others. But this also is a fallacy. It is very unjust in the world, when they find any tincture of vanity in a laudable action, to depreciate it upon that account, or ascribe it entirely to that motive. The case is not the same with vanity, as with other passions. Where avarice or revenge enters into any seemingly virtuous action, it is difficult for us to determine how far it enters, and it is natural to suppose it the sole actuating principle. But vanity is so closely allied to virtue, and to love the fame of laudable actions approaches so near the love of laudable actions for their own sake, that these passions are more capable of mixture, than any other kinds of affection; and it is almost impossible to have the latter without some degree of the former. Accordingly we find, that this passion for glory is always warped and varied according to the particular taste or disposition of the mind on which it falls. Nero had the same vanity in driving a chariot, that Trajan had in governing the empire with justice and ability. To love the glory of virtuous deeds is a sure proof of the love of virtue.

Current Page: 1

GRADE:11

Additional Information:

Rating: Words in the Passage: 1290 Unique Words: 675 Sentences: 69
Noun: 523 Conjunction: 253 Adverb: 141 Interjection: 2
Adjective: 169 Pronoun: 211 Verb: 308 Preposition: 319
Letter Count: 10,081 Sentiment: Positive Tone: Neutral Difficult Words: 398
EdSearch WebSearch
Questions and Answers

Please wait while we generate questions and answers...

Ratings & Comments

Write a Review
5 Star
0
0
4 Star
0
0
3 Star
0
0
2 Star
0
0
1 Star
0
0
0

0 Ratings & 0 Reviews

Report an Error

W3 Total Cache is currently running in Pro version Development mode.