The philosophical writings of David Hume (1711–1776) reflect the confluence of a number of important traditions and controversies of the early modern period. Hume was widely read and a powerful intellect; this combination placed him at a critical juncture in eighteenth-century philosophy.
Hume was attracted, for example, to the scientific method exemplified in the work of Isaac Newton, and at the same time he was passionately committed to the humanistic study of Cicero, Seneca, and Virgil, among other classical authors. Furthermore, Hume’s greatest insight was that Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and others had trusted too much in reason and its powers, and, in order to show their error, he embraced the modes of skeptical attack found in the writings of Sextus Empiricus and employed by Pierre Bayle, one of his favorite authors. Among other doubts that Hume had about the role and authority of reason, one concerned morality. He admired the moral philosophy of the First Earl of Shaftesbury, Francis Hutcheson, and Bishop Butler, with its focus on the sentiments and on benevolence; he saw in this tradition a response to the pessimism and otherworldliness of Scottish Calvinism and other modes of Christian thought. Hume was also a vigorous opponent of religion but a devoted friend of the good life as lived in this world. In his own day, he sought “literary fame” but achieved it only in measured degree and then only for his historical and political writings. His philosophy influenced but a few until after his death, when its powerful impact on diverse schools of thought established Hume as a member of the pantheon of early modern philosophers.
Hume was born on April 26, 1711, in Edinburgh, Scotland, near the family estate of Ninewells. In 1722 he entered the University of Edinburgh ostensibly to pursue a law degree. After spending four years at the university but refusing to prepare for a law career, he returned home in 1726 for a period of intense reading and studying. In 1734 Hume took a position in Bristol, which was not a success, and in the same year travelled to France, where, from 1734 to 1737, he completed the composition of his great systematic work, A Treatise of Human Nature. The first two books were published anonymously in London in 1739, the third book in 1740.
Although the book received some critical notice, it was, in Hume’s eyes, largely ignored. He always treated it as a failure. It stimulated no debate and did nothing to cultivate its author’s fame. Hume thought that the Treatise’s problems stemmed from his literary style. He chose to rewrite the first and third parts and to publish them separately. The Philosophical Essays (later An Inquiry) Concerning the Human Understanding appeared in 1748 and then in a revised version in 1758. An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals was published in 1751.
During the decades following the publication of the Treatise, Hume held a number of minor positions, private and public, and wrote extensively. Twice he was passed over for academic positions, in 1745 at Edinburgh and again in 1751 in Glasgow. His Essays Moral and Political, published in 1741–42, were very well received, and his six-volume history of England, which appeared from 1754 to 1762, made Hume a celebrity in France and at home. His most famous critique of religion, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, was begun in 1751 but published only three years after his death in 1776. He died in Scotland, where he had lived since 1769. By that time, Hume’s secular treatment of morality, his attack on rational religion and deism, and his criticism of Calvinism had made him so notorious that his friend Adam Smith, to whom he had entrusted the manuscript of the Dialogues, feared arranging for its publication. When it appeared in 1779, it did so without a publisher’s imprint.
Hume’s great contribution to moral theory rests on his attack on the primacy and self-sufficiency of reason and on his development of the moral sense tradition of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson. Morality rests not on reason, as Spinoza and Locke had argued, and not on the commands of God, as religious thinkers claimed. Rather, morality is based on our feelings of approval and disapproval and on the benevolence that such feeling positively endorses. Reason does of course play important roles in such a moral view, ordering the sentiments and elsewhere, but ultimately, for Hume, morality is grounded in our sentiments or feelings and not in faith or reason, and its goal is not divine reward or an otherworldly salvation but rather the best and most enjoyable life here on earth. Unlike Hobbes, then, Hume saw human nature as fundamentally good and human life as desirable.
Moreover, Hume’s moral thinking is not simply an attempt to understand morality. It is also a vehicle for moral conduct and practice. In his own words: “Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.”
Recommended Readings
Broad, C. D. Five Types of Ethical Theory. London: Routledge, 1930.
Chappell, V. (ed.). Hume. Garden City: Doubleday, 1966.
Livingston, Donald. Hume’s Philosophy of Common Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
MacIntyre, Alasdair. Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988.
Norton, David Fate. The Cambridge Companion to Hume. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Norton, David Fate. David Hume: Common Sense Moralist, Sceptical Metaphysician. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982.
Smith, Norman Kemp. The Philosophy of David Hume. London: Macmillan, 1941, 1964.
Stroud, Barry. Hume. London: Routledge, 1978.