David Hume

I

Introduction

David Hume (1711-1776), Scottish historian and philosopher, who influenced the development of scepticism and empiricism, two schools of philosophy. Born in Edinburgh, on May 7, 1711, Hume was educated at home and at the University of Edinburgh, where he matriculated at the age of 12. His health was poor, and after working for a short period in a business house in Bristol, he went to live in France.

II

Life and Writings

From 1734 to 1737 Hume occupied himself intensively with the problems of speculative philosophy, writing during this period his most important philosophical work, A Treatise of Human Nature (3 vols., 1739-1740), which embodies the essence of his thinking. In spite of its importance, this work was ignored by the public. As Hume himself put it, it “fell dead-born from the press”, probably because of its abstruse style. Hume's later works were written in the lighter essay or dialogue forms that were popular at that time.

After the publication of the Treatise, Hume returned to his family estate in Berwickshire; there he turned his attention to the problems of ethics and political economy and wrote Essays Moral and Political (2 vols., 1741-1742), which attained immediate success. He failed to obtain an appointment to the faculty of the University of Edinburgh, probably because, even early in his career, he was regarded as a religious sceptic. Hume became, successively, tutor to the insane Marquis of Annandale and judge advocate to a British military expedition to France. His Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding (afterwards entitled An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding) appeared in 1748. This book, perhaps his best-known work, is in effect a condensation of the first part of the Treatise. In 1751 he published An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, which is a similar condensation of the third part of the Treatise.

Hume took up residence in Edinburgh in 1751. In 1752 his Political Discourses was published, and in the following year, having again failed to obtain a university professorship, he received an appointment as librarian of the Advocates' Library in the city. During his 12-year stay in the city, Hume worked chiefly on his six-volume History of England, which appeared at intervals from 1754 to 1762. In the years 1762 to 1765 he served as secretary to the British ambassador in Paris. There he was revered by French literary circles and formed a friendship with the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Hume brought Rousseau back with him to Britain, but the latter, plagued by delusions of persecution, accused Hume of plotting against him, and the friendship dissolved in public denunciations between the two men. After serving as Under-Secretary of State in London (1767-1768), Hume retired to Edinburgh, where he spent the rest of his life. He died on August 25, 1776. His autobiography was published posthumously in 1777, as was his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779). Hume had written the Dialogues in the early 1750s but had withheld the work because of its sceptical nature.

III

Hume's Metaphysics and Epistemology

Hume's philosophical position was influenced by the ideas of the English philosopher John Locke and the Irish philosopher and clergyman Bishop George Berkeley. Hume and Berkeley both differentiated between reason and sensation. Hume, however, went further, endeavouring to prove that reason and rational judgements are merely habitual associations of distinct sensations or experiences.

In a revolutionary step in the history of philosophy, Hume rejected the basic idea of causation as a necessary connection between events in the world, maintaining that: “Reason can never show us the connexion of one object with another, tho' aided by experience, and the observation of their conjunction in all past instances.” That is, when we think we perceive a connection of cause and effect between two events in the world, in fact we are only projecting on to the world a subjective expectation that the first event will be followed by the second. In turn, this expectation is the result of a mental association between the idea of the first event and the idea of the second, which has been created by our past experience of events like the first one always being followed by events like the second, by a “constant conjunction” between one sort of event and the other.

Hume's rejection of causation implies a rejection of scientific laws, which are based on the general premise that one event necessarily causes another and, predictably, always will. According to Hume's philosophy, therefore, knowledge of any matters of fact that go beyond immediate experience is impossible, although he freely acknowledged that, practically, people had to think in terms of cause and effect, and had to assume the validity of their everyday beliefs, or they would go mad. He also admitted the possibility of knowledge of the relationships among ideas, such as the relationships between numbers in mathematics. Hume's sceptical approach also denied the existence both of the spiritual substance postulated by Berkeley and of Locke's “material substance”. Going further, Hume denied the existence of the individual self altogether, maintaining that because people do not have a constant perception of themselves as distinct entities, they “are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions”.

IV

Hume's Ethics and Other Works

In his ethical thinking, Hume applied the same scepticism to the idea of an objective rightness or wrongness about actions as he had applied to the idea of an objective causal connection between events. He argued that a belief that an action is right or wrong cannot be a belief about some matter of fact, because it is a belief that always in some degree motivates us to act, and beliefs about matters of fact never motivate us to act. Only desires and emotions can motivate us.

He went on to argue that when we think we are perceiving an objective rightness or wrongness in an action, we are only projecting on to the action the approval or disapproval that we, and other members of society, feel towards that action. The emotions of approval or disapproval in turn result from the fact that, although human beings are mainly self-interested, every person also has a degree of “sympathy” with all others. This is a tendency to resonate with their feelings, to feel happy when one sees that others are happy, to feel pain when one sees that they are in pain, and so on. If one thinks that an action is going to create a lot of happiness in a lot of people, then one's sympathy with those people expresses itself in a positive feeling towards the action, and this is the feeling of approval. It is the same with disapproval. Hume tried to show that all our moral experience and moral concepts could be explained as a result of the workings of sympathy, approval, and disapproval.

Hume's moral theory has been very influential on subsequent discussion of morality and human action. As well as producing arguments that are still used today against the idea that there can be an objective morality, he provided the basis for the development of utilitarianism, and pioneered the attempt to see moral norms as generated by interactions between largely self-interested individuals. In developing his views on morality, he also established a conception of rational action according to which an action is rational only if it is a means of attaining some goals of the agent. This instrumental conception of rational action has since become the dominant one in both social science and philosophy.

As a historian, Hume broke away from the traditional chronological account of wars and deeds of state and attempted to describe the economic and intellectual forces that played a part in the history of his country. In this way he anticipated the theories of history of G. W. F. Hegel and Karl Marx in important ways. His History of Great Britain (1754) and History of England (1759) were for many years regarded as historical classics.

Hume's contributions to economic theory, which influenced the Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith and later economists, included his belief that wealth depends not on money but on commodities, and his recognition of the effect of social conditions on economics.