English philosopher, historian and economist David Hume (1711 - 1776) summed up the evolution of British philosophy from empiricism gravitating towards materialism to Berkeley's subjective idealism. He became the progenitor of most of the philosophical teachings of the next two centuries. The main work of D. Hume "Treatise on human nature" (1739 - 1740). For a number of years he was in the diplomatic service. In Paris, he found a favorable reception from the French materialists in 1763-1766.
Hume as a philosopher was influenced by the ideas of Berkeley. However, unlike Berkeley, a militant champion of idealism and religion, Hume is a skeptic. The Edinburgh thinker seeks to avoid the extremes of Berkeley's philosophy and open conflict with the conclusions of natural science.
Like Berkeley, Hume proceeds from the fact that the source of knowledge is in the sensations or impressions of the subject. However, Hume considered unacceptable Berkeley's opinion that the source of sensations is an omnipotent being or deity. At the same time, he referred to the fact that no human experience can prove the existence of a deity. Meanwhile, for Hume, the idea of materialists is also unacceptable, according to which sensations are the result of the interaction of man and the objective world. He claims that nothing is available to the human mind except images and perceptions. Hume believed that a person is not able to establish any relationship between the image and the object that gave rise to ᴇᴦο.
As for the causal connection of phenomena, then, according to ᴇᴦο, if it exists, it is unknowable. He believed that the source of knowledge about the order of things is not theoretical research, but faith. According to Hume, the results of the efforts of philosophers only demonstrate the blindness and weakness of the human mind. The underestimation of the importance of scientific knowledge and the exaggeration of the role of common sense on the part of the Edinburgh thinker is a kind of reaction to the excessive claims of reason, science in the Age of Enlightenment, when it is then discovered that they cannot fulfill their promises.
Hume's skeptical philosophy makes a concession to agnosticism, which rejects knowledge of the world or doubts that a person is capable of having knowledge of the world.
The historical significance of D. Hume's philosophy lies in the fact that ᴇᴦο skepticism forced the philosophers who lived after him to continue to comprehend the theory and psychology of knowledge, and also to direct their efforts to the study of ethical problems.
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George Berkeley (1686-1753) - English philosopher, a prominent opponent of materialism and atheism. His ideas largely determined the worldview of D. Hume both in the field of philosophy in general and in the field of psychology. George Berkeley was born and educated in Ireland. He was...
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DAVID HUME
(1711-1776)
English historian, philosopher, economist. In the "Treatise on Human Nature" (1748) he developed the doctrine of sensory experience (the source of knowledge) as a stream of "impressions", the causes of which are incomprehensible. He considered the problem of the relationship between being and spirit unsolvable. He denied the objective nature of causality and the concept of substance. Developed the theory of association of ideas. Hume's doctrine is one of the sources of I. Kant's philosophy, positivism and neo-positivism.
David Hume was born in 1711 in Edinburgh, Scotland, the son of a poor nobleman who practiced law. Relatives of little David hoped that he would become a lawyer, but, while still a teenager, he told them that he had the deepest disgust for any occupation other than philosophy and literature. However, Yuma's father did not have the opportunity to give his son a higher education. And although David began to attend the University of Edinburgh, he soon had to go to Bristol to try his hand at commerce. But in this field he failed, and Hume's mother, who, after her husband's death, took care of her son, did not interfere with his trip to France, where he went in 1734 to get an education.
David lived there for three years, most of which he spent at the Jesuit college of La Flèche, where Descartes had once studied. Curiously, both of these pupils of the Jesuits became the main exponents of the principle of doubt in the new philosophy. In France, Hume wrote a Treatise on Human Nature, which consisted of three books, which was then published in London in 1738-1740. The first book dealt with the theory of knowledge, the second dealt with the psychology of human affects, and the third dealt with the problems of moral theory.
Hume came to the main conclusions for his philosophy relatively early - at the age of 25. In general, all philosophical works proper, with the exception of popular essays, were written by him before the age of 40, after which he devoted himself to history and educational activities. There are almost no exact references to domestic authors in the treatise, for it was written away from the large British libraries, although the Latin library at the Jesuit college in La Flèche was quite large. The works of Cicero, Bayle, Montaigne, Bacon, Locke, Newton and Berkeley, as well as Shaftesbury, Hutcheson and other English moralists, which Hume studied in his youth, had a very great influence on him. But Hume became a completely original philosopher.
Hume's philosophy, surprisingly early and seemingly strange to his contemporaries, is today recognized as an integral link in the development of English empiricism (the direction that considers sensory experience the only source of knowledge) from F. Bacon to positivists, who consider knowledge to be only the cumulative result of special sciences, and the study of worldview problems , in their opinion, is not necessary at all.
Hume, having attached decisive importance to these sense organs in the cognition of reality, stopped in doubt before the question of the existence of reality, since he did not believe in their meaningful nature. "Our thought ... - wrote Hume - is limited by very narrow limits, and all the creative power of the mind is reduced only to the ability to connect, move, increase or decrease the material delivered to us by feeling and experience." This testifies to the empirical nature of his philosophy.
Hume, like the empiricists who preceded him, argued that the principles from which knowledge is built are not innate, but empirical in nature, for they are obtained from experience. However, he not only opposes a priori assumptions, innate ideas, but also does not believe in the senses. In other words, Hume first reduces all knowledge about the world to experiential knowledge, and then psychologizes it, doubting the objectivity of the content of sensory impressions. In A Treatise on Human Nature, Hume writes that "the skeptic continues to reason and believe, although he claims that he cannot defend his reason with reason; for the same reasons, he must recognize the principle of the existence of bodies, although he cannot claim to prove its truth with the help of any arguments ... "
The reading public did not understand the originality of Hume's work and did not accept it. In his autobiography, written by him six months before his death, Hume spoke about it this way: "Hardly anyone's literary debut was less successful than my" Treatise on Human Nature ". among fanatics. But, differing from nature in a cheerful and ardent temperament, I very soon recovered from this blow and with great zeal continued my studies in the countryside.
Hume's main philosophical work was written, perhaps, in a language that was not so difficult to understand, but it was not easy to understand the general structure of the work. The "Treatise" consisted of separate essays not clearly connected with each other, and reading it required a certain mental effort. In addition, rumors spread that the author of these unreadable folios was an atheist. The latter circumstance subsequently prevented Hume more than once from obtaining a teaching position at the university - both in his native Edinburgh, where in 1744 he hoped in vain to take the chair of ethics and pneumatic philosophy, and in Glasgow, where Hutcheson taught.
In the early 1740s, Hume tried to popularize the ideas of his main work. He compiled his "Abbreviated Statement ...", but this publication did not arouse the interest of the reading public either. But Hume at that time established contacts with the most significant representatives of the Scottish spiritual culture. Of particular importance for the future were his correspondence with the moralist F. Hutcheson and close friendship with the future famous economist A. Smith, who met Hume while still a 17-year-old student.
In 1741-1742 Hume published a book called "Moral and Political Essays (Essays)". It was a collection of reflections on a wide range of socio-political problems and finally brought Hume fame and success.
For Hume, the fame of a writer who knows how to analyze complex, but burning problems in an accessible form, has established itself. In total, during his life, he wrote 49 essays, which, in various combinations, went through nine editions during the life of their author. They also included essays on economic issues, and actually philosophical essays, including "On Suicide" and "On the Immortality of the Soul", and partly the moral and psychological experiments "Epicurean", "Stoic", "Platonist", "Skeptic". ".
In the mid-1740s, Hume, in order to improve his financial situation, first had to play the role of a companion with the mentally ill Marquis Anendal, and then become the secretary of General Saint-Clair, who went on a military expedition against French Canada. So Hume ended up in the military missions in Vienna and Turin.
While in Italy, Hume remade the first book of the Treatise on Human Nature into an Inquiry Concerning Human Knowledge. This abbreviated and simplified presentation of Hume's theory of knowledge is perhaps his most popular work among those who study the history of philosophy. In 1748 this work was published in England, but it did not attract public attention. The abridged presentation of the third book of the "Treatise ...", which, under the title "Study on the Principles of Morals", was published in 1751, did not arouse much interest among readers.
The unrecognized philosopher returned to his homeland in Scotland. “For seven months now I have started my own hearth and organized a family consisting of its head, that is, me, and two subordinate members - a maid and a cat. My sister joined me, and now we live together. Being moderate, I I can enjoy purity, warmth and light, prosperity and pleasure. What else do you want? Independence? I have it in the highest degree. Fame? But it is not at all desirable. A good reception? It will come with time. Wives? This is not a necessary vital need. Books? These are really necessary; but I have more of them than I can read."
In his autobiography, Hume says the following: “In 1752, the Law Society elected me their librarian; this position did not bring me almost any income, but made it possible to use an extensive library. At this time I decided to write a History of England, but, not feeling in I had the courage to describe a historical period of seventeen centuries, began with the accession of the House of Stuart, for it seemed to me that it was from this era that the spirit of the parties most distorted the coverage of historical facts. I confess, I was almost sure of the success of this work. It seemed to me that I shall be the only historian who has scorned at the same time power, advantage, authority, and the voice of popular prejudice, and I expected applause in proportion to my efforts, but what a terrible disappointment, I was greeted with a cry of displeasure, indignation, almost hatred: the English, the Scots and the Irish, the Whigs and tories, churchmen and sectarians, freethinkers and hypocrites, patriots and courtiers, all united in a fit of rage against a man who dared generously mourn the fate of Charles I and the Earl of Strafford; and, what is most offensive of all, after the first outbreak of rabies, the book seemed to be completely forgotten.
Hume began publishing the History of England with volumes on the history of the House of Stuart in the 17th century, and, in full accordance with his ethics, he could not completely take one side. Sympathizing with Parliament, he also disapproved of the brutal massacre of Lord Strafford and Charles I in the 1640s. Hume regards history as a kind of applied psychology, explaining events by the interweaving of individual characters, will and feelings, and, in his opinion, the stability of the course of events gives habit. The very emergence of the state is the result of the strengthening of the institution of military leaders, to whom the people "get used" to obey.
Hume's psychological approach was unusual for eighteenth-century English historiography, which was limited to a party-biased assessment of facts. His approach fit better into the Scottish historiographical tradition, in which he anticipated the later romantic-psychological historicism of Walter Scott and other historians and writers. (By the way, Hume always emphasized his belonging to the Scottish nation and never tried to get rid of the noticeable Scottish accent). As already mentioned, the first volumes of the "History of England" were met with restraint by the English public and the Whig party that ruled in the 1750s. Hume's skepticism about religion also played a certain role in this.
This skepticism, although directed only against pre-Christian religions, is clearly visible in Hume's 1757 Natural History of Religion. There he proceeds from the fact that "the mother of piety is ignorance", and ends up saying that "a people without religion, if there is such, is only a little higher than animals." Religious "truths" can never be known, they can only be believed in, but they arise with psychological necessity from the need of the senses. In England, by then a largely Protestant country, Hume's objective approach to the role of Catholics in the events of the 17th century aroused suspicion.
Hume listed by name all the major figures of the Catholic and royalist side, not missing their merits, as well as their sins. This was contrary to what was accepted in Whig historiography, which portrayed the opponents as a solid, rigid and mostly nameless mass. In total, Hume wrote six volumes, two of which were reprinted by him. Already the second volume of the "History of England" (1756) met with a more favorable reception, and when its subsequent volumes appeared, the publication found quite a few readers, including those on the continent. The circulation of all books sold out completely, this work was reprinted in France.
Hume wrote "I became not only a wealthy, but also a rich man. I returned to my homeland, to Scotland, with the firm intention of never leaving it again and the pleasant consciousness that I had never resorted to the help of the powerful of this world and did not even seek their friendship Since I was already over fifty, I hoped to maintain this philosophical freedom until the end of my life.
Hume firmly settled in Edinburgh, turning his house into a kind of philosophical and literary salon. If at an earlier stage of his activity he emphasized in every possible way the role of freedom as the highest and absolute value, now in the essays he publishes on history, morality, art (Hume is one of the founders of the free essay genre in English literature), the thought of a greater significance legality compared even with freedom and that it is better to go for the restriction of freedom than to deviate from the established order.
Thus, Hume's writings provided a platform for the national reconciliation of liberals and monarchists, Whigs and Tories. Hume's books were translated into German, French and other European languages, and he became the most famous British author outside of England at the time. However, with the accession to the English throne in 1760, George III, the situation changed.
In 1762, the 70-year period of Whig rule ended, and Hume, with his objective and sometimes skeptical position, began to be perceived as a "prophet of counter-revolution." In 1763, the war between England and France over the colonies ended, and Hume was invited to the post of secretary of the British embassy at the Court of Versailles. For two and a half years, until the beginning of 1766, he was in the diplomatic service in the French capital, and in the last months he acted as British chargé d'affaires.
In Paris, Hume was rewarded a hundredfold for his past literary failures - he was surrounded by general attention and even admiration, and the philosopher even thought about staying here forever later, from which Adam Smith dissuaded him. A peculiar socio-psychological paradox arose, and the French materialist enlighteners, and their ideological antipodes from the courtly aristocratic clique, warmly welcomed Hume's work on the history of Great Britain. The royal court was favorable to Hume because he partially rehabilitated the Stuarts in his writings, and this favor is not surprising later, during the years of the French restoration, it will manifest itself again.
Louis Bonald ardently recommended that the French read Hume's historical works, and in 1819, under Louis XVIII, a new translation of the History of England was published in Paris. Voltaire, Helvetius, Holbach perceived Hume's skepticism as a revolutionary doctrine, as deism (the doctrine of God who created the world and does not interfere further in its affairs) or even atheism. Holbach called Hume the greatest philosopher of all ages and the best friend of mankind. Diderot and de Brosse wrote about their love for Hume and about his veneration. Helvetius and Voltaire extolled Hume, attributing to him in advance more merit than he really had, they hoped that he would pass from skepticism and agnosticism in matters of religion to atheism, and encouraged him to this radical step.
The most friendly relations were established between Hume and J. J. Rousseau, and Hume, returning to England, invited him to visit. However, upon arrival in London and then at Hume's estate (1766), Rousseau could not come to terms with stiff British customs, began to suspect Hume of arrogance, of neglect of his writings, and then (and this was already painful suspiciousness) of spying on him for the sake of Holbach and other - again imaginary - of his enemies, in an attempt to steal and appropriate his manuscripts and even in the desire to keep him against his will in England as a prisoner.
Hume, who was impressed by Rousseau's free-thinking, was now frightened by the harshness of his rejection of civilization, science, even art, his willingness to replace the monarchy (so convenient, from Hume's point of view, for achieving an inter-estate compromise) with a republic in the spirit of the later Jacobin. Hume never became a materialist. In a letter to E. Millyar, his publisher, the philosopher admitted that he prefers to make peace with the churchmen than, following Helvetius, to get involved in a dangerous skirmish with them. In April 1759, Hume wrote to Adam Smith that Helvetius' On the Mind was worth reading, but "not for its philosophy." Hume's ironic statements about Voltaire's deism and his even more critical remarks about the "dogmatism" of Holbach's System of Nature are known.
As for Hume's friendly ties with the plebeian ideologue J. J. Rousseau, the history of their relationship is extremely characteristic of former friends turned into enemies. In 1766, on his return to the British Isles, Hume received the post of Assistant Secretary of State. The bright pages of Hume's friendship with the French enlighteners quickly faded in his memory, but he soon revived his official relations with British diplomats, which helped him to achieve such a high position.
In 1769, Hume retires and returns to his hometown. Now he was finally able to realize his old dream - to gather around him a group of talented philosophers, writers and art connoisseurs, lovers of the natural sciences. Hume became the secretary of the Philosophical Society established in Edinburgh and engaged in educational activities. The men of science and art who rallied around Hume during these years were the glory of Scotland. This circle included the professor of moral philosophy Adam Ferguson, the economist Adam Smith, the anatomist Alexander Monroe, the surgeon William Cullen, the chemist Joseph Black, the professor of rhetoric and literature Huge Blair, and some other well-known cultural figures of those times, including on the continent.
The cultural flourishing of Edinburgh in the second half of the 18th century owed much to the activities of this circle of eminent scientists, which served as the basis for the creation in 1783 by Adam Smith and the historian William of the Royal Society in Scotland.
In the early 1870s, Hume repeatedly returned to work on his last major work, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, the first draft of which dates back to 1751. The forerunner of these "dialogues" was, apparently, published by Hume anonymously in 1745, a pamphlet on questions of religion. This pamphlet has not yet been found Hume did not dare to publish the Dialogues during his lifetime, not without reason fearing persecution from church circles. Moreover, these persecutions were already making themselves felt: beginning in 1770, James Beatty, a professor at Aberdeen, published five times an anti-Humian pamphlet, An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth: Against Sophistry and Skepticism.
In the spring of 1775, Hume showed signs of a serious liver disease (which eventually brought him to the grave). The philosopher decided to take care of the posthumous publication of his last work and included a special clause about this in his will. But for a long time his executors shied away from fulfilling his will, for they feared trouble for themselves.
Hume died in August 1776 at the age of 65. Adam Smith, a few days before the philosopher's death, promised to publish his Autobiography, adding to it a report on how Hume spent his last days. According to Smith, the philosopher remained true to himself and in the last hours of his life he divided them between reading Lucian and playing whist, ironically over tales of afterlife rewards and joked about the naivety of his own hopes for the imminent disappearance of religious prejudices among the people.
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In his philosophy, David Hume tries to build, or at least start building, a "comprehensive science of man." To approach such a vast task, Hume divides human nature into three main components: knowledge, affects, and morality.
Hume belongs to the empirical tradition of modern European philosophy. This means that for him the logical work of the mind is meaningless without the foundation of experience in the broadest sense of this concept. One can say about Hume that he discovered psychology before it took shape as an independent science. He calls the entire content of our consciousness a "bundle of perceptions" (perception is a figurative "unit" of perception). They appear as a result of experience (they have nowhere else to come from, Hume denies the theory of "innate ideas"). Perceptions are divided into two inseparable kinds: impressions and ideas. Impressions are bright, but ideas are dimmer. Impressions appear directly due to sensory perception, and after some time, passing through the "filters" of imagination, associations, causal relationships, they turn into ideas. Hume suggests that the mechanics of the emergence of perceptions be discovered by biologists, not philosophers.
Nature endowed man with the ability to affect (we know how to be angry, love, suffer). This area of activity belongs to the unconscious component of our nature and is inherent in us from birth. Not only can affects affect the formation of ideas, they are also the strongest motive for our actions.
Thus, Hume aims to overthrow the dogma of the rational component of our essence. To bring the matter to an end, Hume takes a skeptical position in relation to our knowledge in general and scientific knowledge in particular. The philosopher claims that since all our knowledge is derived from sensory data (and our feelings, as you know, are very changeable), we cannot talk about any objective knowledge. At the same time, we are naturally endowed with the ability to accumulate and structure knowledge. Our memory and the principles of association and causality mentioned above are responsible for this.
According to Hume, new knowledge is fixed as a result of repeated repetition of the same action. This action must take place under the same conditions. At some point, the mind gets used to expecting the observed result and therefore believes in the universality of the developed scheme. In logic, this method is called induction. Hume sees the weakness of this method in habit and faith, because it is this pair that underlies most of the knowledge. Often, the human mind replaces the real cause with a previous action. This is how dogmas appear, based on the belief in a false cause of events. Hume is skeptical about the belief in the possibility of establishing a true causal relationship.
Finally, the last section of Hume's philosophy is related to morality. Despite the fact that in the academic environment the theory of knowledge is traditionally given more importance, in the text of Hume himself we can find the following: "morality is the subject that interests us more than anyone else." Hume leaves the theory of knowledge as the foundation for the construction of moral philosophy.
Hume tries to overcome the opposition between the natural and the artificial. He argues that the moral laws governing human behavior, both at the individual and at the social level, appear as a result of selfish motives inherent in us by nature. Hume asks: how could people overcome natural selfishness and create states in which the public good is valued over private success? In answering this question, Hume manifests himself as a kind British gentleman and appeals to the human capacity for sympathy, which allows one to take the positions of other people and form generally accepted laws. However, it is not possible for Hume to find any absolute law that can be established once and for all. Morality is conventional and depends on the economic, political, historical context.
Hume tries to describe the unity of all processes of human life and discovers culture, in the broadest sense of the word, which is an essential characteristic of human nature. Culture as a source of development and impermanence of human society in general and individual life in particular. The idea, which would seem trivial in modern times, was not at all accepted by contemporaries in the first half of the 18th century.
This is how the program theses of Hume's philosophy look like. Of course, in his texts you can find much more topics for reflection. For a quick introduction to his philosophy, I would recommend reading Hume's abridged summary of Treatise on Human Nature, written succinctly by Hume himself for the general public. If you open the “Treatise” itself, you will see a fairly voluminous text written in a high-quality and lively literary language, rare for philosophical texts. In addition, Hume's philosophy contains a number of works on a religious theme, in which the Scot appears as an ardent anti-clerical.
Plan
Introduction
1 Biography
2 Philosophy
3 Compositions
Introduction
David Hume (David Hume, David Hume, English David Hume; May 7 (April 26 old style), 1711 Edinburgh, Scotland - August 25, 1776, ibid) - Scottish philosopher, representative of empiricism and agnosticism, one of the largest figures in Scottish Enlightenment.
1. Biography
Born in 1711 in Edinburgh (Scotland) in the family of a lawyer, the owner of a small estate. Hume received a good education at the University of Edinburgh. He worked in the diplomatic missions of England in Europe.
Began philosophical activity in 1739, publishing the first two parts "A Treatise on Human Nature". A year later, the second part of the treatise was published. The first part was devoted to human knowledge. Then he finalized these ideas and published in a separate book - "Essay on Human Knowledge" .
Wrote a lot of works on various topics, including the history of England in eight volumes.
2. Philosophy
Historians of philosophy generally agree that Hume's philosophy is in the nature of radical skepticism, but many researchers Who? consider that the ideas of naturalism also play an extremely important role in Hume's teachings.
Hume was greatly influenced by the ideas of the empiricists John Locke and George Berkeley, as well as Pierre Bayle, Isaac Newton, Samuel Clarke, Francis Hutcheson and Joseph Butler.
Hume believed that our knowledge begins with experience and ends with experience, without innate knowledge (a priori). Therefore, we do not know the reason for our experience. Since experience is always limited to the past, we cannot comprehend the future. For such judgments, Hume was considered a great skeptic in the possibility of knowing the world through experience.
Experience consists of perceptions, perceptions are divided into impression(feelings and emotions) and ideas(memories and imaginations). After perceiving the material, the cognizer begins to process these representations. Decomposition by similarity and difference, far apart or near (space), and by causality. Everything is made up of impressions. And what is the source of the sensation of perception? Hume replies that there are at least three hypotheses:
1. There are images of objective objects (reflection theory, materialism).
2. The world is a complex of sensations of perception (subjective idealism).
3. The sensation of perception is evoked in our mind by God, the higher spirit (objective idealism).
Monument to Yuma. Edinburgh.
Hume asks which of these hypotheses is correct. To do this, you need to compare these types of perceptions. But we are shackled in the line of our perception and will never know what is beyond it. So the question of what is the source of sensation is a fundamentally unsolvable question.. It's possible, but we'll never be able to verify it. There is no evidence for the existence of the world. You can't prove or disprove.
In 1876, Thomas Henry Huxley coined the term agnosticism to refer to this position. Sometimes the false impression is created that Hume asserts the absolute impossibility of knowledge, but this is not entirely true. We know the content of consciousness, which means that the world in consciousness is known. That is we know the world that is in our mind, but we will never know the essence of the world, we can only know the phenomena. This direction is called phenomenalism. On this basis, most of the theories of modern Western philosophy are built, asserting the unsolvability of the fundamental question of philosophy. Causal relationships in Hume's theory are the result of our habit. A person is a bundle of perceptions.
Hume saw the basis of morality in the moral sense, but he denied free will, believing that all our actions are due to affects.
3. Compositions
· Works in two volumes. Volume 1. - M., 1965, 847 s (Philosophical Heritage, Vol. 9)
· Works in two volumes. Volume 2. - M., 1965, 927 s (Philosophical Heritage, Vol. 10).
"Treatise on Human Nature" (1739) "On the Norm of Taste" (1739-1740) "Moral and Political Essays" (1741-1742) "On the Immortality of the Soul" "Study on Human Knowledge" (1748) "Dialogues on Natural Religion" » (1751)
"History of Great Britain"
Article about David Hume from Encyclopedia Around the World
· David Hume. Studies relating to human cognition - text in Russian and English
· David Hume"Treatise on Human Nature"
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Hume, David
David (David) Hume (May 7 (April 26, old style), 1711 Edinburgh - August 25, 1776, ibid) - Scottish philosopher, representative of empiricism and agnosticism, predecessor of the second positivism (empirio-criticism, Machism), economist and historian, publicist, one of the major figures of the Scottish Enlightenment.
David Hume was born in 1711 in the family of a poor nobleman who practiced law, the owner of a small estate. Hume attended the University of Edinburgh, where he received a good legal education. He worked in the diplomatic missions of England in Europe. Already in his youth he showed a particular interest in philosophy and literature. After visiting Bristol for a commercial purpose, feeling a failure, he went to France in 1734.
Hume began his philosophical career in 1738 by publishing the first two parts of a Treatise on Human Nature, where he attempted to define the basic principles of human knowledge.
A year later, the third part of the treatise was published. The first part was devoted to human knowledge. He then developed these ideas and published them in a separate work, An Inquiry into Human Cognition.
In 1763, after the end of the war between England and France, Hume, as secretary of the British embassy at the Court of Versailles, was invited to the capital of France, where he received recognition for his work on the history of England. Hume's criticism of religious fanatics was approved by Voltaire and Helvetius. However, praise from other philosophers was shown because of their intensive correspondence with Hume, because their interests and views converged in many ways. A special impression on Helvetius, Turgot and other enlighteners was made by The Natural History of Religion, published in 1757 in the collection Four Dissertations.
In 1769 Hume founded the Philosophical Society in Edinburgh, where he acted as secretary. This circle included: Adam Ferguson, Adam Smith, Alexander Monroe, William Cullen, Joseph Black, Hugh Blair and others.
Shortly before his death, Hume wrote his Autobiography. In it, he described himself as a meek, open, sociable and cheerful person who had a weakness for literary fame, which, however, "never hardened my character, despite all the frequent failures."
Hume died in August 1776 at the age of 65.
Books (3)
An inquiry into human intelligence
But, seeing the failure of the named work, the author realized his mistake, which consisted in a premature appearance in the press, revised everything anew in the following works, where, as he hopes, some negligences in his former reasoning or, rather, expressions are corrected.
Some writers, however, who have honored the author's philosophy with scrutiny, have endeavored to direct the fire of all their batteries against this youthful work, which was never recognized by the author, and have laid claim to the victory which they imagined they had won over it.
This is a course of action that is very contrary to all the rules of sincerity and directness in actions, and is a striking example of those polemical subterfuges that fanatics consider themselves entitled to resort to in their zeal. From now on, the author wishes that only the following works be considered as a presentation of his philosophical views and principles.
Works in two volumes. Volume 1
The first volume contains Hume's A Treatise on Human Nature, or an Attempt to Apply the Method of Reasoning from Experience to Moral Subjects, and supplemented by the first Russian translation of Letters from a Gentleman to his Friend in Edinburgh.
The volume is provided with a scientific apparatus, including a new introductory article by A.F. Gryaznov.
Works in two volumes. Volume 2
Most of the principles and reasoning contained in this volume were made public in a three-volume work entitled A Treatise on Human Nature, a work which was conceived by the author before he left college, and written and published shortly thereafter.
But, seeing the failure of this work, the author realized his mistake, which consisted in a premature appearance in the press, revised everything anew in the following works, where, as he hopes, some negligences in his previous reasoning or, rather, expressions are corrected.
Some writers, however, who have honored the author's philosophy with scrutiny, have endeavored to direct the fire of all their batteries against this youthful work, which was never recognized by the author, and have laid claim to the victory which they imagined they had won over it. This is a course of action that is very contrary to all the rules of sincerity and directness in actions and is a striking example of those polemical subterfuges to which the zeal of fanatics considers itself entitled to resort. From now on, the author wishes that only the following works be considered as a presentation of his philosophical views and principles.
