Hume, David (1711–1776)

Life and Works

David Hume was born in 1711 near Edinburgh. He studied science and read widely in history, literature, and philosophy. In his mid-20s, he wrote his first, greatest, and most influential philosophical work, his three-volume Treatise of Human Nature, a difficult and provocative book. To Hume's disappointment, the book failed to gain attention. Therefore, in1741 [Page 1259]and 1742, he published his Essays, Moral and Political to get his ideas across to a general public. With their popular style, the essays were more successful than the Treatise. But being condemned as an atheist and skeptic—he despised the “monkish virtues” of humility and self-denial—Hume never obtained an academic post. Popular revisions of his Treatise (Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and Enquiry Concerning The Principles of Morals)were published in 1748 and 1751. In 1751, Hume also published hisPolitical Discourses, which drew immediate praise. But his most successful book was his six-volumeHistory of England, published from 1754to 1762. This work made Hume quite wealthy. After having held diverse professional positions and having spent several years of his life abroad (in France, Austria, and Italy), Hume could spend his last years in Edinburgh quietly and comfortably, dining and conversing with friends in Edinburgh's intellectual circles.

Empiricism

Following the newly developed natural sciences of the 17th century,Hume wanted to establish a science of human nature that would be free of false and misleading metaphysics or superstition. His aim was to find the explanatory principles that produce order in diverse phenomena of human nature. In general, he thought that a study of history and an examination of all known societies suggested that these principles of human nature are as universal and immutable as those governing the rest of the natural world.

Impressions, Ideas, and Personal Identity

Hume criticized the traditional conception of human nature, which identified the capacity for reasoning as the true human nature. In his account, the passions are likewise potentially positive and beneficent parts of human nature. The materials of thinking(perceptions) are divided into ideas (thoughts) and impressions(sensations, such as colors and sounds, and passions, such as being happy or afraid). He argued that all ideas are ultimately derived from impressions, a thesis usually called the copy principle. But ideas are also regularly connected. It is the faculty of imagination that combines simpler ideas into new structures. The imagination flows from one idea to another via three principles of association: resemblance, contiguity in time or place, and cause and effect.

Source: Courtesy, Wikipedia.

On this account, Hume was skeptical about personal identity. He claimed that we have no experience of a simple, individual impression that we can call “the self.” He diagnosed that we naturally (mis)take a highly constant and coherent series of momentary perceptions for a continuous mental substance (the self). Because of the associative principles, the resemblance or causal connection within the chain of our perceptions gives rise to an idea of oneself, and memory extends this idea past our immediate perceptions.

...