Hume, David (1711–1776)

Life and Work

Hume was born into a noble albeit no longer prosperous family in Edinburgh on April 26, 1711. After the death of his father in 1713 he grew up with his two elder siblings under the care of his mother at Ninewells in the Scottish lowlands.

At the young age of 12 he followed his older brother to Edinburgh University. There he first studied mathematics; later on, he studied law but never completed the degree. Soon Hume turned his concentration to the great ancient philosophers, especially Cicero and Seneca. Beyond them he read the major contemporary British writers like Joseph Butler, John Locke, and George Berkeley; he admired them as fathers of moral science that was based on an experimental approach.

In 1734, after several years of intense reading, he felt sick and exhausted. In an effort to recover his health through a change of habits, Hume relocated to Bristol to take up work for a sugar importer. Because this way of life did not suit him at all, he quickly decided to resign and, still in the year 1734, took up his former studies againbut this time in France. Declining to accept gainful employment forced him to live a very modest life for years.

In France he stayed mainly in La Flèche, where roughly a century before Descartes had received his education in the Jesuit College, which still existed in Hume's time. There he read the continental philosophers' works and soon gained back his mental strength. Between 1734 and 1737 Hume composed his initial work, Treatise of Human Nature. To finalize the editing and for the sake of managing the book's release he moved to London. The first two volumesOf the Understanding and Of the Passions were finally published in 1739.

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Figure: Portrait of David Hume by Allan Ramsey, 1776. Hume was one of the greatest philosophers in Western history, as well as an accomplished historian and economist

Eventually the third volume, Of Morals, appeared. The Treatise included Hume's attempt to introduce a “science of human nature.”

But the Treatise's tepid reception and miserable sales left Hume disappointed since his ambition from his youngest age onward had been to become a reputable man of letters. Having experienced this frustration, he returned to Ninewells to carry on his studies. In 1741/1742, Hume published his Essays Moral and Political. In contrast to the previous work, this one met with wide success.

In search of a stable income and space for further free development, Hume applied in 1745 for a vacant chair of Ethics in Edinburgh. But the “murmur among the zealots” about Hume's alleged skepticism and atheism as voiced in the Treatise gave rise to successful opposition against his appointment. For the same reason he failed again 6 years later in Glasgow in his second and final effort to obtain a professorship.

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