Birthdate: 7th May 1711
Nationality: Scottish
Bio:
David Hume was an 18th century Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was born in 1711 in Scotland. Hume came from a wealthy family and was able to devote his life to carefully studying philosophy and history.
Hume received little formal education, however, he was a voracious reader from a young age. Through extensive reading, he became interested in philosophy and developed his unique empiricist outlook. In his early 20s, Hume began his first major work, A Treatise of Human Nature. Published in 1739, the Treatise laid out his core philosophical views on causation, induction, and human understanding. However, the dense and abstract Treatise was largely ignored by his contemporaries.
In the 1740s and 1750s, Hume turned his attention more toward history and politics. He published the six-volume History of England between 1754–1762. Hume also served as secretary to General St Clair and worked as an undersecretary and chargé d’affaires in the British Embassy in Paris. During this time, he continued writing and publishing philosophical works aimed at a more general audience such as An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. These essays achieved him wider recognition as an important Enlightenment thinker.
In his later life, Hume achieved great success and fame as a man of letters. He socialized with other leading intellectuals of his day and was a central figure of the Scottish Enlightenment. However, Hume remained a controversial figure due to his skeptical and, at times, openly agnostic philosophical views, which challenged orthodox religious belief. Hume continued writing and publishing until his death in 1776 at the age of 65. He made lasting contributions to philosophy, especially in the fields of epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and the history of philosophy. Hume’s empiricist outlook also profoundly influenced later philosophers such as Immanuel Kant. Today, Hume is regarded as one of the most important philosophers to write in English.
