David Hume
Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist
1711 CE to 1776 CE
David Hume (7 May [O.S.
26 April] 1711 – 25 August 1776) is a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and scepticism.
He is one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment.
Hume is often grouped with John Locke, George Berkeley, and a handful of others as a British Empiricist.
Beginning with his A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), Hume strives to create a total naturalistic "science of man" that examines the psychological basis of human nature.
In stark opposition to the rationalists who preceded him, most notably Descartes, he concludes that desire rather than reason governes human behavior, saying: "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions."
A prominent figure in the skeptical philosophical tradition and a strong empiricist, he argues against the existence of innate ideas, concluding instead that humans have knowledge only of things they directly experience.
Thus he divides perceptions between strong and lively "impressions" or direct sensations and fainter "ideas", which are copied from impressions.
He develops the position that mental behavior is governed by "custom", that is acquired ability; our use of induction, for example, is justified only by our idea of the "constant conjunction" of causes and effects.
Without direct impressions of a metaphysical "self", he concludes that humans have no actual conception of the self, only of a bundle of sensations associated with the self.
Hume advocates a compatibilist theory of free will that proves extremely influential on subsequent moral philosophy.
He is also a sentimentalist who holds that ethics are based on feelings rather than abstract moral principles.
Hume also examines the normative is–ought problem.
He holds notoriously ambiguous views of Christianity, but famously challenges the argument from design in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1777).
Kant credited Hume with waking him up from his "dogmatic slumbers" and Hume has proved extremely influential on subsequent philosophy, especially on utilitarianism, logical positivism, William James, philosophy of science, early analytic philosophy, cognitive philosophy, and other movements and thinkers.
The philosopher Jerry Fodor proclaimed Hume's Treatise "the founding document of cognitive science".
Also famous as a prose stylist, Hume pioneered the essay as a literary genre and engaged with contemporary intellectual luminaries such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith (who acknowledged Hume's influence on his economics and political philosophy), James Boswell, Joseph Butler, and Thomas Reid.
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David Hume introduces Newtonian methodology into philosophical analysis in 1739 in A Treatise of Human Nature, his most important work, in which the Scottish empiricist philosopher and historian and attempts to show how human knowledge arises from sense experience.
It has been planned as an attempt to force the French to withdraw their forces from Flanders to reinforce their own coast.
At the same time, as Lorient is used by the French East India Company as a base and supply depot, its destruction will serve British objectives in the East Indies.
Around forty-five hundred British soldiers had been embarked, but the ships carrying them had had to wait off the Lorient coast several days, allowing the town to organize its defences and call in reinforcements from other towns in the region.
The British troops only arrive in the outskirts of the town on October 3 and negotiations for the town's surrender are ended on by the bombardment of October 5–7.
On October 7 the British force is ordered to retreat.
The British engineers' incompetence and losses to disease and fatigue force the commander to stop his offensive.
At the same time, the French commander had originally planned to surrender, believing his enemy to have an overwhelming numerical superiority and knowing the weakness of his defenses and the poor training and weaponry of his own troops.
He makes a surrender offer on October 7, shortly after the enemy's departure, and never receives a reply.
The raid is notable for its military results, such as forcing the French to develop fortifications in southern Brittany, but also for its cultural consequences, such as starting a controversy between David Hume and Voltaire and giving rise to a cult of the Virgin Mary in the town along with several songs describing the siege.
Rousseau's choice of a Catholic vicar of humble peasant background (plausibly based on a kindly prelate he had met as a teenager) as a spokesman for the defense of religion is in itself a daring innovation for the time.
The vicar's creed was that of Socinianism (or Unitarianism as it is called today).
Because it rejects original sin and divine revelation, both Protestant and Catholic authorities take offense.
Moreover, Rousseau has advocated the opinion that, insofar as they lead people to virtue, all religions are equally worthy, and that people should therefore conform to the religion in which they have been brought up.
Former friends such as Jacob Vernes of Geneva cannot accept his views, and write violent rebuttals.
This religious indifferentism causes Rousseau and his books to be banned from France and Geneva.
A sympathetic observer, David Hume, "professed no surprise when he learned that Rousseau's books were banned in Geneva and elsewhere".
Rousseau, he wrote, "has not had the precaution to throw any veil over his sentiments; and, as he scorns to dissemble his contempt for established opinions, he could not wonder that all the zealots were in arms against him. The liberty of the press is not so secured in any country... as not to render such an open attack on popular prejudice somewhat dangerous."
Some background information had been provided by Pietro, who is in the process of authoring a text on the history of torture, and Alessandro Verri is an official at a Milan prison who has firsthand experience of the prison's appalling conditions.
In this essay, Beccaria reflects the convictions of his friends in the Il Caffè (Coffee House) group, who seek to cause reform through Enlightenment discourse.
Beccaria's treatise marks the high point of the Milan Enlightenment.
In it, Beccaria puts forth some of the first modern arguments against the death penalty.
His treatise is also the first full work of penology, advocating reform of the criminal law system.
The book is the first full-scale work to tackle criminal reform and to suggest that criminal justice should conform to rational principles.
It is a less theoretical work than the writings of Hugo Grotius, Samuel von Pufendorf and other comparable thinkers, and as much a work of advocacy as of theory.
The brief work relentlessly protests against torture to obtain confessions, secret accusations, the arbitrary discretionary power of judges, the inconsistency and inequality of sentencing, using personal connections to get a lighter sentence, and the use of capital punishment for serious and even minor offenses.
Beccaria was born in Milan on March 15, 1738, to the Marchese Gian Beccaria Bonesana, an aristocrat of moderate well-being from the Austrian Habsburg Empire.
Beccaria had received his early education in the Jesuit college at Parma.
Subsequently, he graduated in law from the University of Pavia in 1758.
At first he showed a great aptitude for mathematics, but studying Montesquieu (1689–1755) had redirected his attention towards economics.
In 1762 his first publication, a tract on the disorder of the currency in the Milanese states, included a proposal for its remedy.
In his mid-twenties, Beccaria has become close friends with Pietro and Alessandro Verri, two brothers who with a number of other young men from the Milan aristocracy, form a literary society named "L'Accademia dei pugni" (the Academy of Fists), a playful name that makes fun of the stuffy academies that proliferate in Italy and also hints that relaxed conversations that took place in there sometimes end in affrays.
Much of its discussion focuses on reforming the criminal justice system.
Through this group Beccaria has become acquainted with French and British political philosophers, such as Hobbes, Diderot, Helvétius, Montesquieu, and Hume.
He is particularly influenced by Helvétius.
Although it is within the Canton of Bern, from where he had been expelled two years ago, he is informally assured that he can move into this island house without fear of arrest, and he does so.
However, on October 17, 1765, the Senate of Bern orders Rousseau to leave the island and all Bernese territory within fifteen days.
He replies, requesting permission to extend his stay, and offers to be incarcerated in any place within their jurisdiction with only a few books in his possession and permission to walk occasionally in a garden while living at his own expense.
The Senate's response is to direct Rousseau to leave the island, and all Bernese territory, within twenty four hours.
At this point:, he has invitations to Potsdam from Frederick, to Corsica from Paoli, to Lorraine from Saint-Lambert, to Amsterdam from Rey the publisher, and to England from David Hume.
He subsequently decides to accept Hume's invitation to England.
Franklin, in Scotland, spends five days with Lord Kames near Stirling and ...
...stays for three weeks with David Hume, one of Kames’s protégés, in Edinburgh.
Edward Gibbon, "often tempted to throw away the labours of seven years" after several rewrites, publishes the first volume of what will become his life's major achievement, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, on February 17, 1776.
Tracing the trajectory of Western civilization (as well as the Islamic and Mongolian conquests) from the height of the Roman Empire to the fall of Byzantium, it will be published in six volumes.
Through 1777, the reading public will eagerly consume three editions, for which Gibbon will be rewarded handsomely: two-thirds of the profits, amounting to approximately £1,000.
Biographer Leslie Stephen will write that thereafter, "His fame was as rapid as it has been lasting." And as regards this first volume, "Some warm praise from David Hume overpaid the labour of ten years."