Page 191 - DENG502_PROSE

Unit 19: David Hume-of Essay Writing: Introduction and Detailed Study

Kant credited Hume with waking him up from his “dogmatic slumbers” and Hume has proved Notes
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.

19.1 Life and Works

David Hume, originally David Home, son of Joseph Home of Chirnside, advocate, and Katherine
Falconer, was born on 26 April 1711 (Old Style) in a tenement on the north side of the Lawnmarket
in Edinburgh. He changed the spelling of his name in 1734, because the fact that his surname
‘Home’ was pronounced ‘Hume’ in Scotland was not known in England. Throughout his life
Hume, who never married, spent time occasionally at his family home at Ninewells by Chirnside,
Berwickshire, which had belonged to his family since the sixteenth century.
Education
An engraving of Hume from his The History of England Vol. I (1754) Hume attended the University
of Edinburgh at the unusually early age of twelve (possibly as young as ten) at a time when
fourteen was normal. At first he considered a career in law, but came to have, in his words, “an
insurmountable aversion to everything but the pursuits of Philosophy and general Learning; and
while [my family] fanceyed I was poring over Voet and Vinnius, Cicero and Virgil were the
Authors which I was secretly devouring.”He had little respect for the professors of his time,
telling a friend in 1735, “there is nothing to be learnt from a Professor, which is not to be met with
in Books.”
Hume made a philosophical discovery that opened up to him “...a new Scene of Thought,” which
inspired him “...to throw up every other Pleasure or Business to apply entirely to it.” He did not
recount what this “Scene” was, and commentators have offered a variety of speculations. Due to
this inspiration, Hume set out to spend a minimum of ten years reading and writing. He came to
the verge of nervous breakdown, after which he decided to have a more active life to better
continue his learning.
Career
As Hume’s options lay between a travelling tutorship and a stool in a merchant’s office, he chose
the latter. In 1734, after a few months occupied with commerce in Bristol, he went to La Flèche in
Anjou, France. There he had frequent discourse with the Jesuits of the College of La Flèche. As he
had spent most of his savings during his four years there while writing A Treatise of Human Nature,
he resolved “to make a very rigid frugality supply my deficiency of fortune, to maintain unimpaired
my independency, and to regard every object as contemptible except the improvements of my
talents in literature”.He completed the Treatise at the age of 26.
Although many scholars today consider the Treatise to be Hume’s most important work and one
of the most important books in Western philosophy, the critics in Great Britain at the time did not
agree, describing it as “abstract and unintelligible”. Despite the disappointment, Hume later wrote,
“Being naturally of a cheerful and sanguine temper, I soon recovered from the blow and prosecuted
with great ardour my studies in the country”. There, he wrote the Abstract Without revealing his
authorship, he aimed to make his larger work more intelligible.
After the publication of Essays Moral and Political in 1744, Hume applied for the Chair of
Pneumatics and Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. However, the position was

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 185