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

The Poker Club of Edinburgh ... to correct and qualify so much lusciousness.” For a year from Notes
1767, Hume held the appointment of Under Secretary of State for the Northern Department. In
1768 he settled in Edinburgh where he lived from 1771 until his death in 1776 at the south-west
corner of St. Andrew’s Square in Edinburgh’s New Town, at what is now 21 Saint David Street. (A
popular story, consistent with some historical evidence,suggests the street was named after Hume.)

James Boswell saw Hume a few weeks before his death (which was from some form of abdominal
cancer). Hume told him he sincerely believed it a “most unreasonable fancy” that there might be
life after death.This meeting was dramatized in semi-fictional form for the BBC by Michael Ignatieff
as Dialogue in the Dark. Hume asked that he be interred in a “simple roman tomb.” In his will he
requests that it be inscribed only with his name and the year of his birth and death, “leaving it to
Posterity to add the Rest.”It stands, as he wished it, on the south-western slope of Calton Hill, in
the Old Calton Cemetery.

19.2 As Historian of England

In 1754 to 1762 Hume published the History of England, a 6-volume work of immense sweep, which
extends, says its subtitle, “From the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688”. Inspired
by Voltaire’s sense of the breadth of history, Hume widened the focus of history, away from
merely Kings, Parliaments, and armies, to literature and science as well. He argued that the quest
for liberty was the highest standard for judging the past, and concluded that after considerable
fluctuation, England at the time of his writing had achieved “the most entire system of liberty, that
was ever known amongst mankind.”
Hume’s coverage of the political upheavals of the 17th century relied in large part on the Earl of
Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England (1646-69). Generally Hume took a
moderate Royalist position and thought revolution was unnecessary. Hume’s indeed was considered
a Tory history, and emphasized religious differences more than constitutional issues. He was anti-
Presbyterian, anti-Puritan, anti-Whig, and pro-monarchy. Historians have debated whether Hume
posited a universal unchanging human nature, or allowed for evolution and development.
Hume was an early cultural historian of science. His short biographies of leading scientists explored
the process of scientific change. He developed new ways of seeing scientists in the context of their
times by looking at how they interacted with society and each other. He covers over forty scientists,
with special attention paid to Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton. Hume awarded the
palm of greatness to William Harvey.
The History sold well and was influential for nearly a century when it was superseded by
Goldsmith’s history (which itself was partly plagiarized from Hume’s). By 1894, there were at
least 50 editions. There was also an often-reprinted abridgement, The Student’s Hume (1859).
Thought
A statue of Hume by Alexander Stoddart on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh In the introduction to A
Treatise of Human Nature, Hume writes “’Tis evident, that all the sciences have a relation, more or
less, to human nature ... Even Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Natural Religion, are in some
measure dependent on the science of Man”. Also, “the science of man is the only solid foundation
for the other sciences”, and the method for this science assumes “experience and observation” as
the foundations of a logical argument. Because “Hume’s plan is to extend to philosophy in general
the methodological limitations of Newtonian physics”,Hume is characterised as an empiricist.
Until recently, Hume was seen as a forerunner of the logical positivist movement; a form of anti-
metaphysical empiricism. According to the logical positivists, unless a statement could be verified
by experience, or else was true or false by definition (i.e. either tautological or contradictory), then
it was meaningless (this is a summary statement of their verification principle). Hume, on this
view, was a proto-positivist, who, in his philosophical writings, attempted to demonstrate how

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