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Unit 20: David Hume-Of Essay Writing ...

Self Assessment Notes
1. Choose the correct options:
(i) “Of Essay Writing’ appeared in
(a) 1742 (b) 1740 (c) 1741 (d) None of these
(ii) Hume’s death took place in
(a) 1776 (b) 1745 (c) 1773 (d) 1765
(iii) Part of mankind divided into
(a) Learned (b) Conversible
(c) Both (a) and (b) (d) None of these

20.7 Summary

• Hume is most celebrated for his philosophical writings, in which he carried the empirical
philosophy of Locke to the point of complete skepticism. He wrote also a “History of England”
in eight volumes, and a large number of treatises and essays on politics, economics, ethics,
and esthetics. The following essay, “Of the Standard of Taste,” is a typical example of his
clear thinking and admirable style. “He may be regarded,” says Leslie Stephen, “as the
acutest thinker in Great Britain of the eighteenth century, and the most qualified interpreter
of its intellectual tendencies.”
• Hume’s aesthetic theory received limited attention until the second half of the Twentieth
Century, when interest in the full range of Hume’s thought was enlivened by the gradual
recognition of his importance among philosophers writing in English. Unfortunately, many
discussions of Hume’s aesthetics concentrate on a single late essay, “Of the Standard of
Taste” (1757). This emphasis misrepresents the degree to which Hume’s aesthetic theory is
integrated into his philosophical system.
• Hume’s theory is most firmly rooted in the work of Joseph Addison and Francis Hutcheson.
• Hume regards the natural capacity of taste as fundamental to the human ability to make
moral and aesthetic judgments.
• Beauty is a feeling of approbation, and an original, simple impression of the mind. Impressions
are contrasted with ideas, which he alternatively calls “thoughts.
• Taste is the capacity to respond with approbation and disapprobation.
• One of Hume’s most puzzling claims is that taste is an “immediate” response.
• “Of Essay Writing” appeared in 1742 in Volume two of Hume’s Essays, Moral and Political,
but was removed from all subsequent editions of that text published during Hume’s life. The
text file here is based on the 1875 Green and Grose edition. Spelling and punctuation have
been modernized. Of Essay Writing The elegant part of mankind, who are not immersed in
the animal life, but employ themselves in the operations of the mind, may be divided into the
learned and conversible. The learned are such as have chosen for their portion the higher
and more difficult operations of the mind, which require leisure and solitude, and cannot be
brought to perfection, without long preparation and severe labour. The conversible world
join to a sociable disposition, and a taste of pleasure, an inclination to the easier and more
gentle exercises of the understanding, to obvious reflections on human affairs, and the duties
of common life, and to the observation of the blemishes or perfections of the particular
objects, thatsurround them. Such subjects of thought furnish not sufficient employment in
solitude, but require the company and conversation of our fellow-creatures, to render them
a proper exercise for the mind: and this brings mankind together in society, where everyone
displays his thoughts and observations in the best manner he is able, and mutually gives and
receives information, as well as pleasure.
• David Hume was one of the most influential philosophers of modern times. Hume argued
that man gains knowledge through experience and that we should be skeptical of all other

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