David Hume

Introduction & Top Questions
Early life and works
Mature works
- Belief
- Morals and historical writing
Significance and influence
- As a writer
- As a historian
- As an economist
- As a philosopher

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David Hume summary

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Related Questions

How did David Hume challenge arguments for the existence of God?
How did David Hume explain how complex ideas are formed?
How did David Hume explain moral judgments?
How did David Hume explain the association of ideas?
How did David Hume influence Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill?
How did David Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding differ from A Treatise of Human Nature?
How did David Hume’s empiricism explain the origin of human knowledge?
How did habit shape beliefs according to David Hume?
How did the Advocates’ Library help David Hume write History of England?
How was A Treatise of Human Nature received when it first appeared?
How was David Hume received by Parisian society?
What argument did David Hume make against using miracles as proof of religious revelation?
What did David Hume argue about cause and effect?
What did David Hume argue about wealth in Political Discourses?
What did David Hume believe about free trade between nations?
What did David Hume mean by matters of fact?
What did David Hume mean by relations of ideas?
What did David Hume mean when he called reason the slave of the passions?
What distinction did David Hume make between impressions and ideas?
What happened to David Hume’s health in 1729?
What is Hume’s Law about the relationship between facts and moral duties?
What is the problem of induction associated with David Hume?
What period of British history did David Hume cover in History of England?
What role did reason play in David Hume’s theory of human action?
What roles did David Hume have during his years of travel in the 1740s?
What was David Hume’s friendship with Adam Smith like?
When and where was David Hume born?
When was A Treatise of Human Nature published?
When was David Hume’s History of England published?
Where did David Hume travel with General James St. Clair?
Which subjects did David Hume examine in A Treatise of Human Nature?
Why did David Hume believe that knowledge cannot go beyond experience?
Why did David Hume decide not to pursue a career in law?
Why did David Hume go to France in 1734?
Why did David Hume think people expect similar events to occur again?
Why did David Hume travel to Paris in 1763?
Why did David Hume’s History of England make him famous?
Why did Jean-Jacques Rousseau come to Britain with David Hume?
Why is David Hume considered a major figure of the Scottish Enlightenment?
Why was David Hume denied the chair of moral philosophy at the University of Edinburgh?
Why was Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion published after David Hume’s death?
What did David Hume write?
Why is David Hume famous?
Why is Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz famous?
Who were Adam Smith’s parents?
What is Adam Smith best known for?
What is René Descartes known for?
What was René Descartes’s family like?
How did René Descartes die?
Who is St. Augustine?
What was St. Augustine’s impact on Christianity?

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External Websites

The University of Edinburgh - David Hume (1711 ï¿½ 1776)
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Undiscovered Scotland - Biography of David Hume
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Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy - David Hume (1711-76)
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The History of Economic Thoughts - Biography of David Hume
Digital Commons at WayneState - Hume on Mental Representation and Intentionality (PDF)
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Biography of David Hume
Digital Commons at Trinity - David Hume on Banking and Hoarding (PDF)
The Hume Society - David HumeÂ’s Life and Works

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David Hume - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)

David Hume

Scottish philosopher

Written by

Maurice Cranston

Professor of Political Science, London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London, 1969–85. Biographer of Locke and Rousseau.

Maurice CranstonAll

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Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....

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Last updated

Oct. 14, 2026 •History

David Hume (born May 7 [April 26, Old Style], 1711, Edinburgh, Scotland—died August 25, 1776, Edinburgh) was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. Hume conceived of philosophy as the inductive, experimental science of human nature. Taking the scientific method of the English physicist Sir Isaac Newton as his model and building on the epistemology of the English philosopher John Locke, Hume tried to describe how the...

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