David Hume

Last update: 03 Oct 1994 12:01
First version: Sometime before 13 March 1995

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Scotch philosopher, moralist and historian; the greatest of the British empiricists.

Recommended, primary:
• The Hume Archives
• An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
• An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
• Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
• A Natural History of Religion
• From the Essays
  • "Of the First Principles of Government"
  • "Of Superstition and Enthusiasm"
  • "Of the Standard of Taste"
  • "Of the Balance of Trade" [Perhaps the first theoretical account of a feedback mechanism]
  • "Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations"

Recommended, secondary:
• A. J. Ayer, Hume
• Alison Gopnik, "How David Hume Helped Solve My Midlife Crisis", Atlantic Monthly October 2015

To read:
• DH
  • Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary
  • Treatise of Human Nature
• M. A. Box, The Suasive Art of David Hume
• Alison Gopnik, "Could David Hume Have Known about Buddhism? Charles Francois Dolu, the Royal College of La Flèche, and the Global Jesuit Intellectual Network", Hume Studies 35 (2009): 5--28 [PDF reprint via Prof. Gopnik]
• D. C. Stove, Probability and Hume's Inductive Scepticism
• Frederick G. Whelan, Order and Artifice in Hume's Political Philosophy