David Hume

David Hume was born in Edinburgh in 1711 to a moderately wealthy family, but his father died while he was still an infant. As a child he attended the local Church of Scotland, where his uncle was the pastor. He started his education at the University of Edinburgh at the age of eleven, but he left at age fifteen without obtaining a degree, to continue his education privately. He considered a career in law, but his interests lead him to philosophy. He published his first major work, Treatise of Human Nature, at the age of 27. As this work was not very successful, he engaged in tutorial and advisory work in order to make a living. His later works were better received, and he gradually attained a scholarly reputation and considerable royalty income.[1]

In 1744, he applied for a faculty position at the University of Edinburgh, but was not accepted, as discussed below. During the 1760s, he lived in Paris, serving in the embassy there, and he met Rousseau and other important French thinkers. He returned to Edinburgh in 1768 and remained active in the intellectual circles there until his death in 1776.

Impact and Interactions

Hume is generally considered to be the most important thinker of the Scottish Enlightenment. As a major philosopher, he influenced such key figures as Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer. He also made contributions to political and economic thought, and there was considerable interaction on these topics between him and his friends Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson.

Francis Hutcheson read some of Hume's works and offered some constructive criticism through an exchange of letters beginning in 1739. In an early letter, Hume acknowledges: "I am much obliged to you for your reflections on my papers. I have perused them with care, and find they will be of use to me."[2] This relationship came to an end when Hume applied for the chair in Ethics and Pneumatic Philosophy at Edinburgh in 1744. In a letter written to a friend, Hume complains that he has heard that Hutcheson had recommended against giving him this appointment. Although there is no direct evidence of this, Hutcheson's biographer considers it likely, in that Hutcheson would have been concerned about the possible adverse effect of Hume's skeptical views on young minds. In any case, this event put an end to any correspondence between them. Hutcheson was actually offered the Edinburgh position, but he declined it.[3]

Friendships

The close friendship between Hume and a group of Edinburgh clergymen was remarkable in view of his writings about religion. Adverse philosophic comments would have been one thing, but in his Natural History of Religion Hume resorts to ridicule and sarcasm. Of course, some of his most acerbic remarks were directed at Catholics, and liberal Protestants may have thought that they did not apply to them. Nevertheless, as attested by one of these clergymen friends, Alexander Carlyle, they did not approve of "the many attacks on revealed religion that are to be found in his philosophical works, and in many places of his History the last of which are still more objectionable than the first, which a friendly critic might call only sceptical..."[4]

The endurance of the relationship may have been the result of their tolerant attitude or perhaps due to his character, which they admired: "He was a man of great knowledge, and of a social and benevolent temper, and truly the best-natured man in the world... though he had much learning and a fine taste, and was professedly a sceptic, though by no means an atheist, he had the greatest simplicity of mind and manners with the utmost facility and benevolence of temper of any man I ever knew..."[5]

Carlyle  comments on the whole situation:  "He took much to the company of the younger clergy, not from a wish to bring them over to his opinions, for he never attempted to overturn any man's principles, but they best understood his notions, and could furnish him with literary conversation... This intimacy of the young clergy with David Hume enraged the zealots on the opposite side, who little knew how impossible it was for him, had he been willing, to shake their principles."[6]

[1] David Hume, "My Own Life" in The Philosophical Works of David Hume, Volume I  (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1854).

[2] William Robert Scott, Francis Hutcheson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900) 116.

[3] Ibid., 116-128.

[4] Alexander Carlyle, Autobiography of the Rev. Dr Carlyle, Second edition (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1860), 272.

[5] Ibid., 272-273.

[6] Ibid., 274-275.