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Hume, David

Hume, David, 1711-76, Scottish philosopher and historian. Hume carried the empiricism of John Locke and George Berkeley to the logical extreme of radical skepticism. He repudiated the possibility of certain knowledge, finding in the mind nothing but a series of sensations, and held that cause-and-effect in the natural world derives solely from the conjunction of two impressions. Hume's skepticism is also evident in his writings on religion, in which he rejected any rational or natural theology. Besides his chief work, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), he wrote Political Discourses (1752), The Natural History of Religion (1755), and a History of England (1754-62) that was, despite errors of fact, the standard work for many years.

From the Concise Columbia Encyclopedia. Copyright © 1991 by Columbia University Press.

Works on ILTweb

Hume, David. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Harvard Classics Volume 37. P. F. Collier & Son. 1910 Edition. (.txt only -- HTML version to come).