Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

David Hume's public life as a philosopher and an intellectual began with the publication of the first two books of A Treatise of Human Nature in 1739 when he was only 28 years old. The third book appeared a year later. Although scarce notice was taken of his work at the time, Hume's approach to philosophy was revolutionary. In his Introduction to the Treatise and in the abstract of that work, Hume compares his investigations to that of some recent writers who had been applying the new methods of the seventeenth-century natural philosopher, Francis Bacon, to “the science of man.” Bacon recognized the proper roles of observation and reason in the study of natural phenomena, and he was among the first to formulate a method of inquiry designed to guard against fallacious reasoning due to social and personal biases. Bacon is regarded as one of the important contributors to the development of the modern scientific method. Likewise, Hume adopts an empirical approach to his study of human nature — but with results dramatically different from those near-contemporaries, John Locke and Francis Hutcheson, whom he cites as allies in this method.In his lifetime, Hume went on to publish works that received more attention than the Treatise: political essays, social commentaries, a history of England, and a reformulation of his theories from the Treatise in his two famous books, An Essay concerning ... log in or subscribe to read full text