The Scottish philosopher David Hume developed the concept of "mitigated skepticism," which remains a viable alternative to the systems of rationalism, empiricism, and idealism. Hume raised relevant issues and arguments that remain central to...

Called the "Great Infidel" by some and "le bon David" by others, David Hume was and has remained one of the most important British philosophers, essayists, and historians of the eighteenth century. Though Hume is known today in most circles for his...

David Hume's literary work reveals an extraordinary range of interests and a mind of unusual scope and penetration. Recognized as one of the greatest modern philosophers, he made original contributions to the major areas of philosophical inquiry:...

David Hume (1711–1776) is one of the most influential philosophers of the modern period. He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on April 26. His first and most important work, A Treatise of Human Nature (published in two installments in 1739 and...

Though it is now a cliché that Hume’s philosophy is a Newtonian science of humankind, and that all through the twentieth century students of it have noticed such things as the role played by sympathy as a mechanism of communication and...

. 1711–76. Scottish, born in Edinburgh, and generally regarded as the greatest of ‘British empiricists’, Hume was an historian and a man of letters as well as a philosopher. His religious opinions stood in the way of his having an...

Since the day of Pentecost, the Christian church has been called to transcend all barriers of language, nationality, and ethnicity. The Latin Mass of the medieval church was a powerful symbol of unity throughout Western Europe. The sixteenth-century...

David Hume (April 26, 1711 – August 25, 1776)[1] was an 18th-century Scottish philosopher, economist, and historian, considered among the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment. He first gained...

Jerome Christensen has observed that "[f]or Hume and his fellow men of letters the general term that subsumed 'discourse' and 'conversation' was 'correspondence,'" and that "correspondence" was so multivalent in the eighteenth century that it could signify the "empiricist ethic of sympathy" at...

The discovery that a historical narrative reflects the perspective and concerns of its author might seem a relatively recent development, or at least one that reaches back mainly to G. W. F. Hegel's account of the different approaches to writing history. (1) However,...

THE BLACK SWAN: THE IMPACT OF THE HIGHLY IMPROBABLEBy Nassim Nicholas Taleb Random House, 366 pages, $26.95 Nassim Taleb knows the good life: weekends in Venice, excellent wine, helicopter-flying lessons and a host of other luxuries that are easy to afford if, like him, you’re...

In the following two chapters from The Suasive Art of David Hume, Box describes Hume's stylistic development from the Treatise to the Essays. According to Box, the “journalistic character” of the latter work represents a marked improvement over the tendency of the former toward “formal treatise.”

In the first chapter below, Livingston explores Hume's attitudes toward religion and philosophy. In the second, he examines Hume's support of the American Revolution and his criticism of British imperial policy.

In this essay, Potkay explores Hume's ambivalence toward rhetoric and evaluates his attempt “to preserve the coalescent power of eloquence in the very act of dissolving the bonds of religion.”

A speculative analysis of three imaginary cities built according to the ethical teachings of Plato, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant. The purpose is to evaluate which "city" would stand the test of time.

Compares and contrasts the viewpoints of empiricist philosophers John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume. Describes how they all have many different believes, but agree on the three anchor points: the only source of genuine knowledge is sense experience, reason is an unreliable and inadequate route to knowledge unless it is grounded in the solid bedrock of sense experience and there is no evidence of innate ideas within the mind that are known from experience.

This essay is centered upon the philosopher David Hume's work "Dialogues Concerning Natural Relgion." The essay works through Hume's appoarch to reason through the three speakers in his work. It explains the three speakers' (Cleanthes, Philo, and Demea) point of view in regard to philosophy and reason.