This book provides an introduction to the life and works of the Scottish philosopher David Hume. It examines Hume's major philosophical contributions, including his views on empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism, as well as his influential writings on morality, religion, and politics. It also looks
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist and essayist who is known for his highly influential system of empiricism, philosophical scepticism and metaphysical naturalism. Beginning with A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40), Hume strove to create a naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature. Following John Locke, Hume rejected the existence of innate ideas, holding that all our ideas derive ultimately from impressions, but in his fork he distinguished relations of ideas, known a priori, from matters of fact, whose knowledge rests on experience. This places him in the empiricist tradition of Locke and George Berkeley, while drawing his experimental method from Francis Bacon.