David Hume Timeline

Hume worked for four years on his first major work, A Treatise of Human Nature, subtitled "Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects", completing it in 1738 at age 27. Beginning with this work, Hume strove to create a naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature.

Image source: A Treatise of Human Nature

The publication of A Treatise of Human Nature between 1739 and 1740 introduced Hume's naturalistic science of man, examining the psychological basis of human nature. In it, he asserted that "Nature, by an absolute and uncontroulable necessity has determin'd us to judge as well as to breathe and feel."

According to the Treatise (1740), in every system of morality that Hume had read, the author begins by stating facts about the world as it is but always ends up suddenly referring to what ought to be the case. Hume's writings on ethics began with the 1740 Treatise and were refined in his An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751).

Image source: An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals

The Essays Moral and Political was published in 1741 and included in the later edition as Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, helping establish Hume's reputation as an essayist.

Image source: Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary

Hume's volume of Political Discourses, written in 1749 and published by Kincaid & Donaldson in 1752, was the only work he considered successful on first publication. It introduced several new ideas around which the "classical economics" of the 18th century was built.

In 1752, Hume started his great historical work, The History of England, which took fifteen years and ran to over a million words, tracing events from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688.

Image source: The History of England (Hume)

Based on the footnote Hume appended to his essay "On National Characters" in 1753 (amended as an endnote for a posthumous 1777 edition), later scholars acknowledge its content is "especially shocking—and deeply puzzling", forming the basis of charges of racism against Hume.

The Whig-dominated world of 1754 overwhelmingly disapproved of Hume's take on English history, whose coverage of 17th-century political upheavals relied in large part on the Earl of Clarendon's History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England (1646–69).

With the publication of his six-volume The History of England between 1754 and 1762, extending "from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688", Hume achieved the fame that he coveted. The work was a bestseller, influential for nearly a century despite competition from imitations by Tobias Smollett (1757) and Oliver Goldsmith (1771). By 1894 there were at least 50 editions as well as abridgements and illustrated pocket editions.

Hume's 1757 dissertation "The Natural History of Religion" argues that the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam all derive from earlier polytheistic religions. His essays "Of the Standard of Taste" and "Of Tragedy" were also connected with this period.

In 1761 all of Hume's works were banned on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, reflecting the Church's condemnation of his sceptical writings on religion. Around the same time, Hume claimed to have authored an anonymous political pamphlet satirising the failure of the British Parliament to create a Scottish militia in 1760, writing to Alexander Carlyle in early 1761 claiming authorship, although authorship is disputed.

Image source: Index Librorum Prohibitorum

The footnote Hume appended to his essay "On National Characters" in 1753 was amended as an endnote for a posthumous 1777 edition of his works, content later scholars describe as "especially shocking—and deeply puzzling".

Hume also criticised the argument from design in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779). A century later, the idea of order without design was rendered more plausible by Charles Darwin's discovery that adaptations of life result from natural selection of inherited characteristics.

Image source: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

Hume's nephew and namesake, David Hume of Ninewells (1757–1838), was a co-founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783, continuing the family's intellectual legacy.

Image source: Royal Society of Edinburgh

Attention to Hume's philosophical works grew after the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, in his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783), credited Hume with awakening him from his "dogmatic slumber".

Image source: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics

Hume's influence on some of the American Founding Fathers can be seen in Benjamin Franklin's suggestion at the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 that no high office in any branch of government should receive a salary, a suggestion Hume had made in his emendation of James Harrington's The Commonwealth of Oceana.

Image source: Constitutional Convention (United States)

Albert Einstein, in 1915, wrote that he was inspired by Hume's positivism when formulating the theory of special relativity, demonstrating Hume's far-reaching influence beyond philosophy.

Image source: Special relativity

Ayer, while introducing his classic exposition of logical positivism in 1936, claimed that his views were "the logical outcome of the empiricism of Berkeley and David Hume".

Image source: Language, Truth, and Logic

In 2003 the philosopher Jerry Fodor described Hume's Treatise as "the founding document of cognitive science", highlighting its enduring relevance to modern psychology and cognitive science. Don Garrett (2002) coined the term "copy principle" for Hume's doctrine that all ideas are ultimately copied from some original impression.