In 1739, A Treatise of Human Nature was published after Hume returned to England with expectations of fame. Hume was very disappointed when the public generally ignored his writing. Hume turned to writing political essays which were more successful, and applied to be an ethics professor at Edinburgh University. Although easily qualified for the position, he was denied the job because of his supposed Atheism.

After this, he turned around and rewrote A Treatise of Human Nature in order to clarify some of his views that offended people. His revision was titled An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. In 1751 Hume published An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. This writing was not an instant success, and after serving briefly in the military, he began to write Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, and The History of England, which was published in six volumes from 1754 to 1762. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion was not published until three years after his death in 1779. The History of England provided him with the literary fame he always wanted, rather than his extensive philosophical works which were pretty much ignored by the public because everyone thought he was Atheist and didn’t want to “buy into” his ideas.

From 1763 to 1767, Hume was Secretary of the British Ambassador to France, Earl of Hertford. In 1767 he returned to Scotland and finally had no financial worries. Hume was now receiving around 1,000 pounds a year from his writings. In 1775 he became ill, and died peacefully on August 25 of 1776.

David Hume looked at the world in logical terms only. He was a realist who, through philosophy, always had to distinguish between the impressions of human experience and the ideas which are changing representations of life experiences. Hume was also a skeptic, who did not accept anything that presented itself as knowledge until it was proven to be so. Hume believed that people act based on customs and “tradition” instead of reason. He believed that a relationship will follow its own definition as casual, sexual, romantic, friendly, unhealthy and so on based on single events and occurrences that happened during the last encounter of the people in the relationship. And that each event was singular and not directly linked with the last, that’s just how we perceived the encounters to be because we were acting and perceiving the relationship as a custom or tradition. Not just the relationship but our actions, emotions, and outlooks were all “supposed” to follow in a certain manner, and so they follow this manner because it is what we expect (as tradition.) This is probably not very clearly explained by me because I had trouble reading it myself, interpreting it for myself, and writing down what I interpreted (or thought I interpreted) from my research.

Like I mentioned earlier, Hume was suspected to be an Atheist. Even though Hume never denied God’s existence, he felt it was wrong to believe in miracles and give God credit to the experience of a “miracle.” Whenever Hume would hear of a miracle he would test it against rules of evidence and logic and found people’s belief of miracle’s to be just plain absurd. This supports his belief that people do not act upon reason at all, and can be very irrational when something shocking happens. Hume was also an extreme skeptic. Some even think of Hume’s skepticism as all negativity but Hume objected to this view. Hume simply did not trust any theory that was not based solely on human experience.

Perhaps what Hume is most known for is his opinion that people have no ideas at all in the mind that are based on something we did not perceive. He thought that all human knowledge is limited to what we take in with our senses and how we perceive that information. He has that clean-slate philosophy we talked about in class where a person isn’t born with any knowledge, ideas, or impressions in their brains from birth. This is what’s called empiricism.

I don’t think I’m really qualified to agree or disagree with Hume’s empiricist philosophy because I don’t know the arguments from both sides of the coin. I know that I can agree with what Hume is saying because he makes it believable, and I think that is one thing a philosopher has to do to get his views to be accepted. But on the other hand, I’m sure I could listen to someone who opposed his views and I could agree with them too. I find myself doing that in class often. I hear one thing and agree with it until I hear the other side of the story and I change my opinion somewhat. It seems like there is always an intersection between two philosophies that I agree with; a part of one type and a part of its direct opposite. I think it’s completely believable that all of our knowledge comes from just what we experience in our lives through each of our senses. I know I can say that in my life, as far as I can see, this is true. Then again I don’t know of what these scientists have been discovering about newborn babies already having pre-conceived ideas and impressions imprinted in their minds. Like what you were telling us about the twins who never met before having interest in the same type of women. Genetics might be able to imprint information and a pre-conceived pathway for our actions, likes, and dislikes. So to sum up my opinion of Hume’s philosophy, I’d have to say I’m a little sketchy. I don’t agree with him one hundred percent and I don’t disagree with him one hundred percent. Basically because I know there are things out there I don’t know about that I’m sure could persuade me more either way.