David Hume

Profile - David Hume (1711–1776)

David Hume was born in Edinburgh and studied law at Edinburgh University, although he never graduated. He tried his hand at commerce in Bristol but nearly had a nervous breakdown. In 1734 he moved to France and there wrote his masterpiece, A Treatise of Human Nature, in his mid-twenties. This long book was not a great success, but the shortened version, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, became a classic. He built on the empiricism founded by Locke and Berkeley and wrote on causation, morals, and the existence of God. Hume distinguished between ‘ideas’ and ‘impressions’ according to the force and liveliness with which they make their way into consciousness. He reported that he could never catch himself without a perception, and never found anything but the perceptions, which is why he concluded that the self is not an entity but a ‘bundle of sensations’.