Hume, David
1711-1796
PhilosopherBorn in 1711, David Hume was the second son of advocate, Joseph Hume of Ninewells in Berwickshire and was sent to University in Edinburgh to study law. However he did not complete his studies, but turned to philosophy. He claimed that he 'found an insurmountable aversion to every thing but the pursuits of philosophy and general learning'. His Treatise of Human Nature was published anonymously in 1739, but as its author freely admitted it "fell dead-born from the press". He was one of the 42 men of the Edinburgh Defence Volunteers to turn out to oppose the Jacobite army in 1745, and in that same year he was invited to become tutor to the Marquis of Annandale. He was denied chairs in ethics and logic at the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow in 1745 and 1757 respectively because of his unorthodox religious views. However, in 1752 Hume was appointed Keeper of the Advocates Library in Edinburgh, where he had the time and resources to write. Now better known for his empirical philosophy, David Hume accumulated his great wealth from writing histories. His last volume of The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688 (1754-1762) was completed when he was 50. He admitted that he was too rich and too fat to write a further volume to bring his history up to the present, despite an invitation and offer of a pension from the King.
The 'Monsieur Dalembert' mentioned in his will may have been the French mathematician, Jean-le-Rond d'Alembert, as Hume lived in Paris for some years and was much admired by the philosophes of the salons who called him 'Le Bon David'. As well as being a bon viveur in Edinburgh society Hume was also secretary to the Edinburgh Philosophical Society in 1752. He was one of the founders of the Select Society in 1754, although he never addressed it.
Other great thinkers and personal friends mentioned in his will include Adam Ferguson and Adam Smith, to whom Hume entrusts his unpublished papers.
On his deathbed he infuriated a morbidly interested James Boswell by professing that he did not fear death. He died in 1776 aged 65. The money he left for his young nephew's education was put to good use, as his namesake became professor of Scots law at Edinburgh University in 1786. Hume's modest tomb, for which provision is made in his will, can still be seen in the graveyard on Calton Hill in Edinburgh.
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