Fun Facts Friday: David Hume

David Hume  (26 April, 1711 – 25 August, 1776) was a Scottish philosopher and historian, known for A Treatise on Human Nature (1739-40), Essays Moral and Political (1741-42), Political Discourses (1752), and an exhaustive History of England (1754-62), as well as many others.

Works by David Hume*

1. Born as David Home in Edinburgh. His father died when he was about two years old and he was raised by his mother who never married.
2. He changed his last name to Hume because that’s the way “Home” was supposed to be pronounced, but was not known in England as that.
3. At age 12, or maybe even 10, Mr. Hume started to attend the University of Edinburgh.
4. He told friends that “there is nothing to be learnt from a Professor, which is not to be met with in Books”. Mr. Hume did not graduate.
5. At age 25 Mr. Hume found himself with no source of income, despite being of noble ancestry. He took a job as a merchant’s assistant and was forced to leave to France.
6. Mr. Hume did not do well in his forced on profession, but did manage to get a job as a career as a librarian at the University of Edinburgh. There, with time and access to research material, he wrote his six-volume The History of England.
7. It took Mr. Hume 15 years to write The History of England.
8. Today it is generally agreed upon that Mr. Hume’s most important arguments and philosophical doctrines can be found in  A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects, as his greatest literary and philosophical achievement.
   Mr. Hume started to the Treatise when he was 23 years old.
9. “Humean” is the name given to Mr. Hume’s influence on philosophy.
10. Mr. Hume passed away form of abdominal cancer. On his tomb he wanted just his name, date of birth and date of death – “leaving it to Posterity to add the Rest”.

Works by David Hume*

Zohar – Man of la Book
*Ama­zon links point to an affil­i­ate account