David Hume was one smart guy. He started university at 10. He wrote one of the greatest books of philosophy at 26.
His early life, though, seems to have been a bit of a disaster. His dad died when David was only 2. Nobody liked his first book—the important one—and after he graduated, because he was sick all the time, he couldn’t keep a job.
When Hume applied for the “Chair of Pneumatics and Moral Philosophy” (a job title I would kill for), he was turned down. He applied for another professorship, and was turned down again. Out of desperation, he tutored the Marquess of Annandale—but the Marquess turned out to be insane.
Hume then tried to fight against the French in Quebec, but the boats never made it. He tried to fight the French in France, but the raid failed. He went to work as a librarian, but got fired for ordering porn for the library.
While a librarian, though, Hume wrote the book that made him rich, a History of England. Unsurprisingly, he became vastly more popular. Surprisingly, he became more popular with the French, whom he had only recently tried to kill. Apparently, French women just loved him. He did eventually move home to England, but he never stopped having parties with the young and beautiful.
In his late fifties, he fell in love with Nancy Orde, who was a total fox, smart, and by all accounts a real catch. Orde loved him in return, and they may even have been engaged. Hume died, however, of stomach cancer—cheerfully though, as usual.
Hume was the last of the triumvirate of British empiricists. Empiricists believe that we attain knowledge through our senses and by studying the external world.
To us, of course, this seems obvious. Recall, though, Descartes’ belief: the senses are plainly fallible, and it is impossible to build a sound science upon them. In the following selection, Hume builds the argument in reverse: he takes the senses seriously and trusts them. Surprisingly, thoughtful empiricism brings us right back to a point very near skepticism: almost everything is thrown into doubt. And so, despite being separated by a century, a language, and an ideology, Hume and Descartes turn out to have something in common.
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