Hume Selections - Softcover

Excerpt from Hume Selections
David hume was born at Edinburgh, Scotland, in the year 1711, and grew to manhood at a time when British philosophers Were engaged in very active discussion of the nature of morals and religion. Deism was then to the fore, the View that there is a religion natural to all men and discoverable by their reason alone. A famous theory of morals, too, was under attack, because it ignored the spontaneous sympathies of mankind and made too much of the selfish calculation of reason. The opponents of all this rationalism were among the most capable men of letters in that century - the Earl of Shafteslbnry, Bishop Berkeley, Bishop Joseph Butler, and Francis Hutcheson. So Hume read their writings, for he was an eager student of contemporary literature. He was fired with an ambition for a fame like theirs in the world of learning and thus applied himself to the moral subjects of the day, the nature of man and of human morality and religion. It was to be expected, therefore, that he would submit the manuscript of his first book to Hutcheson, and afterwards hurry a copy of the printed work to Bishop Butler. He looked for approval as their follower. He was thus a legitimate heir of that line of British thought, with its characteristic tendency to stand fast by practical convictions and to beware of merely abstract reason.
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