A Blupete Biography Page

Introduction, Part 1 to the Life & Works of
David Hume

By this work I touch upon Hume: his life, his works and his thoughts.2 David Hume was but one of a number of men of eighteenth century Scotland who brought philosophy into a new age.3 These philosophers shunned the superstitions and speculations of the past as is represented by the Cartesian view, a view that envisioned man as a "human demigod, who derives his origin from heaven, and retains evident marks of his lineage and descent." These Scottish philosophers did not, however, go to the other extreme, insisting: that man was blind and awash in the forces of nature. The forces of nature, while unchangeable, are, in a number of instances, discoverable through scientific investigation; and, once discovered, to be reined and ridden like the wind. These Scottish philosophers, led by Hume, were of the view that "there is a great uniformity among the actions of men, in all nations and ages, and that human nature remains still the same, in its principles and operations. The same motives always produce the same actions: The same events follow from the same causes. Ambition, avarice, self-love, vanity, friendship, generosity, public spirit: these passions, mixed in various degrees, and distributed through society, have been, from the beginning of the world, and still are, the source of all the actions and enterprises, which have ever been observed among mankind."4

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Peter Landry
2011 (2019)