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David Hume 1711 - 1776 Philosopher |
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Hume was born in Edinburgh, Scot-land. He studied law at Edinburgh,
and in 1734 went to La Fleche in Anjou, where he wrote his master-piece,
'A Treatise of Human Nature' (1740).
He extended the empiricist ideas of Locke and Berkeley. Hume developed a philosophy of radical skepticism. He repudiated the possibility of certain knowledge, maintaining that what we know is based solely on a series of sensations, and that all deductions from experience were the result of habit, not of logical conclusion. Later he wrote several essays on Moral, Politics and Religion, and a six-volume History of England (1754--62). His views inspired Kant to argue for the inadequacy of empiricism. Empiricism = knowledge by experience. |
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www link : From the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy David Hume |