David Hume

I know that this is late, but I did have an issue with the invitation and actually being able to post this, but here goes nothing. I decided to do my report on a philosopher named David Hume. I chose David Hume has an interesting story that when choosing who I would write about really stood out to me. David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, who is best known today for his system of philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism. He has been compared to fellow philosophers such as John Locke, Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes due to his empiricist approach to philosophy. He was born on 26 April 1711 in a tenement on the north side of the Lawnmarket in Edinburgh. Hume's father died when Hume was a child, just after his second birthday, and he was raised by his mother, who never remarried. He changed the spelling of his name in 1734, because of the fact that his surname Home, pronounced Hume, was not known in England. Throughout his life Hume, who never married, spent time occasionally at his family home at Ninewells in Berwickshire, which had belonged to his family since the sixteenth century. Hume attended the University of Edinburgh at the unusually early age of twelve at a time when fourteen was normal. At first, because of his family, he considered a career in law, but came to have, in his words, "an insurmountable aversion to everything but the pursuits of Philosophy and general Learning; and while [my family] fancied I was poring over Voet and Vinnius, Cicero and Virgil were the Authors which I was secretly devouring.” He had little respect for his professors at the University at this time, telling a friend in 1735 that "there is nothing to be learnt from a Professor, which is not to be met with in Books.” Hume did not graduate from the university. At around the age of 18, he made a philosophical discovery that opened up to him "a new Scene of Thought", which inspired him "to throw up every other Pleasure or Business to apply entirely to it.” He did not directly say what this discovery was, but a popular interpretation of this is  that the new "scene of thought" was Hume's realization that Francis Hutcheson's "moral sense" theory of morality could be applied to the understanding as well. Because of this new inspiration, Hume set out to spend a minimum of ten years reading and writing.  He soon came to the verge of a mental breakdown, suffering from what a doctor diagnosed as the "Disease of the Learned". Hume wrote that it started with a coldness, which he attributed to a "Laziness of Temper” that lasted about nine months. Later, some scurvy spots broke out on his fingers. This was what persuaded Hume's physician to make his diagnosis. Hume wrote that he "went under a Course of Bitters and Anti-Hysteric Pills", taken along with a pint of claret every day. Hume also decided to have a more active life to better continue his learning.