Marking the tercentenary of David Hume's birth, Annette Baier
has created an engaging guide to the philosophy of one of the
greatest thinkers of Enlightenment Britain. Drawing deeply on a
lifetime of scholarship and incisive commentary, she deftly weaves
Hume s autobiography together with his writings and correspondence,
finding in these personal experiences new ways to illuminate his
ideas about religion, human nature, and the social order.
Excerpts from Hume s autobiography at the beginning of each
chapter open a window onto the eighteenth-century context in which
Hume s philosophy developed. Famous in Christian Britain as a
polymath and a nonbeliever, Hume recounts how his early encounters
with clerical authority laid the foundation for his lifelong
skepticism toward religion. In Scotland, where he grew up, he had
been forced to study lists of sins in order to spot his own
childish flaws, he reports. Later, as a young man, he witnessed the
clergy s punishment of a pregnant unmarried servant, and this led
him to question the violent consequences of the Church s emphasis
on the doctrine of original sin. Baier s clear interpretation of
Hume s "Treatise of Human Nature "explains the link between Hume s
growing disillusionment and his belief that ethics should be based
on investigations of human nature, not on religious dogma.""
" "
" "Four months before he died, Hume concluded his autobiography
with a eulogy he wrote for his own funeral. It makes no mention of
his flaws, critics, or disappointments. Baier s more realistic
account rivets our attention on connections between the way Hume
lived and the way he thought insights unavailable to Hume himself,
perhaps, despite his lifelong introspection.
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