Treatise On Human Nature By David Hume

He was born in Edinburgh in 1811 into a Scottish Presbyterian family, but rejects it. At 18 he moves to France and writes Treatise on Human Nature (1739), and no one reads it. He returned to England and became a tutor and re-writes the Treatise and calls it An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), as well as, Essays Moral and Political (1751). Hume was a leading writer and thinker of the Enlightenment in eighteenth century France, who advocated a rational approach to philosophy and government. The thesis of the book is about epistemology, as he is only concerned with things we know. Hume begins by explaining his view on the “moral philosophy, or the science of human nature” (721). He states, “The one considers man chiefly as born

He continues to explain his views on the two philosophical approaches and the persons balance of these philosophies as well as their participation in life till they find some hidden ideas that no one has found before. “But may we not hope, that philosophy, if cultivated with care, and encouraged by the attention of the public, may carry its researches still farther, and discover, at least in some degree, the secret springs and principles, by which the human mind is actuated in its operations” (724)? Here Hume seems to be abandoning the sciences of philosophy because there is those who were leading to error in their search for the answers in the universe (725). He does mention one who did seem the happiest when looking for the heavenly bodies (724), but in his conclusion of section one, leads the reader to believe that this type of philosophy, “which seems to have hitherto served only as a shelter to superstition, and a cover to absurdity and error”