Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides a critical survey of the central themes to the origins of David Hume’s philosophy, situate Hume in his time, and explore how Hume’s ideas have been received and continue to be received in the philosophical tradition. It presents Hume as a figure in the history of philosophy. This includes discussing his intellectual debts and context and his immediate reception in the eighteenth and early twentieth centuries. The book examines Hume as a historian and lay out how Hume’s history contains a sophisticated political theory. Hume was a careful and subtle reader of philosophy, literature, and history, and he drew upon and responded to the Ancient philosophical traditions. In his short autobiography “My Own Life,” he described “devouring” the works of Cicero and Virgil at an early age.