ABSTRACT
On the face of it, there’s much that divides Hume and Nietzsche. Hume’s adherence to a universalist system of ethics founded on utility, for example, would be (or was) abhorrent to Nietzsche (“Man does not strive for pleasure; only the Englishman does” 2 ). Further, Hume had great faith in the methods and principles of the natural sciences, albeit as they were reconceived through empiricism and moderate skepticism. Nietzsche, on the other hand, had a very complicated relationship to the sciences. As a last example, Hume falls comfortably into the Western philosophical and intellectual tradition. He uses arguments, he argues linearly, he writes philosophical essays and treatises, and thus, he responds in kind to his predecessors and contemporaries. Hume was a revolutionary thinker in many ways, but he still had unquestioned faith in the value of truth and in the pursuit of truth. That faith, of course, fell under Nietzsche’s scalpel (or hammer) in his attempt to revalue all values.
