The Purpose of this Book

David Hume (1711–76) is a many-faceted and extremely equivocal thinker. The first characterisation is evidenced by the scope of his intellectual activities; the second by the variety of assessments of his works among his contemporaries and later generations. This book aims to place him in wider intellectual contexts in which he could be depicted as an Enlightenment thinker. For some, this might sound redundant, as it could be contended that Hume has already been widely recognised amongst the foremost philosophers of the period (the term ‘philosopher(s)’ used for these intellectuals here and in its eighteenth-century usage encompasses historians, political economists and scientists). Nevertheless, the conventional definition of the Enlightenment failed to resonate with many alleged characteristics of Hume's social philosophy and for this reason he has often evaded definition as an Enlightenment thinker. Peter Gay, for example, still wonders ‘what, after all, does Hume, who was a conservative, have in common with Condorcet, who was a democrat?’ (1966–9: I, x). Despite his positive appraisal of luxury, civilisation and conversable society, Hume's criticism of social contract theory, his respect for convention and his famous thesis that ‘[r]eason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions’ (T 2.3.3.4; 415) sat uncomfortably with the contract-based, individualistic and rationalistic image of the Enlightenment. In sum, while he has been widely recognised as a philosopher of the Enlightenment, several significant qualifications have always been necessary to accompany such a classification.

As Gay's comment attests, the ambiguity in evaluations of Hume as an Enlightenment thinker is closely related to the relationship that has been claimed to exist between Hume's philosophical scepticism and his alleged political conservatism. One classic example of this assumed relationship is found in John Stuart Mill's evaluation: