David Hume was one of the outstanding thinkers of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, and, in general surveys of the period, is uncontroversially recognized as such. Moreover, he enjoyed this status at the time: not only in England and his native Scotland, but also across the Channel in France, and so in what is typically regarded as the Enlightenment's heartland. Thus, after his diplomatic posting to Paris in 1763 (and so after the success in France of his History of England), he quickly became a friend of major intellectual figures of the French scene, d'Alembert in particular, and something of a favourite exhibit in the Parisian salons: le bon David. In this light, he seems to be quintessentially a figure of the European Enlightenment.

Nevertheless, to think of Hume as an Enlightenment figure is to run into obstacles. These obstacles come from both ends, so to speak: they derive both from common understandings of Hume's philosophy, and from equally common conceptions of the Enlightenment. It will be helpful, then, to begin by surveying some of the more familiar of these obstacles.

Hume or Enlightenment?

If we begin from the Humean side of the issue, three obstacles stand out. The first is very general, the fruit of a philosophical outlook: it is the conviction amongst philosophers that philosophy is fundamentally a historical, concerned with the eternally true.

In ‘Will the Real Enlightenment Historian Please Stand up? Catharine Macaulay versus David Hume’, Karen Green takes exception to my account of Hume as an Enlightenment thinker. She argues that Hume is not an Enlightenment thinker, because he does not argue for the rights that underpin modern democracy; that this failure is inevitable, given his basic principles, because empiricism is an inadequate foundation for Enlightenment principles; and that it is Catharine Macaulay, and not Hume, who should be classed as the genuine historian of the Enlightenment. I will consider each of these three theses, and offer a concluding moral.

The Enlightenment, Democratic Rights – and ‘Whig History’

The Enlightenment, says Green, ‘consisted fundamentally in the establishment of the development of the idea that individuals have political rights, which underpins the growth, during the nineteenth century, of democratic forms of government’. On this basis, she concludes, ‘Hume is not a philosopher of the Enlightenment’. There is no doubt that the inference is sound. If that is what the Enlightenment was, then Hume did not belong to it. But is this tight focus on political rights the most convincing approach to understanding the Enlightenment? It should already be clear, from ‘Hume and the Enlightenment’, that I think it is not: it ignores the more moderate strands of Enlightenment thought, giving priority to the radicalism of the late Enlightenment in France.

David Hume (1711–76) is commonly regarded as the greatest of the British philosophers, albeit more for being a destroyer than a builder. His philosophy rejects the enthronement of reason so characteristic of the western philosophical tradition, and replaces it with a naturalistic picture in which the human being is portrayed as a creature of imagination, passion and habit. The consequence is that we must accept some form of scepticism, such that we can be guided only by opinion, not by knowledge. This is not a form of philosophical quietism, however, since scepticism can establish standards of probability, and so have a critical edge. Thus Hume deployed his conclusions in a critique of religious arguments: most famously in his essay on miracles, but also in critical examinations of belief in divine design and, more generally, of divine causation of the world. His political writings are cautious, but undeniably modernist; and his economic writings helped pave the way for the achievements of his younger contemporary, Adam Smith. In fact, he and Smith are commonly linked, as two of the greatest contributors to that Scottish intellectual flowering after the Act of Union of 1707, now known as the Scottish Enlightenment.

However, to place Hume in this way, as a contributor to Enlightenment in its Scottish form, is to raise a problem.

Sir,

I have read over the Specimen of the Principles concerning Religion and Morality, said to be maintained in a book lately published, entitled, A Treatise of Human Nature; being an attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects. I have also read over what is called the Sum of the Charge. Which papers, as you inform me, have been industriously spread about, and were put into your hands some few days ago.

I was persuaded that the clamour of scepticism, atheism, etc., had been so often employed by the worst of men against the best, that it had now lost all its influence; and should never have thought of making any remarks on these maimed excerpts, if you had not laid your commands on me, as a piece of common justice to the author, and for undeceiving some well-meaning people, on whom it seems the enormous charge has made impression.

I shall insert the accusation at full length, and then go regularly through what is called the Sum of the Charge; because it is intended, I suppose, to contain the substance of the whole. I shall also take notice of the Specimen as I go along.

Specimen of the Principles concerning Religion and Morality, etc.

The author puts on his title-page (Vol. 1) a passage of Tacitus to this purpose: ‘Rare happiness of our times, that you may think as you will, and speak as you think.

To Michael Ramsay

Orleans [France]

31 August 1737

My Dear Friend

I have quitted La Fleche two days after receiving yours. I am now at Tours in my way to Paris, where I do not intend to stay any considerable time, unless some extraordinary accident intervene: So that I propose to see you in London about 3 or 4 weeks hence. You may be sure that this meeting will afford me a very great satisfaction, and it is with the utmost concern I hear you will leave the city a little after my arrival. Nothing can be more useful and agreeable than to have an intimate friend with one at any critical time of life such as that which I am just going to enter upon. And I must certainly esteem it a great loss to be deprived of your advice, as well in points that regard my conduct and behaviour, as in those of criticism and learning. I can assure you I have great confidence in your judgement even in this last particular, though the state of your health and business have never permitted you to be a regular student, nor to apply yourself to any part of learning in a methodical manner, without which it is almost impossible to make any mighty progress. I shall submit all my performances to your examination, and to make you enter into them more easily, I desire of you, if you have leisure, to read once over La Recherche de la Verité of Pere Malebranche, the Principles of Human Knowledge by Dr Berkeley, some of the more metaphysical articles of Bayle's Dictionary, such as those [of] Zeno and Spinoza.

1 All our reasonings concerning matter of fact are founded on a species of analogy, which leads us to expect from any cause the same events, which we have observed to result from similar causes. Where the causes are entirely similar, the analogy is perfect, and the inference, drawn from it, is regarded as certain and conclusive: Nor does any man ever entertain a doubt, where he sees a piece of iron, that it will have weight and cohesion of parts; as in all other instances, which have ever fallen under his observation. But where the objects have not so exact a similarity, the analogy is less perfect, and the inference is less conclusive; though still it has some force, in proportion to the degree of similarity and resemblance. The anatomical observations, formed upon one animal, are, by this species of reasoning, extended to all animals; and it is certain, that when the circulation of the blood, for instance, is clearly proved to have place in one creature, as a frog, or fish, it forms a strong presumption, that the same principle has place in all. These analogical observations may be carried farther, even to this science, of which we are now treating; and any theory, by which we explain the operations of the understanding, or the origin and connexion of the passions in man, will acquire additional authority, if we find, that the same theory is requisite to explain the same phenomena in all other animals.