David Hume (7 May 1711 – 25 August 1776)[1] was a Scottish philosopher, economist, historian and a key figure in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment. Hume is often grouped with John Locke, George Berkeley, and a handful of others as a British Empiricist.[2]

During Hume's lifetime, he was more famous as a historian; his six-volume History of England[3] was a bestseller well into the nineteenth century and the standard work on English history for many years, while his works in philosophy for which he owes his current reputation were mostly unknown during his day.

Hume was heavily influenced by empiricists John Locke and George Berkeley, along with various French-speaking writers such as Pierre Bayle, and various figures on the English-speaking intellectual landscape such as Isaac Newton, Samuel Clarke, Francis Hutcheson (his teacher), and Joseph Butler (to whom he sent his first work for feedback).[4]

In the twentieth century, Hume has increasingly become a source of inspiration for those in political philosophy and economics as an early and subtle thinker in the liberal tradition, as well as an early innovator in the genre of the essay in his Essays Moral, Political, and Literary.[