Portal:Scotland/Selected article/Week 29, 2007
David Hume (April 26, 1711 – August 25, 1776) was a Scottish philosopher, economist, and historian. He is considered one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment. Although in recent years interest in Hume's work has centred on his philosophical writing, it was as a historian that he first gained recognition and respect. His The History of England was the standard work on English history for sixty or seventy years until Macaulay's.
Historians predominantly see Humean philosophy as a form of deep skepticism, but others argue naturalism is equally central to his thought. Humean scholarship has tended to oscillate between those who emphasize the skeptical component (such as the logical positivists), and those who emphasize the naturalist component (such as Don Garrett, Norman Kemp Smith, Barry Stroud, and Galen Strawson).
Hume was heavily influenced by empiricists John Locke and George Berkeley, along with various Francophone writers such as Pierre Bayle, and various figures on the Anglophone intellectual landscape such as Isaac Newton, Samuel Clarke, Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, and Joseph Butler.