The Cambridge Companion to Hume

David Hume is, arguably, the most important philosopher ever to have written in English. Although best known for his contributions to epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of religion, Hume also made substantial and influential contributions to psychology and the philosophy of mind, ethics, the philosophy of science, political and economic theory, political and social history, and, to a lesser extent, aesthetic and literary theory. All facets of Hume’s output are discussed in this volume, the first genuinely comprehensive overview of his work. The picture that emerges is of a thinker who, though critical to the point of scepticism, was nonetheless able to build on that scepticism a profoundly important, and still viable, constructive philosophy.

• Contains specially commissioned essays by an international team of scholars, together with a substantial bibliography • Readers new to Western philosophy will find these volumes the most convenient and authoritative guides currently available

1. An introduction to Hume’s thought David Fate Norton; 2. Hume’s new science of the mind John Biro; 3. Hume and the philosophy of science Alexander Rosenberg; 4. Hume’s scepticism Robert J. Fogelin; 5. Hume’s moral psychology Terence Penelhum; 6. Hume, human nature, and the foundations of morality David Fate Norton; 7. The structure of Hume’s political theory Knud Haakonssen; 8. David Hume: principles of political economy Andrew S. Skinner; 9. Hume’s literary and aesthetic theory Peter Jones; 10. David Hume, ‘the historian’ David Wootton; 11. Hume on religion John Gaskin; Appendix: Hume’s autobiographies; I. A Kind of History of my Life (1734); II. My Own Life (1776).