David Hume

David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, and essayist, the most rigorous and consequential thinker of the Scottish Enlightenment. His early Treatise of Human Nature (1739) failed to make an impact; he recast its arguments in more accessible form in the two Enquiries. His sceptical philosophy challenged the basis of causation, personal identity, and religious belief, and Kant said it was Hume who woke him from his "dogmatic slumber." He was also a beloved figure in Edinburgh society, known as "le bon David" by the French philosophes whose salons he frequented.