Hume’s intellectual development – an overview

Is there, or is there not, some way in which Hume’s contributions to the theory of human nature, to the philosophy of religion, to political science, to political economy, and to history can be construed as having been all part of some single project? If not, then how is Hume’s career as a man of letters to be characterized and understood? James Harris argues that two ways of answering these questions are mistaken. The nineteenth century was wrong to think of Hume as having after the Treatise abandoned philosophy in the pursuit of fame and wealth. More recent Hume scholarship is wrong to move to the opposite extreme in asserting that the concerns of the Treatise set the agenda for all of Hume’s subsequent works. Harris suggests that there is a significant difference between the Hume of the Treatise and the Hume of the Essays, the Political Discourses and the History of England, but this difference should not be characterized in terms of a move from ‘philosophy’ to something else. Rather, it is a move from one kind of philosophy to another – or, better still, from one kind of philosophy to a number of other kinds.