David Hume - An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding

OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

DAVID HUME (171176) was born and educated in Edinburgh. In 173940 he published A Treatise of Human Nature, a great work but poorly received, and Hume came to regret the style and haste in which he had written it. Far more successful were his Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, published from 1741, which proved highly influential in political theory, aesthetics, and especially economics.

In 1748 Hume revised the abstruse epistemology of the Treatise in essay form, as the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, the definitive statement of his mature theoretical philosophy. Combining elegance with devastating insight, it presents the views for which he is now most famous, including his scepticism about induction and causation, his compatibilist account of free will, his rejection of religious miracles, and his advocacy of mitigated scepticism.

In the course of a colourful life which included episodes in the military, diplomatic, and civil services, Hume went on to write major works in ethics, philosophy of religion, and history. But the arguments expressed in the Enquiry are those on which his revolutionary importance, as one of the greatest philosophers of all time, mainly rests. This is the first modern edition to reproduce faithfully the text of the Enquiry in its final form.

PETER MILLICAN, Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Hertford College, Oxford, studied at Oxford University and has also taught at Glasgow and Leeds. His philosophical interests and publications cover a wide range but with a particular focus on Hume and related topics, especially the Enquiry, on which he also edited the collection Reading Hume on Human Understanding (OUP, 2002). He runs the website davidhume.org, and is co-editor of the journal Hume Studies.

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DAVID HUME

Edited with an Introduction and Notes by
PETER MILLICAN

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First published as an Oxford Worlds Classics paperback 2007

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Hume, David, 17111776
[Philosophical essays concerning human understanding]
An enquiry concerning human understanding / David Hume; edited with
an introduction and notes by Peter Millican.
p. cm.(Oxford worlds classics)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 9780-19-921158-6 (alk. paper)
1. Knowledge, Theory of I. Millican, P. J. R. (Peter J. R.) II. Title.
B1481.M55 2007
121dc22
2006102409

Typeset by Cepha Imaging Private Ltd., Bangalore, India
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ISBN 9780-19-921158-6

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References to Humes works are to the following editions and, except for the Enquiry and the Treatise, indicate page numbers.