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A Treatise of Human Nature (1740)
Hume’s highly influential A Treatise of Human Nature was published in 1740 with the subtitle Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects. The theories Hume develops in A Treatise of Human Nature have their foundations in the writings of two other great British empiricists: John Locke and George Berkeley. Like Hume, Locke denied the existence of innate ideas, dividing the sources of our ideas into two categories: those derived from sensation through the use of our sense organs and those derived from reflection through our own mental processes.
The SparkNotes guide Selected Works of David Hume discusses A Treatise of Human Nature in three Summary & Analysis sections: Book I: “Of the Understanding;” Book II: “Of the Passions;” and Book III: “Of Morals.”
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751)
The subject of An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals is the contributions that moral sense and reason make in our moral judgments. Hume claims that moral sense makes the ultimate distinction between vice and virtue, though both moral sense and reason play a role in our formation of moral judgments. Reason is important when we have to make a judgment about what is useful, for reason alone can determine how and why something is useful to us or to others. Hume briefly addresses what moral judges usually include in their lists of virtues, what they leave out, and how they make these lists. He then returns to the classification of virtues he proposed first in A Treatise of Human Nature.
The SparkNotes Guide Selected Works of David Hume discusses An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals in a single-section of Summary & Analysis.
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779)
In the posthumously-published Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Hume, a well-known atheist, explores whether religious belief can be rational. Because Hume is an empiricist (one who thinks that all knowledge comes through experience) he thinks that a belief is rational only if it is sufficiently supported by experiential evidence. Thus, the question boils down to whether there enough evidence in the world to allow us to infer an infinitely good, wise, powerful, perfect God.
