David Hume (1711–1776) is one of the most influential philosophers of the modern period. He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on April 26. His first and most important work, A Treatise of Human Nature (published in two installments in 1739 and 1740, before Hume turned thirty years old), was supplemented in later life by Essays, Moral and Political (two volumes, 1741–1742), An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), and An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751). The latter two books restate in more accessible form the arguments of the Treatise. He also wrote a six-volume history of England (1754–1762) and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, published posthumously in 1779. Hume, who died in Edinburgh on August 26, applied what he considered the experimental method of science to an examination of ideas and morals, thereby developing an ethics that bases moral judgments on feelings. Because emotivism is so frequently assumed in the contemporary West, to read Hume can...