A. H. Basson

Hume was interested in knowledge: how humans obtain it, and how we determine what knowledge we can rely on. This had implications on his own thinking on ethics and science, for example how can we improve our understanding of the world given the difficulties with induction and causation.
This is a concise overview of the philosophy of David Hume, the Scottish thinker of the 18th Century. Though Hume was better known as an historian and essayist during his own life, his lasting impact has been in philosophy and the philosophy of science. He places an emphasis on the use of our senses to gain information from the world, on experimental method, as opposed to the more abstract or metaphysical reasoning of Plato and more recent idealists such as Berkeley.
This book gives us a good overview of Hume including some interesting biographical detail, and both his major contributions to philosophy and his shortcomings. For example though he placed much emphasis on the experimental method in determining the facts of this world, his conception of it approaches more the use of anecdotal or generalised observation than the rigour of modern methods. Despite this, he made the necessary steps towards setting Science on its modern course, and this itself is very important. The last chapter sums up Hume's philosophy well, and compares his position to that of the other Skeptic philosophers including Locke.
This is a short and readable introduction to the philosophy of Hume, which also has in its recommendation that Hume was one of the most important English speaking philosophers that we have had.… (mehr)