David Hume is one of the most significant thinkers among the Enlightenment.
He is motivated by the question what is beauty, and how certain responses to artwork reflect objectivity.
Hume’s essay of 1757,“Of the Standard of Taste” elegantly describes examples of the tradition of aesthetic judgment
The growth of scientific knowledge influenced a sense of general optimism among Enlightenment thinkers. This sense of optimism in result called for a more critical use of human intellect. By overturning long established dogmas, people scrutinized the very prerogatives of reason in relation to political and religious institutions.
During this same time, theorists were trying to take account of all the various creative activities …show more content…
He was a philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist. He is regarded as one of the most important thinkers of Western philosophy and the Enlightenment. He is known especially for his philosophical empiricism or sense derived knowledge and skepticism and also for his influence on another important thinker during the Enlightenment, Emanuel Kant. Hume constantly tried to describe how the mind works in regards to knowledge and how the mind works. Experience meant a lot to Hume because he thought it served as the basis of his theory of knowledge. Hume attended the University of Edinburgh at the extraordinarily young age of 10 or 12. At first his family and him thought that a career in law was what his future may entail due to a family tradition on both sides. Yet, later he had become inspired by the different pursuits of philosophy. After a nervous breakdown and a few years to recover in 1729, he tried a job in a merchants office in 1734. He then came to a turning point in his life where he retired to France to spend the majority of his time studying and writing. During this time spent Hume produced a writing which was separated into three books called A Treatise of Human Nature. These books was the first of Hume’s attempts at a full fledged philosophical endeavor. It was certainly his most thoroughly written product of his thoughts mostly explaining his theories about mans process of thought and …show more content…
In this time he wrote, rewrote, and added to the book, Treatise. It was in this set of three books that Hume developed his mature thought about the nature of reasoning in regards to fact and experience. The growth of scientific knowledge influenced a sense of general optimism among Enlightenment thinkers. This sense of optimism in result called for a more critical use of human intellect. By overturning long established dogmas, people scrutinized the very prerogatives of reason in relation to political and religious institutions. Hume was the first philosopher of the post medieval world to reformulate the skepticism of the ancients. (Cranston) His conclusion that man is more a creature of senses and practical sentiment or taste than that of reason guided many prominent philosophers to