Biography of David Hume: Hume and his French Contemporaries

FAIN: FT-51258-03

John P. Wright
Central Michigan University (Mount Pleasant, MI 48859-0001)

I will focus my attention on Hume's intellectual and personal relations with the Parisian Philosophes (i.e. D'Alembert, Diderot, D'Holbach, Turgot, Buffon, and others) and on his famous quarrel with Rousseau. The central problem is to define the nature of Hume's skeptical philosophy and to compare it with the philosophies of his French contemporaries. ...My question is whether a careful study of the correspondence between Hume and the Philosophes can throw light on defining his attitude toward their intellectual and political stance, and theirs to his.