David Hume

David Hume was a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher born in Edinburgh in 1711. His major works include A Treatise of Human Nature and An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, in which he developed his empiricist theory of knowledge and his skeptical arguments about causation, induction and the self. He is also known for the is-ought problem, later called Hume's Guillotine, which holds that moral conclusions cannot be logically derived from factual premises alone. All biographical facts come from outside the article and are marked for verification.

In Writing.2, Hume is introduced alongside Nietzsche as a philosopher whose legacy of profound investigation remains relevant today. The article then transcribes three numbered paragraphs from Section III of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, titled 'The association of ideas,' to demonstrate the aphoristic style of philosophical writing. The passage argues that rational beings always act with purpose and that works of genius require a plan. The author uses this excerpt to show how readers navigate a philosopher's chain of reasoning. Later in the article, Hume's Guillotine and his sentence about beauty are cited as examples of theories and aphorisms that arise as byproducts of sustained philosophical inquiry.