A Treatise of Human Nature
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| Author | David Hume |
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| Genre | Philosophy |
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Publication date
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1738 |
| Pages | 368 |
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A Treatise of Human Nature is a book by Scottish philosopher David Hume, first published (in parts) from the end of 1738 to 1740.
The full title of the Treatise is A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects. It contains the following sections:
While many scholars today consider the Treatise to be Hume's most important work and one of the most important books in the history of philosophy, the public in Britain did not at first agree, nor in the end did Hume himself agree:
“Most of the principles, and reasonings, contained in this volume, were published in a work in three volumes, called A Treatise of Human Nature: a work which the Author had projected before he left College, and which he wrote and published not long after. But not finding it successful, he was sensible of his error in going to the press too early, and he cast the whole anew in the following pieces, where some negligences in his former reasoning and more in the expression, are, he hopes, corrected. Yet several writers who have honoured the Author’s Philosophy with answers, have taken care to direct all their batteries against that juvenile work, which the author never acknowledged, and have affected to triumph in any advantages, which, they imagined, they had obtained over it: A practice very contrary to all rules of candour and fair-dealing, and a strong instance of those polemical artifices which a bigotted zeal thinks itself authorized to employ. Henceforth, the Author desires, that the following Pieces may alone be regarded as containing his philosophical sentiments and principles.”
Hume intended to see whether the Treatise met with success and, if so, to complete it with books devoted to morals, politics, and criticism. It did not meet with success, and so was not completed.
After deciding that the Treatise had problems of style rather than of content, he reworked some of the material for more popular consumption in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748). It did not prove extremely successful either, but was somewhat more so than the Treatise. He later also "cast anew" Book 3 of the Treatise as An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), which Hume wrote is "of all my writings, historical, philosophical, or literary, incomparably the best."
The Treatise is now in the public domain. Books 1 and 2 were originally published in 1738 (or 1739), while Book 3 was published in 1740.
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