Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit the Shop.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

Editorial

More Mr Nice Guy

by Rick Lewis

With this issue we wish a very happy 300th birthday to the Scottish philosopher David Hume. Many people call him the greatest philosopher ever to have written in the English language, so we’re glad that his birthday gives us an excuse (not that we really needed one) to take a look at some of his main ideas and consider whether and why they still matter today.

As Tim Madigan says in his column, David Hume was regarded by his eighteenth century contemporaries as a really nice guy. Celebrated in Scotland, fêted in France, Hume had a wide circle of adoring friends. He was the great thinker you’d most like to go to the pub with.

…