デイヴィッド・ヒューム（1711-76年）はイギリス経験論を完成させた偉大な哲学者です。啓蒙時代に既に偏狭さ、派閥主義、帝国主義が平和と進歩にとって脅威であることを見抜いていたヒュームの思想は不安定で先の見通せない現代を生きる私たちにも強く響きます。本書はヒュームが取り組んだ「人間の本性」「道徳」「政治」「宗教」のテーマに等しく目を向け、その生涯や歴史的文脈、そして思想の主意をバランスよく概説します。(cf. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Oxford World's Classics) ほか)
   

• Offers a clear account of the contributions to philosophy made by a key thinker in the field
• Covers Hume's main interests of human nature, morality, politics, and religion, and explores the philosophical questions that remain at the heart of the subject today
• Written by one of the world's leading experts in the field
• Weaves together biography, the historical context, and exposition of Hume's arguments

  
David Hume, philosopher, historian, economist, librarian, and essayist, was one of the great figures of the European Enlightenment. Unlike some of his famous contemporaries, however, he was not dogmatically committed to idealised conceptions of reason, liberty, and progress. Instead, Hume was a sceptic whose arguments questioned the reach and authority of human rationality, and who put the rivalrous passions of commercial life at the centre of his theory of human nature. He believed that the modern world was in many ways superior to the ancient world, but was acutely conscious of the threats to peace and progress posed by bigotry, factionalism, and imperialism. Today Hume's works continue to speak to us powerfully in an age of instability and uncertainty.
   
This Very Short Introduction presents a balanced account of Hume's thought, giving equal attention to his work on human nature, morality, politics, and religion. Weaving together biography, the historical context, and a thoughtful exposition of Hume's arguments, James A. Harris offers a compelling picture of a thinker who had no disciples and formed no school, but whom no one in his own time was able to ignore, and who has since become central to modern philosophy's understanding of itself.