A Treatise of Human Nature

Main ideas

• Human understanding, passion and morals studied through a naturalistic science of mind.
• Causation, self and reason reduced to habits, perceptions and passions.
• Moral judgement grounded in sentiment rather than pure reason.

Important themes

Reading context

Hume's first book, published in his twenties in 1739 and, by his own account, falling dead-born from the press. It applies the experimental method to the mind itself, and follows the argument into conclusions he admits he cannot live by.

How to approach it

Book 1 Part 3 on cause and effect, and Book 2 Part 3 on the passions and the will, are the core. The conclusion of Book 1, where he describes his own scepticism as unlivable, is the most human passage he wrote.