Death of a favourite wonk

Hat tip to the Adam Smith Institute for pointing out that today is the anniversary of the death, 231 years ago, of one of my favourite wonks, David Hume.

David Hume (1711-1776):

On this day in 1776, after a long illness, David Hume died. He must have been one of the most intelligent, and indeed one of the wisest human beings to have lived - a truth that can still be inspected in the pages of his history and philosophy.

A notorious skeptic on the subject of religion, Hume found himself excluded from academic posts. But he made up for it with literary masterpieces, such as his Treatise of Human Nature and Essays, Moral and Political, his sweeping, controversial History of Great Britain, plus An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, and An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. But he cautiously reserved the publication of his essays on suicide and on immortality, and his (then) sensational, skeptical Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion until after his death.

Hume took an empirical view of the world. Our senses are the best guide to it, he thought, and not the fanciful theories of metaphysicians and churchmen. It was a philosophy of common sense. And his writings analyze a huge range of subjects - ethics, philosophy of science, free will, the is-ought problem, politics, human nature, and even economics - with a precision and simplicity that is still enjoyable to read (no really, it is) even today.

And, armed with this simple common sense and a towering intellect, he rarely seems to put a foot wrong, even when off his natural ground. Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman, for example, wrote that modern readers of Hume's essay Of Money would find 'few if any errors of commission'.

Sociable and witty, Hume made many friends among the great minds of his day, including Adam Smith, one of the few contemporaries who could claim to be his intellectual equal. On this day, we at the Adam Smith Institute should remember our friend, David Hume.

Personally, the work I like most of Hume's is a relatively minor one, the "Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth" in which he shows how we should remodel government where the power comes from the lowest rung of government upwards. Where the central government only makes laws that the counties acting together want. I even have a domain 1754.org.uk on which I would like to set up a "wonk site" in honour of the anniversary of its publication, but which I have not got around to yet!