1st Edition

The Routledge Guidebook to Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature

By P. J. E. Kail Copyright 2025
254 Pages
by Routledge

254 Pages
by Routledge

254 Pages
by Routledge

David Hume is widely acknowledged as the greatest philosopher to have written in the English language. His 1739/40  A Treatise of Human Nature  is commonly regarded as his masterpiece. It is a profound work of great ambition, seeking to reorient philosophy by establishing a ‘science of human nature’. Following the structure of the original work closely,  The Routledge Guidebook to Hume’s   A... Read more

Preface and Acknowledgments

Abbreviations and Citations to Primary Literature

Introduction

1. Of Ideas, Their Origin, Composition, Connexion, Abstraction, Etc.

2. Of the Ideas of Space and Time

3. Of Knowledge and Probability

4. Of the Sceptical and Other Systems of Philosophy

5. Of Pride and Humility, Love and Hatred

6. Of the Will and Direct Passions

7. Of Virtue and Vice in General

8. Of Justice

9. Of the Other Virtues and Vices.

Bibliography

Index

Biography

P. J. E. Kail is Official Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at St Peter’s College, and an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford, UK. He is the author of, among other things, Projection and Realism in Hume’s Philosophy (2007), Berkeley’s A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Knowledge (2014), and Simply Nietzsche (2019).

"A welcome and very helpful guide to Hume's masterpiece, A Treatise of Human Nature. Students will find it both accessible and engaging, and even scholars of Hume's Treatise will profit from reading Kail’s book."Miren Boehm, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA