Hume’s humility: coming to terms with the limits of what we can know

Arecent visit to Edinburgh offered an opportunity to make a micro pilgrimage to sites associated with the 18th century philosopher David Hume, whose empiricist manifesto A Treatise of Human Nature was the first work on my reading list during my first year at university. (What else would one do in Edinburgh?) That was a long time ago. My memories of the Treatise are vague, and I can’t say I deciphered much of it without the help of commentaries, but I felt the edge of Hume’s radical scepticism then, and now. Though one of the major figures of the Enlightenment, not just in Edinburgh but across Europe, Hume has left relatively few traces on the city. For most of the years since his death in 1776 his principal memorial was his austere mausoleum in the Old Calton Cemetery just off the east end of Princes Street. The addresses he lived at in the city’s Old and New Towns remain more or less unmarked, though guide books will show you where to go (most of them still exist).  <a href="https://medium.com/the-patient-investor/humes-humility-coming-to-terms-with-the-limits-of-what-we-can-know-90d37fc26745">Read More</a>