In honor of the great Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume‘s birthday, May 7, 1711, let me share a series of excellent works about him, and share anew my own history of ideas travel series and other pieces I’ve written in honor of this favorite philosopher of mine, if I was pressed to chose one. Hume is the witty, cosmopolitan, skeptical, sometimes sarcastic, eloquent, and genial thinker that many of his fellow philosophers have called the greatest philosopher to write in English.

I fell in love with Hume’s native Edinburgh when I originally visited in the spring of 2014 but even so, I wouldn’t have predicted I would now be living here continuing my education at his alma mater, the University of Edinburgh. It would have been even more impossible to predict that the window of my first flat in Edinburgh would be located directly across a narrow square from the University’s David Hume Tower. I was moved to observe one day, and still am whenever I think or tell of it, that the windows of that glassy tower often reflect the light of the rising sun into my window. I could imagine no more poetic image than that of how this Enlightenment thinker has influenced my life.

Here are some excellent sources for learning about the great David Hume:

David Hume ~ by William Edward Morris and Charlotte R. Brown for The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

David Hume ~ Melvyn Bragg and his guests Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, and James Harris in discussion for In Our Time

David Hume (1711—1776) ~by James Fieser for the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

David Hume: Natural, Comfortable Thinking ~ by Jane O’Grady for the Times Literary Supplement

David Hume: Scottish Philosopher ~ by Maurice Cranston and Thomas Edmund Jessop for Encyclopædia Britannica

David Hume, the Skeptical Stoic ~ by Massimo Pigliucci for How to Be a Stoic

He Died as He Lived: David Hume, Philosopher and Infidel ~ by Dennis Rasmussen for Aeon

How an 18th-Century Philosopher Helped Solve My Midlife Crisis: David Hume, the Buddha, and a Search for the Eastern Roots of the Western Enlightenment ~ by Alison Gopnik for The Atlantic

Self Aware: How David Hume Cultivated His Image ~ by James Harris for the Times Literary Supplement

Here are my own pieces in the order I wrote them, starting several years back. Perhaps you’ll find, as I do when I return to old pieces from time to time, that my thinking has developed and my mind has changed, to various degrees, on some things:

First Day in Old Edinburgh: Hume Sites and Monuments
Hume’s New Scene of Thought, and, It’s Good to Be Able to Say ‘I Don’t Know’
Hume Sites and Monuments, Part 2
The Consolations of Philosophy, and A Death Free from Fear
Scotticisms
Happy 303rd Birthday, David Hume!
The Debate Over Government and Freedom
The Tale of the Magic Toe – Superstition? Or What?
Hume Sites and Monuments, Part 3
Water of Leith
Last Day in Edinburgh, May 13th, 2014
Hume, Aristotle, and Guns
A memory quilt I created for my Edinburgh trip:
A Hill and a Wall in Edinburgh, 2015, 102″ x 69″
Enlightenment Scotland: Site of James Boswell’s Home in James Court, Edinburgh
Enlightenment Scotland: Advocates Library, Edinburgh
Chirnside and Ninewells, Scottish Borders, Childhood and Summer Home of David Hume
Enlightenment Scotland: Edinburgh’s Select Society
Photobook: Robert Adam, Architect of Edinburgh
Photobook: Letter from David Hume to James Balfour, Mar 15, 1753

*A version of this piece was previously published at Ordinary Philosophy