Hume’s Life, Intellectual Context and Reception

I try to create a coherent narrative from the totality of Hume’s 1776 autobiographical record “My Own Life”. I account for the saying ascribed to his mother (‘Our Davie […] is uncommon wake-minded’), Hume’s declared decision not to reply to any adversary, his representation of his writings as unsuccessful and his opulence as a valuable achievement. In particular, I explore his public and active life (a man of genius is not unfit for business): the army with General St. Clair in Turin and the Embassy with Lord Hertford in Paris. I delineate Hume’s complex relationships with Lawrence Sterne and Adam Smith, his lifelong passion for Lucian and his pagan attitude towards religion: ‘the Edinburgh fishwives were the most acute theologians he has ever encountered’.