First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The 18th-century collection of philosophical articles "Essays" was penned by Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume. The essays' broad range of subjects reflects Hume's varied interests in politics, literature, and philosophy. "A Treatise of Human Nature," one of Hume's most important essays, examines human thinking and makes the case for a more sceptical and empirical philosophy. He promotes a study of human nature based on observation and experience, challenging conventional beliefs about causality, identity, and the nature of knowledge. Hume's writing is distinguished by its empiricism, wit, and clarity. His writings, which provide insights into human nature, the basis of knowledge, and the difficulties of moral and aesthetic judgments, continue to have an impact on the domains of philosophy and economics. The compilation offers a thorough understanding of Hume's contributions to philosophy and is still studied because of its significant influence on Western thought.

In his writings, Hume talks of our 'gilding and staining' natural objects, and of the mind's propensity to 'spread itself' on the world. This has led commentators to use the metaphor of 'projection' in connection with his philosophy: Hume is held to have taught that causal power and self are projections, that God is a projection of our fear, and that value is a projection of sentiment. By considering what it is about Hume's writing that occasions this metaphor, P. J. E. Kail spells out its meaning, the role it plays in Hume's work, and examines how, if at all, what sounds 'projective' in Hume can be reconciled with what sounds 'realist'. In addition to offering some highly original readings of Hume's central ideas, Projection and Realism in Hume's Philosophy offers a detailed examination of the notion of projection and the problems it faces.

Defines the cutting-edge of scholarship on ancient Greek history employing methods from social science.

Terence Penelhum presents a selection of the best of his essays on Hume, most of them quite recent, and three of them not published elsewhere. The central themes of the book are selfhood, the will, and religious belief. Penelhum argues that Hume's sceptical conclusions on personal identity are based on conceptual confusions, but that the common charge of circularity made against him is unfounded. He examines the role Hume gives the idea of the self in his analysis of the passions, the dissonance between the account of the self in the first book of the Treatise of Human Nature and that found in the second, and the reasons for Hume's own dissatisfaction with his views on this theme. The essays on the will examine Hume's famous attacks on rationalist understandings of human motives, and try to expose the deficiencies in his 'compatibilist' interpretation of freedom. The discussion of Hume's views on religion relates them to his scepticism and to his doctrine of natural belief. Penelhum maintains that Hume's ultimate views on religion are to be found in the harshly negative judgements of the first Enquiry, which he did not ever see reason to modify. Penelhum's essays will be fascinating for all who work on these themes, whether from an eighteenth-century or a twentieth-century perspective.