Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

SUBSCRIBE NOW

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit the Shop.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

Articles

Berkeley’s & Hume’s Philosophical Memoirs

David Berman looks for similarities and differences in the aims of the two thinkers.

There are interesting points of both agreement and disagreement in the lives of George Berkeley (1685-1753) and David Hume (1711-1776), arguably the two greatest British philosophers. I also think we have an outstanding philosophical memoir from each, summing up their work, especially in respect of their ruling passions. Both memoirs contain the philosopher’s very last philosophical words, which can be naturally read as their final philosophical testaments. Yet for all that, I don’t think that this has been noticed by their biographers, or by those who have written on them philosophically.

All students of philosophy should know of Hume’s memoir, My Own Life, which he wrote the year he died, 1776, and which was published a year later.

…