25 h 7 minAudiobook13 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 25 h 7 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if your firmest beliefs about cause, self, and right and wrong rest on something other than reason?
In A Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume turns observation toward the mind itself. He wants to ground the study of human nature in experience, rather than guesswork or inherited theory. Through sections on the understanding, the passions, and morals, he asks how we form ideas, reach conclusions, and come to trust what we think we know.
The questions soon become personal. What makes you believe that one event causes another? What holds your sense of self together? Where do judgments of right and wrong begin? Hume examines habit, perception, feeling, and sympathy, offering answers that unsettle familiar assumptions. His inquiry invites you to watch your own mind at work, step by step.
What you’ll discover
- Ideas begin in experience Explore Hume’s distinction between impressions and ideas, and his account of where thought begins.
- The force of habit Examine why cause and effect feel certain, and how Hume challenges that certainty.
- A self under scrutiny Follow Hume inward as he tests the belief in a single, lasting self.
- Feeling moves us Consider the passions and their place in Hume’s account of what reason can do.
- The roots of morals Discover how feeling, sympathy, and convention enter Hume’s explanation of moral judgment and society.
Who will love it
Readers fascinated by the mind, habit, belief, emotion, and the roots of right and wrong will love this book. It suits thinkers who enjoy testing bold claims against everyday experience.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- All ideas begin as feelings and sensations
- The mind links ideas by three gentle forces
- General ideas are single images stretched by habit
- Space and time are built from what we perceive
- Cause and effect are felt, not seen
- Belief is a lively idea shaped by custom
- The self and the outside world are fictions
- Passions follow a double relation of feeling and idea
- Reason serves passion, and morals are felt
- Justice is an invention that sympathy approves
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Ein Traktat über die menschliche Natur
by David Hume · 1739
A philosopher tests the mind like a scientist and finds that cause, self, and the outside world rest on habit.
ChallengingOver 20 hours to readDeutsch
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In short
Why do you expect the sun to rise tomorrow? You have never seen tomorrow, and Hume thinks the usual answer is wrong.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
All ideas begin as feelings and sensations
Hume sorts everything in the mind into two kinds. Impressions are the lively ones, such as sensations and emotions as they first strike you. Ideas are their faint copies, which appear when you think or remember. You feel the gap between touching fire and thinking of it.
His first big claim is that every simple idea comes from a simple impression that matches it. Complex ideas can be new combinations, such as a city with gold pavement and ruby walls. But the pieces always trace back to experience. To give a child the idea of scarlet, you show something scarlet. A person born blind has no ideas of color.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 13 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- First published
- 1739
- Language
- Deutsch
- Level
- Challenging
Cite this edition
Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-treatise-of-human-nature.
Hume, D. (2026). A treatise of human nature. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-treatise-of-human-nature (Original work published 1739)
Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-treatise-of-human-nature.
@book{hume2026treatise,
author = {Hume, David},
title = {A Treatise of Human Nature},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-treatise-of-human-nature},
note = {First published 1739}
}
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What is A Treatise of Human Nature about?
It is an attempt to build a science of the mind on observation. Hume examines how ideas arise, how we reason about cause and effect, how emotions work, and how we come to feel that actions are right or wrong.
What is the difference between impressions and ideas in Hume?
Impressions are the lively perceptions of sensation and feeling as they first strike you. Ideas are their fainter copies in thought and memory. Hume argues that every simple idea is derived from a matching impression.
What does Hume say about cause and effect?
He says we never observe a hidden force linking a cause to its effect. We see only that two things have been joined many times. The sense of necessity comes from the mind's habit of expecting the second after the first.
The author
David Hume
1711–1776 · Scottish philosopher and historian
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, economist, and historian born in Edinburgh in 1711. He lived in Scotland and France. He published A Treatise of Human Nature in 1739–1740 and An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding in 1748. He died in Edinburgh in 1776. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion appeared after his death in 1779.
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