David Hume and the Ideas That Shaped America

Called “a degenerate son of science” by Thomas Jefferson and a “bungling lawgiver” by James Madison, Scottish philosopher David Hume was cited so often at the Constitutional Convention that delegates seemed to have committed his essays to memory. In this episode, we are sharing audio from a recent America’s Town Hall program featuring Angela Coventry, author of Hume: A Guide for the Perplexed; Dennis Rasmussen, author of The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought; and Aaron Alexander Zubia, author of The Political Thought of David Hume, who discuss Hume’s philosophical legacy and its profound impact on the shaping of America. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates. This program was streamed live on January 29, 2024. 

Resources: 
Angela Coventry, ed., A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects 
Dennis Rasmussen, The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought 
Aaron Alexander Zubia, The Political Thought of David Hume: The Origins of Liberalism and the Modern Political Imagination 
National Constitution Center Town Hall program, Montesquieu and the Constitution 
Jeffrey Rosen, The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America (2024) 
Hume Texts Online, https://davidhume.org/ 
Federalist No. 10 
Alexander Hamilton, The Continentalist 
Federalist No. 85 

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