Dennis C. Rasmussen, The Infidel and the Professor. David Hume, Adam Smith and the Friendship that shaped Modern Thought

Abstract

David Hume is widely considered one of the—arguably the—outstanding philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment. Born in 1711, four years after the 1707 Act of Union which traded away the Scottish parliament and independence for representation in the English parliament and the Scots’ access to English markets at home and abroad (and which seems to have been instrumental, within decades, in transforming Scotland from the backwater it then was into the economic and cultural showcase of 50-70 year...