Freedom. Equality. Security
This paper discusses the relationship between what we today would call the strictly philosophical parts of Humes works and his monumental and once popular History of England. In the first part I present an overview of this work and claims that it can by no means be considered a traditional narrative concentrating on actions of princes and statesmen. Instead I find a clear tendency in Hume to present his main theme – constitutional change in England – within a framework of economic and general cultural development. In the second part I present an exegesis of Humes view of human nature, arguing that Hume never claimed that the human condition was stable, but only that an invariant basis may take on radically different forms given diverse circumstances. Finally, I contrast Humes portrait of modernity with Max Webers version, finding Hume to rely more on non-cognitive mechanisms and politics than new form forms of especially economical rationality.