Reading Recommendation: David Hume's Four Philosopher Essays

why you should read the Epicurean, Stoic, Platonist, and Skeptic

In his much larger work, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, David Hume included four essays, each of which is titled with the name of a representative of a philosophical school. They are, in order, The Epicurean, The Stoic, The Platonist, The Skeptic. I just recently shot, edited, and uploaded a set of four core concept videos working through the key ideas of each of these essays, and I’ll be releasing them to the public in the near future.

I had long wanted to do that set of lectures, not least because I enjoy reading and teaching David Hume’s works — though I do disagree with his views at many points — and I’ve liked this sequence of essays since I first read them in a semester-long Hume class back in graduate school. Doing the close rereading and preparation work for the videos really drove home to me how useful they might be for students and lifelong learners, which is why I’m recommending them to you here.

Before explaining the features of them that I particularly like, I should address one seeming omission in the sequence of essays that some readers might ask about. Why doesn’t Hume include an essay on The Aristotelian? After all when we refer to the major schools of antiquity, there are generally five that get mentioned, the four Hume does focus upon and Aristotle’s Lyceum. The answer is a bit of a historical curiosity.

Hume writes in the 18th century, a time in which, as he tells us in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding:

The fame of Cicero flourishes at present; but that of Aristotle is utterly decayed.

That situation would be almost entirely reversed in the 19th century. Prior to that, however, Aristotle tended to be identified with the Scholasticism that early modern philosophy (sometimes rightly, sometimes not) tended to dismiss as dogmatic and antiquated.

There is another good reason as well for the omission of Aristotle, one which has to do with what Hume intends to do in these four essays. He writes in the first footnote to The Epicurean:

The intention of this and the three following essays is not so much to explain accurately the sentiments of the ancient sects of philosophy, as to deliver the sentiments of sects, that naturally form themselves in the world, and entertain different ideas of human life and of happiness. I have given each of them the name of the philosophical sect, to which it bears the greatest affinity.

Hume is in effect treating each of these four philosophies both as what we nowadays often call “philosophy as a way of life” and as an intentional and distinctive approach to life broader than the named philosophical school. This is reflected in the subtitles of the first three essays:

• The Epicurean, or the man of elegance and pleasure

• The Stoic, or the man of action and virtue

• The Platonist, or the man of contemplation, and philosophical devotion

The Skeptic, which is considerably longer than each of the other essays, does not bear such an explanatory subtitle, and one reason this might be is that, when you know Hume’s own philosophy well, a number of the points he makes in that fourth essay seem to be drawn directly from Hume’s philosophical arguments, ideas, and commitments.

I often teach Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding in my Introduction to Philosophy classes. As I was preparing to record my video on The Skeptic, I started musing about the idea of assigning that essay as a sort of introductory text for my students. I think it would work quite well for that purpose, and that’s one reason to make a suggestion of it to all of you readers interested in philosophy.

A good reason for reading all four of these essays together is that they do follow in a tightly connected sequence. The Epicurean argues the claims of focusing upon pleasure in order to enjoy a happy, satisfying life. The Stoic argues for an active life oriented towards virtue and glory, but also engages in criticism of the approach of their pleasure-seeking predecessor. The Platonist in turn, advancing a positive position aiming at contemplation of the universe and God, also sets both the Epicurean and the Stoic in their proverbial crosshairs. And the Skeptic, bringing things to a close, suggests that none of those three stances can really be set forward as the answer to the problem of how to best life.

These four essays are relatively short, well-argued, and dynamic pieces of writing. Hume is an excellent stylist, but also a very thoughtful author. So you glean some real insight into his own views by seeing what he makes of these four “sects”, as he calls them, of philosophy. If what you’re looking for is expositions of precisely what it is that these ancient schools historically thought and taught, these essays aren’t going to supply precisely that. But it’s well worth seeing what he thinks is worth highlighting about the general stances, the values, the commitments, and the views involved in these philosophies.

I would say that, one could read them through with adequate consideration in a single afternoon. And they are essays that reward rereadings. So perhaps now that you’ve learned a bit about what the essays discuss and the way they do so, you’ll take the suggestion and check them out for yourself!

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Gregory Sadler is the president of ReasonIO, a speaker, writer, and producer of popular YouTube videos on philosophy. He is co-host of the radio show Wisdom for Life, and producer of the Sadler’s Lectures podcast. You can request short personalized videos at his Cameo page. If you’d like to take online classes with him, check out the Study With Sadler Academy.