Hume’s Universalism: The Science of Man and the Anthropological Point of View

Abstract

Though it is not his sole motivation, central to Hume’s overall philosophy is his intention to undermine the credibility of superstitious, super-natural accounts of what makes humans and their social life function. The argument of this paper is that attempts to downplay Hume’s universalism and, in virtue of his recognition of diversity, to identify him as subscribing to some form of historicism or relativism, are mistaken or at best fail to apprehend the centrality of his assault on unscientific accounts of human nature.