David Hume: Edinburgh's Philosopher

David Hume's big toe

On Edinburgh's Royal Mile, sited outside the High Court on Lawnmarket, sits a statue of an imposing figure reclining in a chair. He often has a bagpiper in his vicinity, and if you linger a moment as you pass him you may notice passers-by rubbing the statue's foot.

The man in the chair is David Hume, an eighteenth-century philosopher born in Edinburgh on this day, 26 April*, in 1711. Hume has entered the world rankings of influential figures, and is broadly considered to be one of history's most important philosophers writing in the English language. He was also a prolific writer of British history, and economic theory. His philosophical ideas and theories about human nature still have influence today, and he is justly celebrated here in Edinburgh, the city of his birth (and, in 1776, his death).

The people rubbing Hume's foot on the Royal Mile - specifically the big toe of his right foot, which dangles seductively over the edge of the plinth on which he sits - are enacting a superstitious ritual whereby the rubber of the toe is somehow magically endowed with either good luck or something of Hume's own wisdom and insight. 

One of Hume's great contributions to philosophical enquiry describes the relationship between cause and effect, and considers (in essence) that we can never explicitly connect two events in any sense of 'doing this caused that to happen'. As such, those rubbing Hume's toe for luck are directly contravening one of his fundamental assertions about the world...

During his life Hume lived in various places in the city, but most famously had a house just off St Andrew Square in the east end of the New Town. His devout atheism (broadly denied or ambivalently asserted during his lifetime) led the street on which he lived being informally dubbed 'St David Street', and happily it remains so today!

When Hume died in 1776, he was buried in a plot on the Old Calton burial ground on the slops of Calton Hill. His tomb there today is styled as a large circular mausoleum, but visitors will note there is no grand inscription or statement of his prolific and influential life's work.

It is reputed that Hume expressly wished for his tomb to bear just his name, his date of birth, and his date of death. History and posterity, he modestly asserted, would do the rest.

Find out more about Hume and other figures from the Scottish Enlightenment on my Up-Close and Personal private walking tours of the city!

​*In 1711 Scotland was still transitioning between the old Julian calendar and the newer Gregorian calendar. As such, there is a discrepancy of 11 days in some dates from this period. In the Old Style date format, Hume's date of birth was 26 April. On the New Style dating it is dated 7 May.  #simples

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