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Antíteses - Revista do Programa de Pós-Graduação em História Social

Articles

Vol. 18 No. 35 (2025)

The two dimensions of David Hume’s historical theory

DOI
https://doi.org/10.5433/1984-3356.2025v18n35p288-309
Submitted
January 31, 2025
Published
2025-07-30

Abstract

This article points out two complementary but distinct ways of understanding history in David Hume’s thinking. The first refers to history as an impartial, justified and systematically organized form of knowledge about the past, and Hume widely theorized its procedures and techniques throughout his career. The second comprises history as a process—as a totality encompassing all events and agents of the past—that would be endowed with an organizing pattern and a meaning that, after being revealed and explained, would allow the historian some degree of speculation and projections about the future. In constructing our analysis, we make references to the main considerations about history in Hume’s works produced between the mid-1730s and the beginning of the 1760s. They are the Treatise of Human Nature, some of the Essays, the first and second Enquiries, and the History of England.

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