Major figures. The major figures in Scottish eighteenth century philosophy were Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Reid and Adam Ferguson.

Who was the Scottish political philosopher?

During his lectures at Edinburgh University in the late 1840s, Smith befriended fellow Scottish philosopher David Hume. His An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations is seen as the first work in the discipline of political economy.

What is David Hume's philosophy?

His emphasis is on altruism: the moral sentiments that he claims to find in human beings, he traces, for the most part, to a sentiment for and a sympathy with one's fellows. It is human nature, he holds, to laugh with the laughing and to grieve with the grieved and to seek the good of others as well as one's own.