The 52nd Annual Hume Society Conference: commemorating the 250th anniversary of Hume’s death

The commemoration of the 250th anniversary of David Hume’s death offers an important opportunity to reassess the work and life of a key figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, whose radical philosophical empiricism and skepticism profoundly shaped modern thought. Hume—an outstanding historian, essayist, and economist—challenged deeply entrenched assumptions about causality, personal identity, and the foundations of moral and religious belief. His ideas also significantly influenced the early development of modern economics, sociology, and political science. His famous “is–ought” problem, distinguishing between descriptive and normative statements, remains central to ethical theory, while his critique of induction prompted Immanuel Kant to rethink epistemology. Marking this anniversary enables contemporary scholars and philosophers from diverse intellectual traditions to re-engage with Hume’s contributions concerning human nature, the limits of knowledge, the role of sentiment, and the formation of the character and identities of Europe’s nations.

Conference Directors
Tamás Demeter (Corvinus University of Budapest)
Elena Gordon (University College, Dublin)
Lorenzo Greco (University of L’Aquila)
Hynek Janoušek (Czech Academy of Sciences)
Tomáš Kunca (Charles University, Prague)

Preliminary venues: FLÚ AV ČR (banket), FF UK (keynote speech), FHS UK (the rest of the programme)

Conference website