Hume’s Own Life

Abstract

This essay explores the motivations that may lie behind Hume’s autobiographical essay “My Own Life,” written just months before his death in 1776. It compares Hume’s end-of-life assessment—what the author calls “an extraordinary literary disappearing act”—with earlier autobiographical remarks of his and places the essay in the larger context of Hume’s account of the task of history-writing in general, showing how Hume wrestled with the problem of the inherent interestedness involved in the judging of one’s own life.