Abstract
Claudia Schmidt begins her new book, David Hume: Reason in History, by noting how recent literature has tended either to offer an overview of Hume’s thinking or to develop a “unified account of a number of themes” from it; there are no extant studies, she emphasizes, that both display the “explicit order of a systematic survey” and provide “a unified interpretation of his thought”. Schmidt takes this to be a “lacuna in the literature,” one she intends to fill by combining a “systematic survey” of Hume’s contributions to the various branches of philosophy, history, and the social sciences, with a “distinctive interpretation” of her own. In so doing, she casts her net over a wide audience: the book is intended to bring in those starting out on their study of Hume, as well as attract the more seasoned specialist in search of a new interpretation, the non-specialist with an interest in recent scholarship, and those outside philosophy who are curious about Hume’s place in the methodology and history of their own disciplines.