In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Reading David Hume’s “Of the Standard of Taste.” ed. by Babette BabichTina BaceskiBabette Babich, ed. Reading David Hume’s “Of the Standard of Taste.” Berlin: deGruyter, 2020. Pp. VII + 333. ISBN: 978-3-11-058564-3, paper, $24.99.Reading David Hume’s “Of the Standard of Taste,” a volume of essays edited by Babette Babich, purports to offer the reader a “collective stud[y]” of Hume’s famous essay and its related concerns. Almost all the (...) contributions have previously been published, either as journal articles or book chapters. “Of the Standard of Taste” is helpfully included at the beginning of the volume, though Hume Studies readers will already be familiar with the text. The book is divided into five parts. The editor’s introduction comprises part I. Hume’s essay makes up the entirety of part II. Parts III–V are organized around different general themes, with each part containing from three to five essays. In total the book contains twelve essays.Hume’s “Of the Standard of Taste” is a “classic” work in aesthetics today, but what entitles it to this appellation? Indeed, why do we judge any work to be of “classical value?” “Taste” plays a central role in evaluations of this sort, particularly the “taste” of modern scholars. But, as Hume knew, the historical sensibilities of judges are liable to change over the years, and so “some things that appear in their day to be sure classics, things that have until then withstood the test of time, can undergo a shift in value for another era” (13). In her Introduction, Babich tells an engaging, if not always easy to follow, story about Hume’s “deathbed readings” to illustrate the point. From final conversations with Adam Smith, we know that Hume was reading Lucian’s Dialogues of the Dead. But which of Lucian’s several such dialogues was he reading? When the question was put to Annette Baier (who was at that time herself writing about Hume and “last things”), she confessed to being puzzled by the very [End Page 341] question (6). Baier’s initial puzzlement and subsequent investigations to resolve this confusion revealed just how much her own sensibilities diverged from those of Hume’s day. Babich observes: “[T]he Lucian who was popular in Hume’s own day and even through to the beginning of the twentieth century, has today so diminished in “classical” value that he is sufficiently esoteric that Hume scholars like Baier have trouble tracking him down” (13). My own initial confusions reading the Introduction are likely attributable, in part, to the fact that I, too, was unfamiliar with Lucian. Ironically, this fact is, itself, further evidence of Babich’s point: yesterday’s literary gems have dimmed in value today because modern scholars are not conversant with their works. I have already ordered my copy of Lucian.The book’s rationale is explained as follows: “The entire concern of this volume is all about the critical basis for such claims [which works have “classical” value]. How can we determine a standard for estimating tomorrow’s likely classic, whether in the literary domain or other areas where taste plays a role” (14)? There is more at stake with respect to Hume’s “Of the Standard of Taste,” however, than merely predicting “literary futures.” The question concerning a standard of taste has important consequences for improving judgments in a much wider arena: art more broadly (painting, architecture, sculpture, etc.), but perhaps also science and even economics, to mention but a few. Only one of the essays collected here takes up the topic of “classical value” and “literary futures” per se: the editor’s own. The reader is left to make out what they can from the various contributions. But the essays can all advance the discussion insofar as each one attempts to shed light on an important related concern, e.g., the nature of taste, the nature of a standard, influences on taste, and so on. In what follows, I will offer a brief account of some of the essays in parts III–V, so the reader can get an overall flavor (taste) of the volume.Part III... (shrink)

Louis Loeb has identified a “nasty problem” in connection with Hume’s theory of meaning. The problem is that Hume seemingly claims we lack ideas corresponding to key metaphysical terms, such as terms like “substance” and “necessary connection,” but he then proceeds to explain why philosophers believe in the existence of entities denoted by such terms. In short, Hume seems motivated to explain belief in the existence of certain entities, despite his claiming we have no ideas corresponding to them. In this (...) paper, I strive to solve the problem by noting the important role of clear and distinct perception in his thought. In particular, I argue Hume only wishes to deny that we have clear and distinct ideas of substance and necessary connection, and not that we altogether lack any idea of substance and necessary connection, traditionally conceived. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Clarendon Edition of Hume’s EssaysLorne Falkenstein (bio)David Hume. Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary: A Critical Edition. Edited by Tom L. Beauchamp and Mark A. Box, with Michael Silverthorne, J. A. W. Gunn, and F. David Harvey. 2 volumes. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2021. Pp. 1200. ISBN: 97880198847090. $175.As reflected in its title, the Clarendon Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary contains essays that appeared over the course of Hume’s lifetime (...) under the titles Essays, Moral and Political (EMP) and Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (EMPL). (The latter appears as a subtitle within Hume’s larger Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects [ETSS].) It includes pieces that were withdrawn from EMP or EMPL in later editions, as well as essays Hume added to EMPL in 1764 and 1777. These are the essays familiar to those who know Eugene Miller’s Liberty Fund collection of Hume’s Essays with some exceptions: My Own Life, “Of Suicide,” and “Of the Immortality of the Soul” are not included. Essays that Hume decided to withdraw from later editions of EMP or EMPL precede the retained essays, collected in parts by withdrawal date. (This is a nice touch, which better captures the history of their appearance and disappearance.) A dedication to John Home, which appeared in some copies of Four Dissertations, and a list of “Scotticisms,” which appeared at various places in some copies of the first edition of Hume’s Political Discourses (incorporated into EMP and EMPL) are included as appendices.These are decisions that reflect the contents of the published texts, as they appeared from 1741 to 1777 (1:xxvii–xxviii). Hume wanted My Own Life to be prefaced to the posthumous 1777 edition of ETSS (1:444–45), but his publisher, Strahan, chose to publish it as an independent pamphlet instead. The essays “Of Suicide” and [End Page 297] “Of the Immortality of the Soul” were only briefly intended for publication in Four Dissertations (incorporated into ETSS) and did not appear in the released edition. They, too, only appeared posthumously. The editors project a volume containing Hume’s posthumous writings (1:401n1), which should include these works. Though the essays on suicide and immortality are not included, their history is presented over 1:430–31, importantly supplemented by 1:467–68.The dedication to John Home was published during Hume’s lifetime, though only in his Four Dissertations of 1757. As the editors note (1:695–96) it was highly controversial at the time and historically significant, both as an episode in Hume’s own troubles with the Scottish Kirk, and as an indication of the weakening of the control of the clergy over Scottish culture. It merits inclusion somewhere in a critical edition of Hume’s writings. The obvious place is in the company of the works that originally appeared in Four Dissertations. Those works are distributed over three volumes of the Clarendon Hume editions, those containing the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, the Dissertation on the Passions, the Natural History of Religion, and EMPL. This raises the question of which volume would be the one a scholar would be most inclined to consult when searching for the dedication. Since the dedication raises the issue of free speech and Hume was in trouble over what he had said with bearing on religion, one appropriate location would be the volume containing the Natural History, as the dedication applauds a one-time Kirk minister who dared to write a tragedy and get it performed on the Edinburgh stage. Another would be in the company of the literary essays that appeared in Four Dissertations: “Of Tragedy” and “Standard of Taste,” which Hume assigned to EMPL. The editors have opted for the latter.Hume’s different editions of his essays were often prefaced with advertisements and notifications. The most famous is the note in the 1777 edition disowning the Treatise. It is rightly excluded from these volumes of the Clarendon Hume because it was directed for insertion in volumes of ETSS that do not contain EMPL.1 The remaining advertisements and notifications are hard to find. They are appended to the introduction to the third part of the emendations/variants (1:529–30... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Meanings of “Embodied Experience”: A Response to Anik Waldow’s BookHynek Janoušek (bio)Anik Waldow, Experience Embodied: Early Modern Accounts of the Human Place in NatureAnik Waldow’s book, Experience Embodied: Early Modern Accounts of Human Place in Nature, is a welcome contribution to an interesting topic worthy of wider discussion. That topic is the question of how the concepts of embodied experience and reason were understood in seventeenth-and eighteenth-century philosophy. This (...) problem, according to Waldow, is often treated too narrowly, namely by concentrating on the problems of the theory of knowledge. Instead, Waldow shows that the main philosophers of the time understood experience and reason in a broader way and that not only the content of the concept, but also the angle from which experience was considered was not purely theoretical but moral and practical—and this, in turn, led them into researching experience as embodied experience. Indeed, on the one hand, according to most of these theories, our experience is born of a response to the causal action of the external environment on our body and of the body itself; on the other hand, the bodily subject of experience experiences herself as a being who actively and reasonably acts in the world and transforms it. We are aware of this active role.1Since, in this period of philosophy, a fact is defined as that which is given to us by experience, and our bodily actions in the world are given to us in this way, our corporeality, and our action through it, are facts that must somehow be brought into harmony. However, man does not experience herself only as a machine mechanically bound to the sensory stimuli of her own body, but as an active agent who can use her reason and will to shape her life and the world in which she lives. But does man still really possess a reason and a will of her own, which distinguish her actions from the instinctive actions of animals, and which allow her to distance herself from immediate [End Page 305] sensory affects and to act? How can reason and will be interpreted in the context of an embodied and causally determined human experience? And if human moral determination points to self-determined and responsible action, and if this possibility is acquired through learning and education, what kind of self-determining reason are we talking about?2 Finally, the question is how society should shape experience of its individuals so that they can develop their reason and thus the possibility of self-determined action.Waldow chooses the works of Descartes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, and Herder to discuss these topics. The book thus covers authors of all three major linguistic areas in early modern philosophy. The text of the book is divided into three sections. The first discusses Descartes and Locke and the moral dimension of human experience. The second focuses on Hume, Rousseau, and Herder and the question of how the development of our higher cognitive and affective faculties is conditioned by affective responses to sense perception. In the third section, Waldow addresses the question of how the empirical science of man (anthropology) is understood in the work of Herder and Kant.The book starts with a chapter on Descartes, based primarily on an interpretation of his Meditations on First Philosophy. It is clear that in Cartesian methodological skepticism the meditator experiences a freedom to abstain from judging based on confused ideas. Meditations thus allow her to experience the active use of her own mind. This experience contrasts with the passive emergence of sensory ideas and concepts. In the conclusion of the Meditations, this passivity is interpreted as the soul’s experience of being embodied in a bodily substance. In contrast, the experience of the free use of our judgment is a practical experience leading to the development of the ability to actively follow truth and direct the will not only in theoretical inquiry but also in the control of our passions. This is very important for Descartes, for this experience is essential for a virtuous and happy human life.The chapter on Locke continues with a discussion of the activation of... (shrink)

Many scholars have claimed that the psychology of the indirect passions in the Treatise is meant to capture how we come to regard persons as morally responsible agents. My question is exactly how the indirect passions relate to responsibility. In elucidating Hume’s account of responsibility, scholars have often focused not on the passionate responses themselves, but on their structural features. In this paper, I argue that locating responsibility in the structural features is insufficient to make sense of Hume’s account of (...) responsibility. I argue this on the grounds that without reference to the passions, Hume does not have the resources to distinguish between responsible and non-responsible entities. Instead, I attribute to Hume a distinctive, sympathy-based response-dependent conception of responsibility. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Academic Skepticism in Hume and Kant: A Ciceronian Critique of Metaphysics by Catalina González QuinteroZuzana ParusnikováCatalina González Quintero. Academic Skepticism in Hume and Kant: A Ciceronian Critique of Metaphysics. Cham: Springer, 2022. Pp. 268. Hardcover. ISBN: 978-3-030-89749-9. £99.99.This book is a valuable contribution to the rapidly expanding field of research into the formative impact of ancient skepticism on early modern philosophy. This new paradigm was introduced several decades (...) ago, as González Quintero acknowledges, by the pioneering work of Richard Popkin; and while Popkin emphasized the constitutive role of Pyrrhonism in this process, recent philosophical debates have been characterized by a more measured approach, carefully differentiating between the Academics and the Pyrrhonists, and their respective influence on modern skeptics. Gonzáles Quintero opts for the Academic interpretation of Hume’s skepticism, applying it to both his Treatise and the first Enquiry, and extending it to both of Kant’s Critiques—an area much less explored in the context of ancient skepticism. She thus heads into a complex philosophical landscape.The reader may be somewhat puzzled by the book’s subtitle, one which seems to add yet another theme to its already broad structure. However, as Gonzáles Quintero explains in the Introduction, she wants to take the discussions of Academic skepticism beyond the field of empirical science and concentrate on the attitude of the skeptics towards metaphysics; her aim is to show how Cicero, Hume, and Kant “used skeptical means to examine the justification of metaphysical claims and to determine, in this way, which resulting beliefs could be held non-dogmatically and for practical purposes” (1). Perhaps then, the book may be more accurately titled Academic Skepticism and Metaphysics: Cicero, Hume and Kant.Though this may seem a reduction in the scope of the topics, in this particular case it is an expansion, since the author reconstructs how the attitude of the skeptics to metaphysics unfolds from their general epistemological skepticism concerning the limits of reason. She divides the book into three main parts (Cicero, Hume, and Kant), with the first chapter of each part describing the skeptical method of that particular philosopher or school, and the second examining its application to metaphysical matters. This is a huge undertaking for one book, requiring the author to navigate a vast field of philosophical material, including a significant amount of primary and secondary literature, while turning it all back toward the main question concerning the role played by Academic (Carneadean) skepticism in the ancient, Humean, and Kantian treatments of religion and other metaphysical issues. The danger of topic-overload arises and a selective approach is crucial to avoid “dropping the ball.” Gonzáles Quintero tackles this task with varying success. [End Page 346]The first chapter of the first part of the book provides a thorough analysis of Academic skepticism and how it differs from Pyrrhonism and stoicism. With an extensive knowledge of scholarly debates on ancient skepticism, the author discusses various nuances in the relationship between radical Pyrrhonism and Arciselaus of the Second Academy, moving on, predictably, to Carneades of the Third Academy, who proposed a moderate version of skepticism based on evaluating the degree of persuasiveness of impressions. Such impressions deserve non-dogmatic approval and can thus reduce the scope of epoché; they motivate our search for truth while admitting our fallibility; and they guide us in practical matters. Her argument that assenting to persuasive beliefs contains a rational (normative) aspect perhaps deserves further discussion; for the ancient skeptics the criterion of persuasiveness was subjective and unstable, reflecting our momentary feelings about appearances.In the chapter on metaphysics, the author compares Cicero’s skeptical method in De Natura Deorum (DND) and the Tusculan Disputations. In the former, Cicero (through the character of Cotta) abandons skeptical principles (which would prevent us from defining the nature of the gods) for the sake of the practical usefulness of religious rituals as endorsed by the Stoics; while for the Epicureans (Velleius) the gods (or some cosmic Deity) are utterly unconcerned by our world, for the Stoics (Balbus) they care about human affairs—thus this latter stance supports the state religion that Cicero... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Experience, Embodiment, and History: Remarks on Waldow’s Experience EmbodiedDario Perinetti (bio)Anik Waldow’s Experience Embodied delves into what she calls the “early modern debate on the concept of experience.”1 In her rich and wide-ranging account, she shows how a group of key early modern philosophers dealt with a puzzle regarding the connection between the subjective and objective aspects of experience. The puzzle stems from the fact that experience reveals as (...) much about the experiencing subject as it does about the experienced world. Waldow believes that a one-sided focus on the role of “the way of ideas” in shaping the subjective aspect of experience has distorted our understanding of early modern views on experience.According to the traditional reading, the puzzle presents an intractable challenge to early modern philosophers. For if we experience the world through ideas, and ideas are internal mental states, it becomes difficult to reconcile the explanations required for the psychology of our mental states with those needed for the natural sciences dealing with objective states of affairs. But, so Waldow claims, the challenge can be successfully faced once we understand experience as embodied: “We have to think of experience as embodied to do justice to both explanatory requirements, because it is the body that connects the experiencing mind and its subjectivity with the factual realm of the world.”2Waldow disputes the commonly held view that early modern philosophers saw experience as an interaction between mind and world. She contends, instead, that most early modern philosophers understood experience as embodied. The thesis is presented through a series of “case studies” or “snapshots.” These snapshots focus on the way Descartes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Herder, and Kant accounted for the [End Page 319] embodied dimension of experience. The case studies are noteworthy because they succeed in revealing the significance of embodied experience for the authors in question. Waldow manages to expose the significance of embodied experience by focusing on the connection between the authors’ central philosophical views and their views on topics like education, the psychology of emotions, and history, which are often considered of lesser interest by contemporary philosophers.For example, in chapter 1, Waldow argues that connecting Descartes’s mind-body dualism with his understanding of reason as a tool for human self-determination and agency, makes it possible to see how, contrary to commonly held assumptions, Descartes’s dualism aligns well with an understanding of experience as embodied. This weakens the view that Descartes defended a conception of reason as disembodied, and instead, allows for a reading of Cartesian philosophy as aligned with a more naturalistic picture of human nature. In her chapters on Hume and Herder, Waldow sheds light on the way these philosophers perceived reason and experience as deeply rooted in bodily sensibility, as well as in historically shaped moral attitudes and social norms. This focus on embodied experience is central for highlighting how, in different ways, these philosophers endorsed the naturalistic project of understanding the human place in nature. Building on these results, Waldow approaches the problem of the relationship between naturalism and the methodology proper to philosophy from a different and original angle. Her final chapters on Herder and Kant present two ways of understanding the connection between philosophy and the empirical sciences. In her view, Herder advocates for a naturalistic methodology as a way to provide answers to deep metaphysical questions, as well as to empirical questions related to human nature and its connection to culture, society, and history. Unlike Herder, Kant appears as promoting a form of methodological dualism that distinguishes conceptual questions regarding the structure of experience from empirical questions regarding the experience of concrete, embodied human beings. Waldow succeeds in highlighting this contrast between two methodological approaches, thanks to a journey that takes us through the canonical texts of these two thinkers, as well as through less frequented texts such as Herder’s work on the origins of language and Kant’s writings on anthropology, geography, natural history, and history. As can be seen, Waldow’s book not only provides a valuable insight into the significance of embodied experience in early modern philosophy, but also offers refreshing and unexpected readings of the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Editors’ IntroductionElizabeth S. Radcliffe and Mark G. SpencerThis issue opens with the winning essay in the Second Annual Hume Studies Essay Prize competition: “Hume’s Passion-Based Account of Moral Responsibility,” by Taro Okamura. Dr. Okamura’s essay was chosen as the 2022 winner from among papers submitted by emerging scholars from August 2021 through July 2022. Dr. Okamura received his Ph.D. from the University of Alberta in 2022. He is currently (...) a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Research Fellow at the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology at the University of Tokyo.The competition for the Third Prize closed on August 1, 2023, and the winner will be announced in our next issue. Please see the Call for Papers for the fourth competition in the back of this issue. The competition is open to authors ten or fewer years from the Ph.D.A special aspect of our current issue is its spotlight on Hume’s Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary. Renowned Dutch Enlightenment scholar, Frederic L. van Holthoon, presents his analysis of some of Hume’s essays, which he argues constitute Hume’s project of writing on political, or public, issues—a goal he did not get to complete with the Treatise. Also, established Hume scholar Lorne Falkenstein offers an extended review of the newly published Clarendon edition of Hume’s essays, in two volumes (edited by Tom L. Beauchamp and Mark A. Box, with Michael Silverthorne, J. A. W. Gunn, and F. David Harvey).Finally, we want to bring to the attention of our readers that, in fewer than two years, Hume Studies will be marking the 50th anniversary of its first publication. For this event, we are planning a special jubilee issue, 50:1 (April 2025). We hope to include among the unique features of that issue paragraphs or statements from our readers in answer to this query: “Of all of the articles that have been published in Hume Studies over the past 50 years, which one is most noteworthy to you? Why so?” Please see the “Call for Entries” in the back of this issue and on the Hume Studies website. We invite your responses! [End Page 193]Copyright © 2023 Hume Studies... (shrink)

In this piece, I argue that Hume wrote his Essays to continue writing on political issues after he rather abruptly ended his Treatise, Book 3. Initially he wrote some essays in the vein of Addison and Steele, but he rejected these essays as “frivolous.” In writing on political issues, he became a master essayist and his essays withstood the test of time. “Political” should here be taken in the wider sense as topical issues which readers could immediately recognize as being (...) relevant. (shrink)

In this paper, I show how reading Hume’s moral philosophy in light of seminal works by nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American authors can provide resources for developing a richer and more intentionally relational conception of sympathy. I begin by identifying two phenomena to which African American intellectuals like Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Anna Julia Cooper refer with the term “sympathy.” For ease of reference, I label these phenomena “sympathetic commitment” and “sympathetic understanding,” respectively. I then (...) show that there are concepts in Hume’s moral philosophy that refer to similar phenomena and suggest that Hume scholars can draw on these concepts to develop an enriched and distinctively Humean sense of sympathy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reply to My CriticsExperience Embodied: Early Modern Accounts of the Human Place in NatureAnik Waldow (bio)I would like to thank Dario Perinetti and Hynek Janoušek for their thoughtful comments and the time and effort they invested into my work. Their reflections drive attention to important questions and make helpful suggestions about how some of the arguments of the book can be further developed and clarified. In what follows, I (...) will first discuss the proposal to distinguish between a narrow and a broad sense of experience, then specify how I understand the connection between having a body and being able to engage in experiences. In this context, I will also discuss Janoušek’s suggestion to draw further distinctions between the different senses in which the concept of body relates to experience in Descartes and Hume. In the last section, I address the question of whether the focus on bodies risks undermining the claim that experience is intersubjectively constituted.1. Narrow versus Broad Concept of ExperienceDario Perinetti raises the worry that during the early modern period, and even before, the concept of experience was mainly used to discuss epistemological questions, and that therefore the Broad Experience Thesis fails. According to this thesis, it is reductive to think of experience in exclusively epistemological terms, since this ignores that many early modern writers approached questions about the benefits and dangers of experience from a wider moral perspective. This perspective, as I argue in [End Page 329] Experience Embodied, was concerned with the training of the mind’s intellectual and moral capacities, the role of pleasure and pain (and other affects) in epistemic and moral judgement, and, more generally, the question of how it is possible to be self-determined agents who do more than simply respond to the experiences they have.To support his claim, Perinetti cites the Historische Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Cauvin’s Lexicon Rationale sive Thesaurus Philosophicus, but also Aristotle, Bacon, and Hobbes. The approach I pursue in my book is based on the usage of the concept of experience by the authors examined (Descartes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Herder, Kant). I will turn to the analysis of this usage in a moment, but before this let me say a few words about dictionaries.It is in principle not surprising that a dictionary like the Historische Wörterbuch der Philosophie—and its discussion of Aristotle, Bacon, and Hobbes—supports the traditional approach to experience as a centrally epistemological concept. Its entry on “experience” revolves around the idea that philosophers are either empiricists or rationalists.1 Yet it is precisely the establishment of this distinction that has substantially contributed to promoting a reductive concept of experience. After all, rationalism and empiricism are labels typically used to describe competing epistemological positions.2 It is also worth noting that the dictionary’s entry is from the 1970s. Because of this, it operates with a picture of the history of philosophy that has long been challenged by studies that show that there is far more to early modern philosophy than the standard works of some selected canonical figures.3 When dealing with Locke, the entry for instance exclusively focuses on An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and does not even mention that experience is a key concept in Some Thoughts Concerning Education.The rather short and general entry on experience in Chauvin’s Lexicon Philosophicum (1692) is not very telling either—at least not if treated in isolation from other dictionaries and encyclopedias of the period, such as D’Alembert and Diderot’s Encylopédie: a tremendously influential work, that, according to its editors, is in itself committed to the Baconian method.4 And here César Chesneau Du Marsais’s entry on experience straightforwardly highlights the moral dimension of the knowledge acquired through experience:Experience, abstract term, commonly means the knowledge acquired through a long life, combined with the reflections made on what one has seen, and on the good and bad that has happened to us. In this sense, reading history is a highly profitable way of gaining experience; it tells us of events, and shows us the good or bad repercussions and consequences of these events.5The... (shrink)

In the Appendix to the Treatise, Hume argues that there is a significant problem with his earlier account of personal identity. There has been considerable debate about what this problem actually is. I develop a new version of an internal inconsistency reading, where I argue that Hume realised that his original account of the connexion between perceptions in terms of an association of the ideas of the perceptions was not a viable means of explaining the connexion between perceptions as it (...) leads to an infinite regress of ideas of perceptions. This is only stopped by accepting that the mind perceives a connexion between perceptions. This, however, is something Hume cannot accept. As a result, Hume is left without a positive account of the self, as he has no account of the connexion between perceptions. (shrink)

Abstract:The purpose of Hume’s argument about induction, contra “literalist” interpretations that see it merely as psychology, is to show that induction cannot be justified. Hume maintains that the only way to justify induction would be to demonstrate or to produce a good inductive argument for the uniformity principle (UP). His most famous point is that any attempt to justify UP inductively would be circular. One may retort that no inductive argument can be circular, for a circular argument must be deductively (...) valid. But there is a sense in which a purely inductive argument for UP is circular: it uses induction for the purpose of justifying induction. Therefore, the literalist interpretation cannot be right. For if the argument can be circular only if its purpose is to justify induction, and Hume has shown that it is circular, then its purpose must be to justify induction, and Hume shows that this cannot be done. (shrink)

Abstract:This paper claims that Hume is committed to a rather sophisticated form of functionalism. This claim is based upon the following arguments: first, Hume’s characterization of objects such as vegetables and animal bodies in terms of their functional identity, and their underlying analogy with the identity we ascribe to persons or selves, implies that an absolute constancy is not part of the essential nature of persons. Rather, what corresponds to this assumed metaphysical constancy is functional identity. Second, Hume’s distinction between (...) the question concerning the substance of the mind on the one hand, and the questions concerning the local conjunction and cause of our perceptions, on the other, has much in common with, and anticipates, the much-celebrated functionalist distinction between the ontology and metaphysics of the mind. (shrink)

Abstract:What is Hume’s hypothesis of the double relation of impressions and ideas from which a passion arises? How does it operate in structuring his system? These are primary questions that need to be answered in order to understand Hume’s intention in the Treatise. Yet, there exists no reasonable answers, nor serious attempts to answer them, probably because this hypothesis is considered as a limited issue, relevant only to the indirect passions, or because it is too mechanical and unsophisticated to excite (...) critics’ curiosities. My present aim is to show that Hume’s double relation of impressions and ideas operating in the production of indirect passions is integral to his entire system not only in that it serves as a powerful weapon to advocate his naturalistic position, but also in that it is a highly sophisticated psychological mechanism that functions as a schema for the cooperation of the imagination and the passions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hume’s Epistemological Evolution by Hsueh M. QuDan KervickHsueh M. Qu, Hume’s Epistemological Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. 280. Hardback. ISBN: 9780190066291, $90.Every interpreter of Hume is compelled to grapple at some point with the problem of the relationship between Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature (1739) and his two enquiries: An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (1748) and An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (1751). Readers are (...) often guided in this area by Hume’s own later reflections and directions to his readers, particularly by the witty, but terse comments in “My Own Life,” where Hume acknowledges his youthful disappointment when the Treatise “fell dead-born from the press, without reaching such distinction, as even to excite a murmur among the zealots,” and then reports a longstanding conviction that his literary failure with the Treatise “had proceeded more from the manner than the matter.” This famous self-assessment suggests the relationship between the earlier work and the later ones is more a matter of style, exposition, and clarity than of differences in philosophical substance. Close readers of the Treatise and the two Enquiries, however, have often found a significantly more perplexing and far less straightforward relationship among these works. Hsueh M. Qu’s delightful and thought-provoking Hume’s Epistemological Evolution is the first book-length treatment of the relationship between Book 1 of the Treatise of Human Nature and the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. Qu’s book ties together many of the strands of earlier commentary on the subject, synthesizes and critiques them, and develops its own comprehensive and original interpretation. The style is precise and detailed, yet easygoing and fluent, and the book will no doubt serve as the starting point and benchmark for future research on its subject for many years. One important general theme of Qu’s interpretation is the contention that in Book 1 of the Treatise, epistemological issues take a backseat to psychological issues, and epistemological issues tend to arise in the earlier work as “offshoots” of psychological ones, whereas the focus of the Enquiry is much more epistemological. More controversially, Qu rejects the view that the philosophical differences between the Treatise and the Enquiry are only differences in manner, not matter. He argues that Hume disavowed the Treatise treatment of skepticism “because of his dissatisfaction with the response to scepticism offered in the former work: he finds the Treatise’s epistemological framework to be philosophically inadequate” (Qu, 1). Qu believes that Hume defends mitigated skepticism in both the Treatise and the Enquiry, so “his final position is indeed the same in both works.” However, he also argues that the “arguments and frameworks” that lead to this position differ between the two [End Page 183] works, with the Treatise offering defective arguments for this “same philosophical endpoint” (12). As a preliminary step toward justifying his contention that the Enquiry is more normatively focused than the Treatise, Qu begins by comparing and contrasting the stated aims of the two works, as set out in the Treatise’s “Introduction” and in EHU part 1. The most important difference he finds is the emphasis in EHU part 1 on the project of driving out false metaphysics. While the Treatise is focused on establishing a psychological science of man, the Enquiry, “in emphasising its aim of driving off a class of poorly justified beliefs... seems more self-consciously normative than the characterisation of the aims of the Treatise in the corresponding section of that work” (42). In the Enquiry, as Qu reads it, the epistemological recommendations delivered haphazardly and parenthetically in the Treatise have been elevated into a fundamental purpose of the work. Moving from overview to detail, Qu takes up the problem of Hume’s views on induction in Chapters 3 and 4. He follows Stroud in distinguishing a negative phase from a positive phase in Hume’s argument on induction, the first phase aiming to show that inductive inferences are not founded on reason, and the second aiming at the conclusion that they are instead determined by custom. That these two phases of the argument can be found in both the Treatise and the Enquiry is a... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Concealed Influence of Custom: Hume’s “Treatise” from the Inside Out by Jay L. GarfieldJohn Christian LaursenJay L. Garfield. The Concealed Influence of Custom: Hume’s “Treatise” from the Inside Out. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. 302. Hardback. ISBN: 978-0-19-093340-1, $82. This book has at least two original and great merits. One is that it is one of the first in the Hume literature to be truly global. (...) The other is that it gives custom and habit the place they deserve in Hume’s philosophy. Concerning the first of these, I think it would be widely admitted that most of the study of Western philosophy is done in blissful ignorance of non-Western philosophy. We follow what our thinkers are doing, and pay little or no attention to the rest of the world. In contrast, this book peppers the footnotes, and even some of the text, with comparisons to Buddhist schools and figures such as Madhyamaka, Candrakirti, Nagarjuna, and the like. We are not used to the idea that Western philosophers may have drawn some of their ideas from non-Western philosophy, although we have long known that Pyrrho traveled to India and may have taken ideas from the gymnosophists, and that later philosophers like Bayle and Leibniz were very interested in Chinese ideas. In Hume’s case, it is possible that there was some influence through Pyrrho and his followers, or that these were simply parallel developments. The latter are still of philosophical interest because they show how similar philosophies can develop from different roots. Of course, one of the reasons that most of us cannot compare a figure like Hume to Indian or Chinese philosophy is that we do not know the languages and have not been trained in those areas. In this case, Jay Garfield is the author of many works on Indian philosophy, including Engaging Buddhism: Why it Matters to Philosophy (2015), so he has authority in the matter. A work like this, drawing attention to many similarities and parallels in philosophy, could be followed up by some methodological work on how to compare philosophies from such different intellectual traditions. What do the parallels mean? Are there any deeper or wider conclusions that we can make about parallels that appear in very different philosophical traditions? Is convergence of ideas a confidence builder in their solidity and truth, or rather a reminder of common human tendencies to fallacy? If philosophy is ever going to join the ranks of truly global human enterprises, it will have to ask and answer these questions about far-flung philosophical traditions. The main argument of this book is that Hume is best understood as a Pyrrhonian philosopher who maintains that the foundations of our knowledge, ethics, and political practices may be found only in custom and habit. Book 2 of Hume’s Treatise is the key, providing a social account of the passions and our constructions of ourselves. “Custom is essential to the story,” the author writes (82). Nature makes [End Page 179] us develop customs together that start from passions and sympathy, and are drawn together by the imagination. On the basis of these social constructions of most elements of our lives, by the end of the book, Garfield is talking about Hume’s place in the “communitarian tradition” (279–80). If Book 2 is read before Book 1, one will realize that what Hume says about reason and ontology in Book 1 is rooted in his theory of the passions in Book 2, and thus always social. What Hume is doing is more like philosophical psychology (or the psychology of philosophy?) than epistemology, metaphysics, or moral philosophy, according to Garfield. Hume is asking why we believe what we believe in epistemology, metaphysics, and moral philosophy, not proving that any of these beliefs are true. Taking the title of Hume’s Treatise seriously, it is a book about human nature, not about Hume’s understanding of those philosophical subfields. Hume’s work is more descriptive than prescriptive. We can learn from it how we live, not how we should live, which is a matter for the development of customs over time... (shrink)

We are pleased to say that Hume Studies has awarded its second annual Essay Prize, with an announcement featured in this issue. The winning paper will be published in November 2023 (Hume Studies 48:2). We thank the members of the 2022–23 Prize Committee, who are acknowledged in the announcement. Please see the Call for Papers for the Third Annual Essay Prize on page 189 of this issue.Along with five original articles and three book reviews, our current issue features a symposium (...) on Margaret Watkins’s book, The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s “Essays” (Cambridge University Press, 2019). The symposium is a development from an Author-Meets-Critics panel that was held at the 47th Hume Society Conference, sponsored by... Read More. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Comments on Margaret Watkins, The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s “Essays”Jacqueline Taylor (bio)After David Hume’s death, Adam Smith wrote a letter to Hume’s publisher, William Strahan, to recount some of the final words and the attitude of “our late excellent friend, Mr. Hume.”1 Despite declining health and increasing weakness, Hume faced his approaching demise “with great cheerfulness” (EMPL xlvi). He had recently been reading Lucian’s Dialogues of the Dead, and (...) although feeling he had every reason “to die contented,” Smith describes the “jocular excuses” Hume might make to Charon to delay his death (EMPL xlv). He first requests more time so that he can see how the public responds to the latest corrections he had been making to his works, but Charon replied that this would only lead Hume to want more time to make further corrections. Hume tries another tack: “Have a little patience, good Charon, I have been endeavouring to open the eyes of the public. If I live a few years longer, I may have the satisfaction of seeing the downfall of some of the prevailing systems of superstition,” to which Charon replies, “You loitering rogue, that will not happen these many hundred years... Get into the boat this instant, you lazy loitering rogue” (EMPL xlvi). This imaginary dialogue makes evident Hume’s self-awareness as an author who cared greatly about both the correctness of his written works and the influence of these works on the public.In her book, Margaret Watkins argues that Hume’s concern to open the eyes of the public goes well beyond attempts to bring about the downfall of systems of superstition.2 She credits him with the broader aim of writing essays for a literate audience that would stimulate both public and individual improvement in various areas of human activity, including government, work, aesthetic experience, and intimate [End Page 155] relationships. The first three chapters of the book examine the case for Hume’s concern with public improvement. Chapter 1 focuses primarily on the political essays, and examines Hume’s account of governing and his criticism of the irrationality apt to arise with divisive political factionalism. Chapter 2 turns to inequalities of power and the circumstances that allow some to exercise to a greater degree the domineering tendency that is part of human nature. Watkins uses Hume’s essay on the population size of ancient and modern societies to reconstruct his view on the ills—to both masters and slaves—of ancient slaveholding. She complicates this discussion by looking at modern slaveholding in the colonies, and Hume’s puzzling lack of attention to this. In the ancient world, slaveholding resulted from war and conquest, and Watkins examines how ancient warfare also led to greater ferocity and anger in fighting and exacerbated cruelty (a trait Hume had deemed the worst vice in the Treatise [T 3.3.3.8]).3 This is another place where Watkins sees Hume taking stock of modern improvements. In the wide-ranging third chapter, entitled “Working,” Watkins considers economic circumstances as moral causes that can shape character, highlighting the importance for Hume of the commercial virtues, especially industry.4 She also shows that in the four essays on happiness, modeled on Hellenistic sects, each type of philosopher regards industry, or at least occupation, as essential to human happiness. Watkins concludes that the need for industry is thus something we are naturally motivated to seek out, and so an integral part of human nature. Chapter 4, on “Composing,” shows Watkins’s talents as a philosophical essayist in her own right, as she relates art and other forms of beauty to the cultivation of calm passions. We find here an insightful discussion of art, whether composing or consuming, as having particularly therapeutic effects on melancholy and other forms of nervous conditions. Chapters 5 and 6 take up, respectively, love for oneself and love for others. The former looks at the importance Hume places on both self-love and pride. Here Watkins draws primarily on Hume’s more morally theoretical works, both the Treatise and EPM, since they have more to say about self-valuing. Chapter 6 shows how we may fruitfully read... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Imagination in Hume’s Philosophy: The Canvas of the Mind by Timothy M. CostelloeSaul TraigerTimothy M. Costelloe. The Imagination in Hume’s Philosophy: The Canvas of the Mind. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018. Pp. xv + 312. Hardback. ISBN: 9781474436397. $107.00.If anything about Hume’s philosophy can be characterized as widely accepted, it is that the imagination is front and center in Hume’s account of the mind. The aim of (...) Timothy Costelloe’s book is to fully develop the observation, that the imagination, as Hume understands it, is “the canvas of the mind.” Costelloe amply demonstrates that the imagination is a broad canvas, ranging from Hume’s epistemology and metaphysics, to his aesthetics, moral and political philosophy, history, philosophy of religion, and his general conception of philosophy itself. Seven substantial chapters cover these areas, and show how Hume takes the imagination to play a pivotal role in each.One of the many strengths of this book is that Costelloe responsibly mines the secondary literature, carefully explaining the interpretations he seconds and those he finds wanting. The attention to the relevant secondary literature is apparent from the start, where Costelloe laments the surprising dearth of book-length treatments of Hume on the imagination, but helpfully highlights both the lesser known Hume-centric monographs on the imagination by Furlong and Wilbanks, as well as more widely read interpretations.The introductory chapter makes important distinctions and introduces some main concepts. Hume differentiates the imagination’s “combinatory power” from its “creative power.” While the uninhibited ability to concatenate ideas might also be seen as a creative act, Costelloe sees the creative power where the imagination [End Page 173] “generates a class of ideas—‘fictions’ of a certain sort—independent of experience and according to its own inner logic” (21). This characterization makes sense when viewing the imagination’s function as directed towards a goal, such as achieving coherence or creating an aesthetically pleasing effect. Costelloe suggests that achieving an aesthetically pleasing effect is an element in any exercise of the imagination’s creative power. The imagination creates easy transitions among ideas where there were none, where doing so is pleasurable, or aided by the passions.Costelloe introduces his account of Hume’s fictions as errors of the imagination whereby ideas are formed in a manner different from the standard derivation from antecedent impressions. He insists, helpfully, that fictions are not illusions, but rather errors of a different kind. Though both involve error, fictions, unlike illusions, are not described in terms of jest or irony (30).Though he acknowledges that Hume does not describe any fictions as “artificial,” Costelloe finds it helpful to draw a distinction between natural and artificial fictions. Natural fictions are generated without reflection. Artificial fictions, such as those created by poets and philosophers, issue from “the voluntary act of imagination” (31). Costelloe holds that artificial fictions “are rarely taken to refer to objects with real existence and that any professed belief is really a matter of people being persuaded of something and taking the ideas in question as having real referents, thus only lending themselves to their existence for one reason or another” (31). This is a bit unclear. Certainly, poetic fictions are voluntary creations not intended to refer to real objects. But substance, and the double existence of ideas and external objects, as philosophical fictions, surely both involve belief and the corresponding existential commitments on the part of the philosophers who are committed to them. It is also difficult to see the purported contrast between belief and taking ideas to have real referents.Chapter 2, on metaphysics, is the longest chapter in the book, and it addresses the fictions of the imagination in Hume’s account of space and time, continued and distinct existence, liberty and necessity, and personal identity. Costelloe is sensitive to the worry that classifying Hume’s subject in Book 1 of the Treatise as metaphysics may appear to be slighting the central epistemological concerns and failing to appreciate Hume’s nascent cognitive psychology. Such worries fall away as Costelloe explores the roles that the imagination plays in the formation of our conception of duration without change, and the identity... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reply to My CriticsMargaret Watkins (bio)Science is related to wisdom as virtuousness is related to holiness; it is cold and dry, it has not love and knows nothing of a deep feeling of inadequacy and longing. It is as useful to itself as it is harmful to its servants, insofar as it transfers its own character to them and thereby ossifies their humanity. As long as what is meant (...) by culture is essentially the promotion of science, culture will pass the great suffering human being by with pitiless coldness, because science sees everywhere only problems of knowledge and because within the world of the sciences suffering is really something improper and incomprehensible, thus at best only one more problem.1When Nietzsche writes these words in “Schopenhauer as Educator” in 1874, nearly a century after Hume’s death, he is not using “science” (Wissenschaft) to refer only to what we now know as the natural sciences. Indeed, as another essay in the Untimely Meditations makes clear, history is as much, if not more, in Nietzsche’s sights as biology or physics. He is naming a peculiar irony here: in the quest for a certain kind of progress—the progress of knowledge—we can end up killing any hope of progress for life. Certain methods of historical study are forms of enquiry whose spiritless effect is to “let the dead bury the living.”2 Our relentless quest to catalog and preserve the old robs us of the higher ways we might learn from it, or overcome it. We “historians of philosophy” can do this by reading past philosophers as dead artifacts, focusing intently on how they were responding to their particular contexts and pursuing their own projects. As indispensable as such study is, it can kill the texts’ potential to continue to inspire and inform philosophical thought of our own. [End Page 163]In writing The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s “Essays,” my hope was to counteract this tendency in myself and in readers of Hume—to show that these works often neglected by contemporary philosophers are still capable of inspiring life-giving, generative philosophical thought. (I do not say they are of more than “mere” historical interest; abusing the study of history with such a pernicious adverb runs counter to every fiber of my being.) Such thought need not be optimistic, encouraging, or even morally admirable at every step. It need simply inspire our own thought, activate that love of truth that Hume says can never “be carried to too high a degree,” or (preferably and) show us how that truth matters for human life (EHU 5.1).3My attempts to achieve this aim have two primary modes: showing that the Essays can inspire vital philosophical reflection and arguing that they are themselves philosophical or works of philosophy. To put my cards on the table: the enemies within (and without) that run counter to this effort are the tendency to put a piece of philosophical writing under a microscope (whose lens might be analytic or historical) without ever asking why it matters, and the tendency to dismiss the writing as philosophical because it does not fit neatly into one of the current categories of our discipline or our understanding of “the” early modern philosophical project.I am therefore pleased that both my generous interlocutors, Jacqueline Taylor and Andre Willis, recognize my attempt to extend as well as explain Hume’s insights. There is far too much insight in their own contributions for me to do justice to. I will therefore limit my discussion to three main topics: the notion of Humean public spirit I attempt to elucidate in the book, the related problems of analytic distance, and the pressing question of the difference between Hume’s projects in other philosophical works—especially the two Enquiries—and his projects in the Essays.Although there is no essay called “Of Public Spirit,” it is still a significant concept for the Essays. The initial advertisement to the 1741 volume of Essays, Moral and Political included this observation: “Public Spirit, methinks, shou’d engage us to love the Public, and to bear an equal Affection to all our Country-Men; not... (shrink)

Abstract:The question broached in the title may sound odd. It makes sense to ask whether Hume’s empiricism is successful, and whether it is the best way of rendering rigorous the (vague) empiricist view. But is it not obvious that Hume is an empiricist? I shall argue that the answer is negative, at least when we are concerned with methodological empiricism, pertaining to the way inquiry, both scientific and philosophical, must proceed. In support of my claim, I will distinguish between the (...) theoretical question, pertaining to the methodological view Hume endorses, and the practical question, concerned with the way he conducts his inquiry. My conclusion will be that the answer to the first question is contentious, and the answer to the second is negative. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Spirit and Politics: Some Thoughts on Margaret Watkins’s The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s “Essays”Andre C. Willis (bio)Margaret Watkins’s elegant text, The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays (2019),1 is marked by a Humean approach: it fosters philosophical consideration of both the faculties of the mind and the affective features of experience in ways that bear on practical, moral issues. Ever-attentive to the meaning of Hume’s various nuances and strategic ambiguities, (...) Watkins’s even-handed approach guides us into a broad swath of Hume’s ideas and marches us through a trajectory of secondary interlocutors. It also establishes Watkins as an integral part of Hume’s lineage, in the sense that she understands that thoughtful writing itself is an intellectual virtue. Her “unusual sensitivity, not to life’s daily vicissitudes but to beauties and deformities” (193)2 richly textures her overall argument that positions Hume’s Essays as a filter for his vision of “true philosophy:” that reflective turn towards nature and common life that openly challenges abstruse reasoning, fluently embraces historicism and perspectivalism, and deftly foregrounds the usefulness of ideas over their logical certainty.As much as Watkins reveals Hume’s vision for philosophy, she also extends it; for, among other things, her consideration of Hume’s unique endeavor in philosophical literature (ultimately collected under the title Essays, Moral, Political and Literary [1758]), makes an important twofold contribution to Hume studies. It brings greater attention to Hume’s notion of “public spirit,” a distinct mode of human excellence that combines “benevolence” with “greatness of mind.” And, it aestheticizes some practical dimensions of human life (noted in chapter titles, for example, “Working,” [End Page 143] “Thinking,” “Loving”) without losing track of their socio-political valences. I shall return to these two main points below. As an introductory gesture, I want to note that Watkins’s writing both nicely elaborates Hume’s philosophical vision and thoughtfully broadens his literary insights. It does “the job of putting the audience into a responsive relation with the work of art,” what literary critic R. P. Blackmur identified as “the job of intermediary.”3Generally speaking, Watkins’s mediation filters salient themes and terms from Hume’s corpus through a particularly close reading of the Essays. Cast through her richly stylized analysis, Hume’s foundational ideas of “sympathy,” “convention,” “impressions,” “association,” “imagination,” “artifice,” the “passions” (and more) find fresh interpretive air. An example of this in her first chapter tracks Hume’s use of both “artifice” and “convention” from the Treatise through the second Enquiry to the Essays. For Watkins, a through-line for Hume is that “governing” can be thought of as repeated actions that bridge institutional policy to individual character. To think about governing in this way is to open ourselves to new ways of conceiving potential overlaps between nature and artifice (say, in the instance of a moral virtue like courage [50]). To link categories in the Essays back to their antecedent texts along the lines that Watkins does is to situate them in the context of Hume’s larger thought-project and, indirectly, confirm connections between the individual essays. These conjoinings, for Watkins, suggest Hume’s Essays can be treated together, without either blending their disparate themes or diluting their individual subject matter.4This point stands in opposition to Hume’s own semi-admonishment (1741) that “The Reader must not look for any connexion among these Essays but must consider each of them as a Work apart.”5 Watkins’s response—indicative of the graciousness of her overall tone—is to warmly acknowledge Hume’s reproach and affirm the distinctiveness of each of the essays. She proclaims: “The Essays are not unified” (5). Her thinking about them separately, however, reveals a common practical thread in their form. Watkins characterizes this form as serving “to promote public benefit” (4). I think about this form as being philosophical in the way that Richard Rorty conceives of philosophy as cultural criticism. Watkins, however, wants to emphasize the public character of Hume’s philosophy. She writes: “Hume seeks to benefit the public in two ways. First, he tries to allay irrational attitudes that produce imprudent personal and... (shrink)

One of the gravest charges that has been brought against Hume’s essay “Of the Standard of Taste” is that of circularity. Hume is accused of defining good art in terms of “true judges,” and of defining true judges in terms of their ability to judge good art. First, I argue that Hume avoids circularity since he offers a way of identifying good art that is logically independent of the verdict of true judges. Second, I argue that this clarifies an enduring (...) puzzle in the scholarship on Hume’s essay: why he appears to offer not one but two standards of taste. Hume’s standard does not consist of general rules; however, Hume needs general rules to establish that some individuals’ tastes are more “delicate” than others’. (shrink)