Hume: Intellectual Context

Given Kant's seemingly dismissive attitude toward Scottish philosophers of common sense—in the Prolegomena, he famously describes how painful it is to see them miss Hume's point—one might expect that a book titled Kant and the Scottish Enlightenment would be a rather slim volume. However, as Manfred Kuehn in Scottish Common Sense in Germany and elsewhere has made abundantly clear, Scottish philosophy played a large role in eighteenth-century Germany, and was a significant influence on Kant. The present volume, which stands as (...) a Festschrift for Kuehn, admirably follows on this path, and the nineteen papers collected here trace a number of interesting and surprising ways in which Scottish philosophy connects to Kant.... (shrink)

Volumes 1 and 2 of Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature, first published in January 1739, were soon after publication the subject of five notices and four reviews. Volume 3, published at the end of October 1740, received no notices and was reviewed only in the Bibliothèque raisonnée. This anonymous review of vol. 3 is of interest not only for David Norton is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, McGill University, and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, University of Victoria. His address is 8-4305 Maltwood (...) Lane, Victoria, BC, Canada V8X 5G9. what it says about Hume’s views as set out in the third book of the Treatise, but also because of questions that have arisen about the authorship of this and an earlier review of vol. 1 of the Treatise published in the same journal. In Part I of this paper we begin by reviewing the grounds for attributing to Pierre Des Maizeaux the notice of vols. 1 and 2 of the Treatise published by the Bibliothèque raisonnée in its April–June, 1739 issue. We then focus principally on the question of the authorship of the review of vol. 3 of the Treatise published by the Bibliothèque raisonnée in its April–June, 1741 issue, but we also consider in passing the grounds that have been offered for attributing to Francis Hutcheson the critical components of the Bibliothèque raisonnée review of vol. 1 of the Treatise. In Part II of the paper we present a transcription of the French text, never before reprinted, of this review. Part III is a new English translation of this text. In an effort to show the differences between the sense of the Treatise presented by translated quotations of it and Hume’s original texts, Part IV offers some three-column comparisons of three relatively lengthy French “quotations” of Treatise 3 found in the review, our back-translations of these texts, and the versions of these texts found in the Treatise. It then offers in a similar format, comparisons of the present and earlier translations of passages of the review of vol. 3. (shrink)

The term ‘Scottish Enlightenment’ annoys some Scottish historians, because to them it seems to suggest that a state of unenlightenment prevailed in Scotland before the mideighteenth century, but ‘enlightenment’ when used by the historian of ideas is simply a technical term to describe certain aspects of eighteenth-century thought. The trouble is in defining precisely what aspects of eighteenth-century thought it is meant to describe. Different people study the eighteenth century Scottish thinkers for different reasons; for Professor Pocock, for example, they (...) belong to the tradition of ‘civic humanism’ and constitute one of his Machiavellian moments. But they are more widely known nowadays for the modernity and sophistication of their social theory. (shrink)

The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Philosophy is a massive achievement, and in more than one sense. The most obvious is its sheer bulk: two volumes totalling 1400 pages, including over 150 pages of bibliography and index and another 100 pages of biobibliographical appendix. This last item, as its name suggests, provides thumbnail biographies of all the main figures referred to in the volumes together with a list of all their main publications with publication dates and also a short list of (...) main secondary sources—and so can be expected to be a lifesaver for harassed scholars desperately trying to track down a missing reference. It is also a pleasure to record that, in an age when production standards... (shrink)

The following review by "Crito" was reproduced in shortened form in 1888 (Dibdin, Annals, 89-90) and is not now readily available. It is transcribed and edited here as illustrative of the events prompting David Hume's dedication to John Home of Four Dissertations in 1757. The possibility that Crito was in fact Hume deserves exploring, though the question remains speculative given the evidence available.The review appeared as a letter in the Caledonian Mercury and the Edinburgh Evening Courant, both on 18 December (...) 1756, on the day of the fourth performance of Home's Douglas at what was then openly called a theater. Until recently the theater had been carefully denominated the "Concert-hall, Canongate," wherein .. (shrink)

The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment offers a philosophical perspective on an eighteenth-century movement that has been profoundly influential on western culture. A distinguished team of contributors examines the writings of David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Reid, Adam Ferguson, Colin Maclaurin and other Scottish thinkers, in fields including philosophy, natural theology, economics, anthropology, natural science and law. In addition, the contributors relate the Scottish Enlightenment to its historical context and assess its impact and legacy in Europe, America and beyond. (...) The result is a comprehensive and accessible volume that illuminates the richness, the intellectual variety and the underlying unity of this important movement. It will be of interest to a wide range of readers in philosophy, theology, literature and the history of ideas. (shrink)

En Guedi, un oasis en la orilla occidental del Mar Muerto, es uno de los más importantes yacimientos del desierto de Judea. En el periodo romano—bizantino En Guedi fue famosa par sus excelentes dátiles y por sus plantaciones de bálsamo. En la última fase de su sinagoga hay una extraña inscripción, cuya interpretación ha ocupado el interés de muchos estudiosos. El presente artículo es un intento de aproximación al correcto significado de la inscripción de En Guedi con inclusión de los (...) últimos datos conocidos. (shrink)

While Hume remains one of the most central figures in modern philosophy his place within Enlightenment thinking is much less clearly defined. Taking recent work on Hume as a starting point, this volume of original essays aims to re-examine and clarify Hume's influence on the thought and values of the Enlightenment.

Antonio Santucci, Filosofia e cultura nel settecento britannico II: Hume e Hutcheson. Reid e la scuola del senso comune, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2001. xxxviii + 526 pp. Paperback, €36.15. ISBN: 88-15-08098-8 Maurizio Maione, The Scotch Metaphysics: A Century of Enlightenment in Scotland, Rome, Carocci, 2001. 183 pp. Paperback, €14.98. ISBN: 88-430-1757-8.

Reading Tamás Demeter's recent book, "David Hume and the Culture of Scottish Newtonianism," feels like visiting a curiosity shop. There are some general themes that are meant to harmonize the work, such as the emphasis on the conceptual and methodological unity of natural and moral philosophy. This merging of cultures of inquiry is nicely illustrated with the case study of anger in the period. There is the main thesis: that Hume's science of mind was influenced, not as much by Newton's (...) Principia, as by Newton's Opticks. Newton's Opticks informs the "sciences of quality," such as chemistry and physiology in eighteenth-century Scotland, and then chemical and anatomical thinking makes its way to Hume's science of... (shrink)

Tamas Demeter presents a clear and compelling new perspective of Hume’s methodology and conceptual structure in David Hume and the Culture of Scottish Newtonianism. Hume, he argues, is a Newtonian of the Scottish tradition, but not the mechanical kind that is modeled after the Principia. Instead, Hume should be understood as a kind of European Enlightenment “vitalist.” As a result, his work reflects the more organic methodology that defines Newton’s Opticks.

ABSTRACTThe liberty of the press became one of the main topics of public debate in the 1720s and 1730s in response to Walpole’s restrictive press policy. This debate was carried on mainly in newspapers such as the Craftsman and the London Journal. Country and Court writers did not limit their discussions to legal questions, but conducted a lively debate about what press freedom actually was, and what role the press should have in political life. Among other things, they discussed to (...) what extent it was appropriate for the press to take on an anti-governmental role. This debate is important, not least because it is a foil for one of the ‘classical’ eighteenth-century texts on the problem of press freedom, David Hume’s essay ‘Of the Liberty of the Press’. The debate reveals to what extent, and in what respects, Hume was breaking new ground in this essay. (shrink)

Up till this day one cannot find much scholarship which situates Hume in the context of early modern natural philosophy. Tamás Demeter's new book, David Hume and the Culture of Scottish Newtonianism, does a spectacular job in filling this gap. His monograph is the most comprehensive pursuit to understand Hume's place in the Newtonian tradition of natural philosophy. Demeter specifies Hume's place both in the context of Newtonian moral philosophy and Newtonian chemistry and physiology.

This chapter considers the extent to which David Hume is properly regarded as a Scottish philosopher at all. It begins by looking at A Treatise of Human Nature and argues that there is little, if any, discernible connection between it and either the education Hume received at Edinburgh or what was going on in Scottish letters in the 1720s and 1730s. It also explores ways in which Hume, like William Robertson, engaged with and subverted the usual tropes of Scottish history (...) writing. His writings on religious topics Scotland were never far from Hume’s mind. Hume repeatedly found himself involved in the struggle between ‘Moderate’ and ‘Orthodox’ wings of the Church of Scotland, and this had a significant impact on how he presented his philosophy of religion. (shrink)

This volume is the third in a series intended to make the writings of Scottish philosophers more widely available to modern readers. The series is under the general editorship of Gordon Graham. Presumably the editorial decisions set out in the Series Editor’s Note at the beginning of the volume are his and are intended to be uniform throughout the series. Some, given the intent of the series, are reasonable decisions to modernize spelling and punctuation and to transliterate Greek passages. On (...) the other hand, some are worrisome, as in the decision to omit some original footnotes and re-title selections. Most problematic is the way the selections are documented. Reference is simply to a first publication date, not to a standard edition, and in the case of selections drawn from larger works, no way to locate the selection within the work is provided. For example, the reference to Hutcheson is to “London, 1725” but in fact the text does not correspond to the 1725 edition of the Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue but presumably to that of 1726 or 1728. There are differences between the first edition and the later ones not only of wording but of section numbering. And for example, two selections from Hume’s Treatise are referred only to the Treatise in general; no reference to the specific sections is provided. Granted that these are not intended as scholarly editions, but for someone who would like to follow up and either read more or check the context, this is likely to be a major annoyance, and it is hard to see why the book, part, and section would not be given for a work such as the Treatise. Anyone who might want to quote from the text would be in something of a quandary as to how to check the citations. (shrink)

This gracefully written and ably-researched book explores historical writing in Britain in the last half of the eighteenth and the first quarter of the nineteenth centuries. Readers of this journal, however, may be most interested to know that it is also a book in which Hume figures prominently. One of Phillip’s most involved subtexts aims to explain how it was that Hume, the celebrated historian of the eighteenth century, fell from grace in the nineteenth century.

This is a review article discussing James Harris’s excellent study of David Hume’s full philosophical career including his epistemology, moral philosophy, politics, economics, religion, and history. Harris argues against a common view that in his later writings Hume is merely working out and developing the ideas of his Treatise of Human Nature. He even argues that Hume’s two Enquiries are substantially new works and not mere recasting of his youthful Treatise. Harris writes that philosophy for Hume is a ‘a style (...) of thought and of writing rather than a subject matter or body of doctrine.’. He carefully analyses Hume’s many essays, including those on economics and politics and provides the context which is needed to understand their significance. He explains how Hume modified and built his views on his reading of both contemporary and ancient authors. Each chapter provides a careful study of Hume’s writings in the context of his extant letters and manuscripts. Harris’s Intellectual Biography is recommended for anyone who wishes to understand his individual writings as well as those who seek to an overall understanding of his intellectual development. (shrink)

Scottish philosophy and intellectual history have become the increasingly fashionable fields of academic studies. Alexander Broadie, one of the pioneers and an accomplished scholar of the Scottish Enlightenment, returns to the basic question, namely, “what is Scottish philosophy?”, and presents a comprehensive work on the history of Scottish philosophy. Broadie successfully elucidates the nature and significance of Scottish philosophy both historically and philosophically. He argues that Scottish philosophy must be studied in its historical context, for it is not only a (...) philosophical enterprise but also a persistent tradition which has united the Scottish nation for centuries. The advancements in science, literature, politics, and culture in Scotland would be extremely unlikely, if not impossible, without such an intellectual culture established by thinkers in that tradition. This article is intended as a review of Broadie’s A History of Scottish Philosophy in the background of his shifting academic interests from philosophy to history while he holds the professorship in University of Glasgow. His commitment to Scottish philosophical culture deserves the attention of contemporary historians and philosophers, for his work opens up a space for dialogue between intellectual history and history of philosophy, an issue addressed at the end of this paper. (shrink)

James Harris’s new Hume biography offers, among other things, ‘a series of conjectures as to what Hume’s intentions were in writing in the particular ways that he did about human nature, politics, economics, history, and religion’. The biography is particularly novel with regard to Hume’s intentions when writing about religion, which, Harris argues, were rather benign. Harris fails to appreciate the full extent of the difficulties attaching to his series of conjectures, however.

En este artículo se plantea el nacimiento de la Estética moderna a partir de la tradición filosófica empirista y racionalista. Se analizan sus aportes al campo de la Estética como disciplinas filosóficas, sus aciertos y sus errores, y se plantea una solución intermedia para elevar esta disciplina al ámbito científico que pasaría por un fundamento realista moderado que articulara el conocimiento sensible.

Although the main focus of Hume’s career was in the humanities, his work also has an observable role in the historical development of natural sciences after his time. To show this, I shall center on the relation between Hume and two major figures in the history of the natural sciences: Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and Albert Einstein (1879–1955). Both of these scientists read Hume. They also found parts of Hume’s work useful to their sciences. Inquiring into the relations between Hume and (...) the two scientists shows that his philosophical positions had a partial but constructive role in the formation of modern biology and physics. This is accordingly a clear indication of Hume’s impact on the scientific tradition. Before proceeding to analyze Hume’s contribution to the history of science, it is important to address his broader role in the history of philosophy of science. Hume’s discussions concerning the topics of causation, induction, the distinction between mathematical and empirical propositions, and laws of nature have been important for the philosophy of science of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. (shrink)

The ‘Scottish Enlightenment’ has fostered a steadily growing academic industry since Duncan Forbes and Hugh Trevor-Roper put the subject on the map in the 1960s. David Hume and Adam Smith have from the start been widely considered as its leading thinkers, and their thoughts on politics have attracted an increasing amount of attention in recent years. Two new publications invite readers to reflect on the state of the art in Scottish Enlightenment studies in general, and especially Hume and Smith scholarship. (...) Christopher Berry’s Essays on Hume, Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment collects many of Berry’s pathbreaking essays from a career spanning over 40 years. The Infidel and the Professor by Dennis Rasmussen is astonishingly the first book-length treatment of the private and philosophical friendship between Hume and Smith. Both publications reflect how much Scottish Enlightenment studies have expanded since the 1960s, and the sustained interest in Hume and Smith to boot. At the same time, they also raise questions about the future of the field and what remains to be done. (shrink)

In The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought, Dennis Rasmussen reminds us that ‘Hume believed that “the first Quality of an Historian is to be true & impartial; the next to be interesting”’ (p. 72). Rasmussen meets both criteria in his history of the friendship of Hume and Smith, two luminaries of the Scottish Enlightenment. The Infidel and the Professor lays out the facts carefully, showing both the depth of Hume and (...) Smith’s warmth and respect for each other as well as the extent of their shared intellectual interests and mutual influence. But while he is ‘true & impartial,’ just as Hume would want, Rasmussen also tells a lively and engrossing story. In a well-paced and beautifully written narrative, he demonstrates the same wit and genuine affection for his subjects that he proves characterized their relationship. (shrink)

James A. Harris's biography of David Hume is the first such study to appear since Ernest Mossner's The Life of David Hume (1954). Unlike Mossner, Harris aims to write a specifically "intellectual biography", one that gives "a complete picture of Hume's ideas" and "relates Hume's works to the circumstances in which they were conceived and written" (vii). Harris's study turns on four central theses or claims about the character of Hume's thought and how it is structured and developed. The claims (...) are: -/- Hume's Treatise has no claim to any sort of "privileged" status in relation to Hume's other major works -- which include his Essays and his History of England. There is no system, doctrine, or fundamental aims or ambitions that serve to unify Hume's thought. Irreligious aims and interests are not of any particular or unique importance for Hume's thought. Moreover, whatever irreligious aims and objectives Hume may have had, they reflect his moderate, neutral and detached attitude to this and all other subjects -- there is no underlying animus or hostility against religion that motivates his contributions to this subject. Hume's thought should be understood and explained not in terms of his concern with some specific subject matter or body of doctrine but rather in terms of his style and his identity as a "philosophical man of letters". The general picture of Hume that emerges from this study, as constructed around these four core theses, is, as I will explain, incomplete, unconvincing and, in important respects, seriously flawed and misleading. -/- . (shrink)

David Hume and the Culture of Scottish Newtonianism: Methodology and Ideology in Enlightenment Inquiry. By Demeter Tamás.

The philosophical friendship between David Hume and Adam Smith spanned almost thirty years and influenced several of the greatest productions of the Scottish Enlightenment, but it has never before been the subject of a book-length study. Rasmussen’s accessible account of the friendship between Hume and Smith remedies this and tells an engaging story about these two “dearest” friends.Rasmussen’s story unfolds chronologically, with each chapter focusing largely on either Hume or Smith. The major events of their friendship are dutifully covered, including (...) their respective journeys to France, and Hume’s controversial quarrel with Rousseau; but Rasmussen’s focus is on tracing their relationship and how that... (shrink)