Hume: Intellectual Context

Two arguments in Hume’s essay on miracles are reductios ad Catholicism: if you believe in the miracles in the Bible, then you ought to believe in Catholic miracles as well. Hume’s intended readers hated Catholicism and would sooner reject miracles than follow the pope. Hume argues that Jansenist miracle stories meet the standards of trustworthiness as well as any miracles in history. He knows that his Protestant believers don’t believe the stories, and he hopes to persuade his readers to reject (...) any testimony that falls short of that standard. In the ‘Contrary Religions Argument,’ Hume argues that contrary religions should undermine our belief in the trustworthiness of miracle reports. The main contrary religion Hume has in mind is Catholicism, since most miracles stories are Catholic, and Hume’s readers would have rejected them out of hand. He then concludes that if most religiously motivated testimony for miracles is false such testimony is generally unreliable, including testimony for Biblical miracles. (shrink)

Philosophical history became the Enlightenment genre of historical writing par excellence supposedly by “defeating” established humanist erudite history and antiquarianism. This article argues that, contrary to established perceptions, philosophical history developed out of a concern expressed by early eighteenth-century erudite historians about the nature of historical evidence: both David Hume—leading philosophical historian—and the members of the French erudite Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres shared a broadly Lockean approach to historical evidence, choosing verisimilitude to common experience as the key criterion (...) of certainty. Indeed, Hume likely drew directly from the académiciens. Historical certainty is achieved, both sides concluded, by providing a verisimilar chain of causes of historical events, rather than mere lists of historical facts. Philosophical historians like Hume departed from the reformulated eighteenth-century version of erudite history by making causes the main object of history rather than merely a foundation of trustworthy factual accounts. (shrink)

In the conclusion to the first book of the Treatise, Hume's skeptical reflections have plunged him into melancholy. He then proceeds through a complex series of stages, resulting in renewed interest in philosophy. Interpreters have struggled to explain the connection between the stages. I argue that Hume's repeated invocation of the four humors of ancient and medieval medicine explains the succession, and sheds a new light on the significance of skepticism. The humoral context not only reveals that Hume conceives of (...) skepticism primarily as a temperament, not a philosophical view or system. It also resolves a puzzle about how Hume can view skepticism as both an illness and a cure. The skeptical temperament can, depending on its degree of predominance, either contribute to or upset the balance of temperaments required for proper mental functioning. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article presents a commentary by James Steuart on David Hume’s History of the Tudors, written in the early 1760s. In doing so, the article sketches new aspects of Steuart’s political and historical thought at a time when he was hopeful about returning to Scotland from his long continental exile, following his leading role in the 1745 Jacobite rising. After providing a short biographical context, it establishes that the text was written whilst Steuart was working on his Political Oeconomy, and (...) when the ‘Marian controversy’ dominated Scottish historical debate. It goes on to explore the influence of Steuart’s friend Mary Wortley Montagu on his criticism of Hume’s misogynistic representation of Mary, Queen of Scots. It then reconstructs Steuart’s central argument about the failures of monarchs to adapt from feudal to commercial society, resulting in untrammelled liberties that harmed the lower classes. Concerned with the history of industry and commerce, political judgment, and the spirit of the people, Steuart’s hitherto unpublished commentary is a key source for understanding the ‘late Jacobite’ system of thought which influenced the reign of George III and inspired radicals later in the century. (shrink)

there are two lines of influence of David Hume on the history of classical American pragmatism: the familiar atomist-nominalist-associationist of empirical psychology reviled by Kantian and idealist critics, on the one side, and the conjectural historian and early developmentalist, or evolutionary, philosopher who was important to Darwin, on the other. The classical pragmatists received the first most directly through the work of Thomas Hill Green, in his edition of the Treatise of Human Nature—with its long critical introduction—that appeared in the (...) 1870s. In this essay I argue that the atomist of the traditional reading is a false Hume, with the hope that identification of the error will make way for a better... (shrink)

Hume's admiration for the Roman philosopher and statesman, Cicero, is well-known. Yet scholars have largely overlooked how Hume's interpretation of Cicero – initially as a Stoic, and subsequently as an academic sceptic – evolved with Hume's own intellectual development. Moreover, scholars tend to focus on Hume's debts to Cicero with regard either to his epistemological scepticism or his philosophy of religion. This essay suggests instead that Hume's engagement with Cicero was at its most intense, and productive, when evaluating the relationship (...) between morality and religious belief. Closer attention to the place of Cicero in Hume's writings illuminates our understanding of Hume's intellectual development, particularly in the crucial pre- Treatise years. It also, however, shines light on Hume's interpretation of the history of occidental philosophy, and on how Hume saw his own work to relate to this history. (shrink)

A lo largo de este libro se ofrece una interpretación novedosa y sugerente del pensamiento de David Hume y del Quijote, leído y citado por aquél, siendo una obra muy influyente en la Inglaterra de su tiempo. El autor pretende mostrar que la influencia del Quijote en el pensamiento de Hume es posible, probable y plausible, para lo cual ofrece diversos argumentos. Desarrolla su interpretación mostrando que un fragmento extraído del Quijote es indispensable para la postulación del criterio del gusto (...) en la teoría estética de Hume. Asimismo, muestra cómo a partir de los elementos de la Ciencia de la naturaleza humana y en especial del concepto de imaginación es posible realizar una interpretación coherente del Quijote, en donde se sugiere que la relación entre Cervantes y Hume va más allá del ámbito de la estética. (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)

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.

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)

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

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)

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)

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.

The Historical Dictionary of Hume's Philosophy is the only Hume dictionary in existence. The book provides a substantial account of David Hume's life and the times in which he lived, and it provides an overview of his philosophical doctrines. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and over a hundred cross-referenced dictionary entries covering key terms, as well as brief discussions of Hume's major works and of some of his most important predecessors, contemporaries, and successors.

This volume centers on an annotated edition of a short, controversial work that Adam Smith wrote on the last days, death, and character of his closest friend, the philosopher David Hume. It also includes several related texts as well as an extensive editor’s introduction.

18th-century British aesthetics addressed itself to a variety of questions: What is taste? What is beauty? Is there is a standard of taste and of beauty? What is the relation between the beauty of nature and that of artistic representation? What is the relation between one fine art and another? How ought the fine arts be ranked one against another? What is the nature of the sublime and ought it be ranked with the beautiful? What is the nature of genius (...) and what is its relation to taste? -/- Although none of these questions was peripheral to 18th-century British aesthetics, not all were equally central. The question on which the others tended to turn was the question concerning the nature of taste. But this question was not simply how best generally to define taste. Everyone seems to have been in at least rough agreement with Joseph Addison’s early definition of taste as “that faculty of soul, which discerns the beauties of an author with pleasure, and the imperfections with dislike” (Addison and Steele 1879, no. 409). But agreeing with Addison meant agreeing only to use “taste” to refer to that faculty and to acknowledge that such discerning has something of the phenomenology of sensation. The central question was how to think of taste so defined. Is taste a higher, cognitive faculty, akin perhaps to reason, with objects of a primarily intellectual nature? Or is it a lower, bodily faculty, more akin to the five bodily senses, and with objects of a primarily material nature? The major theories that arose in response to this question can be grouped into three main lineages: (a) internal-sense theories, of which the theories of Shaftesbury (1711), Hutcheson (1725), Hume (1739–40, 1751, and 1757) and Reid (1785) are representative; (b) imagination theories, of which theories of Addison (1712) and Burke (1757/59) are representative; and (c) association theories, of which the theories of Gerard (1757) and Alison (1790) are representative. (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)

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)

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)

In reading biographies or accounts of figures with which one agrees and sympathizes, there is a tendency that needs to be avoided, that is, of over -identifying with the figures in question and of too closely mapping one's own life and aspirations onto them.As such, there is some risk involved for a person like me in reading about the friendship between David Hume and Adam Smith. Dennis C. Rasmussen's excellent new volume, The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, (...) and the Friendship that Shaped Modern Thought, chronicles that friendship in an engaging and compelling narrative. The work is thoroughly researched and entertainingly written. Rasmussen uses the extant correspondence between Smith and... (shrink)

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.

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 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)

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)

Why do Humean eyes matter? The subject of David Hume’s eyes and face leads us into some unexpected curiosities connected with events in his life and written works. We outline the scholars’ propensity to describe the face of their favourite philosopher and spread upon it their personal reading of his life and writings. We ask questions about portraits, their resemblance to the original as a standard of beauty. We survey eighteenth-century physiognomy, and the humourous paradox of the “fat philosopher,” both (...) clumsy and refined. We inquire into Hume’s use of physiognomy, his views on corpulence and his own vacant look. We observe the role of Ramsay’s portraits in the 1766 dispute between Rousseau and Hume. We outline the role the eyes play in the body of his written work. We finally recall that the picture which he deemed the “best likeness” has now disappeared. Yet, there remains something still engraved. (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)

This new history of Scottish philosophy will include two volumes that focus on the Scottish Enlightenment. In this volume a team of leading experts explore the ideas, intellectual context, and influence of Hutcheson, Hume, Smith, Reid, and many other thinkers, frame old issues in fresh ways, and introduce new topics and questions into debates about the philosophy of this remarkable period. The contributors explore the distinctively Scottish context of this philosophical flourishing, and juxtapose the work of canonical philosophers with contemporaries (...) now very seldom read. The outcome is a broadening-out, and a filling-in of the detail, of the picture of the philosophical scene of Scotland in the eighteenth century. (shrink)

This is the first book to provide a comprehensive overview of the entire career of one of Britain's greatest men of letters. It sets in biographical and historical context all of Hume's works, from A Treatise of Human Nature to The History of England, bringing to light the major influences on the course of Hume's intellectual development, and paying careful attention to the differences between the wide variety of literary genres with which Hume experimented. The major events in Hume's life (...) are fully described, but the main focus is on Hume's intentions as a philosophical analyst of human nature, politics, commerce, English history, and religion. Careful attention is paid to Hume's intellectual relations with his contemporaries. The goal is to reveal Hume as a man intensely concerned with the realization of an ideal of open-minded, objective, rigorous, dispassionate dialogue about all the principal questions faced by his age. (shrink)

'Methinks I am like a man, who having narrowly escap'd shipwreck', David Hume writes in A Treatise of Human Nature, 'has yet the temerity to put out to sea in the same leaky weather-beaten vessel, and even carries his ambition so far as to think of compassing the globe'. With these words, Hume begins a memorable depiction of the crisis of philosophy and his turn to moral and political philosophy as the path forward. In this groundbreaking work, Thomas W. Merrill (...) shows how Hume's turn is the core of his thought, linking Hume's metaphysical and philosophical crisis to the moral-political inquiries of his mature thought. Merrill shows how Hume's comparison of himself to Socrates in the introduction to the Treatise illuminates the dramatic structure and argument of the book as a whole, and he traces Hume's underappreciated argument about the political role of philosophy in the Essays. (shrink)

The Treatise of Human Nature finds its full meaning in the interpretative cultural environment in which it was written. This article aims to point out the strong influence that the Newtonian system exerted in the young Hume and how the rejection of hidden causes and the search for an observable common cause are the guide that inspires Hume to look for the principles of the science of man denying, therefore, an a priori access to universal truths, establishing the scientific observation (...) as the only possible way for the science of man. Hume does not deny the validity of induction and the possibility of reaching general knowledge but takes newtonian proposal to develop the science of man. (shrink)

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)

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 Eighteenth century is one of the most important periods in the history of Western philosophy, witnessing philosophical, scientific, and social and political change on a vast scale. In spite of this, there are few single volume overviews of the philosophy of the period as a whole. _The Routledge Companion to Eighteenth Century Philosophy _is an authoritative survey and assessment of this momentous period, covering major thinkers, topics and movements in Eighteenth century philosophy. Beginning with a substantial introduction by Aaron (...) Garrett, the thirty-five specially commissioned chapters by an outstanding team of international contributors are organised into seven clear parts: Context and Movements Metaphysics and Understanding Mind, Soul, and Perception Morals and Aesthetics Politics and Society Philosophy in relation to the Arts and Sciences Major Figures. Major topics and themes are explored and discussed, ranging from materialism, free will and personal identity; to the emotions, the social contract, aesthetics, and the sciences, including mathematics and biology. The final section examines in more detail three figures central to the period: Hume, Rousseau and Kant. As such _The Routledge Companion to Eighteenth Century Philosophy_ is essential reading for all students of the period, both in philosophy and related disciplines such as politics, literature, history and religious studies. (shrink)

This paper seeks to establish that Bernard Mandeville's ideas on courage and honour shaped the Scottish debate about ancients and moderns by formulating a perspective how eighteenth-century civil societies grew large, luxurious and feminine without losing their ability to wage war. My focus is on Mandeville's positive influence on David Hume, whose writings were a springboard for many Mandevillean ideas in Scotland. In contrast to a recent claim in scholarship, Hume aimed to discredit, instead of developing, Shaftesburyan ideas of ancient (...) courage. The concluding part of the paper will discuss Andrew Millar and Adam Ferguson in this context. (shrink)