Hume Studies

It is often said that the Enlightenment was a cosmopolitan age, and this truism would be difficult to dispute. Philosophers of "natural rights" argued powerfully for the existence of a single moral community made up of all human beings—and reformers ultimately succeeded in putting this ideal into practice, most notably with their abolition of the slave trade. Meanwhile, philosophers of the period had an abiding fascination with foreign cultures, with many people, Locke among them, eagerly scrutinizing travellers' accounts of their trips to non-European nations and theorizing about the reasons for the diversity in human manners and behavior to which these accounts testified. Robert Boyle even composed a set of guidelines for the philosophical traveler, which he published in the transactions of the Royal Society in 1666. Yet strangely, especially given the current fascination with cosmopolitanism and multi-culturalism among philosophers, no comprehensive treatment of Enlightenment cosmopolitanism has yet appeared. However, we are beginning to see the regular publication of more specialized studies, and Frederick Whelan's interesting book is a noteworthy entry in this genre.

The book collects papers that have either been published elsewhere or presented at conferences, and the chapters are not linked together by a single thesis or argument. Whelan's previous work has focused on Hume, and the longest of the book's chapters is devoted to "Hume and the Non-Western World." Whelan does an excellent job of bringing together Hume's many comments about non-Western cultures, and offers an interesting discussion concerning the problem of Hume's apparent racism. However, the chapter leaves many questions about the relationship between his approach to cultural diversity and his larger philosophy unanswered. We are, for instance, offered no discussion of how our moral sentiments work both to create parochial biases in our judgments and motivate us to overcome them. (Hume says that sympathy leads us naturally to privilege those who are closest to or most resemble us, yet the very "notion of morals" implies a sentiment "so universal and comprehensive as to extend to all mankind" EPM 9.5; SBN 272). Surprisingly, the text where Hume considers issues of cultural diversity most explicitly (and most philosophically), the "Dialogue" that concludes the second Enquiry, receives only passing notice.

Whelan concludes his chapter with a brief reflection on Hume and the question of empire. He suggests that Hume has surprisingly little to say on this topic, and this is perhaps true relative to the size of his corpus. But Whelan ignores [End Page 251] much of what Hume does say. Hume offers reflections on the Roman empire, the Norman conquest, and on James I's conquest of Ireland that are highly pertinent to Whelan's discussion, and that present a view on empire that is, in the mind of this reviewer at least, clear and consistent. He calls the Romans "those civilized conquerors," and in discussing James's invasion draws a distinction between "the vain and criminal glory of conquests" and the harsh but benevolent rule of a civilized empire such as the king's (David Hume, The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688, 6 vols. [Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1983], 1:226 and 5:49, respectively). Whelan correctly notes the importance of Hume's distinction between barbarous and civilized societies, but does not subject this distinction to the close examination that his chosen topic would seem to demand.

The book's second chapter deals with the question of how the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers regarded the "rude nations" of North America. The third discusses Abraham-Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron's response to Montesquieu on the question of oriental despotism. The fourth examines Burke's views on India, while the final chapter deals with Hegel and the "Oriental" world. Whelan does not attempt to connect the ideas he examines to those of modern theorists, with the (perhaps unavoidable) exception of Edward Said. His methodology is predominantly that of...