In many ways, Benedict (Baruch) de Spinoza appears to be a contradictory figure in the history of philosophy. From the beginning, he has been notorious as an "atheist" who seeks to substitute Nature for a personal deity; yet he was also, in Novalis's famous description, "the God-intoxicated man." He was an uncompromising necessitarian and causal determinist; yet his ethical ideal was to become a "free man." He maintained that the human mind and the human body are identical; yet he also (...) insisted that the human mind can achieve a kind of eternality that transcends the death of the body. He has been adopted by Marxists as a precursor of historical materialism, and by Hegelians as a precursor of absolute idealism. He was a psychological egoist, proclaiming that all individuals necessarily seek their own advantage and implying that other individuals were of value to him only insofar as they were useful to him; yet his writings aimed to promote human community based on love and friendship, he had many devoted friends, and even his critics were obliged to acknowledge that his personal conduct was above reproach. He held that the state has the right to do whatever it has the power to do, while at the same time he defended democracy and freedom of speech. He denied supernatural revelation and criticized popular religion as a grave danger to the peace and stability of the state; yet he devoted himself to the careful interpretation of scripture and argued for toleration and freedom of religion. Rarely employing figures of speech or rhetorical flourishes of any kind, his works are nevertheless among the most magisterial and uplifting of all philosophical writings, and they have inspired more poets and novelists than those of any other philosopher of the early modern period. (shrink)

It is widely believed that Hume often wrote carelessly and contradicted himself, and that no unified, sound philosophy emerges from his writings. Don Garrett demonstrates that such criticisms of Hume are without basis. Offering fresh and trenchant solutions to longstanding problems in Hume studies, Garrett's penetrating analysis also makes clear the continuing relevance of Hume's philosophy.

Beginning with an overview of Hume's life and work, Don Garrett introduces in clear and accessible style the central aspects of Hume's thought. These include Hume's lifelong exploration of the human mind; his theories of inductive inference and causation; skepticism and personal identity; moral and political philosophy; aesthetics; and philosophy of religion. The final chapter considers the influence and legacy of Hume's thought today. Throughout, Garrett draws on and explains many of Hume's central works, including his Treatise of Human Nature (...) , Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding , and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion . Hume is essential reading not only for students of philosophy, but anyone in the humanities and social sciences and beyond seeking an introduction to Hume's thought. (shrink)

Hume is a naturalist in many different respects and about many different topics; this paper argues that he is also a naturalist about intentionality and representation. It does so in the course of answering four questions about his theory of mental representation: (1) Which perceptions represent? (2) What can perceptions represent? (3) Why do perceptions represent at all? (4) Howdo perceptions represent what they do? It appears that, for Hume, all perceptions except passions can represent; and they can represent bodies, (...) minds, and persons, with their various qualities. In addition, ideas can represent impressions and other ideas. However, he explicitly rejects the view that ideas are inherently representational, and he implicitly adopts a view according to which things (whether mental or non-mental) represent in virtue of playing, through the production of mental effects and dispositions, a significant part of the causal and/or functional role of what they represent. It is in virtue of their particular functional roles that qualitatively identical ideas are capable of representing particulars or general kinds; substances or modes; relations; past, present, or future; and individuals or compounds. (shrink)

Is Hume a naturalist? Does he regard all or nearly all beliefs and actions as rationally unjustified? In order to settle these questions, it is necessary to examine their key terms and to understand the character-especially the normative character-of Hume's philosophical project. This paper argues that Hume is a naturalist-and, in particular, both a moral and an epistemic naturalist-in quite robust ways; and that Hume can properly regard many actions and beliefs as "rationally justified" in several different senses of that (...) term. (shrink)

Despite his well-known criticisms of popular religion, Hume refers in seemingly complimentary terms to ‘true religion’; in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, his character Philo goes so far as to express ‘veneration for’ it. This paper addresses three questions. First, did Hume himself really approve of something that he called ‘true religion’? Second, what did he mean by calling it ‘true’? Third, what did he take it to be? By appeal to some of his key doctrines about causation and probability, and (...) to some key features of the characters and content of the Dialogues, I argue, contrary to important recent interpretations by Immerwahr and Falkenstein, that Hume's ‘true religion’ is a doctrine, enunciated by Philo, that he regarded as true in an epistemic sense. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Some Features of Hume's Approach to the Science of Man Structure and Content of “Conclusion of this book” The Rational Justification of Belief Skepticism and Naturalism Notes References Further reading.

I argue that spinoza's ontological argument is successful when it is understood to have two premises: (i) it is possible for god to exist, (ii) it is necessary that, if god exists, he necessarily does. the argument is valid in s5. spinoza is in a position to establish the second premise of the argument on the basis of his definitions and axioms. the first premise was assumed to be true, but, as leibniz noted, it must be established for the conclusion (...) of the argument to be forthcoming. this is one of the main problems with the argument, and it requires a solution to the problem of the attributes. certain alternate interpretations of spinoza are then argued to be deficient on textual and logical grounds. (shrink)

When corporations are accused of unethical behaviour by external actors, executives from those organizations are usually compelled to offer communicative responses to defend their corporate image. To demonstrate the effect that corporate executives'' communicative responses have on third parties'' perception of corporate image, we present the Corporate Communicative Response Model in this paper. Of the five potential communicative responses contained in this model (no response, denial, excuse, justification, and concession), results from our empirical test demonstrate that a concession is the (...) most effective and robust communicative option. (shrink)

Hume argues that respect for property (“justice”) is a convention-dependent (“artificial”) virtue. He does so by appeal to a principle, derived from his virtue-based approach to ethics, which requires that, for any kind of virtuous action, there be a “first virtuous motive” that is other than a sense of moral duty. It has been objected, however, that in the case of justice (and also in a parallel argument concerning promise-keeping) Hume (i) does not, (ii) should not, and (iii) cannot recognize (...) such a motive. This paper defends Hume’s argument against these three objections. (shrink)

In this appendix to "a treatise of human nature", Hume expresses dissatisfaction with his own account of personal identity, Claiming that it is "inconsistent." in spite of much recent discussion of the appendix, There has been little agreement either about the reasons for hume's second thoughts or about the philosophical moral to be drawn from them. The present article argues, First, That none of the explanations for his misgivings which have been offered has succeeded in describing a problem which would (...) or should have led hume to question his own account or to regard it as inconsistent; and second, That there is nonetheless a serious inconsistency in his account of personal identity-An inconsistency which hume apparently noticed, Even if his critics did not. This inconsistency is ultimately the result of his attempt to combine reductionistic theories of personal identity and causation with a non-Reductionistic theory of mind. (shrink)

Monism, characterized by Jonathan Schaffer as the thesis that the cosmos is the one and only basic actual concrete object, has been the subject of a great deal of recent interest. Spinoza is often taken, rightly, to be an important forebear. This article seeks to explain the distinctive content and basis of Spinoza’s monistic metaphysics and to compare it to contemporary Monism. It then argues that although Spinoza’s monistic metaphysics is not strictly a version of Monism as defined, it has (...) a number of theoretical advantages that make central aspects of it worthy of serious consideration. (shrink)

Hume describes “mental geography” as the endeavor to know “the different operations of the mind, to separate them from each other, to class them under their proper heads, and to correct all that seeming disorder, in which they lie involved, when made the object of reflection and enquiry.” While much has been written about his geography of thought in Treatise Book 1, relatively little has been written about his geography of feeling in Books 2 and 3, with the result that (...) there has been considerable puzzlement and disagreement about the meaning and grounds of many of his central theses about the passions, action, and morals. My endeavor in this chapter is to remove some common sources of perplexity about his classification of the operations of feeling “under their proper heads” in that work. I begin by explaining his three highest-level distinctions bearing on this terrain: that between impressions and ideas; that between original impressions and secondary impressions; and that between the passions and the other emotions. In order to understand this third distinction, I explain his three different senses of the term ‘emotion’ and the relations among them. I ill then examine five different kinds of secondary impressions that he recognizes. These are: (1) sensible agitations; (2) feelings of or from mental operations; (3) volitions; (4) the passions (including motives); and (5) sentiments of taste. The broad outlines of the resulting geography are mapped out in a chart at the end. (shrink)

The significance of Friedrich Nietzsche for twentieth century culture is now no longer a matter of dispute. He was quite simply one of the most influential of modern thinkers. The opening essay of this 1996 Companion provides a chronologically organised introduction to and summary of Nietzsche's published works, while also providing an overview of their basic themes and concerns. It is followed by three essays on the appropriation and misappropriation of his writings, and a group of essays exploring the nature (...) of Nietzsche's philosophy and its relation to the modern and post-modern world. The final contributions consider Nietzsche's influence on the twentieth century in Europe, the USA, and Asia. New readers and non-specialists will find this the most convenient, accessible guide to Nietzsche currently available. Advanced students and specialists will find a conspectus of recent developments in the interpretation of Nietzsche. (shrink)

The nature and consistency of John Locke's views about liberty and suspension, as well as their bearing on what is now called determinism, remain matters of controversy and sometimes, despair. This chapter explains what it is that "determines the will" according to John Locke. It begins by explaining the central terms Locke employs and the meanings he assigns them. Next, the chapter cites and discusses some of the main doctrines that he formulates using that terminology. In light of these explanations, (...) the chapter analyzes two recent interpretations of Locke's doctrines about liberty, suspension, and the will. The first of these, offered by Vere Chappell, convicts Locke of inconsistency; the second, offered by Gideon Yaffe, proposes away to acquit him. Finally, drawing on the lessons of those examinations, the chapter presents and develops a consistent and more satisfying interpretation of Locke's treatments of liberty and suspension in relation to the will. (shrink)

This collection of essays on themes in the work of John Locke , George Berkeley , and David Hume , provides a deepened understanding of major issues raised in the Empiricist tradition. In exploring their shared belief in the experiential nature of mental constructs, The Empiricists illuminates the different methodologies of these great Enlightenment philosophers and introduces students to important metaphysical and epistemological issues including the theory of ideas, personal identity, and skepticism. It will be especially useful in courses devoted (...) to the history of modern philosophy. (shrink)

Spinoza's guiding commitment to the thesis that nothing exists or occurs outside of the scope of nature and its necessary laws makes him one of the great seventeenth-century exemplars of both philosophical naturalism and explanatory rationalism. Nature and Necessity in Spinoza's Philosophy brings together for the first time eighteen of Don Garrett's articles on Spinoza's philosophy, ranging over the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, ethics, and political philosophy. Taken together, these influential articles provide a comprehensive interpretation of that (...) philosophy, including Spinoza's theories of substance, thought and extension, causation, truth, knowledge, individuation, representation, consciousness, conatus, teleology, emotion, freedom, responsibility, virtue, contract, the state, and eternity-and the deep interrelations among them. Each article aims to resolve significant problems in the understanding of Spinoza's philosophy in such a way as to make evident both his reasons for his views and the enduring value of his ideas. At the same time, Garrett's articles elucidate the relations between his philosophy and those of predecessors and contemporaries like Aristotle, Hobbes, Descartes, Locke, and Leibniz. Lastly, the volume offers important and substantial replies to leading critics on four crucial topics: the necessary existence of God (Nature), substance monism, necessitarianism, and consciousness. (shrink)

It is an honor to receive such extensive comments from Louis Loeb, whose work I admire and from whom I have learned much. In particular, his landmark 2002 book, Stability and Justification in Hume’s “Treatise” and his 2010 collection of essays, Reflection and the Stability of Belief: Essays on Descartes, Hume, and Reid are essential reading for anyone who wants to understand early modern epistemology. Some of what I have learned from him is reflected in the book on which he (...) is now commenting which is not, of course, to say that he approves of all of the uses I make of his work, nor that I agree... (shrink)

Stefanie Rocknak's stimulating, challenging, and highly original new book, Imagined Causes: Hume's Conception of Objects, is helpfully summarized on its back cover as follows: This book provides the first comprehensive account of Hume's conception of objects in Book I of A Treatise of Human Nature. What, according to Hume, are objects? Ideas? Impressions? Mind-independent objects? All three? None of the above? Through a close textual analysis, Rocknak shows that Hume thought that objects are imagined ideas. But, she argues, he struggled (...) with two accounts of how and when we imagine such ideas. On the one hand, Hume believes that we always and universally imagine that objects are the causes of our perceptions. On... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Hume’s Imagination by Tito MAGRI Don Garrett MAGRI, Tito. Hume’s Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. xiii + 494 pp. Cloth, $115.00In A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume defines “the imagination” in an inclusive sense as “the faculty, by which we form our fainter ideas”—that is, those that are not memories. In the narrower sense, it is “the same faculty, excluding only our demonstrative and probable (...) reasonings.” Book 1 of the Treatise is largely a work about the imagination in the inclusive sense. Indeed, by Magri’s count, book 1 contains more occurrences of the term imagination/imagine and its variants than of any other philosophical term with the exceptions of impression and idea. Yet until the late 1990s, it was surprisingly rare to find commentators treating the Humean imagination as a focus of attention in its own right, and the complete range of its many roles and operations has largely remained uncatalogued until now. With twelve highly detailed chapters distinguishing no fewer than twenty different “works of the imagination” governed by eighteen different “principles,” Hume’s Imagination is by far the most comprehensive treatment of the faculty to date. Indeed, its only limitations are its two announced ones. First, it does not discuss the imagination in Hume’s subsequent An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (where its operations receive much less attention) or other writings. Second, it does not discuss the extensive roles played by the imagination in Treatise, book 2 (“Of the Passions”) and book 3 (“Of Morals”)—although readers may hope that a sequel will take up those roles. The wide array of roles and operations that Hume attributes to the inclusive imagination, even in Treatise, book 1 alone, naturally raises the question of how much real unity it has as a psychological natural kind. Magri’s original and provocative answer to this question is that the various operations of Hume’s imagination are unified by their filling in various “cognitive gaps” between the representational contents of the mind’s sensations and memories, on the one hand, and the full range of its cognitive contents and capacities, on the other. Rather than appealing to the kind of purely intellectual ideas posited by Descartes and other so-called rationalists who drew a strong distinction between the intellect and the imagination, however, Hume traces our further abilities to the inferences and mental transitions that the imagination produces utilizing only broadly imagistic ideas. In support of this answer, the book is divided into five parts. Part I, chapter 1 explains the central notion of a “cognitive gap” in terms of a “dualism of representation and inference.” For Magri, “representation” applies only to sensation and memory (although he grants that [End Page 156] “presentation” might be the better term in the case of sensation), as governed by Hume’s self-described first principle: “our simple ideas in their first appearance are deriv’d from simple impressions which are correspondent to them, and which they exactly represent.” This principle is the topic of chapter 2. “Inference” (or, more broadly, “transitions”) applies only to the imagination, which generates new “nonrepresentational” cognitive content in accordance with what Hume calls his second principle: “the liberty of the imagination to transpose and change its ideas.” This principle is the topic of chapter 3. To say, as Magri does, that the only “representational” ideas for Hume are those of memory sounds highly paradoxical, but the intended (nonparadoxical) meaning becomes clear enough on careful reading. Part 2 of the book takes up the role of the imagination in generating specifically conceptual modes of thought. In chapter 4, Magri explains the mind’s capacity for generality in thought through the operation of “abstract ideas” and its capacity to distinguish different aspects of an object through the operation of “distinctions of reason.” In chapter 5, he examines the generation of distinctively modal content through the capacity of the imagination to conceive the same object as having different qualities or being placed in different circumstances. Part 3 turns to the crucial topic of the imagination’s generation of cognition of a world of “realities” beyond sensation and memory through the production of “causal ideas.” Chapter 6... (shrink)

This article is a critical discussion of David Owen's book, _Hume's Reason. Owen rightly emphasizes (i) that an understanding of Hume's theory of reasoning is essential to understanding his philosophy and (ii) that an understanding of early modern antiformalism in logic is crucial to understanding Hume's theory of reasoning. Against most commentators, Owen and I agree that Hume's famous conclusion about inductive inferences, i.e., that they are "not determin'd by reason"--is a causal rather a normative claim; however, I dispute Owen's (...) particular interpretation of this conclusion, arguing instead for an interpretation that allows Hume to use the term 'reason' univocally to mean "the inferential faculty." While agreeing with Owen that Hume regards the "wise" use of reason as a moral virtue, I argue that Hume's _endorsement of the use of reason is not entirely dependent on this fact. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Basic Distinctions Basic Principles References Further Reading.

Featuring more than 150 articles by more than 70 leading scholars, this is the first encyclopedia devoted to empiricism. The _Encyclopedia of Empiricism_ serves four main purposes. First, it provides a convenient source for scholars and students seeking information on particular figures, topics, or doctrines, specifically in their relation to empiricism as an historical movement or to empiricism as a broader tendency of thought. Because each entry contains a brief bibliography of primary and secondary sources, it can usefully serve as (...) a point of first reference. Second, the _Encyclopedia_ illustrates the continuity and logical development of the Empiricist movement by examining, within topical articles, the contributions of a number of different philosophers related to the statement and solution of particular issues. Third, it explicates the relations, both logical and historical, between empiricism as a movement of the 17th and 18th centuries and the various species of empiricism that preceded and succeeded it. Finally, the _Encyclopedia_ explores some of the most important intellectual influences on empiricism as a methodology of thought. Outstanding Academic Book. (shrink)

P. J. E. Kail's Projection and Realism in Hume's Philosophy is an excellent book, consisting—like Hume's Treatise itself—of three excellent parts. I will comment on one central aspect of its second part: its explanation of the source of the second thoughts that Hume famously expressed, with a frustrating lack of specificity, about his own initial discussion of personal identity in the Treatise.As is well known, Hume holds in the section "Of personal identity" (T 1.4.6) that a self, mind, or person (...) is "nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions" (T 1.4.6.4; SBN 252) and, more specifically, a "system of different perceptions or different existences link'd together by the relation of cause and .. (shrink)

In a 1998 Hume Studies book symposium, Peter Millican provided excellent critical comments on my Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy, and I am grateful that he has done the same for Hume. Many of the new or revised interpretations in the latter book result, directly or indirectly, from his extraordinary stimulus, both in his writings and in person, as a philosophical scholar and interlocutor. His comments range over much of the book, but the majority of them concern chapter 2, (...) chapter 3, chapter 4, and chapter 8 (“Morality... (shrink)

Hume's Morality: Feeling and Fabrication 1 is a most useful and agreeable book. It contains a wealth of analysis, argument, and insight about many of the most central elements of the moral theory of one of the greatest moral philosophers in human history: David Hume. The book is well-conceived, well-argued, stimulating, informative, clear, precise, thorough, balanced, nuanced, and ingenious, while evincing—especially in its concluding chapter, when considering possible extensions of Hume's theory—a certain subtle but pleasing "warmth in the cause of (...) virtue." As Hume would be the first to recognize, these traits of the book are indications of the personal merit of its author: Rachel Cohon. Indeed, if Cleanthes. (shrink)

Commentators have offered interpretations over many years of the nature and status of the attributes in Spinoza's metaphysics, but attributes are best understood as diverse manners of existence, so that a substance having more than one attribute exists in more than one manner. Spinoza's monistic metaphysics of substance and mode allows him to offer an appealing conception of the nature of space. Spinoza's monistic metaphysics provides the basis for a positive account of how particular things constitute things at all. All (...) the philosophers of the seventeenth century, arguably none has more direct bearing on recent work in metaphysics than Spinoza. In Spinoza's monism, there is only one perfectly real being, which grounds and is more real than all of the other existing things, and in which they inhere. Spinoza's panpsychism at the same time provides a model of cosmopsychism, in which the mental character of the cosmos grounds the mental character of each particular thing. (shrink)

Philosophers have long disagreed about whether poetry, drama, and other literary arts are important to philosophy and among those who believe that they are important, explanations of that importance have differed greatly. This paper aims to explain and illustrate some of the reasons why Hume found literature to be an important topic for philosophy and philosophers. Philosophy, he holds, can help to explain general and specific literary phenomena, to ground the science of criticism, and to suggest and justify "principles of (...) art," while at the same time literature can provide valuable "experiments" for philosophical theorizing and provide it with a model for the science of morals and (in some ways) for philosophy itself. Moreover, the literary arts can not only help one to write better philosophy, in Hume's view they can also help one to write philosophy better. (shrink)