One of Hume's most well-known works and a masterpiece of philosophy, A Treatise of Human Nature is indubitably worth taking the time to read.

Hume's Reception in Early America: Expanded Edition brings together the original American responses to one of Britain's greatest men of letters, David Hume. Now available as a single volume paperback, this new edition includes updated further readings suggestions and dozens of additional primary sources gathered together in a completely new concluding section. From complete pamphlets and booklets, to poems, reviews, and letters, to extracts from newspapers, religious magazines and literary and political journals, this book's contents come from (...) a wide variety of sources published in colonial America and the early United States between 1758 and 1850. As well as classics by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, it contains scores of unknown and hard-to-locate items, many of which have not been reprinted since their original publication. These responses are divided into four parts covering Hume's Essays; his Philosophical Writings; his History of England; and his Character and Death. Each of those parts has a separate introductory essay, and every selection is introduced by a short headnote that sets the piece in its historical context and provides bibliographical references. Packed with new insights into Hume and American thought and culture, Hume's Reception in Early America reveals the relevance and impact of Hume on American political, philosophical, historical, religious, and aesthetic debates. (shrink)

A thorough examination of the role which David Hume''s writings played upon the founders of the United States.This book explores the reception of David Hume''s political thought in eighteenth-century America. It presents a challenge to standard interpretations that assume Hume''s thought had little influence in early America. Eighteenth-century Americans are often supposed to have ignored Hume''s philosophical writings and to have rejected entirely Hume''s "Tory" History of England. James Madison, if he used (...) class='Hi'>Hume''s ideas in Federalist No. 10, it is commonly argued, thought best to do so silently -- open allegiance to Hume was a liability. Despite renewed debate about the impact of Hume''s political ideas in America, existing scholarship is often narrow and highly speculative. Were Hume''s works available in eighteenth-century America? If so, which works? Where? When? Who read Hume? To what avail? To answer questions of that sort, this books draws upon a wide assortment of evidence. Early American book catalogues, periodical publications, and the writings of lesser-light thinkers are used to describe Hume''s impact on the social history of ideas, an essential context for understanding Hume''s influence on many of the classic texts of early American political thought. Hume''s Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects, was readily available, earlier, and more widely, than scholars have supposed. The History of England was read most frequentlyof all, however, and often in distinctive ways. Hume''s History, which presented the British constitution as a patch-work product of chance historical developments, informed the origins of the American Revolution and Hume''ssubsequent reception through the late eighteenth century. The 326 subscribers to the first American edition of Hume''s History (published in Philadelphia in 1795-96) are more representative of the History''s friendlyreception in enlightened America than are its few critics. Thomas Jefferson''s latter-day rejection of Hume''s political thought foreshadowed Hume''s falling reputation in nineteenth-century America. MARK G. SPENCER is Associate Professor of History at Brock University where he holds a Chancellor''s Chair for Research Excellence. His books include Hume''s Reception in Early America (2002), Utilitarians and Their Critics in America, 1789-1914 (2005),and Ulster Presbyterians in the Atlantic World (2006). periodical publications, and the writings of lesser-light thinkers are used to describe Hume''s impact on the social history of ideas, an essential context for understanding Hume''s influence on many of the classic texts of early American political thought. Hume''s Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects, was readily available, earlier, and more widely, than scholars have supposed. The History of England was read most frequentlyof all, however, and often in distinctive ways. Hume''s History, which presented the British constitution as a patch-work product of chance historical developments, informed the origins of the American Revolution and Hume''ssubsequent reception through the late eighteenth century. The 326 subscribers to the first American edition of Hume''s History (published in Philadelphia in 1795-96) are more representative of the History''s friendlyreception in enlightened America than are its few critics. Thomas Jefferson''s latter-day rejection of Hume''s political thought foreshadowed Hume''s falling reputation in nineteenth-century America. MARK G. SPENCER is Associate Professor of History at Brock University where he holds a Chancellor''s Chair for Research Excellence. His books include Hume''s Reception in Early America (2002), Utilitarians and Their Critics in America, 1789-1914 (2005),and Ulster Presbyterians in the Atlantic World (2006).eputation in nineteenth-century America. MARK G. SPENCER is Associate Professor of History at Brock University where he holds a Chancellor''s Chair for Research Excellence. His books include Hume''s Reception in Early America (2002), Utilitarians and Their Critics in America, 1789-1914 (2005),and Ulster Presbyterians in the Atlantic World (2006). periodical publications, and the writings of lesser-light thinkers are used to describe Hume''s impact on the social history of ideas, an essential context for understanding Hume''s influence on many of the classic texts of early American political thought. Hume''s Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects, was readily available, earlier, and more widely, than scholars have supposed. The History of England was read most frequentlyof all, however, and often in distinctive ways. Hume''s History, which presented the British constitution as a patch-work product of chance historical developments, informed the origins of the American Revolution and Hume''ssubsequent reception through the late eighteenth century. The 326 subscribers to the first American edition of Hume''s History (published in Philadelphia in 1795-96) are more representative of the History''s friendlyreception in enlightened America than are its few critics. Thomas Jefferson''s latter-day rejection of Hume''s political thought foreshadowed Hume''s falling reputation in nineteenth-century America. MARK G. SPENCER is Associate Professor of History at Brock University where he holds a Chancellor''s Chair for Research Excellence. His books include Hume''s Reception in Early America (2002), Utilitarians and Their Critics in America, 1789-1914 (2005),and Ulster Presbyterians in the Atlantic World (2006). periodical publications, and the writings of lesser-light thinkers are used to describe Hume''s impact on the social history of ideas, an essential context for understanding Hume''s influence on many of the classic texts of early American political thought. Hume''s Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects, was readily available, earlier, and more widely, than scholars have supposed. The History of England was read most frequentlyof all, however, and often in distinctive ways. Hume''s History, which presented the British constitution as a patch-work product of chance historical developments, informed the origins of the American Revolution and Hume''ssubsequent reception through the late eighteenth century. The 326 subscribers to the first American edition of Hume''s History (published in Philadelphia in 1795-96) are more representative of the History''s friendlyreception in enlightened America than are its few critics. Thomas Jefferson''s latter-day rejection of Hume''s political thought foreshadowed Hume''s falling reputation in nineteenth-century America. MARK G. SPENCER is Associate Professor of History at Brock University where he holds a Chancellor''s Chair for Research Excellence. His books include Hume''s Reception in Early America (2002), Utilitarians and Their Critics in America, 1789-1914 (2005),and Ulster Presbyterians in the Atlantic World (2006).eputation in nineteenth-century America. MARK G. SPENCER is Associate Professor of History at Brock University where he holds a Chancellor''s Chair for Research Excellence. His books include Hume''s Reception in Early America (2002), Utilitarians and Their Critics in America, 1789-1914 (2005),and Ulster Presbyterians in the Atlantic World (2006).eputation in nineteenth-century America. MARK G. SPENCER is Associate Professor of History at Brock University where he holds a Chancellor''s Chair for Research Excellence. His books include Hume''s Reception in Early America (2002), Utilitarians and Their Critics in America, 1789-1914 (2005),and Ulster Presbyterians in the Atlantic World (2006). periodical publications, and the writings of lesser-light thinkers are used to describe Hume''s impact on the social history of ideas, an essential context for understanding Hume''s influence on many of the classic texts of early American political thought. Hume''s Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects, was readily available, earlier, and more widely, than scholars have supposed. The History of England was read most frequentlyof all, however, and often in distinctive ways. Hume''s History, which presented the British constitution as a patch-work product of chance historical developments, informed the origins of the American Revolution and Hume''ssubsequent reception through the late eighteenth century. The 326 subscribers to the first American edition of Hume''s History (published in Philadelphia in 1795-96) are more representative of the History''s friendlyreception in enlightened America than are its few critics. Thomas Jefferson''s latter-day rejection of Hume''s political thought foreshadowed Hume''s falling reputation in nineteenth-century America. MARK G. SPENCER is Associate Professor of History at Brock University where he holds a Chancellor''s Chair for Research Excellence. His books include Hume''s Reception in Early America (2002), Utilitarians and Their Critics in America, 1789-1914 (2005),and Ulster Presbyterians in the Atlantic World (2006).eputation in nineteenth-century America. MARK G. SPENCER is Associate Professor of History at Brock University where he holds a Chancellor''s Chair for Research Excellence. His books include Hume''s Reception in Early America (2002), Utilitarians and Their Critics in America, 1789-1914 (2005),and Ulster Presbyterians in the Atlantic World (2006).rough the late eighteenth century. The 326 subscribers to the first American edition of Hume''s History (published in Philadelphia in 1795-96) are more representative of the History''s friendlyreception in enlightened America than are its few critics. Thomas Jefferson''s latter-day rejection of Hume''s political thought foreshadowed Hume''s falling reputation in nineteenth-century America. MARK G. SPENCER is Associate Professor of History at Brock University where he holds a Chancellor''s Chair for Research Excellence. His books include Hume''s Reception in Early America (2002), Utilitarians and Their Critics in America, 1789-1914 (2005),and Ulster Presbyterians in. (shrink)

Hume's works in Colonial and early Revolutionary America -- Historiographical context for Hume's reception in eighteenth-century America -- Hume's earliest reception in Colonial America -- Hume's impact on the prelude to American independence -- Humean origins of the American Revolution -- Hume and Madison on faction -- Was Hume a liability in late eighteenth-century America? -- Explaining "Publius's" silent use of Hume -- The reception of Hume's politics in late eighteenth-century America.

In a recent paper, Karl Schafer argues that Hume's theory of mental representation has two distinct components, unified by their shared feature of having accuracy conditions. As Schafer sees it, simple and complex ideas represent the intrinsic imagistic features of their objects whereas abstract ideas represent the relations or structures in which multiple objects stand. This distinction, however, is untenable for at least two related reasons. Firstly, complex ideas represent the relations or structures in which the impressions that are (...) the objects of their simple components stand. Secondly, abstract ideas are themselves instances of complex ideas. I draw two important conclusions from these facts. Firstly, contra Schafer and Garrett, the Copy Principle, properly emended, constitutes the entirety of Hume's theory of mental representation. Secondly, whereas paradigm examples of complex ideas, e.g. ideas of spatial and temporal complexes, are structured by relations of contiguity, abstract ideas are those complex ideas instead structured by relations of resemblance. As such, they represent their objects not as spatially or temporally contiguous but rather as resembling. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:110 DAVID HUME'S INVISIBLE HAND IN THE WEALTH OF NATIONS THE PUBLIC CHOICE OF MORAL INFORMATION Introduction The thesis I shall defend is that there are systematic aspects of Adam Smith's economics which make little sense when read in isolation from a literature in which David Hume provides the signal contributions. Consequently, parts of Hume's own work are stripped of meaning, isolated as they (...) are from later developments. The puzzles about Smith's analysis which I find illuminated by Hume's are the following: 1. Why does Smith both defend the importance of economic growth for the material of well-being of the working class and claim that property originates as spoil, impoverishing the working class? After all, in the classical system the existence of property is one requisite for economic growth. 2. Why does Smith exalt the assumption of self-interested behavior in private activity but claim that irrationality dominates the political process? 3. Why does Smith deny the importance of benevolence in Wealth of Nations and insist on the importance of morality Sentiment morality in Theory of Moral its?3 The three questions have a common feature: they are related to the question of how public goods are provided. The particular public good in question is the institution of private property. As with all true I am obligated to the Center for Study of Public Choice for generous support of my research. Suzanne Levy gets the credit for the extent to which this approaches English. I have benefited from acute comments from Charles Rowley and Charles Griswold. The errors and obscurities which remain are solely my responsibility. Ill public goods, society considered as a whole benefits from having such an institution, but each individual considered separately can gain by anti-social behavior.4 Public goods provide a considerable difficulty for any social institution; neither competition in the market nor government requests that individuals reveal how much they wish to be taxed are certain to be efficient. There are aspects of the classical economic analysis which stress the importance of moral information as a partial solution to the public goods problem. By "moral information" I only require that the theory is employed as a guide and that if an individual acts contrary to the theory, this choice is not cited as "falsifying" the theory. Rather, something is said to be "wrong" or "wicked" about the choice.6 Much of modern economic analysis assumes that individuals have perfect information; this postulate rules out any significant role for moral information in the provision of the public goods. To avoid assuming away such a role for morality, we will drop the perfect information assumption and then examine if we can make sense of the classics' attack on the public goods problem. Of course, the specification that individuals see their own interests very poorly is consistent with Smith's general approach. The technique employed below is to look at the issue which Hume and Smith addressed as a problem in modern economics. The key difficulty is to determine under what conditions moral information could guide individuals with very imperfect perceptions to maximize their utility. In particular, suppose we find that moral guidance tells an individual how efficiently to produce. Is this morality self-enforcing or are resources required to persuade people to act in accord with these teachings? If resources are required, we will not pay much attention to just how this persuasion 112 is provided, e.g., whether we tell people that theft is "evil" or whether we hang a few thieves. General production theory tells us we probably will do both, but this is a separate issue. The argument to be advanced is that moral information has self-enforcement properties in private activities but these properties are missing in public activities. In this account, then, real resources will be required for implementing the morality. This consideration in turn raises an interesting issue. If the government expends these resources, what reason is there to believe that they will be provided to serve the public interest and not the interest of the government? Is it possible that the government can prosper by keeping people ignorant or by giving them advice... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:94 HUME ON THE PERCEPTION OF CAUSALITY Introduction Few issues in philosophy have generated as much debate and as little agreement as Hume's controversial theory of causality. The theory itself has been notoriously difficult to pin down, and not surprisingly empirical evidence has played a very minor role in the issue of what is meant by 'cause'. This is not, however, due to the fact that empirical (...) tests of the theory are hard to devise, but rather because such tests have usually been undertaken by experimental psychologists addressing slightly different issues and unaware of the philosophical implications of their work. However, recent signs of agreement on the overall nature of the theory (reviewed in Beauchamp and Rosenberg, chapter 1) allow a profitable integration of the theory with psychological research on the nature and importance of the perception of causal relations in conditioning. The significance of some of these experiments will be discussed later, and it will be argued that the factors Hume cited as being the essential determinants of causality, when complemented by the additional factor of the degree of contingency between the cause and the effect, correspond exactly with the factors known to affect conditioning; and therefore, that the laws of conditioning specify the properties that define causal relationships. Hume's Theory of Causality Hume was well aware of the importance of causal connections between events as a source of associations in the mind: 95 'Tis sufficient to observe, that there is no relation, which produces a stronger connexion in the fancy, and makes one idea more readily recall another, than the relation of cause and effect betwixt their objects (T II).2 In other words, if we believe a causal relationship exists between two events, then one of these events, the cause, will readily recall the other, the effect. The problem comes, of course, when we ask how it is that we know that a causal relationship exists. Obviously, a distinction must be made between causation as a physical property and causality as a mental idea. Traditionally, the following definitions have been made: causation is the physical property of one event causing another, such as one ball colliding with and causing the movement of a second ball. This property is part of the realm of mechanics and physics. Causality, on the other hand, describes the attribution by an organism of an effect to a cause. Such a distinction is supported by dictionary definitions. These two ways of thinking of what is meant by the term 'cause' are explicitly discussed by Hume. On the notion of physical causation, he says: We may define a CAUSE to be 'An object precedent and contiguous to another, and where all the objects resembling the former are plac'd in like relations of precedency and contiguity to those objects, that resemble the latter.' Of the mental idea of a causal relationship, on the other hand, he says: A CAUSE is an object precedent and contiguous to another, and so united with it, that the idea of the one determines the mind to form the idea of the other, and the impression of the one to form a more lively idea of the other. (T 170) Unfortunately, Hume was never less than imprecise in maintaining this dissociation, and often 96 he plainly confused the two definitions. Hence the academic controversy, between those who, like Kemp Smith, believe that the second definition represents a misguided attempt by Hume to analyse the causal relation on a mental level, 3 and those who see both definitions as essential (e.g. Beauchamp and Rosenberg). But surely the first definition simply represents Hume's view of causality as a philosophical relation, while the second represents his view of it as a psychological fact. And it is as much his intention to explain this fact, that ideas do not simply come into our heads for no apparent reason, but on the contrary are summoned up by preceding thoughts which they are associated, as it is to elucidate the philosophical relation. The extent of Hume's commitment to a psychological explanation of causal attribution has been recognised by Beauchamp and Rosenberg: 5 Hume plainly did develop a theory of causal... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:HUME'S THEORY OF IMAGINATION* Historians of philosophy seem increasingly to agree with the view that David Hume is the greatest philosopher ever to have written in English. This high esteem of the Scottish empiricist, however, is a phenomenon of the last decades. As late as 1925 Charles W. Hendel could write "that Hume is no longer a living figure." And Stuart Hampshire reports that in (...) the Oxford of the Thirties the results of Humean philosophizing were regarded as "extravagances of 2 scepticism which no one could seriously accept." A cursory glance at the Hume bibliography edited by Roland Hall demonstrates that it has become standard practice in the English-speaking world to seek an understanding of Hume's arguments when analysing philosophical problems. Critical literature nevertheless continues to neglect the majority of his arguments. It is sufficient, I think, to mention Hume's remarks on space and time, his theory of emotions, his inquiries into the problem of justice, his economic writings and those on the psychology of roliqion. Dut 3 even in the frequently quoted passages of the Treatise Hume's central notion is not, in my opinion, at the heart of the analysis. Here I refer to Hume's remarks on the phenomenon of imagination (fancy). Although he mentions this curious faculty of our cognition on almost every page, there are only a few sporadic attempts at an interpretation of this "supreme Humean faculty." This may be due to the fact that until quite recently the 'problem of imagination' has hardly even belonged to the marginal topics of modern philosophy. This paper therefore attempts to demonstrate not only that Hume dealt with the phenomenon of imagination, but also that an analysis of this concept is of paramount significance for the understanding of his entire philosophy. In the first three sections three different faculties or functions of the imagination will be distinguished. Not only the artist's - 91 92. works, but also the insights of the scientist and the illusions of metaphysicians are, according to Hume, decisively based on this very cognitive faculty. Section 4 contains a brief discussion of the sceptical arguments of the Treatise, particularly of the Humean analysis of causation. Their impact on Hume's reflections on the problem of imagination is the topic of Section 5. I hope to prove that in the Enquiry Hume interprets these sceptical arguments differently than in the Treatise. While in his early work he feels himself exposed to Pyrrhonian doubts, he assumes the position of an 'academic sceptic' in the Enquiry. The concluding section eventually tries to determine which motives may have been decisive for Hume's change of opinion. I shall defend the thesis that in his late work Hume developed an 'ethics of belief on the basis of natural beliefs, in which the artistic capacity of the imagination assumes a decisive role in justifying philosophical and scientific propositions. 1. The Metaphysical Faculty of the Imagination In the Introduction to the Treatise Hume describes his endeavour as developing a propaedeutic basic science which should provide a better understanding of all products of the human mind (science, mathematics, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, politics). In the Abstract he calls his early work "a system of the sciences" (?7). Besides this empirical interest Hume saw the importance of justifying the choice of method, i.e. to extoll the experimental procedure as the only rational one. Metaphysical approaches are interpreted as products of a blind imagination. Beginning with the Introduction to the Treatise it has been a constant motive of Hume's philosophy to constrain metaphysics in order to make way for science. In the sections Of the effects of other relations and other habite (T106-117), Of unphilosophiaal probability 93. (T143-155), Of scepticism with regard to the senses (T187218 ), Of the antient philosophy (T219-225) Hume specifies those beliefs which, in his opinion, are based on figments of our imagination. He "had ^en that all the errors of philosophy arose from the fact that imagination determined men much more than they recognized - there could be no secure truth for him, then, until he had explored this aspect of the nature of man." He compares imagination to a ship which, having... (shrink)

Drawing on ten years of research on the unpublished Wittgenstein papers, Stern investigates what motivated Wittgenstein's philosophical writing and casts new light on the Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations. The book is an exposition of Wittgenstein's early conception of the nature of representation and how his later revision and criticism of that work led to a radically different way of looking at mind and language. It also explains how the unpublished manuscripts and typescripts were put together and why they often provide (...) better evidence of the development of his ideas than can be found in his published writing. In doing so, the book traces the development of a number of central themes in Wittgenstein's philosophy, including his conception of philosophical method, the picture theory of meaning, the limits of language, the application of language to experience, his treatment of private language, and what he called the "flow of life." Arguing that Wittgenstein's views are often much more simple (and more radical) than we have been led to believe, Wittgenstein on Mind and Language provides an overview of the development of Wittgenstein's philosophy and brings to light aspects of his philosophy that have been almost universally neglected. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:HUME'S USE OF ILLICIT SUBSTANCES Now as every perception is distinguishable from another, and may be consider 'd as separately existent; it evidently follows, that there is no absurdity in separating any particular perception from the mind; that is, in breaking off all its relations, with that connected mass of perceptions, which constitute a thinking being. 1. The Problem Hume is often classified as an 'atomist'. He (...) is alleged to hold that every simple perception (impression and idea) is 'independent': to say that a simple perception P. exists does not entail the existence of any other entity. As the passage above makes clear, part of this atomism is a neutral monism. That is, no perception is intrinsically mental, or material. Yet, he is also claimed to adhere staunchly to the so-called theory of ideas. Indeed, Stroud devotes the entire second chapter of his book Hume to discussion of Hume's adaptation of it. Now we shall argue that any plausible reading of the theory of ideas identifies that which is directly perceived -in Hume's case, (at least) simple perceptions -- as intrinsically mental. This means either that every perception P_ must be in some mind, thus violating one tenet of atomism, or that perceptions themselves are intrinsically mental, thus compromising their neutrality. Can Hume escape this apparent dilemma? The answer seems reasonably clear if one knows Hume. He claims that the mind is a bundle of perceptions. As a member of the bundle, a perception is mental. However, this notion of the mental is genuinely contextual; that is, no perception is, despite appearances, intrinsically mental, due to some nonrelational quality it has. To say the same thing differently, Hume holds merely that perceptions must, as a matter of fact, be 'in' minds in order to exist. Why he thinks this, according to Stroud (and others), is probably at least a function of the reasons other members of the way of ideas tradition classify the directly perceived as mental. More accurately, the following two propositions are considered to be merely contingent, i.e., non-necessary truths for Hume; one can imagine their contradictories: (1)In order to exist, a perception must be 'in' a mind, i.e., some mind or other. (2)If a person S_ has a perception P., then P_ is 'in' S., in the sense that P is a member of a collection of perceptions that constitute S_. Thus, if a perception exists, it must as a matter of fact be in some mind or other, but it is not connected necessarily to any mind. Hence perceptions are mental, yet independent i.e., neither necessarily in the collections they are in fact in, nor necessarily in any collections at all. Given (1) and (2), the existence of a perception entails the existence of a mind only in a contingent, not a logical, sense. As the reader shall see, this defense of Hume comes in the end to classifying him as some sort of phenomenalist, who reconstructs the 1 notions of mental and physical from a given data base. Ne are not satisfied with this answer. Indeed, we think it quite inadequate. To begin to show that, let us turn to a set of passages in the Treatise that set the problem we have been trying to outline. Hume himself speculates, in an infamous passage in the Appendix, that something is radically wrong with his claims about the self, that somewhere in his system there is a contradiction and, indeed, he senses that the contradiction has something to do with his atomism (T 633ff). We think he is right. Our thesis is as follows. The contradiction Hume senses is that he both holds and disavows the claim that g perceptions are mind dependent in an intrinsic sense. Thus, though a given perception is (perhaps) not necessarily in a given mind, it must either be in some mind or other in a logical sense of "must," or intrinsically mental in the sense of being intentional. As we explain in detail in section 2, the argument from perceptual variation, a cornerstone of the theory of ideas, leads inevitably to the view that there are intentional entities. Not only is... (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Introduction: Baker on the Private Language Argument Strawson's and Malcolms Interpretations of the Beetle Story Pitcher's, Cook's, and Donagan's Interpretations of the Beetle Story Cohen's Repudiation of the Beetle Story Hacker's and Baker's Interpretations of the Beetle Story.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:53. AN INDEX OF HUME'S REFERENCES IN A TREATISE OF HUMAN NATURE The index below of Hume's references in the Treatise te the works of other authors excludes those which are accurate and full in his text (of which there are few) and those which are so general, e.g., to Spinoza's atheism, that no passage is specifiable. Hume mentions other writings, for which this index is (...) compiled, in several different ways. Occasionally he mentions the author's name, the title of his book and gives a reference which is less specific than it could be. These have been identified. Often he mentions an author's name only, e.g., de Retz, and in such cases the fullest possible reference has been given. One of Hume's notable intellectual gifts was his ability to distil several pages of a book into one or two sentences of crisp and accurate synthesis. (This skill is most apparent in his summaries of articles in Bayle' s Dictionary in his "Notes on Philosophy", of which the manuscript is in the Royal Society of Edinburgh Library.) In these instances, page references are impossible and the closest indication one can give is a section or chapter. Some of his references are anonymous, e.g., as an 'elegant writer' says, and so are some quotations. These have been identified with one exception. One anonymous reference (number 24 below) requires explanation because it is both anachronistic and interesting. Hume refers to an observation by "a late eminent philosopher". It is anachronistic because the book to which he refers was published after the Treatise; it is interesting because it provides further evidence of Hutcheson's influence on Hume and the latter' s regard for him. The explanation, for Hutcheson was still alive when Vol.11 of the Treatise appeared in 1739, is that 'late' is here being used in the sense of 'recent' - Hutcheson himself uses the word in the same way in referring to Mandeville when the latter was 54. alive. (An enquiry concerning moral good and evil. Section 1, VI.) Further, the System circulated widely among Hutcheson's friends in Scotland and over so many years that it finally appeared posthumously. That Hume could not cite a published work also accounts for the anonymity of the reference to someone he admired. It is often impossible to determine in which language or in which edition Hume read a particular author. Where there is evidence as to which language he used, the title has been given in that language. There are now so many extant editions of the Treatise that Volume, Part, Chapter and Section references are given, as well as the pagination of Selby-Bigge' s edition, so that readers of other editions may be able to use the index. 1.Vol. 1. Title-page. Tacitus, The Histories, Bk. I. 1. 2.Part 1, Sect. 1, p. 2, n. John Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, Bk. I, Chap. I, 8. 3.Sect. VII, p. 17, n. George Berkeley, A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Introductixi, Sect. 7, e_t seq. 4.Part II, Sect. II, p. 30, n. Nicolas de Malezieu, Elementa Geometrica. 5.Sect. Ill, p. 35, n. John Locke, Essay, Bk. II, Chap. XIV. 6.Sect. IV, p. 43, n. Antoine Arnauld, La logique ou l'art de penser. Part I, Chap. 5. (In some editions Pierre Nicole is named as co-author. The book is also known as the Port Royal Logic). 7.Sect. IV, p. 46, n. Isaac Barrow, Mathematical Lectures. 8.Part III, Sect. Ill, p. 80, n. Thomas Hobbes, Elements of Philosophy, Part Second, Chap. 9. And Tripos : in Three Discourse. Ill, of Liberty and Necessity. 55. Sect. Ill, p. 80, n. e.g., Samuel Clarke, A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, Props. I-III, et. seq. 10.Sect. Ill, p. 81, n. John Locke, Essay, Bk. IV, Chap. X. 11.Sect. VIII, p. 100 and appendix Vol. Ill, p. 630. Cicero, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, Bk. V. 1.2. 12.Sect. XIII, p. 153. Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz, Mémoires, Bk. III. The second 'observation' is from Book... (shrink)

Reason, egoism, and utilitarianism, by H. Sidgwick.--Is egoism reasonable? By G. E. Moore.--Ultimate principles and ethical egoism, by B. Medlin.--In defense of egoism, by J. Kalin.--Virtuous affections and self-love, by F. Hutcheson.--Our obligation to virtue, by D. Hume.--Duty and interest, by H. A. Prichard.--The natural condition of mankind and the laws of nature, by T. Hobbes.--Why should we be moral? By K. Baier.--Morality and advantage, by D. P. Gauthier.--Bibliographical essay (p. 181-184).

This chapter examines the developments that led from Wittgenstein’s early logical atomist view that all meaningful discourse can be analyzed into logically independent elementary propositions to his later philosophy. In 1929, Wittgenstein rejected logical atomism for a “logical holist” conception of language as composed of calculi, formal systems characterized by their constitutive rules. By the mid-1930s, he had rejected the model of a calculus, emphasizing that language is action within a social and natural context — more like a game than (...) a calculus — and that rule-governed behavior is dependent on a background of practices which cannot themselves be explicitly formulated as rules. The discussion of these central developments for the emergence of his later “practical holism” focuses on changes in his conception of the nature of measurement and the role of mind and mental processes in linguistic meaning. (shrink)

Unlike most books on Wittgenstein, Wittgenstein on Mind and Language begins from the initial articulation of his thoughts in his first drafts, conversations, and lectures, and attends closely to the process of revision that led to the Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations. This introductory chapter provides information about the nature of the Wittgenstein papers, summarizes the rationale for reading his work in this way, and outlines the reading of the development of Wittgenstein’s philosophy that this approach yields. This discussion on the (...) development of Wittgenstein’s thought emphasizes the role of his changing conception of the nature of experience and its relationship to the world, the closely related problem of the relationship between ordinary language and its analysis, his later conception of the role of analogies in generating — and dissolving — philosophical problems, the parallels with psychoanalysis, and the variety of philosophical methods employed in his later philosophical writing. There is also an overview of a central theme of the book as a whole: the contrast Wittgenstein drew between “ordinary” and “philosophical” ways of looking at things when he wrote the Tractatus, and how that contrast was transformed in his subsequent writing, focusing on his contrast between “primary” and “secondary” worlds and his notion of a “phenomenological language”. (shrink)

An analysis of the sources of Wittgenstein’s picture theory — which include not only his moment of insight on reading a magazine story about the use of models in a traffic court, but also the work of Russell, Hertz, and Boltzmann — provides the basis for an exploration of Wittgenstein’s articulation of a pictorial conception of representation in his wartime notebooks and its crystallization in the Tractatus. A discussion of Wittgenstein’s later criticism of the picture theory and his notion of (...) a “philosophical picture” illustrates the fundamental reversal in his transition to his later conception of philosophy: instead of taking literal pictures as a guide to the nature of meaning, he came to regard philosophical theories as akin to expressing an aesthetic preference for a certain style of representation. Wittgenstein’s treatment of factual language in the picture theory is related to his Tractarian approach to logical form, and the role of the show/say distinction in his early conception of logic and language. Particular attention is given to the difficulties generated by the idea that the conditions for the possibility of a given domain of discourse cannot be described in language, but must be shown by the form of words in question. (shrink)

This chapter argues that the ontology of the Tractatus is best understood as the consequence of Wittgenstein’s conception of logic and representation in general, and the postulate of the determinacy of sense in particular. Once it is recognized that Wittgenstein arrived at the idea of simple objects based on an abstract argument about the nature of complexes and analysis without providing any specific examples of such analyses, it is easy to see the need for caution in attributing any characteristics to (...) the objects over and above those demanded by Wittgenstein’s logicolinguistic commitments. Commentators have taken the Tractatus to be setting out a bewildering variety of highly specific views about the nature of objects. But the truth is that the book is so programmatic that its ontology can be elaborated in any number of ways. The final section of this chapter analyzes Wittgenstein’s treatment of the self in the Tractatus and his writing from the 1930s as a central example of the extreme tensions between the positivisistic doctrines stated in the Tractatus and the antipositivistic subtext it aims to convey or “show”: if the exoteric doctrine of the Tractatus is that there is no such thing as the subject of experience, the esoteric doctrine is that there is. This leads to a close reading of his proposal in the early 1930s that is considered a “subjectless” language as a way of clarifying the nature of experience, and his subsequent critique of the notions of the “metaphysical self” and the “visual world”. He had transmuted the difference between the first person and third person modes of speech into differences between two worlds and then had tried to put them back together again. (shrink)

The first section of this chapter presents a close reading of Wittgenstein’s “Remarks on Logical Form”, focusing on the conception of the relationship between language and experience, and the nature of the analysis of immediate experience that are set out there. Section two sets out an interpretation of what Wittgenstein meant when he said that he had rejected “phenomenological language” or “primary language” as his goal. Distinguishing between a weak and a strong sense of these terms shows how he could (...) have given up the goal of formulating a language that would amount to a complete analysis of immediate experience, yet retain the goal of finding ways of clarifying what we say about experience. Section three discusses Wittgenstein’s use of the analogy of the pictures on a roll of film in a movie projector and the pictures on a cinema screen for the relationship between world and experience. The final section analyzes how and why the analogy leads Wittgenstein to a paradoxical conception of immediate experience as a separate realm, “timeless” and “neighborless”, a conception of the “world as idea” that is supposedly inexpressible. (shrink)

In 1929, Wittgenstein made use of river imagery to convey the supposedly inexpressible thesis that all is in flux. However, he rejects this extreme thesis in manuscripts from the early 1930s and drafts of the Philosophical Investigations, affirming that one can step twice into the same river. His later discussion of the “stream of life” involves a return, in certain respects, to the river analogy, albeit in a very different key. Examining Wittgenstein’s changing use of this image casts light on (...) the continuities and discontinuities in the development of his philosophy. Wittgenstein’s argument that a private definition is impossible because ostension always depends on a “technique of use”, and his rejection of a positive theory of mind is clarified by examining some unusually explicit notes for a public lecture on private language. This material shows how the treatment of training and practice in the opening sections of the Philosophical Investigations is the basis for the subsequent discussion of both rule-following and privacy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Current State of Vico ScholarshipDavid L. MarshallGiambattista Vico is one of those chameleon figures in the history of ideas who is so intellectually rich that he can be constantly reinvented. It is indicative of the rich ambiguity of his thought that two of the most prominent intellectual historians working today should have come to opposite conclusions about his relationship to the master-category of eighteenth-century intellectual history: for Mark (...) Lilla, Vico was a Counter-Enlightenment thinker; for Jonathan Israel, he was a figure in the Radical Enlightenment.1 Vico’s fungibility gives reason for pause. Someone who can be folded into all manner of intellectual projects may be suspect. But Vico is more colonizing than colonized and, thus, the diversity of his receptions is evidence of creativity, and not merely malleability. The only way to deal with Vico is to dive into the multiplicity of plausible interpretations and find in them the makings of a new line of inquiry. Vico’s moment of flourishing in the Anglophone world came initially in the 1960s and 1970s, but if the diversity and quality of receptions in the last five years is anything to go by then we can say that Vico remains—especially in Italian, French, and German— an intellectual historical provocateur.This review essay surveys such literature and makes a single recurring observation: the various specifications of Vico’s place in intellectual history come into alignment as dimensions of what one might term Vico’s reinvention of rhetoric. As a professor of rhetoric in a culture that possessed—for [End Page 141] the most part—very weak oratorical institutions, Vico found himself in a particularly paradoxical situation. Recent research on Vico suggests that this paradox worked itself out in Vico’s thought in a number of highly interesting ways. First, Vico constitutes an opportunity for intellectual historians of the scientific revolution by offering a simultaneously rhetorical and pragmatic gloss of the early modern logic of experiment. Second, for intellectual historians of religion, Vico constitutes a study in how early moderns could examine the rhetorical functioning of theological vocabularies without necessarily committing themselves to the independent existence of the referents of those vocabularies. Third, for intellectual historians of Enlightenment, Vico confirms that encyclopedism was not a merely French practice in the eighteenth century and that the kind of omnicompetence implicit in encyclopedic multidisciplinarity had roots in rhetorical criticism. Fourth, intellectual historians of Counter-Enlightenment cannot easily fold Vico into their narratives, in part because his legal works (which have been read as a call for cultural retrenchment in response to early modern skepticism) are in fact an account of how Greek rhetoric found its analogue in Roman jurisprudence. Fifth, for historians of the idea of language, Vico demonstrates that there were powerful alternatives in early modernity to the dominant contractualist account of the origin of language (offered by Hobbes, Locke, and others) that were rhetorical and yet did not emphasize the priority of speech over writing.When it appeared in 1961, Nicola Badaloni’s Introduzione a G.B. Vico was the most sophisticated attempt to locate Vico in the Neapolitan philosophical tradition. In many ways, it remains the best attempt at contextualizing a thinker who is notoriously difficult to situate among his contemporaries. John Robertson’s recent Case for the Enlightenment has many virtues (not least its revealing supposition that Vico ought to be read alongside Hume), but as an attempt at contextualization Robertson’s work is not as rich as Badaloni’s.2 In particular, Badaloni did a great deal to reconstruct the history of natural philosophical inquiry at Naples in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In Badaloni’s description, Naples was a place in which a strong culture of natural philosophical investigation set the foundation for concepts such as experimentalism and pantheism. Furthermore, Badaloni argued that, although such concepts originated in natural philosophy, they cross-pollinated with ideas prominent in the Neapolitan schools of jurisprudence—particularly probabilism. In the [End Page 142] broadest terms, Badaloni argued that Vico’s intellectual project was an examination of the pantheistic principle that Jovis omnia plena (“all things are made of Jove”) in the domains of law, poetry, and history... (shrink)

Jacques Derrida's extensive early writings devoted considerable attention to "being as presence," the reality underlying the history of metaphysics. In Derrida on Being as Presence: Questions and Quests, David A. White develops the intricate conceptual structure of this notion by close exegetical readings drawn from these writings. White discusses cardinal concepts in Derrida's revamping of theoretical considerations pertaining to language--signification, context, negation, iterability--as these considerations depend on the structure of being as presence and also as they ground "deconstructive" reading. (...) White's appraisal raises questions invoking a range of problems. He deploys these questions in conjunction with thematically related quests that arise given Derrida's conviction that the history of metaphysics, as variations on being as presence, has concealed and skewed vital elements of reality. White inflects this critical apparatus concerning being as presence with texts drawn from that history--e.g., by Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Hume, Kant, Whitehead. The essay concludes with a speculative ensemble of provisional categories, or zones of specificity. Implementing these categories will ground the possibility that philosophy in general and metaphysics in particular can be pursued in ways which acknowledge the relevance of Derrida's thought when integrated with the philosophical enterprise as traditionally understood. (shrink)

This book, first published in 1951, is an examination of Hume's 'Treatise of Human Nature', 'An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals', and 'An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding'. It lucidly clarifies and makes alive the new discoveries of Hume's works in a study that makes plain the importance of this philosopher to the world today.

Until recently, philosophical scholarship has not been kind to Hume’s arguments in “Of scepticism with regard to reason” (A Treatise of Human Nature, 1.4.1). [1] Reid gives the negative arguments a pretty rough ride, though in the end he agrees with Hume’s conclusion that reason cannot be defended by reason.[2] Stove’s comment that the argument is “not merely defective, but one of the worst arguments ever to impose itself on a man of genius” (Stove 1973), while extreme, is (...) not untypical. Many important books on Hume (e.g. Stroud 1977) simply ignore it, though this may be because it is difficult to find any trace of the arguments in the Enquiry Concerning the Human Understanding.[3] Furthermore, when attention was paid to the arguments, it was devoted mainly to the second of the two negative arguments Hume puts forward, and that argument was held to contain an elementary mistake concerning beliefs about beliefs (McNabb 1951). (shrink)