Although two documents from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith have given instruction on the moral problems of artificial reproductive technologies and the importance of respecting the lives of cryopreserved embryos, no definitive judgment has been made regarding the possibility of rescuing those embryos by means of embryo transfer into the uterus of a willing woman. This essay offers an analysis of the morality of embryo transfer in light of the ethical principles of St. Thomas Aquinas and argues (...) that the proper use of our generative potential is only safeguarded by being restricted to marital intercourse. The arguments of those who favor the adoption model are considered and rejected in light of a Thomistic analysis of the categories of paternity, maternity, and filiation. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 14.4 : 673–695. (shrink)

According to the New Natural Law theory, marriage is a basic good. This means that marital society is an end in itself, and that marital intercourse instantiates that end by making the married couple to be “one-flesh.” This one-flesh union finds its intrinsic fulfillment in the procreation of children, but should not be seen as a mere means to the begetting and rearing of offspring. This view of marriage represents a departure from the traditional understanding of marriage as having its (...) ultimate raison d’être in the begetting and rearing of offspring, and has significant implications for judgments concerning the liceity of embryo adoption/rescue. This paper offers a critical appraisal of the thesis that marriage is a basic good. (shrink)

This essay responds to an article by Elizabeth Bothamley Rex titled “The Magisterial Liceity of Embryo Adoption”, specifically to Rex’s critique that his objections to the liceity of embryo transfer distort magisterial documents. He then draws out the implications of the differences between his view and Rex’s on the relation between maternity and pregnancy. The essay concludes by pointing out that, if they are to change their minds, opponents of embryo adoption need to be convinced that it is morally licit (...) to impregnate, or “introduce an order to birth,” in a woman by means other than the marriage act. (shrink)

This penetrating book sheds light on the psychology of fundamentalism, with a particular focus on those who become extremists and fanatics. What accounts for the violence that emerges among some fundamentalist groups? The contributors to this book identify several factors: a radical dualism, in which all aspects of life are bluntly categorized as either good or evil; a destructive inclination to interpret authoritative texts, laws, and teachings in the most literal of terms; an extreme and totalized conversion experience; paranoid thinking; (...) and an apocalyptic world view. After examining each of these concepts in detail, and showing the ways in which they lead to violence among widely disparate groups, these engrossing essays explore such areas as fundamentalism in the American experience and among jihadists, and they illuminate aspects of the same psychology that contributed to such historical crises as the French Revolution, the Nazi movement, and post-Partition Hindu religious practice. (shrink)

The self-psychology theories used as motivational tools in work organizations during the past 20 years have collided with a confluence of societal changes. The individual has been enticed by more freedom in the work organization and an increasing array of life choices in a pluralistic society. At the same time, the economic environment has become hostile, threatening to limit the individual's choices. The confluence of expanding social choice and contracting economic resources has made it difficult for many individuals to make (...) life choices that may lead to personal self-fulfillment. As a result, employees may most need and most appreciate order and predictability from their work organizations at the very time when more flexible work organization structures are most needed for the wave of new products and production technologies that need to be explored and developed. Hope for a resolution to this dilemma may be found in strengthening society's more durable social institutions, such as the family, organized religion, and the local community. If individuals can find the stability their lives need in these institutions, they may respond better to change, challenge, and freedom in the work organization. (shrink)

This volume consists of autobiographical by the following scholars, together with pictures and autographs: Raven I. McDavid, Jr., Henry M. Hoenigswald, John B. Carroll, William G. Moulton, Archibald A. Hill, Yakov Malkiel, Charles F. Hockett, Harold B. Allen, William Bright, Einar Haugen, George S. Lane, Frederic G. Cassidy, James B. McMillan, Winfred P. Lehmann, Fred W. Householder, and Dell Hymes. A master list of references, and an index of persons conclude the volume.

Hegel and Canada is a collection of essays that analyses the real, but under-recognized, role Hegel has played in the intellectual and political development of Canada. The volume focuses on the generation of Canadian scholars who emerged after World War Two: James Doull, Emil Fackenheim, George Grant, Henry S. Harris, and Charles Taylor.

C.S. Peirce held what is nowadays called a “commitment view” of assertion. According to this type of view, assertion is a kind of act that is determined by its “normative effects”: by asserting a proposition one undertakes certain commitments, typically to be able to provide reason to believe what one is asserting, or, in Peirce’s words, one “takes responsibility” for the truth of the proposition one asserts. Despite being an early adopter of the view, if Peirce’s commitment view of assertion (...) is mentioned at all in contemporary discussions it is only in passing. His view is, however, far more complex and nuanced than he has been given credit for. My primary goal here, then, is to get a better understanding of Peirce’s version of a commitment view of assertion. I also argue that figuring out the details of Peirce’s theory of assertion can also provide us with a viable way to respond to problems that contemporary commitment views of assertion face. (shrink)

In addition to being a founder of American pragmatism, Charles Sanders Peirce was a scientist and an empiricist. A core aspect of his thoroughgoing empiricism was a mindset that treats all attitudes as revisable. His fallibilism seems to require us to constantly seek out new information, and to not be content holding any beliefs uncritically. At the same time, Peirce often states that common sense has an important role to play in both scientific and vital inquiry, and that there (...) cannot be any “direct profit in going behind common sense.” Our question is the following: alongside a scientific mindset and a commitment to the method of inquiry, where does common sense fit in? Peirce does at times directly address common sense; however, those explicit engagements are relatively infrequent. In this paper, we argue that getting a firm grip on the role of common sense in Peirce’s philosophy requires a three-pronged investigation, targeting his treatment of common sense alongside his more numerous remarks on intuition and instinct. By excavating and developing Peirce’s concepts of instinct and intuition, we show that his respect for common sense coheres with his insistence on the methodological superiority of inquiry. We conclude that Peirce shows us the way to a distinctive epistemic position balancing fallibilism and anti-scepticism, a pragmatist common sense position of considerable interest for contemporary epistemology given current interest in the relation of intuition and reason. (shrink)

Isaac Levi targets an implicit tension in C.S. Peirce’s epistemology, one that exists between the need to always be open-minded and aware of our propensity to make mistakes so that we do not “block the road of inquiry,” and the need to treat certain beliefs as infallible and to doubt only in a genuine way so that inquiry can proceed in the first place. Attempts at alleviating this tension have typically involved interpreting Peirce as ascribing different normative standards to different (...) areas of inquiry. I argue here that such “double-standard” interpretations face significant problems. I offer instead an interpretation of Peirce on which the differences between different areas of inquiry are descriptive rather than normative. Such a view resolves Levi’s tension while interpreting Peirce as consistently subscribing to one normative standard for all inquiry. (shrink)

Epidemics, the medical historian Charles Rosenberg argued, typically have four Acts, as in a play. In Act I, which he termed ‘Progressive revelation’, ‘merchants’, ‘municipal authorities’ and ‘the complacency of ordinary men and women’, alike are reluctant to acknowledge an epidemic because of its threat to their ‘economic and institutional interests’ and to ‘their accustomed way of doing things’: gradually however, ‘inexorably accumulating deaths and sicknesses’ bring ‘ultimate, if unwilling, recognition’. In Act II, ‘Managing randomness’, ‘collective agreement’ is sought (...) on an ‘explanatory framework’ to manage the epidemic’s ‘dismaying arbitrariness’. Such frameworks, in previous centuries mainly religious, are now more ‘secular and mechanistic’, but again also moral and social: explanation for example of the ‘differential susceptibility of particular individuals’ is sought in terms of ‘risk-enhancing behaviour’ and ‘style of life’, but also of environmental and social factors, such as ‘residence and occupation’, providing ‘a vehicle for social criticism as well as a rationale for social control’. In Act III, ‘Negotiating public response’, pressure is generated for ‘decisive and visible community response’, often taking the form of ‘collective rites integrating cognitive and emotional elements’. Such rites, including not only ‘the imposition of a quarantine’ and ‘procedures to cleanse and disinfect’, but also religious, or now more often moral or social rituals, afford ‘the reassurance of familiar frames of explanation and logically consequent policies that provide both meaning and the promise of efficacy’. Finally, In Act IV, ‘Subsidence and retrospection’, ‘incidence of the disease gradually declines’, and questions are raised ‘for retrospective moral judgement’ about ‘what “lasting impact” particular incidents have had and what “lessons” have been learnt. Have the dead died in vain? Has a heedless society reverted to its accustomed ways of doing things as soon as denial became once more a …. (shrink)

There is evidence that the practice of meditative reading was cultivated by Hellenistic Jews as a discipline analogous to the spiritual exercises of the philosophical schools. The present study traces (1) the Deuteronomic antecedents of this practice, (2) its reconfiguration in the Torah Psalms, and (3) finally its expression in Greco-Jewish translation, with special reference to the Greek Psalter. Taking its cue from the work of Pierre Hadot, it situates this development within the larger matrix of Hellenistic philosophical discourse. The (...) philological focus of the study is the use of the Hebrew verb I הגה Qal in contexts where Torah study is thematic and its rendering by μελετάω in the Septuagint. To frame the lexical analysis, it draws on the slot-filler model pioneered by Charles Fillmore. Contribution: This article situates a key Greco-Jewish translation with reference to both its Deuteronomic antecedents and to practices cultivated within the philosophical schools of the Hellenistic period. The analysis demonstrates the relevance of Frame Semantics to philological investigation. (shrink)

This article examines Nietzsche’s influence on analytic philosophy, focusing on the field of analytic ethics. It presents some key rationales motivating his re-evaluation of values and, in particular, his critique of modern morality. To demonstrate his influence on the work of Charles Taylor, Alasdair Macintyre, and Bernard Williams, the role of Nietzsche’s genealogical method in his re-evaluative project is considered. This is followed by a discussion of Nietzsche’s critique of the value of moral values and its relation to similar (...) objections developed by more recent morality critics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:David Hume’s Political EconomyJohn RobertsonCarl Wennerlind and Margaret Schabas, eds., David Hume’s Political Economy (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), Pp. xiii + 378. ISBN 978-0-415-32001-6, Cloth, $160. ISBN 978-0-415-49413-7, Paper, $44.95.This collection of papers is as welcome as it is overdue. As its editors observe in their introduction, the reference point for studies of Hume’s economic thinking has remained Eugene Rotwein’s “Introduction” to his volume David Hume: (...) Writings on Economics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press) since its publication in 1955. The conference from which these papers derive was convened forty-eight years later, in 2003, and the volume was another five years in preparation (while this review, in turn, has taken its own time). But David Hume’s Political Economy is not a random collection of conference papers: editorial direction has ensured a substantial publication, and an important contribution to Hume studies. The individual contributions fall into four broad categories, with fruitful overlaps between them. These are: (1) Hume’s biography and his immediate Scottish context; (2) the philosophical framework of Hume’s economic thinking provided by his account of human nature; (3) Hume’s treatment of money; and (4) the reception of Hume’s economic writings in France, as a starting-point for exploring his contribution to the wider European Enlightenment debate over the prospects of the modern commercial economy.Two established scholars of the Scottish Enlightenment open the volume. Roger Emerson identifies “Scottish contexts for David Hume’s political-economic [End Page 123] thinking” (10), and Ian Simpson Ross traces “the emergence of David Hume as a political economist” (31) in a more strictly biographical perspective. Emerson draws on his knowledge of Scottish improvers, most notably Lord Ilay, third duke of Argyll, and explores the several ways in which Hume could have been aware of their activities and the issues they had to confront. Ross directs attention to specific episodes in Hume’s life that may have stimulated Hume’s interest in economic affairs. By their use of the conditional and the subjunctive, both contributors acknowledge that the suggested connections are speculative: for reasons which he left to be inferred, Hume was reluctant to apply his arguments explicitly to local, Scottish circumstances. But as Ross demonstrates in the case of Hume’s friendship with Isaac Pinto, and later in the volume Robert Dimand documents in the matter of Hume’s memorandum on Canadian paper money, there are still details of Hume’s biography to be filled out. As more Hume letters become available, it is likely that further such episodes may come to light: Hume’s biography is not an exhausted subject.A fine essay by Christopher Berry on “Hume and Superfluous Value” (49) opens the second set of contributions. Re-visiting Hume’s intervention in the Luxury Debate, Berry argues that Hume rejected the Stoic ideal of poverty embodied in Epictetus’s view that slippers were simply for the protection of the foot indoors, and any ornamentation was superfluous “luxury.” Instead, Hume deliberately attached value to the superfluous. It was precisely the indulgence of luxury, the enjoyment of a more beautiful slipper, which aroused and sustained the “industry” of men, whence derived the enrichment of society and the strengthening of the power of the sovereign. Other contributions in this group are less successful. Till Grüne-Yanoff and Edward McClennen target Albert Hirschman’s thesis that in a commercial society the passions are tamed by the increasing importance attached to the particular passion of “interest.” Instead of relying solely on “interest,” Hume envisages an evolution or “refinement” of the passions, in which reason “serves” the passions by helping individuals to determine how to achieve their ends (86). Quite why this process should be termed a “natural history of the passions” (86) is, however, unclear, as is the extent to which the authors wish to rehabilitate “reason” in Hume’s explanation of action. Richard Boyd seeks to extrapolate from Hume’s writings a concept of “civility” adequate to the pluralism of modern commercial society. Working hard with exiguous evidence—“civility” is mentioned in passing on only a few occasions in... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:William Robertson’s History of Manners in German, 1770–1795László KontlerThe work I have had in preparing this new edition of Robertson’s History of Charles V has not been very agreeable. To compare an already existing translation line by line with the original... costs more trouble than a new translation would require. I do not flatter myself that I have noticed everything that could have been improved, and would hardly (...) undertake such a task for a second time.... 1Anybody familiar with the frustrating side of editorial work can only sympathize with the sentiments expressed in these sentences by Julius August Remer, the editor of the second German edition of William Robertson’s The History of the Reign of Emperor Charles V in 1779. What makes this complaint somewhat peculiar is that just shortly before its author had spoken very highly about their object: “The translator, the late councillor Mittelstedt had too much wisdom and common sense, and was too proficient in both languages... to produce a translation that is not faithful,” and the “excellent book” only needed to be supplemented with a few notes in order to improve its accuracy. 2 Nevertheless, a few years later Remer thought it appropriate to revise Robertson’s work completely, radically changing its structure and its organizing principles and adding substantially to its size. In the process much of the meaning of the [End Page 125] original was lost; and what was gained instead bore the imprint of the environment, the personality, and the limitations of the stature of the new author. At the same time Robertson’s History—in the original, in Mittelstedt’s translation, and in Remer’s version alike—was held in considerable esteem in German-speaking areas well into the nineteenth century. 3A study of the patterns of thought involved in its several incarnations may offer an insight into the way of the transmission of ideas through cultural boundaries. Looking at the German publishing history of the celebrated Scottish historian William Robertson’s greatest accomplishment between the 1770s and the 1790s, this article is intended as a contribution to the study of the limits of translatability as well as of the intellectual horizons of cultural exchanges, through translation, between such different enlightened intellectual communities as those of late-eighteenth-century Scotland and North Germany. 4Although it is only recently that William Robertson has started to emerge from the obscurity he suffered in the shadow of the more glittering names of the Scottish Enlightenment, an analysis of the ways in which he was influential no longer needs either to be defended or prefaced by a survey of his various activities. Robertson is the protagonist of Richard B. Sher’s study of Church, academe, and polite society in Edinburgh; and his character and oeuvre as a historian have been analyzed from several points of view. 5 Robertson’s contemporary admirers already placed him on a par with Hume and Smith, describing him as a chief component in Scotland’s “strong ray of philosophic [End Page 126] light.” 6 His “combination of philosophy and history” was said to have avoided, more successfully than all others, “the inconveniences which it threatens.” 7 Indeed, his History of Charles V was one of the most formidable eighteenth-century attempts to use “stadial” or conjectural history—which figured prominently not only in the thought of the Scottish theorists but also of the French physiocrats and the German-Swiss thinker Isaak Iselin—as a conceptual background to his account of the historical process as a result of which the foundations of modernity were laid.Such development studies were deemed essential to the proper understanding of contemporary commercial society; and especially in the long introduction of Robertson’s work, A View of the Progress of Society in Europe from the Subversion of the Roman Empire to the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century, “descriptive and narrative history” 8 were magisterially interwoven to produce a richly documented piece of historiography. It also offered an overview of the natural succession of various stages in people’s mode of subsistence from hunting through shepherding and agriculture to commerce and the ways in which these gave rise... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XXI, Number 2, November 1995, pp. 315-332 Robertson, Hume, and the Balance of Power FREDERICK G. WHELAN William Robertson, like his Scottish Enlightenment colleague David Hume, practiced a kind of philosophic history which, although it appears to consist mainly of narratives of political and military events, is also designed to teach moral and political lessons of general significance and utility. The principal theme of Hume's History (...) of England, for example, is the growth of legal and constitutional government in connection with the emergence of modern society; Hume's narrative implicitly justifies both such a government and the moderate politics on which it depends. A theme of comparable importance in Robertson's History of Charles V (1769) is the emergence of a balance of power and thence a relatively stable international system among European states in the early sixteenth century, when the policy of balance first clearly appeared. As he declares in his Preface: The political principles and maxims then established still continue to operate. The ideas concerning the balance of power, then introduced or rendered general, still influence the councils of nations. (R 307)1 Robertson both describes the relevant policy decisions (especially the alliance between the traditional enemies, England and France, to counter the threat posed by Charles Vs unprecedentedly large empire) and justifies such policies as reasonable and beneficial.2 Frederick G. Whelan is at the Political Science Department, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh PA 15260 USA. 316 Frederick G. Whelan In treating this theme, Robertson was taking up a topic that was of interest to Hume as well. Hume refers on a number of occasions to the sixteenth century balance of power in his History chapters on the reign of Henry VIII (1759),3 especially in the portion extending through the 1520s, and he treats the topic more systematically in his earlier essay "Of the Balance of Power" (1752).4 Hume like Robertson defends balance of power policies in general, and Hume certainly (Robertson probably) had a more particular reason for doing so: to justify contemporary British (Whig) foreign policy (and several wars), which since the reign of Louis XIV had aimed at maintaining a European counterbalance to France.5 Hume's and Robertson's favorable descriptions of the sixteenth century anti-Habsburg policy provide a useful background for defending the eighteenth century anti-Bourbon policy.6 Indeed, both Hume and Robertson probably exaggerated the prevalence of the balance of power, at least as a conscious policy, in the early sixteenth century; although they were no doubt correct in noting that something like the modern state system first began to take shape at that time, they seem to have projected the eighteenth century emphasis on balance backwards in time as a way of legitimizing it.7 Robertson sums up the fifty year period he covers by observing that the similar stage of development of the states of Europe at that time, together with the policy of balance, permitted the preservation of a fairly stable system of independent states that has lasted until the present: But the advantages possessed by one state were counterbalanced by circumstances favourable to others; and thus prevented any from attaining such superiority as might have been fatal to all. The nations of Europe in that age, as in the present, were like one great family.... There was not among them that wide diversity of character and of genius which, in almost every period of history, hath exalted the Europeans above the inhabitants of the other quarters of the globe, and seems to have destined the one to rule and the others to obey. (R 704) Hume's concern with contemporary policy, and with France, is more conspicuous: Europe has now, for above a century, remained on the defensive against the greatest force that ever, perhaps, was formed by the civil or political combination of mankind. And such is the influence of the maxim here treated of, that tho' that ambitious nation, in the five last general wars, have been victorious in four, and unsuccessful only in one, they have not much enlarged their dominions, nor acquired a total ascendant over EUROPE.... In the last three of these general Hume... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:69 WILLIAM ROBERTSON AND DAVID HUME: THREE LETTERS The relationship between David Hume and his fellow Scottish historian William Robertson has always seemed one-sided. Despite the existence of fifteen letters to Robertson in the standard volumes of Hume's correspondence,1 Hume scholars have long had reason to regret the lack of a single extant letter from Robertson to Hume. None are to be found, for example, where one would most (...) expect them to be — in the Royal Society of Edinburgh, alongside the letters to Hume from various other Moderate clergymen and literati in Robertson's circle, such as Hugh Blair and Adam Ferguson. Fortunately, however, two of Robertson's letters to Hume (numbered II and III below) have now turned up where one would not expect them to be — among Robertson's own correspondence in the Robertson2 Macdonald Papers, National Library of Scotland. They are not mere drafts, such as one is accustomed to find among an author's private papers; rather, they are autograph signed letters that appear to have actually been posted. How and when they found their way back to Robertson's personal papers, and what became of the rest of Robertson's letters to Hume, are questions open to speculation. For the moment we are grateful for the letters we now have, neither of which is known to have been published before in whole or in part. Nor has Hume been identified before as the recipient of either of these letters, though internal evidence makes it clear that he was. Both letters date from the late 1760s, when Hume was living in London and Robertson was at the peak of his multi-faceted career in Edinburgh as university principal, parish minister, ecclesiastical leader, and man of letters. The first of them, dated 27 March 1767, was sent to Hume in his capacity as under- 70 secretary of state in the Northern Department (an office he held from February 1767 to January 1768). It is plainly a reply to a letter of 19 March, in which Hume had discussed three topics to which Robertson was 5 responding: Robertson's efforts to secure a military chaplaincy for a certain Scottish minister (evidently named Brodie); Conway's role in the famous dispute between Hume and Rousseau; and the public response to Adam Ferguson's newly published Essay on the History of Civil Society. In addition Robertson addresses a matter that Hume had apparently broached with him at some earlier time: the attempt to find a suitable Scottish church to which Hume might obtain a crown presentation for his nephews' tutor, the Rev. Christopher Tait. The letter concludes on a note of admiration that is characteristic not only of Robertson but of most of Hume's other "Protestant Pastors" in Scotland. The second letter to Hume, dated 31 January 1769, is chiefly concerned with the forthcoming publication of Robertson's History of Charles V and the French translation of it by J.-B.-A. Suard — subjects that had been treated in two letters from Hume to 7 Robertson of autumn 1768. It also contains a strong recommendation for a bright young Scottish writer (in both the legal and literary senses of that term) who would one day become Robertson's most vitriolic critic: Gilbert Stuart. On the personal side, there is encouragement for the now unemployed Hume to return to Edinburgh, as he was then threatening to do, after his "great glut of society" at Paris and London, and there are allusions in the closing paragraph to Hume's part in introducing his friend to polite society when Robertson had visited London to arrange the publication of Charles V in the spring of 1768. 71 To these two letters from Robertson we have prefixed a third from earlier in the same decade, one Q not actually addressed to Hume but largely about him. Robertson wrote it to their common friend Gilbert Elliot (later Sir Gilbert Elliot) on 8 March 1762, two days before the Town Council elected Robertson principal of Edinburgh University. The first paragraph deals with the principalship and relates to Hume only indirectly, as we point out in a footnote. The second paragraph, however, contains interesting... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:69 WILLIAM ROBERTSON AND DAVID HUME: THREE LETTERS The relationship between David Hume and his fellow Scottish historian William Robertson has always seemed one-sided. Despite the existence of fifteen letters to Robertson in the standard volumes of Hume's correspondence,1 Hume scholars have long had reason to regret the lack of a single extant letter from Robertson to Hume. None are to be found, for example, where one would most (...) expect them to be — in the Royal Society of Edinburgh, alongside the letters to Hume from various other Moderate clergymen and literati in Robertson's circle, such as Hugh Blair and Adam Ferguson. Fortunately, however, two of Robertson's letters to Hume (numbered II and III below) have now turned up where one would not expect them to be — among Robertson's own correspondence in the Robertson2 Macdonald Papers, National Library of Scotland. They are not mere drafts, such as one is accustomed to find among an author's private papers; rather, they are autograph signed letters that appear to have actually been posted. How and when they found their way back to Robertson's personal papers, and what became of the rest of Robertson's letters to Hume, are questions open to speculation. For the moment we are grateful for the letters we now have, neither of which is known to have been published before in whole or in part. Nor has Hume been identified before as the recipient of either of these letters, though internal evidence makes it clear that he was. Both letters date from the late 1760s, when Hume was living in London and Robertson was at the peak of his multi-faceted career in Edinburgh as university principal, parish minister, ecclesiastical leader, and man of letters. The first of them, dated 27 March 1767, was sent to Hume in his capacity as under- 70 secretary of state in the Northern Department (an office he held from February 1767 to January 1768). It is plainly a reply to a letter of 19 March, in which Hume had discussed three topics to which Robertson was 5 responding: Robertson's efforts to secure a military chaplaincy for a certain Scottish minister (evidently named Brodie); Conway's role in the famous dispute between Hume and Rousseau; and the public response to Adam Ferguson's newly published Essay on the History of Civil Society. In addition Robertson addresses a matter that Hume had apparently broached with him at some earlier time: the attempt to find a suitable Scottish church to which Hume might obtain a crown presentation for his nephews' tutor, the Rev. Christopher Tait. The letter concludes on a note of admiration that is characteristic not only of Robertson but of most of Hume's other "Protestant Pastors" in Scotland. The second letter to Hume, dated 31 January 1769, is chiefly concerned with the forthcoming publication of Robertson's History of Charles V and the French translation of it by J.-B.-A. Suard — subjects that had been treated in two letters from Hume to 7 Robertson of autumn 1768. It also contains a strong recommendation for a bright young Scottish writer (in both the legal and literary senses of that term) who would one day become Robertson's most vitriolic critic: Gilbert Stuart. On the personal side, there is encouragement for the now unemployed Hume to return to Edinburgh, as he was then threatening to do, after his "great glut of society" at Paris and London, and there are allusions in the closing paragraph to Hume's part in introducing his friend to polite society when Robertson had visited London to arrange the publication of Charles V in the spring of 1768. 71 To these two letters from Robertson we have prefixed a third from earlier in the same decade, one Q not actually addressed to Hume but largely about him. Robertson wrote it to their common friend Gilbert Elliot (later Sir Gilbert Elliot) on 8 March 1762, two days before the Town Council elected Robertson principal of Edinburgh University. The first paragraph deals with the principalship and relates to Hume only indirectly, as we point out in a footnote. The second paragraph, however, contains interesting... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Narrative, Interpretation, and Plagiarism in Mr. Robertson's 1778 History of Ancient GreeceGiovanna CeseraniDays after the successful debut of his History of Scotland in 1759, Dr. William Robertson was busy consulting his friends about what project to undertake next. David Hume solicitously responded by expressing doubts about two of the possible topics—the age of Pope Leo Xth and the Emperor Charles Vth. The first would be difficult because it (...) would require the understanding of that age's "great Works of Sculpture, Architecture, Painting," while attaining the "competent Knowledge... requird of the State & Constitution of the Empire," including numerous European countries, necessary to carry out the second project "would be the Work of half a Life." Rather Hume recommended "the ancient History, particularly that of Greece": "I think," he wrote, "Rollin's Success might encourage you, nor need you be in the least intimidated by his Merit. That Author has no other Merit, but a certain Facility & Sweetness of Narration; but has loaded his Work with fifty Puerilities."1 Yet, after considering further the excellent historical narratives that survived from antiquity, Hume feared that they could indeed turn into a disadvantage for the aspiring modern historian: "For what can you do in most places with these Authors, but transcribe & translate them? No Letters or State Papers from which you coud correct their Errors, or authenticate their Narration, or supply their Defects. Besides, Rollin is so well wrote with respect to Style, that with superficial people it passes for sufficient." On the whole he thought, however, that a "History of Greece till the death of Philip... would be successful, notwithstanding all these discouraging Circumstances. The Subject is noble, & Rollin is by no means equal to it."2 [End Page 413]Despite his friend's advice, Robertson went on to write what became his most successful work, the History of the Reign of Charles V (1769), but Hume's letters are nevertheless revealing.3 Hume's acute concern with publishing success speaks, on the one hand, to his lifelong economic struggle, but also of the flourishing market for history books in his times, on which, before the professionalization of the discipline, authors more and more came to rely in lieu of the literary patronage of earlier times.4 But the issue of the status of the historian was more than an institutional one for Hume's contemporaries. While the classical model of the historian as political man writing history in his retirement from public life was in sharp decline, a clear successor was still to follow. As Pocock puts it: would one who studied, edited, or rewrote past history be an historian at all?5 Hume's concern with historical authority and his consciousness of the difference between a narrative based on experience, in the Thucydidean mode as he would have understood it, and one based on authorities, is clear in his letter advising Gibbon to transform the Decline and Fall's endnotes into footnotes.6 Hume's letters to Robertson show again this concern developed in parallel to a philosophical preference for manners over details of action, human explanations rather than divine ones. From this perspective he found "puerile" the French Jansenist educator Charles Rollin, who in the preface to his Histoire Ancienne (1730–38) set out the goal to reveal the design of divine Providence within human history and whose work was dominated by a moralistic reading of the past.7Hume's reflections and concerns neatly fit the influential interpretation that, more than half a century ago, Arnaldo Momigliano formulated for the genealogy of modern Western historiography. As Momigliano saw it, modern history developed precisely out of the eighteenth-century convergence of traditional historical narrative—what used to be linear accounts of mostly political events—and antiquarian research—scholarship traditionally devoted to systematic treatment of a variety of subjects that relied on the skills of paleography, epigraphy and the interpretation of archaeological material.8 This process—culminating with Gibbon—presupposed the philosophical shift of the age: "what used to be secondary becomes primary. What used to be primary—wars and dynasties—becomes secondary."9 Recent research has since [End Page 414] expanded the Momigliano's formula—this... (shrink)

In his Philosophical Inquiry concerning Human Liberty (1717), the English deist Anthony Collins proposed a complete determinist account of the human mind and action, partly inspired by his mentor Locke, but also by elements from Bayle, Leibniz and other Continental sources. It is a determinism which does not neglect the question of the specific status of the mind but rather seeks to provide a causal account of mental activity and volition in particular; it is a ‘volitional determinism’. Some decades later, (...) Diderot articulates a very similar determinism, which seeks to recognize the existence of “causes proper to man” (as he says in the Réfutation d’Helvétius). The difference with Collins is that now biological factors are being taken into account. Obviously both the ‘volitional’ and the ‘biological’ forms of determinism are noteworthy inasmuch as they change our picture of the nature of determinism itself, but my interest here is to compare these two determinist arguments, both of which are broadly Spinozist in nature – and as such belong to what Jonathan Israel called in his recent book “the radical Enlightenment,” i.e. a kind of underground Enlightenment constituted by Spinozism – and to see how Collins’ specifically psychological vision and Diderot’s specifically biological vision correspond to their two separate national contexts: determinism in France in the mid-1750s was a much more medico-biological affair than English determinism, which appears to be on a ‘path’ leading to Mill and associationist psychology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.2 (2002) 261-282 [Access article in PDF] The "Progress of Ambition": Character, Narrative, and Philosophy in the Works of William Robertson Neil Hargraves In his biography of William Robertson, Dugald Stewart claimed that by "few writers of the present age has [the] combination of philosophy with history been more often attempted than by Dr. Robertson; and by none have the inconveniences which it (...) threatens been more successfully avoided." 1 At first sight Stewart's assertion seems puzzling. Arnaldo Momigliano considered Robertson to be less successful than Edward Gibbon in his integration of the three elements of eighteenth-century historical writing, philosophy, narrative, and erudition. 2 Despite Robertson's stated belief that "arrangement" was the principal task of the historian, his organizational framework appeared to foster separation rather than integration. 3 Thus, his central work, The History of the Reign of Charles V (1769), is divided into three discrete parts. An apparently conventional narrative of high politics and diplomacy is prefaced by an essay on medieval Europe, A View of the Progress of Society in Europe, which was regarded by his contemporaries as a classic of "philosophical" history, 4 while [End Page 261] Robertson appended to both copious "Proofs and Illustrations." The structure of The History of America (1777) is even less integrated, despite criticalpraise of its "regular plan... complete narration and perfect whole." 5 To other critics his interpolation of dissertations upon the "condition and character" of the Americans, Mexicans, and Peruvians, seemed to sever the thread of the narrative and consequently to break up the unity of the work. 6 Yet as this paper will seek to demonstrate, there was a vital connection between the narrative and "philosophical" components of Robertson's major histories: the theoretical dissertations served recognizably narrative purposes. The bridge between them lies in the complex notion of character created by the expansion of historical forms in the eighteenth century."Philosophical" history defined itself in opposition to the vacuities and muddles of conventional political-diplomatic historical narrative. Its advantages over narrative were various: the revelation of general rather than particular causes, grounding the history on more certain and less random principles: 7 the penetration of causes "insensible" and invisible to the eyes of a careless observer, obscured by the "great theatre of the world"; 8 a broadening of the subject-matter, away from the mere rehearsal of the struggles between crown and nobility or fixation with constitution and government, towards a more inclusive and heterogeneous history of "manners, including arts, sciences, society" and what today would be termed "mentalities," and, related to the last point, a principle of organization that would reduce the apparent chaos and multiplicity of the past to a simple and luminous plan of arrangement. 9 This was the most exacting requirement for the philosophical historian. As a critic wrote of Robertson's View, its value lay most in its "vast and magnificent plan... that profound and easy art of classing [facts], in such a manner that... the accumulated multiplicity of events is gradually reduced to a small number." It [End Page 262] required a more "elevated view... above all discussions and disputes." 10 Philosophic history aimed to strip away the illusion of appearances and substitute an unseen but more regular and systematic history. In its more ambitious formulations it aimed not simply at a universal history of mankind but at no less than a "history of the human mind": an attempt to explain through historical description the enormous gulf that separated modern man from his savage ancestor. As Robertson himself famously declared in Book IV of America, In order to complete the history of the human mind, and attain to a perfect knowledge of its nature and operations, we must contemplate man in all those various situations wherein he has been placed. We must follow him in his progress through the different stages of society, as he gradually advances from the infant state of civil life towards its maturity and decline. (VIII, 49-50) This was a history of progress... (shrink)

It is well-known that naïve realism has difficulty accommodating perceptual error. Recent discussion of the issue has focused on whether the naïve realist can accommodate hallucination by adopting disjunctivism. However, illusions are more difficult for the naïve realist to explain precisely because the disjunctivist solution is not available. I discuss what I take to be the two most plausible accounts of illusion available to the naïve realist. The first claims that illusions are cases in which you are prevented from perceiving (...) properties you would ordinarily perceive and subsequently form a mistaken judgment about the perceived object. The second appeals to an unusual look or appearance that the perceived object instantiates. I argue that neither account is satisfactory and that, consequently, naïve realism ought to be rejected. (shrink)

The present edition provides a detailed and accessible discussion ofhis theories and adds an account of the immediate responses to the book on publication.

Virtually every aspect of the current philosophical discussion of self-deception is a matter of controversy including its definition and paradigmatic cases. We may say generally, however, that self-deception is the acquisition and maintenance of a belief (or, at least, the avowal of that belief) in the face of strong evidence to the contrary motivated by desires or emotions favoring the acquisition and retention of that belief. Beyond this, philosophers divide over whether this action is intentional or not, whether self-deceivers recognize (...) the belief being acquired is unwarranted on the available evidence, whether self-deceivers are morally responsible for their self-deception, and whether self-deception is morally problematic (and if it is in what ways and under what circumstances). The discussion of self-deception and its associated puzzles gives us insight into the ways in which motivation affects belief acquisition and retention. And yet insofar as self-deception represents an obstacle to self-knowledge, which has potentially serious moral implications, self-deception is more than an interesting philosophical puzzle. It is a problem of particular concern for moral development, since self-deception can make us strangers to ourselves and blind to our own moral failings. (shrink)

At the very beginning of L’Homme-Machine, La Mettrie claims that Leibnizians with their monads have “rather spiritualized matter than materialized the soul”; a few years later Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, President of the Berlin Academy of Sciences and natural philosopher with a strong interest in the modes of transmission of ‘genetic’ information, conceived of living minima which he termed molecules, “endowed with desire, memory and intelligence,” in his Système de la nature ou Essai sur les corps organisés. This text first (...) appeared in Latin in 1751 under the title Dissertatio inauguralis metaphysica de universali naturae systemate, with the pseudonym Dr Baumann; it was translated by Maupertuis in 1754 as Essai sur la formation des corps organisés and was later included in his 1756 Œuvres under the title Système de la nature. Now, it is clear that Maupertuis was a kind of Leibnizian; and that his molecule possessed higher-level, ‘mental’ properties. In that sense he falls under the first category described by La Mettrie. But he was also involved in a debate on this issue with Diderot, who put forth a sustained critique of Maupertuis’ theory of the molecule in the additions to his 1753 Pensées sur l’interprétation de la nature. Where Maupertuis attributes higher-level properties to his living minima, Diderot argues that these properties are ‘organizational’, i.e., they can only be properties of the whole. At issue here is the degree of commitment to a form of materialism. (shrink)