In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Editors’ IntroductionElizabeth S. Radcliffe and Mark G. SpencerThis issue opens with the winning essay in the Third Annual Hume Studies Essay Prize competition: “Hume beyond Theism and Atheism” by Dr. Ariel Peckel. Dr. Peckel’s essay was chosen as the winner from among papers submitted by emerging scholars from August 2022 through July 2023. Please see the full prize announcement with information about this talented Hume scholar elsewhere in this (...) issue. Our Call for Papers for the Fourth Essay Prize competition is printed in the back of this issue and on-line at the Hume Studies website. The contest is open to authors ten or fewer years from the Ph.D. and closes on August 1, 2024. If you are eligible, please consult our “Call” for further details!In other Hume Studies news, we have once again acquired a new printer. Christensen Printing (Lincoln, Nebraska), whose work for us was excellent, suddenly closed its business when its owner retired this past year and had no one to succeed him. We received the news just when our November issue was ready to go to press. With the assistance of our friends at the Philosophy Documentation Center, we obtained estimates from three printers and have now engaged Bailey Printing in Charlottesville, Virginia. Our November issue was published on-line by November 1 (at the Philosophy Documentation Center website, the Project Muse website, and the Hume Society website), but the print issue took longer to get to subscribers.For a second time, we want to bring to the attention of our readers that Hume Studies will be marking its 50th year of publication in 2025. As we have previously noted, we are planning an anniversary issue for 50:1 (April 2025). We hope to include among the special features of that issue paragraphs or statements from our readers in answer to this query: “Of all of the articles that have been published in [End Page 7] Hume Studies over the past 50 years, which one is most noteworthy to you? Why so?” Please see the “Call for Entries” in the back of this issue or on the Hume Studies website (https://www.humesociety.org/ojs/index.php/hs), which includes details on where to send your response. The due date is October 15, 2024, but we encourage you to send your entries as soon as possible! [End Page 8]Copyright © 2024 Hume Studies... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Editors’ IntroductionElizabeth S. Radcliffe and Mark G. SpencerThis issue opens with the winning essay in the Second Annual Hume Studies Essay Prize competition: “Hume’s Passion-Based Account of Moral Responsibility,” by Taro Okamura. Dr. Okamura’s essay was chosen as the 2022 winner from among papers submitted by emerging scholars from August 2021 through July 2022. Dr. Okamura received his Ph.D. from the University of Alberta in 2022. He is currently (...) a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Research Fellow at the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology at the University of Tokyo.The competition for the Third Prize closed on August 1, 2023, and the winner will be announced in our next issue. Please see the Call for Papers for the fourth competition in the back of this issue. The competition is open to authors ten or fewer years from the Ph.D.A special aspect of our current issue is its spotlight on Hume’s Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary. Renowned Dutch Enlightenment scholar, Frederic L. van Holthoon, presents his analysis of some of Hume’s essays, which he argues constitute Hume’s project of writing on political, or public, issues—a goal he did not get to complete with the Treatise. Also, established Hume scholar Lorne Falkenstein offers an extended review of the newly published Clarendon edition of Hume’s essays, in two volumes (edited by Tom L. Beauchamp and Mark A. Box, with Michael Silverthorne, J. A. W. Gunn, and F. David Harvey).Finally, we want to bring to the attention of our readers that, in fewer than two years, Hume Studies will be marking the 50th anniversary of its first publication. For this event, we are planning a special jubilee issue, 50:1 (April 2025). We hope to include among the unique features of that issue paragraphs or statements from our readers in answer to this query: “Of all of the articles that have been published in Hume Studies over the past 50 years, which one is most noteworthy to you? Why so?” Please see the “Call for Entries” in the back of this issue and on the Hume Studies website. We invite your responses! [End Page 193]Copyright © 2023 Hume Studies... (shrink)

Hume’s History of England has received a good deal of attention over the years, but no one has ever systematically studied his sources.1 Instead, scholars have worried about Hume’s biases, his portraits of figures like Charles I, and his alleged scorn for mere antiquarianism, which resulted in a readable but superficial history. The most exciting monograph dealing with his History of England in recent years sees it as a step in the process which led to nineteenth-century historicism. Others have seen (...) him in the context of narrativity but have paid little attention to the sources of the facts worked into that... (shrink)

Utilitarian ideas in nineteenth-centuryAmerica have been given short shrift inmodern historical and philosophicalscholarship. Collecting the relevant publishedwork together in one place is an essentialstarting point for any serious investigation of American utilitarians andtheir critics. James Crimmins and Mark Spencer have made an expertselection from scattered sources of around 60 important articles andessays. These include treatments of Bentham by his friend John Neal,editor of The Yankee, and commentaries on John Stuart Mill gatheredfrom rare American journals. There are also discussions of utilitarianjurisprudence (...) by the great American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, andpieces by many other writers. This collection, with its substantialeditorial introduction, will be vital reading for historians of ideas,scholars of philosophy and political thought, and any one elseinterested in the fate of utilitarianism in America. (shrink)

Recent years have witnessed a renewed scholarly interest in David Hume’s History of England (1754–1762), and this essay adds to that interest by analyzing the sources that Hume used in the History. Unfortunately, Hume did not provide a bibliography or guide to those sources, and no scholar has produced one since. We have been preparing a bibliography for publication and the following essay is a preliminary view of some of what it will show. It demonstrates that Hume consulted and used (...) more varied sources, and used them in more skillful ways, than commonly has been assumed. (shrink)

This is our initial issue as co-editors of Hume Studies. We thank our predecessors, Ann Levey, Karl Schafer, and Amy M. Schmitter, for their years of editorial oversight and for their assistance in the transition. Some of the papers they began shepherding through the editorial process will be appearing in our issues.Regular readers of the journal will notice that volume 46 is dated 2020, while this first issue of volume 47 is dated April 2022. The journal has been behind the (...) calendar for many years and catching up is essential. So, the Hume Society Executive Committee and the Hume Studies Editorial Board approved a proposal to advance the publication cover date to the current date. Subscribers will of course be... (shrink)

This issue of Hume Studies opens with the winner of the inaugural Hume Studies Essay Prize, Aaron Alexander Zubia’s excellent essay, “Hume’s Transformation of Academic Skepticism.” The Prize was awarded this past year in a competition among contending papers submitted from January 1 through August 1, 2021.The Hume Studies Essay Prize is an annual award in the amount of $1,000 US made possible by the support of the Hume Society. The Essay Prize is an ongoing competition for those who submit (...) papers to Hume Studies and are ten or fewer years from receiving the Ph.D., including current graduate students. Entries for the second prize closed on August 1, 2022. Papers submitted before that date are undergoing the usual... (shrink)

We are pleased to say that Hume Studies has awarded its second annual Essay Prize, with an announcement featured in this issue. The winning paper will be published in November 2023 (Hume Studies 48:2). We thank the members of the 2022–23 Prize Committee, who are acknowledged in the announcement. Please see the Call for Papers for the Third Annual Essay Prize on page 189 of this issue.Along with five original articles and three book reviews, our current issue features a symposium (...) on Margaret Watkins’s book, The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s “Essays” (Cambridge University Press, 2019). The symposium is a development from an Author-Meets-Critics panel that was held at the 47th Hume Society Conference, sponsored by... Read More. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume 29, Number 1, April 2003, pp. 89-98 Another "Curious Legend" about Hume's An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature MARK G. SPENCER I In 1938, J. M. Keynes and P. Sraffa edited and introduced for Cambridge University Press a reprinting of An Abstract of A Treatise of Human Nature.1 The Abstract they claimed in their subtitle was "A Pamphlet hitherto unknown by DAVID HUME." Arguing (...) against a number of nineteenth and early-twentieth -century scholars who attributed authorship of an abstract of the Treatise to Adam Smith, Keynes and Sraffa convincingly documented in their introductory essay many solid reasons for thinking that the pamphlet being reprinted was Hume's.2 Sixty years on, their account dispelling this "curious legend" of Smith's authorship has now become the received opinion. T.E. Jessop accepted Keynes and Sraffa's argument (having seen it in proof before the edition was published) in his bibliography of 1938, and Norman Kemp Smith gave their version an early supportive review.3 E.C. Mossner, in his well-known biography of Hume, accepted wholeheartedly Keynes and Sraffa's findings.4 When in 1978 the Selby-Bigge's edition of Hume's Treatise saw its second edition the text of the Abstract was appended and a note gave P.H. Nidditch's opinion that "Hume's authorship is overwhelmingly likely."5 More recently Mark G. Spencer is Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of History, University of Toronto. Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St. George St., Toronto, Ontario MSS 3GS, Canada. [email protected] 90 Mark G. Spencer in the pages of this journal, Jeff Broome, David Raynor, and David Fate Norton have all helped buttress the case for Hume's authorship, as did R. W. Connon and M. Pollard elsewhere.6 Despite an occasional dissenting voice,7 the Abstract is now widely, and rightly (or so it seems to this author), thought to have been Hume's. But with all of this scholarly attention focused on confirming Hume's authorship, another much more contentious aspect of Keynes and Sraffa's interpretation has gone largely unnoticed. Keynes and Sraffa's billing of the Abstract as "A Pamphlet hitherto unknown by DAVID HUME," suggested that before 1938 the Abstract had not been attributed publicly to Hume and that the contents of the pamphlet also had been completely unknown. "Students of Hume have known that an abstract of the Treatise was made and intended for publication," wrote a reviewer of Keynes and Sraffa, "[b]ut no copy of this abstract was known to exist: indeed it was usually supposed that the abstract had never been printed at all."8 Relying on Keynes and Sraffa it would be easy to suppose that the Abstract was never publicly ascribed to Hume and even that the contents of the pamphlet had been overlooked entirely until Keynes and Sraffa came along. One of the purposes of the present short essay is to dispel, once and for all, that misunderstanding about the Abstract. Norman Kemp Smith went part of the way toward that end in 1938 when he reviewed Keynes and Sraffa's edition. But in the process Kemp Smith introduced another "curious legend" that has slipped into scholarly acceptance with little comment and no debate. We will see that it is a mistake to argue, as Kemp Smith did, that Hume's authorship of a sixpenny pamphlet was known to readers of An universal biographical and historical dictionary, published in 1800. There is no discussion of Hume's Abstract in that book. However, the Abstract was discussed in print in at least three different publications between 1818 and 1827, long after its initial publication in 1740 and long before Keynes and Sraffa brought it to the attention of their audience in 1938. While pre-1938 Hume scholars had overlooked the Abstract, at least one of Hume's early nineteenth-century critics knew of the Abstract's existence, attributed the work to Hume, and even quoted extensively from Hume's "Preface." Most interesting of all, Hume's authorship of the Abstract was interpreted in ways that are telling of the historical reception of... (shrink)

They say you can’t judge a book by its cover. If that is right, it really is too bad in the case of Andrew Sabl’s Hume’s Politics. It is too bad because the reviewer’s job would be exceedingly easy, and very pleasant. By any measure this book has a strikingly fine cover. Its image is drawn from John Byam Liston Shaw’s depiction of Queen Mary and Princess Elizabeth entering London in 1553. Hume’s interpretation of Elizabeth I plays a prominent role (...) in Hume’s Politics, so I will come back to her. But first, looking beneath the cover, what else does Sabl’s book yield?The short answer is that it yields plenty. There are several important points being... (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.

This study takes as its point of departure a question posed by Francis Hutcheson in An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, an important text of the Scottish Enlightenment. Hutcheson asked: “Whence arises this Love of Esteem, or Benevolence, to good Men, or to Mankind in general, if not from some nice Views of Self-Interest?” . As will be well known to readers of this journal, Hutcheson in his answer pointed to the workings of a (...) “moral sense,” arguing: “The Universality of this moral Sense, and that it is antecedent to Instruction, may appear from observing the Sentiments of Children, upon hearing the Storys with which they are commonly entertain’d as soon as they understand Language. They always passionately interest themselves on that side where Kindness and Humanity are found; and detest the Cruel, the Covetous, the Selfish, or the Treacherous. How strongly do we see their Passions of Joy, Sorrow, Love, and Indignation, mov’d by these moral Representations, even tho there has been no pains taken to give them Ideas of a Deity, of Laws, of a future State, or of the more intricate Tendency of the universal Good to that of each Individual!”. (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 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 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)

America’s Philosopher tells the story of English writer John Locke’s (1632–1704) American reception, from his time till ours. The ‘intellectual life’ of the volume’s sub-title is understood broadly...

This gracefully written and ably-researched book explores historical writing in Britain in the last half of the eighteenth and the first quarter of the nineteenth centuries. Readers of this journal, however, may be most interested to know that it is also a book in which Hume figures prominently. One of Phillip’s most involved subtexts aims to explain how it was that Hume, the celebrated historian of the eighteenth century, fell from grace in the nineteenth century.

This study takes as its point of departure a question posed by Francis Hutcheson in An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, an important text of the Scottish Enlightenment. Hutcheson asked: “Whence arises this Love of Esteem, or Benevolence, to good Men, or to Mankind in general, if not from some nice Views of Self-Interest?”. As will be well known to readers of this journal, Hutcheson in his answer pointed to the workings of a “moral (...) sense,” arguing: “The Universality of this moral Sense, and that it is antecedent to Instruction, may appear from observing the Sentiments of Children, upon hearing the Storys with which they are commonly entertain’d as soon as they understand Language. They always passionately interest themselves on that side where Kindness and Humanity are found; and detest the Cruel, the Covetous, the Selfish, or the Treacherous. How strongly do we see their Passions of Joy, Sorrow, Love, and Indignation, mov’d by these moral Representations, even tho there has been no pains taken to give them Ideas of a Deity, of Laws, of a future State, or of the more intricate Tendency of the universal Good to that of each Individual!”. (shrink)

This brief book aims to “show an alliance between history and philosophy in Hume’s thought”. Six of its eight chapters are revised essays, published originally in academic journals from 1975 to 1996. These essays are sometimes insightful on the links between Hume’s philosophical and historical thought. But the book’s episodic and disparate origins remain discernible in the finished text, producing uneven results.