Abstract

A Cultivated Reason is an intriguing book. Everyone who thinks she understands Hume or is pretty sure that she doesn't should read it. It is elegantly written, informal and illuminating. It does take patience however, partly because its organization is idiosyncratic and sometimes confusing. Williams combines exegesis of Humean texts—the Treatise, the two Enquiries, and the Essays—with the defense of a view that he calls "nonrationalism." This wide-ranging theory stakes claims in ontology, theory of knowledge, ethics, aesthetics, and in the broader issue of how philosophical reflection is related to the concerns of everyday life. Williams endorses nonrationalism and believes that Hume is its progenitor; for almost every nonrationalist thesis, Williams finds a Humean precedent. Here he goes against the tradition in which the explication des textes requires the explicator to keep his own theoretical commitments in the background. Williams does not do this and thus he aligns himself with philosophically sophisticated commentators—David Pears, Robert Fogelin, and Barry Stroud are examples—who are explicit and candid about where they stand. As a consequence of Williams's procedure, the reader is often at a loss to know whether a particular thesis is being ascribed to Hume or whether the author is trying in a Humean spirit to advance the nonrationalist cause. There do seem to be significant differences, for example, the nonrationalist does not countenance the gap that was important to Hume between the "is" and the "ought." So if you object or disagree, you don't know where to complain.