This collection of new papers on Scottish philosophy in the age of Hutcheson and Hume pays close attention to the study of context and the use of original historical sources as a key to philosophical interpretation. The book includes revolutionary new research on Hume's early reading in science and religion and its impact of his thought.

There is a theistic argument which is discussed at least twice in the Hume corpus, both times rather perfunctorily. This perfunctoriness has carried over to some of his commentators, who are not always clear as to what the argument is or about the force of Hume’s comments on it. On page 23 of A Letter from a Gentleman to his Friend in Edinburgh Hume calls it “the metaphysical Argument a priori” and in Part 9 of Dialogues concerning Natural Religion simply (...) “the argument a priori”.1 It is the argument of Demea. (shrink)

Since 1999 Thoemmes Press (now Thoemmes Continuum) has been engaged in a large-scale programme of biographical dictionaries of philosophy and related subjects. This volume on Irish philosophers follows the standard format of arranging entires alphabetically by thinker. It includes two forms of entry: (1) entries reproduced from previous editions of Thoemmes encyclopedias of British philosophy and (2) wholly new entries on early (renaissance-period) and_ modern (20th century) philosophers, together with some new entries on the intervening centuries. >.

Investigating key issues in English philosophical, political, and religious thought in the second half of the seventeenth century, this book presents a set of new and intriguing essays on the topics. Particular emphasis is given to the interaction between philosophy and religion among leading political thinkers of the period; connections between philosophical debate on personhood, certainty, and the foundations of faith; and new conceptions of biblical exegesis.

Professor Parkinson in his lecture on ‘The Translation Theory of Understanding’ discusses two stages in the development of a false but influential tradition which he finds common to Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Professor George Steiner's After Babel. He is not, of course, alleging any direct historical influence of the one on the other; neither is he principally addressing Steiner's book as a whole, but rather the account of understanding upon which it appears to be founded. I should like (...) to take his paper as the starting-point for my own, but begin from a somewhat broader view than he does of the legacy of Locke. With Parkinson's constructive position I have no quarrel, and I shall not address myself directly to it. (shrink)

Professor Parkinson in his lecture on ‘The Translation Theory of Understanding’ discusses two stages in the development of a false but influential tradition which he finds common to Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Professor George Steiner's After Babel. He is not, of course, alleging any direct historical influence of the one on the other; neither is he principally addressing Steiner's book as a whole, but rather the account of understanding upon which it appears to be founded. I should like (...) to take his paper as the starting-point for my own, but begin from a somewhat broader view than he does of the legacy of Locke. With Parkinson's constructive position I have no quarrel, and I shall not address myself directly to it. (shrink)

Presenting significant new research on the moral and religious philosophy of David Hume, this volume illustrates the importance of intellectual context in understanding the work and career of one of the most important thinkers of the eighteenth century. Distinctive in its reappraisal of the influence of John Locke, Francis Hutcheson, and others, it examines how Hume reacted to, and in turn affected, other thinkers whose views, like his own, were bound up with specific philosophical, theological, and scientific traditions and commitments. (...) This volume also publishes for the first time in facsimile form the newly discovered fragment on evil. (shrink)