Hume and the Enlightenment

223 Pages·1974·10.758 MB·English

by  William B. Todd

HUME AND THE
ENLIGHTENMENT

HUME AND THE
I
ENLIGHTENMENT
ESSAYS
PRESENTED TO
Ernest
Campbell
Mossner
EDITED BY
WILLIAM B.TODD
EDINBURGH
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
AUSTIN
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS
HUMANITIES
RESEARCH
CENTER
*
Universities of Edinburgh and Texas 1974
EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS
22 George Square, Edinburgh
ISBN o 85224 277 8
Elumanities Research Center, Texas
ISBN o 87959 005 5
Library of Congress
Catalog Card Number 74—84715
Printed in Great Britain by
Western Printing Services Ltd, Bristol
Preface
It IS ESPECIALLY appropriate that this volume,
honouring Ernest Campbell Mossner, should be issued
under the auspices both of Edinburgh University and
of the University of Texas, the two locales perhaps
most often associated, the one with the early time, the
other with the later reputation of David Hume. We
will remember that twenty years ago Professor Moss-
ner’s Life of Hume appeared in both places; and more
recently some of us will recall the rumour that there
was at Austin, as there is in Edinburgh, a ‘School of
Scottish Studies’ or some kind of ‘David Hume Tower’.
Indeed there is all this, essentially, all reposing in the
life and achievements of the scholar we now salute.
The writers of these essays have endeavoured to
present whatever new interpretations or original
material may have concerned Le Bon David. Like the
philosopher, and like his biographer, they have ranged
far in their pursuits, here back to the age of Plato and
Aristotle and forward to the era of Wittgenstein. To¬
gether with their colleagues everywhere they thus
would express, in this tribute to Professor Mossner,
their own sense of what the Enlightenment still means
in these our darker days.
W.B.T. 26 April 1974
*
237484
Contents
p. viii Abbreviations
1 The Misunderstood Hume
T. E. Jessop, University of Hull
14 Hume’s Critique of Ethical Rationalism
D. D. Raphael, Imperial College, University of London
50 Hume on Separating the Inseparable
Stanley Tweyman, York University, Ontario
43 Kant and Hume on Reason and Experience in Ethics
Philip P. Wiener, Temple University, Pennsylvania
52 Michotte and Hume on Mechanical Causation
D. G. C. Macnabb, Pembroke College, Oxford
60 Philosophy and Fiction. The Challenge of David Hume
Ian Ross, University of Rritish Columbia
72 Linguistic Analysis as Rhetorical Pattern in David Hume
Michael Morris roe Jr, John Marshall Law School, Chicago
83 Hume’s Argument from Design
Richard S. Peters, University of London
99 Hume and Isaac de Pinto, 11. Five New Letters
Richard H. Popkin, Washington University, Missouri
128 Hume and Nancy Orde. Three New Letters
John Valdimir Price, University of Edinburgh
136 Concepts and Meaning
Geoffrey Hunter, University of St Andrews
153 Was Berkeley a Precursor of Wittgenstein?
Antony Flew, University of Reading
164 Adam Smith. Science and the Role of the Imagination
Andrew S. Skinner, University of Glasgow
189 David Hume. A Preliminary Bibliography
William B. Todd, University of Texas
206 Ernest Campbell Mossner.
Published Writings
Works directed at the University of Texas
212 Index
Abbreviations
Hume’s Life and Works
Dialogues Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. Norman
Kemp Smith, Edinburgh and London 1947
Enquiries Enquiries Concerning the Human Understanding and
Concerning the Principles of Morals,
ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, Oxford 1946
Letters The Letters, ed. J. Y.T. Greig, 2 vols, Oxford 1932
Life Ernest C. Mossner The Life of David Hume,
Edinburgh and Austin 1954
Treatise A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Ernest C. Mossner,
London (Penguin Books) 1969
Other References
BL British Library (formerly designated British Museum)
EHR English Historical Review
JEGP Journal of English and Germanic Philology
JHI Journal of the History of Ideas
MLN Modern Ijanguage Notes
PBSA Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America
PMLA Publications of the Modern Language
Association of America
PQ Philological Quarterly
R.S.E. Royal Society of Edinburgh
TSLL Texas Studies in Literature and Language
T. E. JESSOP 1
The Misunderstood Hume
APHlLOSOPHERMAYbe misunderstood if he writes badly—this can¬
not be said of Hume 5 or if he is unusually profound — but acuteness
rather than profundity was Hume’s characteristic. Or he may be mis¬
understood if his texts are treated as entirely objective propositions to be
studied merely by formal and empirical logic, with little if any consider¬
ation of the particular mind and course of life of the man who thought
them out, only the printed words counting 5 or if only one or two of his
range of writings be fastened on, the rest being virtually ignored. It is,
I think, in these last two ways that Hume has been prevalently mis¬
understood. In particular he has by many been reduced to a label or a
standard-bearer for a cause, for subjective positivism, exponents and
opponents alike narrowing the approach to this issue. The purpose of
this paper is to plead for and illustrate a much wider approach. Such an
intention will be congenial to the distinguished man of letters whom
this volume is celebrating, for the breadth and tenacity of his interest
have been extraordinary.
The Dehumanised Hume
It is possible to come to grips with Kant without having to read the early
biographies by Borowski, Jachmann, and Wasianski, all published in the
year of his death ( 1804), or the modern one in English by the American
J. H. W. Stuckenberg (London 1882). It is possible because, tied to East
Prussia, his life was almost devoid of meaningful incident: the French
scholar Emile Faguet dismissed it with the brilliant epigram ‘Nothing
happened to him except the possession of genius’ and proceeded straight¬
way to the sage’s philosophy. Hume on the contrary did not pass his
years in a study and a lecture-room. How widely and variously he lived,
peppering his years with significant events, has been triumphantly
recorded in Professor Mossner’s Life of David Hume (1954), a monu¬
ment of industrious and percipient research, a handsome tome, yet
scarcely if ever referred to by British philosophers, perhaps on the
quite true ground that biography is not philosophy and on the heartless
ground that it is irrelevant to philosophy.
My first care will be to draw attention to some of the features of
Hume’s national background.
1. A few years of teaching in a Scottish university made me realise
that unless we bear in mind that Hume was a Scot, and an eighteenth-
century one, we shall form only an anaemic idea of him. To risk a banality,
The Misunderstood Hume
2
the Scots are not English. They had checked the Roman expansion
northwards, and for centuries warred against the English. They were a
people apart until 1707, when the two kingdoms of England and Scot¬
land were united as the kingdom of Great Britain, with a single Parlia¬
ment in London. The union seems to have been accepted reluctantly,
and chiefly because of the economic advantage of free access to the
English colonial markets. They retained, and still retain, their national
independence of mind. Hume disliked the English, although during his
visits to London he mixed with them without sourness. With his fellow-
countrymen he spoke the broad Lowland Scots which in vocabulary,
idiom, and pronunciation was mostly unintelligible to the English;1
when with Englishmen he spoke their language with a strong Scottish
accent, which during his stay in Paris he carried into his French. The
Scottish speech is virile, and they are outstandingly a virile people,
splendidly courageous, hardheaded, yet warmhearted and with a deli¬
cious sense of humour.
2. The Scots were and are an intellectual people, even the simple
people being able, at varying levels, to think and talk seriously. The
esteem for education is general and deep. They had a school-system far
earlier than England: by the insistence of the Kirk an act of 1696 re¬
quired every parish to provide a building for a school and a salary for a
schoolmaster. As for higher education, while in the eighteenth century
England had only two universities, Scotland had four—St Andrews
(1411), Aberdeen (14945 two colleges each granting its own degrees
until 1858), Glasgow (1451), and Edinburgh (1582). Although these
were smaller than the English, which were groups of colleges, the dis¬
parity is striking. Scotland had a much smaller population (Hume
reckoned it to be a million and a half) and much less wealth. Their
poverty was not disabling for, as in all else, it was faced robustly. A
large proportion of the students were from poor homes, but were well
prepared in their parish schools. The professions were mostly the minis¬
try of the Church, law, and medicine.
What sort of education did Hume get? His father, a minor country
laird of distinguished descent, died when he was only two years old, so
that he was brought up by his mother, daughter of Sir David Faulkner,
later a Law Lord. Coming from such a family she was competent to
direct her son’s education. Whether she herself taught him, or sent him
to the parish school, or employed a tutor, is not known 5 but there was a
good library in the home, and that he made good use of it is indicated
by his remark in an early letter: ‘From my earliest infancy I found
always a strong inclination to books and letters’ (Letters, i. 13). He
entered Edinburgh University in 1723 at the age of twelve and left it
in 1725 or 1726 without proceeding to a degree, both the early entry
T.E.JESSOP
3
and the early departure being by no means unusual in his day. He was
obliged to attend the courses in Greek, Logic and Metaphysics, and
Natural Philosophy. The medium of instruction was usually Latin.
Which optional courses he took is not recorded. He must have been fre¬
quently aware of the talk among students of the zeal of certain professors
for the study of the English language and literature, and in the field
of Mathematics for the Newtonian Physics. In the latter subject Edin¬
burgh University claims to have been the first university after Cam¬
bridge to make it an important part of a course, which while Hume was
there was conducted by Colin Maclaurin, probably the ablest mathe¬
matician after Newton in eighteenth-century Britain. The Newtonian
strain in Hume’s Treatise (association of ideas as analogous to Newton’s
‘attraction’ ; cf. Book I, Sect. 4 ad finem) may have occurred to him at
that time. The standards set for very young students were doubtless
lower than the present university level, but boys matured sooner then
than now, their intellectual capacity was certainly stimulated, and
Scottish grit kept them on the treadmill after they had finished their
courses, a large proportion of them rising to distinguished careers.
3. The religious and the intellectual attitudes were harnessed to one
another. Calvin had a theology almost as firmly systematised as the
Roman Thomism, with the important difference that it was a matter
not only for the ministers of the Church; for these, while ardently point¬
ing out the implications for conduct, made the theology the framework
and substance of their preaching, in order to inculcate doctrinal ortho¬
doxy, which indeed was not merely imposed on the congregations but was
demanded by them. The layfolk were sufficiently instructed to pounce
on and question any sermonic departure from Calvinist orthodoxy.
Further, as it is but a step from theology to philosophy, something of the
latter crept occasionally into sermons, and would doubtless be amplified
for a poor crofter when his lad, or his neighbour’s lad, came home on
vacation from his university. In these ways philosophy filtered through,
however imperfectly, into the humblest stratum of the Scottish people,
something that never happened in England.2
What is the bearing of this third feature on the understanding of
Hume? Obviously, that one of the reasons why he became a philosopher
is that philosophy was a central part of his nation’s culture, and we know
that of the alternatives, theology, law, and medicine, the first two
repelled him. He apparently made his choice towards the end of his
stay at the university or very soon afterwards. From that time onwai ds
he moved on to a mastery of philosophy, himself his own teacher. The
possession of a degree and a spell of supervised postgraduate study had
not yet become a pre-condition of scholarly status. There was nothing
remarkable in his offering himself as a candidate for the Chair of Moral