Signatures and Taste: Hume’s Mortal Leavings and Lucian

Abstract

In his introduction to his collection of David Hume’s essays, Alasdair MacIntyre writes what surely wins the palm for an introductory first sentence to a book collection: “An introduction should introduce.”2 The point is elegant and MacIntyre is compelled to explain: “It should not be an attempt at a substitute for the book it is introducing.” In the essayistic case of David Hume’s essays, and collections of the same, of which there are a number, Hume’s essays speak for themselves, that is to say, apart from an ’advertisement,’ without an editor’s introduction. Additionally, there is a tradition of scholarly reflection on Hume’s essays as such. The current collection adds to this and hopes to inspire reflection on what is arguably the most exceptional of Hume’s essays. “Of the Standard of Taste” was written to avoid damages threatened in response to the planned publication of Hume’s Five Dissertations (a book including: “The Natural History of Religion,” “Of the Passions,” “Of Tragedy,” “Of Suicide,” and “Of the Immortality of the Soul”). The threats were promised by William Warburton (1698– 1779), the influential theologian who subsequently