Hume StudiesPub Date : 2024-04-09DOI: 10.1353/hms.2024.a924229
Roger Crisp
{"title":"Hume's Hedonism","authors":"Roger Crisp","doi":"10.1353/hms.2024.a924229","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hms.2024.a924229","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>This paper seeks critically to elucidate Hume’s views on pleasure and the good, in particular his evaluative hedonism, and to show that evaluative hedonism is in certain respects at least as significant a component of his philosophical ethics as sentimentalism. The first section explains his notion of pleasure, and how it is, in an important sense, prior to desire. The following two sections show how this conception of pleasure and its relation to desire leads Hume to accept evaluative hedonism, as well as a form of psychological hedonism, and to give pleasure a key role in his metaethics. The paper ends, as do both the <i>Treatise</i> and the second <i>Enquiry</i>, with the distinction—a false one, according to Hume—between virtues and natural abilities, and an attempt to bring out the implicit challenge Hume is making to non-hedonist accounts of value, especially those that postulate “moral” value.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":29761,"journal":{"name":"Hume Studies","volume":"83 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140564616","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Hume StudiesPub Date : 2024-04-09DOI: 10.1353/hms.2024.a924234
Krisztián Pete
{"title":"Hume's Natural Philosophy and Philosophy of Physical Science by Matias Slavov (review)","authors":"Krisztián Pete","doi":"10.1353/hms.2024.a924234","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hms.2024.a924234","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Hume’s Natural Philosophy and Philosophy of Physical Science</em> by Matias Slavov <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Krisztián Pete </li> </ul> Matias Slavov. <em>Hume’s Natural Philosophy and Philosophy of Physical Science</em>. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. Pp. 216. Hardcover. ISBN 9781350087866, £95. <p>Although the relationship between Hume and Newton is a recurring theme in the Hume literature, Matias Slavov’s book does not seek to contribute to the debate between the traditional (Hume imitated Newton’s natural philosophy) and the critical (Hume intended his “science of Man” as the foundation of all other sciences) approaches regarding the nature of this relation. The book is intended to be a summary of Hume’s natural philosophy—or rather an aggregation of his comments on natural philosophical topics—pursued by exploring and analysing themes and issues that were prominent in the natural philosophy of the early modern period. In this respect it is a pioneering undertaking.</p> <p>Of course, Slavov does not claim in his book that Hume is a natural philosopher. “[F]irst and foremost . . . [h]e is not; for his main objective is to establish a new science of human nature” (1). But Slavov does claim that Hume’s natural philosophical views can be understood and valued in themselves and in the philosophical-scientific context of his time as well. The book is not a discussion of the natural philosophical dimensions of the “science of human nature,” but rather, of the natural philosophical views which are reconcilable with his main objective. In this respect, the book is not a methodological approach to Hume’s supposed natural philosophy, but a synthesis of certain elements of Hume’s philosophy that can feature in a consistent natural philosophy. Although his arguments are generally indirect and are more about what Hume seems to be committed to and what follows from his epistemological position rather than his actual positions, Slavov’s conclusions seem mostly convincing.</p> <p>Thus, Slavov’s point is not that the empiricist method is compatible in every detail with Newtonian mechanics, but rather that Hume seems to be committed more to a Cartesian natural philosophy. Slavov does not write about the possibility and significance of applying natural philosophical methods to moral philosophy; rather, he wants to build a complete philosophy of nature around some of Hume’s basic ideas to “fill the gap for a book on Hume’s relation to natural philosophy and philosophy of physical science” (2).</p> <p>The book has two “equally important aims” (ix): to shed more light onto Hume’s relationship to natural philosophy, and to demonstrate that physics and philosophy have overlapping domains. Hume was hardly concerned with physics, so Slavov’s strategy of defining natural philosophy as an overlap between physics","PeriodicalId":29761,"journal":{"name":"Hume Studies","volume":"48 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140564617","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Hume StudiesPub Date : 2024-04-09DOI: 10.1353/hms.2024.a924228
Ariel Peckel
{"title":"Hume beyond Theism and Atheism","authors":"Ariel Peckel","doi":"10.1353/hms.2024.a924228","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hms.2024.a924228","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>This paper defends a rigorous reading of Hume’s critiques of arguments for the existence of God and of the belief in God against interpretations that endorse Humean theism, deism, and fideism. The latter include Donald Livingston’s theist reading, J. C. A. Gaskin’s “attenuated deism” reading, and Edward Kanterian’s “humble fideism” reading. I also examine whether Hume’s rejections of a positive theology commit him to agnosticism or atheism. My innovative challenge to such conclusions maintains that, while elements of both agnosticism and atheism are found in Hume, these denote, respectively, a methodology and an incidental implication of his philosophy. But neither sufficiently captures his constructive vision for a society, individual psychology, and system of knowledge guided by naturalist principles and aims. For this, an alternate conception is needed that describes Hume’s philosophy of religion beyond mere atheism.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":29761,"journal":{"name":"Hume Studies","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140564543","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Hume StudiesPub Date : 2024-04-09DOI: 10.1353/hms.2024.a924235
Margaret Watkins
{"title":"The Testimony of Sense: Empiricism and the Essay from Hume to Hazlitt by Tim Milnes (review)","authors":"Margaret Watkins","doi":"10.1353/hms.2024.a924235","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hms.2024.a924235","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>The Testimony of Sense: Empiricism and the Essay from Hume to Hazlitt</em> by Tim Milnes <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Margaret Watkins </li> </ul> Tim Milnes. <em>The Testimony of Sense: Empiricism and the Essay from Hume to Hazlitt</em>. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. viii + 278. Hardback. ISBN: 9780198812739. $91.00. <p>In his brief autobiography, “My Own Life,” Hume reports that “almost all [his] life has been spent in literary pursuits and occupations” (E-MOL: xxxi). This is one of at least ten places in this brief work in which he associates himself with “letters” or “literature”—as compared to at most four associations with philosophy. The moral to be inferred is not that Hume considered himself not to be a philosopher. Rather, he conceived of philosophy as a kind of literature. The <em>Treatise</em> was itself a “literary attempt.” Indeed, opposition between the “literary” and “philosophical” aspects of a text would have been foreign to Hume and his contemporaries—a notion for a later age, despite his occasional loose distinction between the relevant genres, as in his list of writings “historical, philosophical, or literary” in “My Own Life” (E-MOL: xxxvi).</p> <p>Yet despite Hume’s own understanding of the continuity between philosophy and literature, broadly conceived, it is still common for contemporary philosophers to ignore literary questions in their examination of Hume’s work, or to presume that one can easily distinguish the “philosophical” parts from the “literary” ones. Tim Milnes’s <em>The Testimony of Sense</em> is therefore a welcome addition to the Hume literature (pun intended). With a particular focus on the essay—a genre of great importance to Hume—Milnes contributes to the small set of engagements with Hume from the disciplinary perspective of English literature. With training in both philosophy and literature, as well as established expertise on Romanticism and its own essays, Milnes is well-qualified for the task. <em>The Testimony of Sense</em> includes sustained engagement with Hume’s contemporaries and successors, but for the purposes of this review, I engage the book primarily as a Hume scholar for Hume scholars.</p> <p>Milnes’s story plays out in three acts. The first establishes the need for public trust created by a skeptical crisis, itself a product of Hume’s criticism of the epistemic program of thinkers in the Cartesian and Lockean traditions. The second explains how the essays of the long eighteenth century constitute a response to that need in various ways. The third reveals in detail how the Romantic essayists, particularly William Hazlitt and Charles Lamb, both respond to and deviate from the “neoclassical” essayists, typified by Hume and Samuel Johnson.</p> <p>The first chapter, “Self and Intersubjectivity,” lays the groundwork by articulati","PeriodicalId":29761,"journal":{"name":"Hume Studies","volume":"68 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140564535","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Hume StudiesPub Date : 2024-04-09DOI: 10.1353/hms.2024.a924232
Peter Millican
{"title":"Hume as Regularity Theorist—After All! Completing a Counter-Revolution","authors":"Peter Millican","doi":"10.1353/hms.2024.a924232","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hms.2024.a924232","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>Traditionally, Hume has widely been viewed as the standard-bearer for <i>regularity</i> accounts of causation. But between 1983 and 1990, two rival interpretations appeared—namely the <i>skeptical realism</i> of Wright, Craig, and Strawson, and the <i>quasi-realist projectivism</i> of Blackburn—and since then the interpretative debate has been dominated by the contest between these three approaches, with projectivism recently appearing the likely winner. This paper argues that the controversy largely arose from a fundamental mistake, namely, the assumption that Hume is committed to the subjectivity of our conception of causal necessity. That assumption generated tensions within the regularity account, which the skeptical realist and quasi-realist alternatives, in very different ways, purported to resolve. But a broader and more balanced view of the textual evidence, taking due account of the relatively neglected sections where Hume <i>applies</i> the results of his analysis, tells strongly in favour of an objectivist regularity view, both in respect of causation and causal necessity. Despite some complications, the upshot is a far more straightforward reading of Hume than those that have hitherto dominated this long-running debate.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":29761,"journal":{"name":"Hume Studies","volume":"48 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140564539","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Hume StudiesPub Date : 2024-04-09DOI: 10.1353/hms.2024.a924231
Avital Hazony Levi
{"title":"Hume's Theory of Moral Judgment in Light of His Explanatory Project","authors":"Avital Hazony Levi","doi":"10.1353/hms.2024.a924231","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hms.2024.a924231","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>In this paper, I argue that Hume’s account of moral judgment is best understood if it is read in light of Hume’s explanatory project. I first lay out the textual support to show that Hume’s account of justice in the <i>Treatise</i> includes both approval of a motive that gives rise to the virtue of justice, and approval of a system of conduct, irrespective of a motive. I then argue that we can allow for such plurality in Hume’s theory of moral judgment if we view it in light of his explanatory project: finding unifying causes for disparate phenomena. Hume offers a unified theory of moral judgment because he can show that the different approvals are explained by the same causes. Finally, I argue that viewing Hume’s account of moral judgment in light of his explanatory project allows us to appreciate a further distinction between the moral judgment of the natural and the artificial virtues: while judgments of the former are fully explained by the causes of a certain motive, the latter are only fully explained by the causes of the motive in the context of a convention, which in turn is partially constituted by non-approved motives.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":29761,"journal":{"name":"Hume Studies","volume":"51 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140564614","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Hume StudiesPub Date : 2024-04-09DOI: 10.1353/hms.2024.a924230
Albert Cotugno
{"title":"Hume on Self-Government and Strength of Mind","authors":"Albert Cotugno","doi":"10.1353/hms.2024.a924230","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hms.2024.a924230","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>Throughout his writings, Hume extols the benefits of an attribute he calls “Strength of Mind,” which he defines as the “prevalence of the calm passions over the violent” (T 2.3.3.10). But there is some question as to how he thought a person could attain this important trait. Contemporary scholars have committed Hume to the view that only indirect and social methods, such as state punishment or sympathetic pressure, could effectively cultivate it. Yet a closer examination of Hume’s corpus reveals a more direct approach applicable at the individual level. Though rarely achieved and difficult to execute, self-government of the passions is possible according to Hume. The key to success lies in harnessing the power of habit. In its most sophisticated form, the process centrally involves cultivating a certain transformative connoisseurship, the ability to appreciate regularities in one’s own mental activity and thereby alter it.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":29761,"journal":{"name":"Hume Studies","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140564540","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}