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Annetie Baier A Progress Of Sentiments. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1991. Pp. xi + 333.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Paul Russell
Paul Russell*
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6T 1W5
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Critical Notice
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Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , March 1993 , pp. 107 - 123
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Copyright © The Authors 1987

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References

1 A Treatise of Human Nature, L.A. Selby-Bigge and P.H. Nidditch, eds. (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1978). Hereafter abbreviated as T.

2 Hume, ‘My Own Life,’ in Essays: Moral, Political and Literary, Eugene F. Miller, ed. (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics 1985), xxxiv-xxxv. Essays hereafter abbreviated as ESY.

3 The Advertisement is reprinted in Hume, Enquiries, L.A. Selby-Bigge and P.H. Nidditch, eds. (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1975), 2. Hume’s attitude to the Treatise is discussed in Smith, N. Kemp The Philosophy of David Hume: A Critical Study Of Its Origin and Central Doctrines (London: Macmillan 1941)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Ch. 24.

4 Details concerning the reaction to Hume’s Treatise, and to his philosophy in general, can be found in Mossner, Ernest C. The Life of David Hume, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1980)Google Scholar.

5 The traditional skeptical interpretation is usually associated with critics of Hume such as Thomas Reid, James Beattie, and T.H. Green. On this see, e.g., Kemp Smith, Philosophy of David Hume, 3-8. Rev. Sydney Smith provides a brief and neat summary of this view of Hume (Introduction to Sketches of Moral Philosophy): ‘Bishop Berkeley destroyed this world in one volume octavo; and nothing remained, after his time, but mind; which experienced a similar fate from the hand of Mr. Hume in 1739.’

6 Kemp Smith, Philosophy of David Hume, 84; cp. 11 and 45

7 See, e.g., Stroud, Barry Hume (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1977), xiGoogle Scholar. Stroud says that his study presents ‘a more systematic and more consistent naturalistic interpretation’ of Hume. Compare, however, Terence Penelhum, Hume (London: Macmillan 1975), 17-18.

8 The traditional skeptical interpretation tends to place heavy emphasis on the metaphysics and epistemology of Book One. Kemp Smith did much to alter this slant on the Treatise. Unfortunately, however, Kemp Smith gives very little attention to Book Two— which he regards as ‘the least satisfactory of the three Books which constitute the Treatise’ (Philosophy of David Hume, 160). Similar sentiments concerning the merits and relevance of Book Two have been expressed recently by Flew, Antony (David Hume: Philosopher of Moral Science [Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1986], 122)Google Scholar. Ardal’s, Pall Passion and Value in Hume’s Treatise (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 1966)Google Scholar —a work which Baier refers to as a ‘recent classic’ (PS, ix)—has done a great deal to restore interest in the contents of Book Two and the way that it relates to the Treatise as a whole.

9 Hume, of course, is often interpreted as being an epistemological ‘individualist’ of the sort that is typical of British empiricist philosophy. See, e.g., Bronowski, Jacob Science and Human Values (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1964), 60-1Google Scholar. Ironically, Bronowski goes on to defend the very thesis which Baier attributes to Hume: ‘The positivist would break [scientific knowledge] into still simpler pieces, and would then propose to verify each. But it is an illusion, and a fatal illusion, to think that he could verify them himself …. [All] our knowledge, has been built up communally; there would be no astrophysics, there would be no history, there would not even be language, if man were a solitary animal’ (62). This is an interesting thesis, although I find Hume’s presentation of it more obscure than Baier’s discussion suggests.

10 Baier has the work of Mackie, John (Hume’s Moral Theory [London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1980]Google Scholar) particularly in mind in this context. See her references at PS, 312 (nn. 21, 22, 23, and 24).

11 It is significant that it is not just contemporaries such as Gauthier, Mackie, and Jean Hampton who maintain that Hume’s theory of justice bears a strong resemblance to the position of Hobbes. Hume’s own contemporaries took very much the same view. One early review of the Treatise says, for example, that Hume’s views on the origin of justice and property are simply ‘the system of Hobbes dressed up in a new taste.’ (For further details see my ‘Skepticism and Natural Religion in Hume’s Treatise,’ Journal of the History of Ideas 49 [1988]247-65, at 255-7.) I would agree with Baier, however, that there are important differences to be noted between these thinkers in this sphere. More importantly, Baier is certainly right to challenge John Mackie’s strongly Hobbesean reading of Hume’s moral philosophy (cp. Mackie, Hume’s Moral Theory, 151).

12 I have some serious reservations about this account of Hume’s conception of truth. See, in particular, Hume’s remarks in his essay ‘The Sceptic’ (ESY, 168: ‘To this operation .. .’). In this essay Hume argues that the foundations of the distinction between truth and falsehood are not the same as those that support the distinctions that we draw concerning ‘the qualities of beautiful and deformed, desirable and odious.’ More specifically, what is true or false, he claims, does not depend ‘upon the particular fabric or structure of the mind,’ but rather on ‘a real, though often unknown standard, in the nature of things.’ In the case of morals and aesthetics, however, all relevant distinctions require that we ‘feel a sentiment of delight and uneasiness, approbation or blame.’ I take these remarks to suggest that truth is not simply a matter of (social) agreement for Hume, but that moral distinctioru;— in so far as they depend on the structure of human feeling — are basically a matter of established human agreement (i.e. shared feeling).

13 Stroud, Hume, 144; see also Penelhum, Hume: ‘It is not, however, his attempt…’ (120).

14 I discuss this issue in ‘On the Naturalism of Hume’s “Reconciling Project”’ (Mind 92 [1983]593-600). Other papers of mine of related interest include ‘Causation, Compulsion and Compatibilism’ (American Philosophical Quarterly 25 [1988)313-21) and ‘Hume on Responsibility and Punishment’ (Canadian Journal of Philosophy 20 [1990) 539-64). See also Ardal’s Passion and Value, Ch. 4.

15 Hume’ s Skepticism in the Treatise of Human Nature (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1985). Another virtue of A Progress of Sentiments is that the discussion of secondary literature is generally kept to a minimum and largely confined to the footnotes. Baier does, however, pay particular attention to Fogelin’s interpretation (PS, 54-60).

16 In my review of Fogelin’s Hume’s Skepticism I argue that the tendency of his interpretation is to ‘exaggerate the extent of Hume’s skeptical commitments and to play down or ignore those aspects of Hume’s philosophy which emphasize the importance and indispensability of rational procedures and principles’ (Mind 95 [1986]392-6, at 394). This places me much closer to Baier than Fogelin. However, as I explain below, I take a rather different view from Baier of the way that Hume’s skepticism and naturalism in the Treatise should be characterized and how they are related.

17 There has, of course, been a great deal of discussion recently concerning these methodological issues. See, e.g., Skinner, Quentin ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,’ reprinted in Tully, James ed., Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and His Critics (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1988)Google Scholar; Dunn, John ‘The Identity of the History of Ideas,’ in Political Obligation in its Historical Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Rorty, Richard ‘The Historiography of Philosophy: Four Genres,’ in Rorty, R. Schneewind, J.B. and Skinner, Q. eds., Philosophy in History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 See my ‘Skepticism and Natural Religion inHume’s Treatise,’ 253-7. When reading Hume’s Letter it is important to keep in mind that Hume was trying to ‘defuse’ the charges made against him in order not to be disqualified for the Chair that he was applying for. For this reason much of what he says in this context is patently insincere and evasive. Nevertheless, both the charges made against him and his replies give considerable insight into the nature of his objectives and intentions in the Treatise.

19 Baier mentions Clarke only twice (PS, 13 and 22). Both references are slight and passing. I discuss the evidence regarding Hume’s deep interest in Clarke’s philosophy, and the significance of it for the general interpretation of the Treatise, in some detail in the papers cited inn. 19 below. See Clarke’s A Discourse Concerning the Being and Attributes of God, the Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of Christian Revelation (6th ed., London, 1725).

20 These papers include ‘Hume’s Treatise and Hobbes’s The Elements of Law’ (Journal of the History of Ideas 46 [1985] 51-64); ‘“Atheism” and the Title-Page of Hume’s Treatise‘(Hume Studies14 [1988]408-23); ‘Skepticism and Natural Religion in Hume’s Treatise’; ‘Epigram, Pantheists and Freethought inHume’s Treatise’ (Journal of the History of Ideas 54 [forthcoming 1993]).

21 Hume begins the Abstract as follows: ‘This book [i.e. the Treatise] seems to be written upon the same plan with several other works that have had great vogue of late years in England’ (T, 645). It is generally assumed that Hume has in mind the works of the thinkers whom he mentions in a passage further below (T, 646; see also T, xvii) — i.e. Locke, Shaftesbury, Mandeville, Hutcheson, and Butler. The striking fact is that it is not their works, but rather Hobbes’s works which have the same ‘plan’ or structure as the Treatise. Moreover, the very title ‘Treatise of Human Nature’ is taken from a relevant work by Hobbes. (Hobbes’s Elements of Law was not published as a single work under that title until 1889. Hume and his contemporaries would have read The Elements as two separate works, the first of which had the title Human Nature and the second De Corpore Politico. The former work is repeatedly referred to in the latter as the ‘Treatise of Human Nature.’) For further details see my ‘Hume’s Treatise and Hobbes’s The Elements of Law.’

22 The title-page of the Treatise makes plain Hume’s anti-Christian intentions and objectives. As noted above, Hume takes his title from a relevant work by Hobbes. Furthermore, the epigram from Tacitus was used by Spinoza for the title of the last and particularly important chapter of his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (a work which was widely discussed and better known in Britain at this time than the Ethics). Throughout the first half of the eighteenth century Hobbes and Spinoza were widely regarded as the two most infamous ‘atheists.’ Significantly, the subtitle of Clarke’s Discourse states that his work is an ‘answer to Mr. Hobbs, Spinoza and their Followers’ (i.e. other deniers of natural and revealed religion). These features of Hume’s title-page would be quite obvious to a suitably informed audience. The anti-Christian significance of the epigrams which Hume placed on the title-pages of the Treatise (Book Three has an epigram taken from Lucan) are discussed and explained in my ‘“Atheism”; and the Title-Page of Hume’s Treatise’ and in ‘Epigram, Pantheists and Freethought in Hume’s Treatise.’

23 I am grateful to Terry Penelhum for some helpful comments and remarks on this critical notice.