The best-known event in Scottish philosopher David Hume’s life is his death in 1776. Historians tell us that the great skeptic and critic of traditional religious belief faced the end with tranquility and even good cheer, untroubled by the thought that his demise would be his annihilation. The 65 years that preceded that demise were not uneventful, exactly. There were, for example, the public controversies caused by his various works, and his troubled relationship with Jean-Jacques Rousseau. But neither, for the most part, was his outward life plausibly the stuff even of a good PBS costume drama. As with so many philosophers, what was of greatest interest in the life of Hume is to be found in his head and in the pages of his books.
This is precisely what James Harris’s new book on Hume is concerned with. It is, as his subtitle alerts us and as he emphasizes from the outset, an intellectual biography. To be sure, Harris, who teaches philosophy at the University of St. Andrews, offers the reader some valuable insights into Hume’s outer life. Most interesting is his account of the philosopher as a young man. The older Hume—serene and worldly-wise, a literary eminence and toast of Paris who rubbed shoulders with Rousseau, Adam Smith, and James Boswell—is well known to students of philosophy. Less familiar is the 18-year-old who suffered from anxiety and depression to the point of a nervous breakdown, and the first-time author who veered between bouts of elation and panic when contemplating what he hoped were the merits (but also feared were the deficiencies) of his forthcoming Treatise of Human Nature.
For the most part, though, what Harris provides is a wealth of details, drawn from letters and other documents, concerning the influences on Hume’s intellectual output—on the evolution of his thinking, the composition and publication of his works, and the nature of the controversies into which he entered. Harris’s book is a work of superb scholarship, well-written and insightful, and will be an invaluable resource to students of early modern thought. It is novel in its very conception—an intellectual biography of Hume has not been attempted before—and offers a fresh perspective on Hume’s motivations and the character of his work.
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Hume’s multivolume History of England was among the works for which he was best known during his lifetime. Indeed, commentators in the decades after his death tended to see him primarily as a historian, and regarded his philosophy as having an essentially negative significance, a collection of skeptical errors to which later thinkers provided a corrective. By the middle of the 19th century his significance as a historian was also being challenged, on the grounds that his research was weak and his style too bloodless.
John Stuart Mill began the trend toward a more positive estimation of Hume’s importance as a philosopher. Mill argued that Hume posed a serious challenge that had not in fact successfully been addressed by Thomas Reid, Immanuel Kant, and others who were thought to have refuted him. In the early 20th century, Norman Kemp Smith inaugurated the interpretation of Hume as more than a mere skeptic. Hume had, Kemp Smith argued, a positive account of human nature, and one that provided the key to understanding Hume’s project as a unified philosophical program, one set out in the Treatise of Human Nature and implemented in the later works. Later 20th-century commentators would cement the Kemp Smith interpretation.
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In Harris’s view, none of these approaches to Hume is quite right. He agrees that Hume was always a philosopher, and never merely a historian or man of letters (though his conception of philosophy was broader than that of the contemporary academic). But Harris thinks it a serious interpretive error to try to find a single, unified program running through all of Hume’s work, and he urges us not to discount either the skeptical tenor of much of that work or the role that literary ambition played in motivating it.
What one will not find in Harris’s book is much in the way of critical, philosophical analysis of Hume’s ideas. For the most part, that is not a problem, and Harris’s approach is certainly defensible. There are already a great many works devoted to such critical analysis, and it is precisely the gap in the existing Hume literature—the lack of sufficient attention to what Hume was reading, to the circumstances under which he wrote specific works, to his interactions with other prominent figures of the day, and so forth—that Harris is trying to fill.
On the other hand, the mixing of critical analysis with historical research has in contemporary academic philosophy become a standard part of writing works on the history of the subject, and for good reason. The critical philosophical analysis of the ideas of some thinker of the past involves asking questions such as: What exactly does this or that particular claim made by the thinker mean? Apart from what the thinker explicitly said about it, what are the different ways it could be interpreted? And apart from the arguments the thinker actually gave for it, what arguments could be given for it? Furthermore, what objections might be raised against it? And what responses to those objections could be given? Asking questions like these not only helps us to see how the ideas of past thinkers might be relevant today, but also helps us to see what a past thinker himself might have intended, and what the critics and admirers he engaged with might have had in mind in responding to him the way they did. Hence an approach which neglects such questions and confines itself to the gathering of documentary evidence and the like is bound to be less penetrating than it might have been.
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There is another aspect of much contemporary scholarship on the history of philosophy that is relevant here. Pop accounts of the history of early modern thought famously present Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, and company as having liberated Western philosophy and science from the bogeyman of medieval Scholasticism. Sweeping away this purported mishmash of religious dogma and uncritical attachment to Aristotle, the early moderns—so the story goes—rebuilt Western thought from scratch. Contemporary historians of science and of philosophy know that this is a myth. For one thing, what the traditional narrative represents as “Scholasticism” is in fact largely a crude caricature. For another thing, early modern thinkers often betray a much greater reliance on actual Scholastic ideas and assumptions than modern readers are aware. Twentieth-century scholars like Étienne Gilson (in philosophy) and Thomas Kuhn (in the history of science) inaugurated a trend toward a more nuanced reading of the relationship between early modern thought and its Scholastic antecedents. Contemporary historians of philosophy like Margaret Osler, Dennis Des Chene, Walter Ott, Helen Hattab, and many others have greatly furthered this recovery of the actual history of the Scholasticism-to-early-modern transition.
Surprisingly, and disappointingly, Harris’s book shows little evidence of having been informed by these developments. Yet the topic of Hume’s relationship to Scholasticism is ripe for a serious and detailed treatment. This is so in several respects, not the least of which being that Hume famously declared “School metaphysics” to be among the chief targets of his skeptical arguments. But in fact, as several historians have pointed out, at least one of Hume’s most famous themes—his skepticism about causality as a real feature of the world (as opposed to a mere projection of the mind onto the world)—has medieval Scholastic antecedents. In particular, one finds anticipations of Hume’s claims and arguments on this subject in William of Ockham and in Nicholas of Autrecourt (who is sometimes described by historians of philosophy as “the medieval Hume”). Some of Hume’s criticisms of anthropomorphic conceptions of the deity are also of a kind a Scholastic might endorse.
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Then there is the fact that positions like Hume’s are also sometimes anticipated and criticized by Scholastic writers. For example, much of the edifice of Hume’s thought rests on his assumption that to have a concept is essentially to have a kind of mental image. It is because he cannot trace certain key metaphysical concepts—the notion of a substance, of causal power, of the self, and so on—to any specific mental image that he denies that we really have such concepts. But Thomas Aquinas (under the influence of earlier thinkers like Aristotle) would have pointed out that this conflation of concepts with images cannot be correct. For example, we quite easily grasp the concept of a triangle as that of a closed plane figure with three straight sides. This concept applies to all possible and actual triangles—red ones and green ones, right and obtuse triangles, isosceles and scalene triangles. By contrast, any image we can form of a triangle will not apply to all triangles, since it will always exhibit features had by some triangles (e.g., a blue right triangle) but not by all (e.g., a red obtuse triangle).
Hence, whereas the pop narrative would have it that Hume put forward novel and devastating objections that earlier philosophers like the medievals had never thought of, in fact from a Scholastic point of view, at least, all he had done was to revive elementary fallacies that had long before been exposed and refuted. (The eminent 20th-century philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe—herself influenced by Aquinas—famously described Hume as “a mere—brilliant—sophist.”)
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And that is not all. As Harris notes, Hume spent more than two years at the Jesuit College at La Flèche in France. Harris observes rather dryly that “we know almost nothing of how he passed his time there,” but that Hume left with “a complete draft” of what would become the first two books of the Treatise of Human Nature. The questions this raises cry out for asking. What did Hume read while he was there? What sorts of conversations did he have with the Jesuits? Did he borrow any of his ideas from the Scholastic sources he might have come into contact with there? Did he consider objections to his arguments that might have been found in these sources? Unfortunately, Harris does little to address such questions, and while he is correct to say that not much is known, that is not to say that nothing is known or that the question might not be investigated. Indeed, Harris refers in the footnotes to some work on the subject, but does not pursue it himself.
Also regrettable is the absence of any discussion of the conflicting accounts of Hume’s death. The standard story is the one alluded to above, that he faced his demise with serenity; and it may well be correct. But there is a competing account, related in a 19th-century work by Anglican church leader Alexander Haldane, according to which Hume’s deathbed cheerfulness was a pose and in which at least one person who attended to him found him to be sunk in depression and gloom. Of course, it is true that some of his religious critics would like to believe this. But it is no less true that some of Hume’s secular admirers would like not to believe it. In any event, questioning hagiography is hardly something to which Hume himself could have objected.
Katika miaka ya 1770 na 1719, mwanafalsafa Mskoti David Hume alikufa. Wanahistoria wanatuambia kwamba mtu huyo mwenye kutilia shaka na kukosoa imani ya kidini ya kitamaduni alikutana na mwisho kwa utulivu na hata furaha, bila kusumbuliwa na wazo kwamba kifo chake kingekuwa uharibifu wake. Miaka 65 iliyotangulia kifo chake haikuwa ya kawaida. Kwa mfano, kulikuwa na mabishano ya umma yaliyosababishwa na kazi zake mbalimbali, na uhusiano wake wenye matatizo na Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Lakini hata hivyo, kwa sehemu kubwa, maisha yake ya nje hayakuwa na uwezekano wa kuwa mambo hata ya mchezo mzuri wa kuigiza wa PBS. Kama ilivyo na wanafalsafa wengi, kile kilichokuwa cha kupendeza zaidi katika maisha ya Hume kinapatikana katika kichwa chake na katika kurasa za vitabu vyake. Hii ni hasa nini James Harris 'kitabu kipya juu ya Hume ni wasiwasi na. Kama vile kichwa chake cha chini kinavyotuhakikishia na kama anavyosisitiza tangu mwanzo, ni wasifu wa kiakili. Kwa hakika, Harris, ambaye hufundisha falsafa katika Chuo Kikuu cha St. Andrews, humpa msomaji ufahamu fulani wenye thamani juu ya maisha ya nje ya Hume. Jambo lenye kupendeza zaidi ni simulizi lake la yule mwanafalsafa akiwa kijana. Hume mzee <unk>serene na ulimwengu-mwenye hekima, mwandishi mashuhuri na toast ya Paris ambaye rubbed mabega na Rousseau, Adam Smith, na James Boswell <unk> ni maarufu kwa wanafunzi wa falsafa. "Mtu mwenye umri wa miaka 18 ambaye alikuwa na wasiwasi na kushuka moyo hadi kufikia hatua ya kushuka moyo, na mwandishi wa mara ya kwanza ambaye aligeuka kati ya mashambulizi ya msisimko na hofu wakati wa kutafakari kile alichotarajia kuwa sifa (lakini pia aliogopa kuwa ni mapungufu) ya kitabu chake kinachofuata ""Treatise of Human Nature.""" Kwa sehemu kubwa, hata hivyo, kile Harris hutoa ni utajiri wa maelezo, kuchukuliwa kutoka barua na nyaraka nyingine, kuhusu ushawishi juu ya Hume's uzalishaji wa kiakili juu ya mageuzi ya kufikiri kwake, muundo na uchapishaji wa kazi zake, na asili ya mabishano ambayo aliingia. Kitabu cha Harris ni kazi ya elimu bora, imeandikwa vizuri na yenye ufahamu, na itakuwa rasilimali muhimu kwa wanafunzi wa mawazo ya mapema ya kisasa. Ni riwaya katika dhana yake mwenyewe - wasifu wa kiakili wa Hume haujahitajika kabla - na inatoa mtazamo mpya juu ya motisha ya Hume na tabia ya kazi yake. Historia ya Uingereza ya Hume ilikuwa moja ya kazi ambazo alijulikana zaidi wakati wa maisha yake. Kwa kweli, katika miongo iliyofuata kifo chake, wachambuzi walimwona kama mwanahistoria, na waliona falsafa yake kuwa na maana mbaya, mkusanyiko wa makosa ya kutilia shaka ambayo wasomi wa baadaye walitoa marekebisho. Kuanzia katikati ya karne ya 19 umuhimu wake kama mwanahistoria pia ulishutumiwa, kwa sababu utafiti wake ulikuwa dhaifu na mtindo wake ulikuwa usio na damu. John Stuart Mill alianza mwelekeo wa kukadiria kwa njia nzuri zaidi umuhimu wa Hume akiwa mwanafalsafa. Mill alidai kwamba Hume alitoa changamoto kubwa ambayo kwa kweli haikuwa imefanikiwa kushughulikiwa na Thomas Reid, Immanuel Kant, na wengine ambao walidhani wamemkataa. Katika karne ya 20, Norman Kemp Smith alianzisha tafsiri ya Hume kama zaidi ya mtu mwenye kutilia shaka tu. Hume alikuwa na, Kemp Smith alidai, akaunti chanya ya asili ya binadamu, na moja ambayo alitoa ufunguo wa kuelewa mradi Hume kama mpango wa falsafa umoja, moja iliyowekwa katika Treatise of Human Nature na kutekelezwa katika kazi ya baadaye. Katika karne ya 20, wataalamu wa Biblia walianza kueleza kwa usahihi zaidi kuhusu tafsiri ya Kemp na Smith. Katika maoni ya Harris, hakuna moja ya mbinu hizi kwa Hume ni haki kabisa. Hume alikuwa mwanafalsafa wa kihistoria, na sio mwanahistoria tu, ingawa maoni yake ya falsafa yalikuwa mapana kuliko yale ya wasomi wa wakati huo. Lakini Harris anafikiri ni kosa kubwa la tafsiri kujaribu kupata mpango mmoja, wa umoja unaoendesha kazi yote ya Hume, na anatuhimiza tusipuuze ama tenor ya kutilia shaka ya kazi hiyo au jukumu ambalo tamaa ya fasihi ilicheza katika kuisukuma. Kile ambacho mtu hatapata katika kitabu cha Harris ni mengi katika njia ya uchambuzi muhimu, wa kifalsafa wa mawazo ya Hume. Kwa sehemu kubwa, hiyo si tatizo, na mbinu ya Harris ni hakika defensible. Kuna tayari kazi nyingi sana zilizowekwa kwa uchambuzi huo muhimu, na ni haswa pengo katika fasihi ya Hume iliyopo - ukosefu wa umakini wa kutosha kwa kile Hume alikuwa akisoma, kwa hali ambazo aliandika kazi maalum, kwa mwingiliano wake na watu wengine mashuhuri wa siku hiyo, na kadhalika - ambayo Harris anajaribu kujaza. Kwa upande mwingine, mchanganyiko wa uchambuzi muhimu na utafiti wa kihistoria katika falsafa ya kisasa ya kitaaluma imekuwa sehemu ya kawaida ya kuandika kazi juu ya historia ya somo, na kwa sababu nzuri. Uchambuzi wa kifalsafa wa mawazo ya baadhi ya wasomi wa zamani unahusisha kuuliza maswali kama vile: Je, nini hasa hii au madai hayo maalum yaliyotolewa na msomi maana? Mbali na kile mchambuzi alisema wazi kuhusu hilo, ni njia gani tofauti inaweza kutafsiriwa? Na mbali na hoja ambazo mwanasaikolojia alitoa kwa ajili yake, ni hoja zipi zingeweza kutolewa kwa ajili yake? Isitoshe, ni pingamizi gani laweza kusemwa dhidi yake? Na ni majibu gani yangeweza kutolewa kwa pingamizi hilo? Kuuliza maswali kama haya sio tu hutusaidia kuona jinsi mawazo ya wasomi wa zamani yanaweza kuwa muhimu leo, lakini pia hutusaidia kuona kile msomi wa zamani mwenyewe angeweza kuwa na nia, na nini wakosoaji na mashabiki alioshirikiana nao wangeweza kuwa na akili katika kumjibu kwa njia waliyofanya. Kwa hiyo, mbinu ambayo hupuuza maswali kama hayo na kujizuia katika kukusanya ushahidi wa maandishi na vinginevyo ni lazima kuwa chini ya penetrating kuliko inaweza kuwa. * * Kuna kipengele kingine cha elimu nyingi ya kisasa juu ya historia ya falsafa ambayo ni muhimu hapa. "Mambo ya kihistoria ya mawazo ya mapema ya kisasa yanajulikana sana na Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, na kampuni kama ""walioweka falsafa na sayansi ya Magharibi huru kutoka kwa bogeyman ya Scholasticism ya enzi za kati.""" Kwa kuondoa mchanganyiko huu wa mafundisho ya kidini na kushikamana bila ukosoaji na Aristotle, watu wa mapema wa kisasa - kwa hivyo hadithi inaendelea - walijenga upya mawazo ya Magharibi kutoka mwanzo. Wanahistoria wa kisasa wa sayansi na falsafa wanajua kwamba hilo ni hadithi tu. Kwa sababu moja, kile ambacho simulizi la kitamaduni huwakilisha kuwa "Scholasticism" kwa kweli ni picha ya kuchekesha. Kwa sababu nyingine, mara nyingi wasomi wa mapema wa kisasa huonyesha utegemezi mkubwa zaidi kwa mawazo na dhana halisi za Scholastic kuliko wasomaji wa kisasa wanavyojua. Wataalamu wa karne ya ishirini kama vile Étienne Gilson (katika falsafa) na Thomas Kuhn (katika historia ya sayansi) walianzisha mwelekeo wa kusoma kwa uwazi zaidi uhusiano kati ya mawazo ya mapema ya kisasa na antecedents zake za Scholastic. Wanahistoria wa kisasa wa falsafa kama Margaret Osler, Dennis Deschanel, Walter Ott, Helen Hattab, na wengine wengi wameendeleza sana uponyaji huu wa historia halisi ya mabadiliko ya Scholasticism hadi mapema ya kisasa. Kwa kushangaza, na kwa kukatisha tamaa, kitabu cha Harris kinaonyesha uthibitisho mdogo wa kuwa na habari na maendeleo haya. Hata hivyo, suala la uhusiano wa Hume na Scholasticism limeiva kwa ajili ya matibabu mazito na ya kina. Hii ni hivyo katika mambo kadhaa, si kidogo ya ambayo kuwa kwamba Hume maarufu alitangaza <unk> Shule ya metaphysics <unk> kuwa miongoni mwa malengo makuu ya hoja zake shaka. Lakini kwa kweli, kama wanahistoria kadhaa wameonyesha, angalau moja ya mandhari maarufu zaidi ya Hume - kutilia shaka kwake juu ya sababu kama kipengele halisi cha ulimwengu (kinyume na utabiri tu wa akili kwenye ulimwengu) - ina antecedents za Scholastic za enzi za kati. Hasa, mtu hupata matarajio ya madai ya Hume na hoja juu ya mada hii katika William wa Ockham na katika Nicholas wa Autrecourt (ambaye wakati mwingine huelezwa na wanahistoria wa falsafa kama <unk>Hume wa enzi za kati<unk>). Baadhi ya ukosoaji wa Hume wa dhana za anthropomorphic za mungu pia ni ya aina ambayo Scholastic inaweza kuidhinisha. * * Kisha kuna ukweli kwamba nafasi kama Hume pia ni wakati mwingine inatarajiwa na kukosolewa na waandishi Scholastic. Kwa mfano, sehemu kubwa ya muundo wa mawazo ya Hume hutegemea dhana yake kwamba kuwa na dhana ni kimsingi kuwa na aina ya picha ya akili. Ni kwa sababu hawezi kufuatilia baadhi ya dhana muhimu metaphysical - dhana ya dutu, ya nguvu causal, ya binafsi, na kadhalika - kwa picha yoyote maalum ya akili kwamba yeye anakataa kwamba sisi kweli kuwa na dhana kama hizo. Thomas Aquinas, ambaye alikuwa na ushawishi mkubwa juu ya Aristotle, alionyesha kwamba kuna tofauti kubwa kati ya mawazo na picha. Kwa mfano, tunaweza kuelewa kwa urahisi wazo la pembetatu kuwa ni umbo la ndege iliyofungwa yenye pande tatu zilizo sawa. Dhana hii inatumika kwa pembetatu zote zinazowezekana na halisi - nyekundu na kijani, pembetatu za kulia na za mviringo, isosceles na triangles scalene. Kwa kulinganisha, picha yoyote tunaweza fomu ya pembetatu si kutumika kwa pembetatu zote, tangu daima kuonyesha sifa alikuwa na baadhi ya pembetatu (kwa mfano, bluu haki pembetatu) lakini si kwa wote (kwa mfano, nyekundu obtuse pembetatu). Kwa hiyo, ingawa hadithi ya pop ingesema kwamba Hume aliweka mbele mashtaka mapya na yenye kuangamiza ambayo wanafalsafa wa mapema kama vile wa enzi za kati hawakuwa wamefikiria, kwa kweli, angalau kutoka kwa mtazamo wa Scholastic, yote aliyofanya ilikuwa kuamsha makosa ya msingi ambayo yalikuwa yamefunuliwa na kupingwa muda mrefu kabla. "Mwanafalsafa maarufu wa karne ya 20 Elizabeth Anscombe, ambaye pia aliathiriwa na Aquinas, alimfafanua Hume kuwa ""mwanafalsafa mzuri tu.""" Kama Harris anavyosema, Hume alitumia zaidi ya miaka miwili katika Chuo cha Wajesuiti huko La Flèche nchini Ufaransa. Harris anasema kwamba hatujui chochote kuhusu jinsi alivyotumia wakati wake huko, lakini kwamba Hume aliondoka na rasimu kamili ya kile ambacho kingekuwa vitabu viwili vya kwanza vya Treatise of Human Nature. Maswali yanayoibuka yanahitaji kuulizwa. Hume alisoma nini alipokuwa huko? Ni mazungumzo gani aliyofanya na Wayesuiti? Je, alikopa mawazo yoyote kutoka kwa vyanzo vya Scholastic ambavyo huenda alikutana navyo huko? Je, alichukua kwa uzito pingamizi dhidi ya hoja zake ambazo zingeweza kupatikana katika vyanzo hivyo? "Haris anasema, ""Hakuna kitu kinachojulikana, lakini si kwamba hakuna kitu kinachojulikana au kwamba swali hilo linaweza kuchunguzwa.""" Kwa kweli, Harris anataja katika maelezo ya chini ya baadhi ya kazi juu ya mada, lakini si kufuatilia mwenyewe. Pia ni jambo la kusikitisha kwamba hakuna mazungumzo yoyote kuhusu masimulizi yanayopingana kuhusu kifo cha Hume. Hadithi ya kawaida ni ile iliyotajwa hapo juu, kwamba alikabili kifo chake kwa utulivu; na huenda ikawa sahihi. Lakini kuna simulizi linalohusiana na hilo, linaloelezwa katika kitabu cha karne ya 19 cha kiongozi wa kanisa la Anglikana Alexander Haldane, ambalo linasema kwamba furaha ya Hume alipokuwa akilala kitandani ilikuwa ni kujifanya na kwamba angalau mtu mmoja aliyemhudumia aliona kwamba alikuwa ameshuka moyo na kuwa na huzuni. Ni kweli kwamba baadhi ya wakosoaji wake wa kidini wangependa kuamini hivyo. Lakini ni kweli kwamba baadhi ya wapenzi wa kilimwengu wa Hume hawataki kuamini jambo hilo. Kwa vyovyote vile, kutilia shaka hagiography si jambo ambalo Hume mwenyewe angeweza kupinga.