Member News

Livia Guimarăes is Professor of Philosophy at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

P. J. E. Kail on the legacy of Hume (November, 2011)

P. J. E. Kail is University Lecturer in the History of Modern Philosophy, St Peter’s College, Oxford University

John P. Wright's Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature: An Introduction is now available as an e-book.

David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40) presents the most important account of skepticism in the history of modern philosophy. In Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), John P. Wright examines the development of Hume's ideas in the Treatise, their relation to eighteenth-century theories of the imagination and passions, and the reception they received when Hume published the Treatise. He explains Hume's arguments concerning the inability of reason to establish the basic beliefs which underlie science and morals, as well as his arguments showing why we are nevertheless psychologically compelled to accept such beliefs. The book will be a valuable guide for those seeking to understand the nature of modern skepticism and its connection with the founding of the human sciences during the Enlightenment.

John P. Wright is Professor of Philosophy at Central Michigan University

Lorne Falkenstein publishes An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding(Broadview Press, 2011)

Angela Coventry interviewed by Ann Arbor Science and Skepticism Society (August 12th, 2011)

Listen to the Five-Part Audio Interview on: Empiricism and Skepticism; the Copy Principle; the Design Argument and Belief in Miracles; and the Hume Society.

Angela Coventry is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Portland State University

Mark Spencer's David Hume and Eighteenth-Century America is now available in paperback

Mark Spencer's David Hume and Eighteenth-Century America (University of Rochester Press, 2010) explores the reception of David Hume's political thought in eighteenth-century America. It presents a challenge to standard interpretations that assume Hume's thought had little influence in early America.

Mark Spencer is Associate Professor of History at Brock University

Thomas Holden publishes Spectres of False Divinity: Hume's Moral Atheism (Oxford University Press, 2010)

Spectres of False Divinity presents a historical and critical interpretation of Hume's rejection of the existence of a deity with moral attributes. In Hume's view, no first cause or designer responsible for the ordered universe could possibly have moral attributes; nor could the existence (or non-existence) of such a being have any real implications for human practice or conduct. Hume's case for this 'moral atheism' is a central plank of both his naturalistic agenda in metaphysics and his secularizing program in moral theory. It complements his wider critique of traditional theism, and threatens to rule out any religion that would make claims on moral practice.

Thomas Holden situates Hume's commitment to moral atheism in its historical and philosophical context, offers a systematic interpretation of his case for divine amorality, and shows how Hume can endorse moral atheism while maintaining his skeptical attitude toward traditional forms of cosmological and theological speculation.

Thomas Holden is Associate Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara

David Fate Norton and Jacqueline Taylor's The Cambridge Companion to Hume: Second Edition

Edited by David Fate Norton and Jacqueline Taylor. The Cambridge Companion to Hume: Second Edition: New York, 2009. Although best known for his contributions to the theory of knowledge, metaphysics, and philosophy of religion, Hume also influenced developments in the philosophy of mind, psychology, ethics, political and economic theory, political and social history, and aesthetic theory. The fifteen essays in this volume address all aspects of Hume's thought. The picture of him that emerges is that of a thinker who, though often critical to the point of scepticism, was nonetheless able to build on that scepticism a constructive, viable, and profoundly important view of the world. Also included in this volume are Hume's two brief autobiographies and a bibliography suited to those beginning their study of Hume. This second edition of one our most popular Companions includes six new essays and a new introduction, and the remaining essays have all been updated or revised.

David Fate Norton is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at McGill University. Jacqueline A. Taylor is Associate Professor of Philosophy at University of San Francisco, California.

Joseph Filonowicz's Fellow-Feeling and the Moral Life

Joseph Filonowicz's Fellow-Feeling and the Moral Life (Cambridge University Press, 2008), 272 pp, is an original study of the moral philosophy of the British Sentimentalists, including substantial discussion of the work of Hume, especially in relation to his predecessors Shaftesbury and Hutcheson.

Joseph Filonowicz is Professor of Philosophy at Long Island University, The Brooklyn Campus.

Roger L. Emerson's Essays on David Hume, Medical Men and the Scottish Enlightenment

Roger L. Emerson's Essays on David Hume, Medical Men and the Scottish Enlightenment (Ashgate, 2009), 316 pp, embraces many of the topics which Hume included under "industry, knowledge and humanity"--from the European Enlightenment and the Scots relation to it, to Scottish social history and its relation to religion, science and medicine. Overarching themes of what it meant to be enlightened in the eighteenth century are considered alongside more specific studies of notable figures of the period, such as Archibald Campbell, 3rd Duke of Argyll and David Hume, and the training and number of Scottish medical students. Together, the volume provides an opportunity to step back and reconsider the Scottish Enlightenment in its broader context and to consider what new directions this field of study might take. (From Ashgate)

Roger L. Emerson is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Western Ontario.

Donald L.M. Baxter's Hume's Difficulty: Time and Identity in the Treatise is now available in paperback

Donald L.M. Baxter's Hume's Difficulty: Time and Identity in the Treatise (Routledge, 2009) focuses on Hume's treatment of the concept of numerical identity, which is central to Hume's famous discussions of the external world and personal identity. Hume raises a long unappreciated, and still unresolved, difficulty with the concept of identity: how to represent something as "a medium betwixt unity and number." Superficial resemblance to Frege's famous puzzle has kept the difficulty in the shadows. Hume's way of addressing it makes sense only in the context of his unorthodox theory of time. Baxter shows the defensibility of that theory against past dismissive interpretations, especially of Hume's stance on infinite divisibility. Later the author shows how the difficulty underlies Hume's later worries about his theory of personal identity, in a new reading motivated by Hume's important appeals to consciousness. Baxter casts Hume throughout as an acute metaphysician, and reconciles this side of Hume with his overarching Pyrrhonian skepticism.

Donald L.M. Baxter is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut.

Rachel Cohon publishes Hume's Morality: Feeling and Fabrication

Rachel Cohon's Hume's Morality: Feeling and Fabrication (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 288 pp, offers an original interpretation of the moral philosophy of David Hume, focusing on two areas. Firstly, his metaethics. Cohon reinterprets Hume's claim that moral distinctions are not derived from reason and explains why he makes it. She finds that Hume did not actually hold three "Humean" claims: 1) that beliefs alone cannot move us to act, 2) that evaluative propositions cannot be validly inferred from purely factual propositions, or 3) that moral judgments lack truth value. According to Hume, human beings discern moral virtues and vices by means of feeling or emotion in a way rather like sensing; but this also gives the moral judge a truth-apt idea of a virtue or vice as a felt property. Secondly, Cohon examines the artificial virtues. Hume says that although many virtues are refinements of natural human tendencies, others (such as honesty) are constructed by social convention to make cooperation possible; and some of these generate paradoxes. She argues that Hume sees these traits as prosthetic virtues that compensate for deficiencies in human nature. However, their true status clashes with our common-sense conception of a virtue, and so has been concealed, giving rise to the paradoxes. (From Oxford University Press Online)

Rachel Cohon is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University at Albany, State University of New York.

Annette Baier publishes Death and Character: Further Reflections on Hume

Annette Baier's book Death and Character: further reflections on Hume (Harvard University Press, 2008) is a collection of essays about his philosophy of the human person. Ranging widely in Hume's works, Baier considers his views on character, desirable character traits, his treatment of historical characters, and his own character as shown not just by his cheerful death and what he chose to read shortly before it but also by changes in his writings, especially his repudiation of the celebrated A Treatise on Human Nature. She offers new insight into the Treatise and its relation to the works in which Hume cast anew the material in its three books. Her reading radically revises the received interpretation of Hume's epistemology and, in particular, philosophy of mind. (From Harvard University Press Online)

Annette Baier is Distinguished Service Professor of Philosophy Emerita at the University of Pittsburgh.

Kenneth Merrill publishes Historical Dictionary of Hume's Philosophy

The Historical Dictionary of Hume's Philosophy by Kenneth R. Merrill (Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2008), xxii + 351 pages, is the only Hume dictionary in existence. The book provides a substantial account of David Hume's life and the times in which he lived, and it provides an overview of his philosophical doctrines. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and over a hundred cross-referenced dictionary entries covering key terms, as well as brief discussions of Hume's major works and of some of his most important predecessors, contemporaries, and successors. (From the Scarecrow Press online catalog)

Elizabeth Radcliffe publishes A Companion to Hume

A Companion to Hume, edited by Elizabeth Radcliffe (Blackwell Publishing, 2008) 592 pp. is part of the Blackwell Companions to Philosophy series. It contains 29 essays by leading Hume scholars organized into six parts, with an introduction and a discussion of Hume's historical context. Blackwell is offering a discount to Hume Society members. For details log in to Hume Society Members Only.

Hume Society Members featured in New Essays on David Hume

New Essays on David Hume, ed. Emilio Mazza and Emanuele Ronchetti (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2007) is a collection of contributions from eminent scholars. The volume is divided into four sections. The first opens with the question of naturalism and closes with scepticism. Moral philosophy is at the heart of the second section, which also deals with the relation between Hume and Hutcheson. The third spans from the History of England and how it was appropriated by de Maistre and Constant, to the American reception of Hume's work and its connection with American deism. The last section is devoted to the presentation of recent Humeana: the new scholarly edition of the Treatise and two edited volumes on Hume and on his European reception.

Contributors: Annette C. Baier, Flavio Baroncelli, Martin Bell, Alix Cohen, Roger L. Emerson, David Fate Norton, Marina Frasca-Spada, James A. Harris, Dale .Jacquette, Peter Jones, P.J.E. Kail, Catherine Kemp, Emilio Mazza, James Moore, Mary J. Norton, Charles Pigden, Emanuele Ronchetti, Ian Simpson Ross, Mark G. Spencer, M. A. Stewart, Luigi Turco, and John P. Wright. [8.15.07]

Saul Traiger publishes The Blackwell Guide to Hume's Treatise

The Blackwell Guide to Hume's Treatise, edited by Saul Traiger (Blackwell Publishing Limited, 2005) joins the ranks of Blackwell's Guides to Great Works. The Guide, intended to provide students with the scholarly resources needed to mine the Treatise for philosophical insights, contains fifteen original essays by leading Hume scholars. It is dividied into four parts. Part I: Formulation, Reception, and Scope of the Treatise, Part II: the Understanding, Part III: the Passions, Part IV: Morals.

Contributors: Lilli Alanen, Donald L.M. Baxter, Janet Broughton, Rachel Cohon, Don Garrett, Lorne Falkenstein, Mikael Karlsson, Jane McIntyre, William Edward Morris, Tony Pitson, Wade Robison, Abraham Sesshu Roth, Corliss Swain, Jackie Taylor, and John Wright

Saul Traiger is a former President as well as Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the Hume Society and former member of the Executive Committee.

Livia Guimarăes Guest Edits Special Issue of Kriterion - Revista de Filosofia Devoted to Hume (July-December, 2011)

P. J. E. Kail on the legacy of Hume (November, 2011)

John P. Wright's Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature: An Introduction is now available as an e-book.

Lorne Falkenstein publishes An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding(Broadview Press, 2011)

Angela Coventry interviewed by Ann Arbor Science and Skepticism Society (August 12th, 2011)

Mark Spencer's David Hume and Eighteenth-Century America is now available in paperback

Thomas Holden publishes Spectres of False Divinity: Hume's Moral Atheism (Oxford University Press, 2010)