Philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment (review)

452 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 25:3 JULY 1987 themselves empirical claims which, given the skeptical argument about induction, we have no reason whatever to believe. Even the claim that Academic skepticism will be the result of the aforementioned competing influences is an unwarranted empirical prediction; "superstition" or "enthusiasm" are just as likely outcomes of following Hume's advice if the Pyrrhonian interpretation of Hume's inductive skepticism is right. Indeed, as Hume so clearly recognizes in his discussion of the meaning of 'natural' in Book III of the Treatise (Treatise,475), anything that happens is natural in one sense; to call something 'natural' cannot, therefore, be grounds for endorsing or recommending it. On the other hand, what we ought to do or believe is often, sadly, quite unnatural (in the sense of being uncommon). The problem with Pyrrhonism is that its triumph leaves the skeptic bereft of resources to recommend anything. Thus it remains doubtful whether Hume's (theoretical) skepticism and naturalism can co-exist. This book advances no novel or controversial interpretation of Hume, nor does it independently pursue very far the issues Hume raises. Much of it is a straightforward exposition of the relevant arguments. It is, however, a clear and well-organized treatment of the topic and should be especially useful for someone who wants to get an overview of these skeptical arguments in the Treatise. SCOTT ARNOLD University of Alabama, Birmingham Vincent Hope, editor. Philosophers of the ScottishEnlightenment. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, x984. Pp. xii + 261. $22.5o. The study of Scottish philosophy revolves around Edinburgh and the generous resources found there. For twenty-five years now Dr. George Davie has been one of these resources, a wellspring of bibliographical leads and philosophical ideas--and so he continues to be despite his recent retirement. It is entirely fitting then that Davie's colleague, Vincent Hope, should have undertaken to organize this volume, and a credit to Edinburgh University Press that the gesture has been brought to completion in the form of a set of essays focussed on, with one exception, Scottish philosophers of the eighteenth century. The unity of the book is, however, this purely temporal one, and that in itself will seem a weakness to those who know that George Davie has often said that it is the nineteenth-century Scots who interested him the most. In these circumstances it is regrettable that there is only one essay (Neil Maccormick's reflections on the Institutes of James Lorimer) from this later period, and that, among the essays we are given, there is some less than lively stirring of the waters of the Great Names, eighteenth-century version. Especially disconcerting is the fact that few of the authors show anything like an appreciation for Davie's insistence on reading the documents of Scottish intellectual history as historical documents--as responses to the philosophical, political, and social issues of their time, and not as so many timeless bolts from the blue. Granted, only one author in the work actually says: "I shall treat philosophically rather than BOOr nEvxzws 453 historically of certain themes from the [title], the question being not from whom [author] derived his theses and how they stand in relation to others' theses, but what instruction we should derive from them, and how we should stand in relation to them; not why [author] came to think what he thought, but whether, in thinking it, he was right" (234). Nevertheless, this attitude pervades most of the essays in the collection. Perhaps such an ahistorical perspective would be less disappointing here if one were convinced that any philosophical work can be adequately assessed (Is the author right or wrong?) in such isolation. I should think that the right to assess presupposes the duty of understanding, and that seeing historical works in context is a sine qua non of understanding. Of course, in the end we want to know what Hume can teach us, but we will learn more if we remember that Hume--whatever his hopes about posterity-was not speaking to us, but to his contemporaries, and that more often than not his positive views are built on, and of, the rubble of...