Hume, Multiperspectival Pluralism, and Authorial Voice

Hume Studies Volume XXIV, Number 2, November 1998, pp. 313-334 Hume, Multiperspectival Pluralism, and Authorial Voice PETER LOPTSON Of all the great philosophers, Hume is probably the one about whom there is, among specialists, the deepest diversity of incompatible interpretations. Hume scholars, their results the outcome of years of labour and close intelligent command both of the Hume texts, and of each others' views, still arrive at remarkably different understandings, at the most basic levels, of what is going on in Hume's philosophical work. At the same time, these incompatible interpretations are typically forwarded with astonishing confidence by their proponents, as pretty much obviously, and certainly not seriously disputably, what Hume meant, and what informed exploration of his writings shows.1 There are of course some results of consensus, and some matters about which hardly anyone is in doubt. But to a degree probably without equal in the cases of other major philosophers, Hume elicits certitude, but to outcomes impossible to combine.2 By Hume's philosophical work I mean essentially A Treatise of Human Nature, the two Enquiries, and attendant or accompanying material such as the Abstract of the Treatise, and its Appendix.3 There are of course differences to be met with in Hume's work with the passage of time; significant differences of tone, and probably of doctrine, between the Treatise and the first Enquiry, for example. Yet, even for those who claim an inconsistent or erratic Hume, there is commonly agreed to be a fundamental commonality in his work, a unitary philosophy identifiable in all these core writings. What is not agreed is what that philosophy is. Peter Loptson is at the Department of Philosophy, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario NlG 2Wl CANADA, email: ploptson@uoguelph.ca 314 Peter Loptson Hume's views on religion illustrate this theme. Some are sure that Hume is an atheist,4 others that he is a deist,5 or at least some kind of theist;6 some even think he is a nonstandard fideist Christian.7 Likewise with regard to the possibility of knowledge of reality: some think Hume is a metaphysical realist,8 others that he is a positivist,9 hostile to any possibility of metaphysical pretension. Others see the latter animus, but still hold, sometimes on new grounds, to the classical conception of Hume as a genuine skeptic of one degree or other.10 Still others combine something of the first reading with something of the third, calling Hume a skeptical realist.11 Pall S. Õ rdal, if I interpret his view of Hume correctly, sees him as a sort of pragmatist, or proto-pragmatist, as do others.12 Most—though not all—contemporary interpreters identify Hume as a naturalist. Some think Hume unquestionably believes in causality13—indeed, causality of full rationalist stripe; others are sure that he denies that there is causality in the world,14 or else impute to him an altogether novel sort of causality,15 that, as they see it, no one before him—and possibly few since—have entertained. Some think Hume denied that there are people, or selves;16 others are confident that he shares standard common sense assumptions about human persons, and other items of the world.17 The relations between Hume's epistemological and psychological views and his work in moral philosophy, also are conceived in radically different ways. For some Hume means primarily to be the Newton of the mind—the first social scientist.18 Others contest the Newtonian ascription.19 Still others argue that Hume's whole goal is the formulation of an account of moral thinking, and the moral life, and all else is just propaedeutic to that end.20 Some see a profound unity and an architectonic interconnectedness in the Humean philosophical edifice, where others think Hume turns his philosophical attention upon one topic or range of topics then on to others, not noticing that he reaches views in one sector that are inconsistent with his views in other areas.21 For some Hume is a supremely masterful philosophical mind, with a synoptic command not only of the terrain of his special topics in human experience but of the inquiring eye and stance of naturalist...