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  • David Hume: Historical Thinker, Historical Writer ed. by Mark G. Spencer
  • Simon Kow
David Hume: Historical Thinker, Historical Writer, edited by Mark G. Spencer. University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013. xii, 282 pp. $69.95 US (cloth).

This book is a fine collection of essays addressing an under-explored topic, namely the relation between Hume the philosopher and Hume the historian. Mark G. Spencer notes in the introduction that apart from scattered remarks on history in Hume’s philosophical treatises and essays, and general comments on the development of the English constitution in his History of England, the philosophical content in Hume’s historical writings and the historical content of his philosophy are not fully apparent. And while Hume’s History of England was widely read in his day, his historical work tended to be neglected thereafter relative to his philosophical texts. Although some of the claims made by the authors in this volume may be [End Page 136] questioned, in terms of their various attempts to unify the philosophical and historical sides of David Hume, the collection as a whole represents a significant contribution to the growing scholarship on this important aspect of Hume’s thought.

The essays employ a diversity of approaches. Roger L. Emerson argues that Hume was potentially interested in writing an ecclesiastical history (as did his successor Gibbon), given the often rich accounts of ecclesiastical affairs in The History of England. His hesitance arose from not wanting his peace disturbed by both offended religious authorities and radical Enlightenment philosophes. In contrast, Jennifer A. Herdt is critical of Hume’s distinction between natural moral sentiments, and artificial lives as influenced by superstition and enthusiasm. In fact, she argues, a sympathetic understanding of religious belief and practice underpins Hume’s writing; Hume’s own historiography can be interpreted as endorsing a kind of providen-tialism (of human progress).

The following chapters focus on Hume’s History of England. Philip Hick nicely traces the development of concepts of liberty from Machiavelli to Bolingbroke. He argues that Hume broke from republican and Whig views on freedom in his analysis of its entanglements with religious fanaticism, and the need to balance liberty with authority. Nevertheless Hume’s employment of the rhetoric of “the spirit of liberty” helped fuel the revolutionary politics of late eighteenth-century America. Mark Towsey turns to the eighteenth-century Scottish readership of The History of England. He shows that despite misgivings over Hume’s religious skepticism, and complicated and controversial political learnings, the work nevertheless enjoyed great success in his homeland. David Allan looks southward to ascertain who Hume’s English readers might have been, and how they discussed and obtained copies of his History — again despite or because of its controversial content. In his examination of the medieval volumes of the History, Jeffrey M. Suderman explores Hume’s nuanced reflections on the English kings of the Middle Ages. For Hume the greatest monarchs were those who transcended the barbarism of their times, thus reinforcing not only the superiority of modern civility but also the surprising role of powerful monarchs in the making of modern English constitutional liberty.

Subsequent chapters by F.L. van Holthoon, Claudia M. Schmidt, and Douglas Long are the most provocative and controversial. According to van Holthoon, the end of Hume’s History of England was for Hume the end of history, in that by 1688 the English had achieved the most practicable government to preserve constitutional liberty — a mixed government. In his Essays, though, he pointed to a republican form as ideal. The term “end of history” is inflammatory, and of questionable utility and precision — would Hume have truly precluded the possibility of new social and political configurations for the English, given his solidly empirical [End Page 137] approach to history? But fortunately, van Holthoon’s assessment is persuasive when he confines himself within Hume’s own terms. Even more ambitiously, Schmidt claims that Hume influenced such philosophers as Herder, Hegel, John Herschel, Hempel, and even Hamann through his historiographical reflections concerning the “theory of progress,” and his recognition of human situatedness in history. Schmidt concedes that her account might appear to be nothing more than “a bundle...

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