Hume’s Sceptical Enlightenment by Ryu Susato (review)

This rich and detailed volume reads David Hume as a skeptic, but Susato is less interested in dissecting Hume’s particular skeptical arguments and more concerned with what he regards as Hume’s larger skeptical vision as it relates to his social and political thought. Susato argues against the idea that Hume’s historical work is independent of his philosophical skepticism; and he opposes the idea that Hume ought best to be read as a conservative thinker. Broadly speaking, the question Susato addresses is how the “Humean defense of such positive values as ‘industry, knowledge and humanity’ is supported by seemingly conservative, though actually sceptical aspects of Hume’s thought, such as his criticism of rationalism in morals, his rejection of the social contract theory in politics, and his deep doubt concerning the possibility for progress in human civilisation” (21).

Susato defines the idea of Enlightenment in a rather vague way as a “shared sensitivity among philosophers to the on-going process of civilization . . . and as a series of questions and issues posed by those intellectuals based on this historical awareness” (6–7). The term ‘sceptical enlightenment’ Susato draws from Henry May’s Enlightenment America (1976); but Susato is especially keen to distinguish his interpretation, among the very many he addresses, from those of Jonathan Israel, John Robertson, Duncan Forbes, Donald W. Livingston, and Neil McArthur.

About Hume as a skeptic, Susato similarly interprets Hume not as advancing philosophical theses or doctrines but rather as animated by a kind of “spirit of scepticism” (12) that can be, he argues, more precisely understood by four characteristics: (i) Hume’s empirical naturalism, which focuses on contingencies and diversity (17–18) in the social and natural orders; (ii) his “scepticism about the clear demarcation of various issues” (18), including the limits of legislative power; (iii) his accepting the instability of opinion (19) such that “Hume naturally cannot uphold the attainability of eternal truth by reason; much less the perfectibility of human nature” (19); and (iv) Hume’s dialogical and ironic literary styles (20).

Skeptics, if you will pardon the pun about the link between Hume’s philosophical and historical work, point out that Hume never explicitly connects them (e.g. Andrew Sabl, Hume’s Politics, 2012). Susato responds by collecting a raft of suggestive remarks—including Hume’s self-characterization as a skeptical Whig in a 1748 letter to Henry Home, Lord Kames—and then advancing a two-pronged set of arguments. In chapter 2 he holds that Hume’s anti-rationalist theory of the natural association of ideas bears skeptical import, especially when stripped of the Epicurean materialism with which it was often identified. Chapter 3 makes the connection to Hume’s larger thought by arguing that Hume’s skeptical theory of association underwrites his political theory of opinion, custom, and manners. As Susato writes, “the plasticity and indeterminacy of Hume’s notion of opinion is central to his system of ‘the science of MAN’ and his Sceptical Enlightenment” in history and politics (72).

Chapters 4–7 explore applications of that connection. Chapter 4 claims that Hume’s pro-luxury position is more than an anti-Christian and quasi-Epicurean-Stoic moral theory in that it also advances the idea of social refinement as improvement. It is a thesis, I think, that could be reinforced by a closer examination of Addison and Steele’s periodic literature and the scholarship on politeness. Chapter 5 argues for the consistency of Hume’s opposition to priestcraft between his philosophical and historical work. For example, according to Susato, “the Church of England provides a middle ground between superstition and enthusiasm, but still within the framework of ‘false’ religions” (168). The chapter offers fruitful comparisons between Hume and Voltaire.

Chapters 6 and 7 defend another kind of consistency, namely, between Hume’s affirmation of politics as a science, his idealized plan for a “Perfect Commonwealth,” and his skeptical emphasis on the diverse particularities of human history as well has his pessimism about faction and human...