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  • Hume’s True Scepticism by Donald C. Ainslie
  • Miriam Schleifer McCormick
Donald C. Ainslie. Hume’s True Scepticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. xiv + 286. Cloth, $70.00.

In this rigorous and thorough discussion of David Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature 1.4, entitled “Of the sceptical and other systems of philosophy,” Donald Ainslie aims both to provide detailed textual exegeses of all seven sections, and to offer a way of understanding them as unified by the recurring theme of the dangers of “false” philosophy and a defense of “true” philosophy or “true scepticism.” To understand the compatibility of Hume’s skeptical conclusions and his philosophical ambitions, and so to be in a position to properly interpret 1.4.7, we must “fully contextualize” it in “what has preceded it, especially elsewhere in Part 4” (5).

Ainslie tells us he will argue “that true scepticism involves a domestication of philosophy” (2). Philosophers cannot occupy a position that transcends common life, or employ methods that are immune from our ordinary “vulgar” experience. This domestication has two effects: philosophy is “unable to offer a justification or a repudiation of our fundamental tendencies to believe”; and “there is no special obligation to philosophize . . . those who are not interested in things philosophical should not be thought to exemplify some kind of failing” (2). I have sympathy with both these conclusions though I think the second effect, as Ainslie states it, can be misleading.

To establish the first claim, it is important to understand Hume’s view of introspection and reflection. Ainslie argues that Hume rejects Locke’s view of reflection, and most importantly that he rejects Locke’s notion of consciousness. For Locke we have immediate awareness and knowledge of our mental operations. For Hume, we have the capacity to reflect on our mental operations and do so when we introspect. But this observation of mental operations is “not something that is always forced upon us” (121). Because such reflection is optional, the skeptical challenge that asks whether our ideas are veridical is not one that we have to face; we do not normally need to decide that our most basic beliefs are well-founded. When we philosophize, these questions do become legitimate. But when we ask whether we should believe the verdicts of reason or of the senses, our “reflective interference” leaves us unable to answer, for the tools we use to try to answer are the very same ones whose legitimacy we have put into question.

Our inability to accept the conclusions of skeptical arguments is not a “brute fact” about us, neither displaying our fundamental irrationality nor revealing that our “natural tendencies” are normatively superior, but is the result of reflective interference (149). This recognition is key, for Ainslie, to understanding Hume’s view of philosophy that avoids the pitfalls of both the skeptical and naturalist interpretations of Hume’s view as presented in “Conclusion of this book.” Ainslie calls his view a “philosophical interpretation,” arguing that this section’s primary purpose is to explain how philosophy fits into everyday life (237). The overarching message is that philosophy needs to recognize its limits. When we are immersed in our world of reasoning and sensing we do not require a philosophical grounding. Philosophical reasoning will naturally lead us to ask for one; and then we are faced with a choice between “false” philosophy that will provide an answer filled with contradictions, and “true” philosophy that will recognize that these questions cannot be answered.

While I agree with much of what Ainslie says, and philosophy is not something we must all undertake, to say that it is not the case that the unexamined life is not worth living is not the same as saying the unexamined life is no better than the examined one. At times, Ainslie’s view seems to fail to do justice to how Hume thinks “true philosophy” could be of value, especially as it can offer alternative ways of addressing questions to those offered by superstition and religion. While Ainslie notes that this is one of the reasons Hume cites to return to philosophy after a period away from it (225), he underplays the...

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