The Cosmopolitan Ideal in Enlightenment Thought: Its Form and Function in the Ideas of Franklin, Hume, and Voltaire, 1694-1790 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 479 should ignore his attempts to understand the pervasiveness of religious beliefs. It is exactly because Stroud's general view of Hume's system is so worth testing that ~t should have been tested against these parts of ~t. A few comments in conclusion about the final chapter, "Problems and Prospects of Humean Naturalism." Stroud argues that Hume's permanent interest does not lie in his being a supposed ancestor of positivism, since his naturalism ~sbased on observation and inference rather than logical analysis. It lies in his vision of a comprehensive science of man that places human reason, and the concepts with which It operates, in the broader context of human nature. In Hume himself this vision is encumbered by the theory of ideas, but if freed from the limitations that theory imposes it could be carried forward into a comprehensive study of what It is to "have" concepts such as necessity, objectivity, or virtue. While the resulting investigations, as Stroud describes them, are certainly a far cry from many twentieth-century understandings of what analysis is, they incorporate a good deal that is famililar from Kant and the later Wlttgenstein--in particular the latter's use of imaginary forms of life that differ from our own by the absence of the concepts being studied. What he does not make quite clear is how far he thinks this naturahsm-minus-the-theory-of-ideas would displace the skepticism that is the negative phase of Hume's, as many influenced by Wlttgenstem would presumably expect it to do. If Stroud thinks it would do so, he is hardly outlining a future for Humean naturahsm! The final pages are very fine. They make clear, accurately and with race balance, the philosophical value that Hume discerned in his own skepticism. Since Hume holds that our natural beliefs depend on fictions from which we cannot detach ourselves, he has to emphasize that he can expect at most a fleeting recognition of their groundlessness in h~s own case. So the Humean is forced into oscLllation between moments of disturbing skeptical self-knowledge and a lifetime of adherence to these fictions. His illumination will lie in a recogmtion that this is his inevitable condition. This conclusion offers a form of philosophical consolation, not (as I have always myself been inclined to say) a verdict against philosophy, and Stroud is wholly right to emphasize this. But it is surely mistaken to say that this shows affinity with the classical skeptics. To the classical Skeptic, tranquillity comes through a suspense of judgment that is the outcome of philosophical criticism of those popular beliefs which the wise man will assent to only outwardly. To Hume the validity of the criticism still leaves us unable to suspend judgment for more than the briefest moments, and it is this very Inability which the philosopher has to recognize and accept contentedly as a socml being. His message is the very opposite of theirs. TERENCE PENELHUM Untversi~ of Calgao' Thomas J. Schlereth. The Cosmopohtan Ideal m Enhghtenment Thought: Its Form and Function in the Ideas of Frankhn, Hume, arid Voltaire, 1694-1790. Notre Dame and London: The University of Notre Dame Press, 1977. Pp. xxv + 210. $13.95. The argument at the outset of this book Is that "the cosmopohtan ideal" had a noticeable Impact on Enlightenment intellectual life throughout the transatlantic community. Other scholars have previously identified cosmopolitanism as a main feature of the Enlightenment. Schlereth claims our attention because he has written the first lengthy study that traces its theoretical and practical influence . Enlightenment thinkers were not the first to dream of an integrated world order or to articulate an abstract faith m the fundamental umty of mankind. In both of these realms, the philosophes were self-conscious heirs to the thought of classical antiquity and of the Renaissance. According to Schlereth, the novelty of the pursuit of the cosmopolitan ideal in the Enlightenment was the extent of its success. In justifying this claim, however, Schlereth's initial, relatively modest argument comes to be refashioned into a much broader claim. Indeed, the final two chapters of the book suggest that in most respects the cosmpolitan Ideal is...