New Essays on David Hume (review)

Organized by the Italian Research Group on the British Enlightenment, this collection provides insight into the many different aspects of David Hume's philosophy. The book comprises a total of twenty-one articles that take diverse approaches to Hume's epistemology, morals, politics, history, and religion, and is divided into four sections: "Of the understanding," "Of morals and criticism," "Of history, politics and religion," and "Hume novelties." Due to limitations of space, all the articles cannot be addressed here; I will instead discuss those articles that touch on areas of research that have not been much explored recently, or that provide new approaches to old issues in Hume scholarship.

The first section contains six articles on Hume's epistemology. The opening article, "Kemp Smith and the Two Kinds of Naturalism in Hume's Philosophy," by John P. Wright, provides a very suggestive revision of the long-held debate on Kemp Smith's reading of Hume's theory of belief as a form of naturalism. Wright claims that Kemp Smith's allegation of the influence of Hutcheson and Newton on Hume's theory of association of ideas is problematic, and that a rather Malebranchean motive lies beneath it.

In "Simple Perceptions in Hume's Treatise," Marina Frasca-Spada attempts to clarify the meaning of Hume's term, 'simple perceptions'. The author begins by considering various possible instances of such "atomic" entities—colored points, sounds, and passions, among others. After this, she concludes that a "simple perception" does not refer to the "parts" of a complex one, but rather to distinguishable perceptual "aspects" of it; hence, the expression 'simple perception' is relative to the "complex perception" rather than absolute.

P. J. Kail's "Leibniz's Dog and Humean Reason" examines Hume's claims on the constitutive similarity of human and animal reason in light of Leibniz's view. Kail argues that what Hume saw as both animal and human reasoning—i.e., making more or less probable inferences on the grounds of mechanically associated ideas—corresponds to what Leibniz considered a dog's non-rational way of thinking. Leibniz's dog, says Kail, "lacks reason since he lacks knowledge of necessary truths. . . . Lack of reason is equivalent to a failure to grasp underlying causes" (70). He concludes that it is Hume's skepticism concerning our capacity to grasp causal powers that leaves us on the same standing as Leibniz's dog: "that is to say, the skeptical doubts reveal us as Fido" (76).

The second section, "On morals and criticism," revolves mostly around the debate between James Moore and David Fate Norton on the relationship between Hume and Hutcheson. In 1994, Moore argued that Hutcheson's moral theory should be interpreted as belonging to the tradition of Stoicism, whereas Hume's is Epicurean. To this interpretation, Norton answered (2005) by pointing to Hutcheson's influence on Hume and the conceptual similarities in their moral theories. Now, in his contribution entitled "The Eclectic Stoic, the Mitigated Skeptic," Moore resumes the debate, referring to various signs of what he takes to be Hume's allegiance to Epicureanism, and documenting how Hume and Hutcheson's discrepancies are more evident than their similarities. Moore's case is forcefully made, while making a diligent summary of Norton's points in the debate. The absence of a response from Norton is somewhat remedied by Luigi Turco's, "Hutcheson and Hume in a Recent Polemic," though his general conclusion seems to be more in agreement with Moore's position.

The section "Of History, Politics and Religion" contains seminal articles on Hume's History of England and its reception in eighteenth-century America. It begins with Annette Baier's "Hume's Excellent Hypocrites"—an examination of the vice of hypocrisy in the History of England—and continues with two articles on Hume's reception in colonial America: Mark Spencer's "Hume's Reception in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia" and M. A. Stewart's "Hume in the Service of American Deism."

The most important contribution in this...