Interpretation: The Case of David Hume

This essay offers an account of the different interpretations of David Hume, dating from the interpretations of his contemporaries in Scotland, in order to illustrate the importance of considering the context of interpretation as well as that of the text. The context of interpretation is taken to include the different conceptual and intentional contexts of contemporary interpreters as well as the different contexts of time and space. This account thus involves a focus on the rational reconstruction of Hume's thought within particular intellectual contexts and the transfer of such interpretations from one context to another. As a result, we can see how Hume should have been regarded as a rational skeptic, the inspiration for logical positivism, and a realist. On the face of it, it is not clear that these are compatible positions: a rationalist requires all statements to be established by reason, but a skeptical rationalist sees little scope for reason and thus knowledge (for example, because existence cannot be proved by reason); a logical positivist requires the application of reason to observed facts for statements to be meaningful; a realist sees the object of science to be real entities, but does not necessarily see reason and/or observation as capable of yielding true knowledge of the real.

The interpretation of Hume as a realist was set out in Dow 2000 by virtue of a focus on the particularities of the Scottish Enlightenment—in other words, an account of Hume's own context.¹ The implication was drawn that interpretations of Hume as a rational skeptic and as the inspiration for logical positivism arose from a misunderstanding of his intentions due to inadequate reference to context. Here we consider what accounted for these different influential interpretations, that is, the context of the interpreters themselves. We consider Hume's contemporaries in Scotland, who could be said to have a shared intellectual context, as well as subsequent thinkers in different intellectual environments. We bring the discussion of the interpretation of Hume up to modern times; modern differences in the interpretation of Hume can be understood in terms of the different methodological approaches and intentions of the interpreters.

Hume is credited with having a direct effect on modern economics, but there are disagreements as to the content of Hume's economic thought (see Berdell 1995). For monetarists, Hume's quantity theory of money is a theoretical inspiration. Jacob Frenkel and Harry Johnson (1976), for example, quote liberally from Hume in their account of global monetarism. Yet others interpret Hume's monetary thought quite differently. For example, in an argument further developed by J. F. Berdell (1995), Andrew Skinner (1993, 237–38) points out that, while discussing the determination of the rate of interest, “Hume thus concluded that the most important single factor was not simply the supply of money, but a change in manners and in the form of economic organization” (see also Hutchison 1990, 42). Further, in addition to his static statement of the quantity theory of money, Hume argued for increasing the money supply to encourage entrepreneurship and increase productivity. “Hume was seeking to show that the frequently posed question as to what was the ‘right' quantity of money for a country was, in the long run [in the abstract sense], meaningless” (Hutchison 1990, 45). Further, Margaret Schabas (2001) provides an account of the complexity of Hume's thinking on money, relating it to the context of contemporary thinking in natural philosophy.

Although there are clearly interpretational issues relating to Hume's economics, we will focus here primarily on Hume's philosophical writing, because of its influence on thought on economic methodology. The argument to be developed—that it is important to understand the differences in intellectual context, even among contemporary interpreters—could help us also to understand how these different interpretations of Hume's economics have arisen, as well as how they may have a more general application to economic thought. But we confine ourselves...