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  • On Enlightenment
  • Graeme Hunter (bio)
David Stove. On Enlightenment. Edited by Andrew Irvine Transaction 2002. xxxvi, 185. US $34.95

When he died in 1994, David Stove enjoyed an excellent reputation both as a Hume scholar and as a philosopher of science. But it was as an essayist, rather than as an academic writer, that he built up a large and loyal readership across the English-speaking world. To anyone who has never encountered Stove the essayist it will be difficult to explain the nature of his charm.

The first popular essay of Stove's I encountered was a piece of social criticism called 'A Farewell to Arts: Marxism, Semiotics and Feminism.' When this essay appeared in the mid-1980s the topics it discussed were among the current idols of the cave, and untenured professors like myself were expected to worship them. Religious dissent and religious tolerance were unknown. Those were the days when universities were described as 'islands of repression in a sea of freedom.' To learn that there was a professor somewhere in Australia courageous enough to put these idols in question, and witty enough to lampoon three of them in a single essay, was intoxicating. Not since puberty had I discovered anything as dangerous and delightful.

The person who introduced me to this side of David Stove was Andrew Irvine, a former student of Stove's, now a professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia and the editor of the present fine collection of essays. It does not include the paper of which I have spoken, but contains fourteen others, each of which is just as good. They concern the nature of the Enlightenment and its legacy. On the one hand, Stove fiercely defends the reasonableness for which the Enlightenment stood, while on the other hand relentlessly exposing both the intellectual pretensions of its progenitors and the follies of its contemporary progeny.

It is difficult to find a general category for these essays and it might be a mistake to try. In that respect they resemble their author, of whom Roger Kimball writes in the preface to this volume: 'Stove was that rarest of creatures: a genuinely independent thinker. His allegiance was always to the best argument, the most persuasive reasoning. This made him difficult to categorize, impossible to pigeon-hole.'

One unifying thread running through the collection, however, is provided by the critical scrutiny to which it subjects many of the key ideas [End Page 425] of the Enlightenment. And since these tend to be the ideas we take for granted today, readers who are prepared to reconsider some of their conventional assumptions are likely to profit most from this book. Stove offers searching criticisms of utilitarianism, egalitarianism, sociobiology, pacifism, and affirmative action. He explains how it is possible for socialism to make relentless progress even in societies which massively reject it and how conservatism can be so much wiser than liberalism, yet never as popular. And this is accomplished with unfailing clarity and a good deal of humour.

Is there a weakness in this collection? There is one. It is too short.

Graeme Hunter

Graeme Hunter, Department of Philosophy, University of Ottawa

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