A Treatise of Human Nature (review)

Hume Studies Volume XXVI, Number 2, November 2000, pp. 339-343 Book Reviews DAVID HUME. A Treatise of Human Nature (Oxford Philosophical Texts). Edited by David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton, with Editor's Introduction by David Fate Norton. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. ix + 106 + 595. ISBN 0-19-875173-7, cloth, $49.95; ISBN 0-19-875172-9, paper, $14.95. Readers of Hume have been aware for some years that a new Oxford edition of his philosophical works was forthcoming; and since 1998 it has been clear that the Oxford Philosophical Texts versions would appear at least a little earlier than the Clarendon edition. The Nortons' edition of the Treatise is the third of these volumes to be published. While scholars will never have doubted that it was high time the versions of Green and Grose and L. A. Selby-Bigge were replaced by one that embodied the results of more recent scholarship and technology, students and general readers may still wonder how important it really is for them to acquire a new copy of a work to which they have had easy access in a handy and pretty accurate format for many years. While Green and Grose's Hume has always been confined to the libraries, there are hundreds of copies of Selby-Bigge's about, and no doubt there will be for many years yet. So one thing I shall try to do in this review is answer those who might ask how important it is that they (and their students) make a point of reading the Treatise in this new edition. I shall hereafter refer to the Nortons' text as OPT, and the Selby-Bigge text, first published by Oxford in 1888 and revised in the second edition by P. H. Nidditch, as SBN. There is no suspense about the answer to the question. OPT totally supersedes SBN, and if the continued presence of copies of the latter in any way hinders the universal adoption of the former, then, as Hume might have put it, they should be committed to the flames. The reason for this judgment is the Volume XXVI, Number 2, November 2000 340 Book Reviews superlative quality of the editorial apparatus that the Nortons provide for us. I shall confine my comments to this apparatus, as the textual differences between OPT and SBN are the subject of a separate account by the Nortons themselves,1 and further review of them should await the appearance of the Clarendon edition. The editorial material in OPT makes it a bulkier volume than SBN. The obvious additions are the substantial editor's introduction, the section-by-section summaries that precede each set of annotations, the detailed annotations themselves, the glossary and the index. This is to be set beside Selby-Bigge's analytical index, and the eleven pages of textual notes added by Nidditch. Another obvious change is that the Nortons have numbered all Hume's paragraphs ; this makes referencing very easy, and reduces the temptation to use different number styles for books, parts, and sections: for example, 1.4.6.3 identifies a passage as being in the third paragraph of the sixth section of the fourth part of the first book. Any future classes where some students have SBN and others have OPT can achieve common referencing if the former group number their paragraphs with a pencil. Future scholarly works that refer, as they all will, to OFT, can be used the same way by SBN holdouts. Older scholarly works whose authors were unwise enough to make references solely by SBN page-numbers could be a problem for OPT users in the future, however; but one cannot provide for everything. I shall comment here on the editor's introduction, the editors' annotations and sectional summaries, and the index. The editor's introduction. This occupies 97 pages, numbered "Inn" to distinguish them from pages in the text. Its stated purpose is to show how each part of the work "contributes to the achievement of Hume's efforts to provide a comprehensive account of the workings, scope, and limits of the human mind" (13). This immediately sets the tone for the whole essay...