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  • Hume's Skeptical Crisis: A Textual Study
  • Annette C. Baier
Robert J. Fogelin . Hume's Skeptical Crisis: A Textual Study. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Pp. xii + 192 pages. ISBN 978-0-19-538739-1, Cloth, $45.00.

Not since A. J. Ayer's Hume: A Short Introduction, in 1980, has a little book about Hume packed so much punch. Fogelin's handsome book is more restricted in its topic than Ayer's, which covered all of Hume's thought, and along the way made some very pertinent remarks about personal identity, a topic which Fogelin too addresses, although it was not part of the crisis that is his main concern. The only other short book which is at all comparable is David Pears's 1990 Hume's System. We must be grateful to Oxford University Press for a series of little gems on Hume.

This book is a more restricted in topic than Fogelin's 1985 version of Hume's thought, in Hume's Skepticism in the Treatise of Human Nature, since it does not discuss Parts 1 and 2 of Book 1, and barely alludes to Books 2 and 3. The account of induction is still seen as skeptical (18), but is mentioned only in passing. As its subtitle tells us, this book is a fairly close textual study, giving us analytical summaries of all of parts 3 and 4 of Book 1, and some parts of the Appendix. Fogelin grants, to those who have stressed Hume's naturalism, that much of Book 1, such as the final sections of Part 3, support such a reading, or would, "unless, that is, we turn pages and enter into the skeptical realm of Part 4" (28). And even then, as he points out, Hume ends its first section claiming that his own theory of belief is verified by the ineffectiveness of the skeptical argument. "Hume exhibits no jitters [End Page 231] as a result of his skepticism with regard to reason" (51). The jitters come a section later, and recur in Section 4, and in the "Conclusion."

In his preface Fogelin mentions me, as well as Thomas Brown, J. A. Passmore, Barry Stroud and Don Garrett, as having influenced his present interpretation. His account of the skeptical moves in part 4 has changed mainly in its details. While in his earlier book, skepticism was a recurrent mood, running through the whole Treatise, now it is seen to peak in a crisis in part 4 of Book 1. Fogelin sees Hume's stance, thereafter, as the outcome of two vectors, unanswered skepticism about our powers of thought, and the persistence of common belief. This leads to a modest ambition to proceed with the science of human nature, despite the gloomy skeptical conclusions. "Viewed this way, his mitigated skepticism is an explicable event in the natural history of philosophy" (158).

Fogelin begins with part 3, leaving aside the question of whether Hume had a right to his empiricist thesis that all ideas derive their elements from impressions, and to other theses asserted before part 3 of Book 1, and also leaves aside the question of how Hume could proceed from the Conclusion of Book 1 on into Books 2 and 3. Just as the naturalist ending of part 3 is followed by the skepticism of part 4, it is granted (137) that part 4 is followed by a resumption of the task of describing our minds. Part 4, before its final paragraphs, is a skeptical interlude in a long careful look at how we think and feel, and how our experience, including our experience of thinking, affects that.

The book aims to show how the skepticism grows up alongside, and even within, the science of man. This it does, in the main, superbly. It is a narrative, not an argument with other interpreters, none of whom are mentioned, after the Preface. This gives the book its uncluttered charm. The brisk run through part 3 with which the book begins is fine, except for two matters. Section 9 is said to claim that all the principles of association transfer belief, while all that Hume claims about two of them, resemblance...

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