Scepticism and Literature: An Essay on Pope, Hume, Sterne, and Johnson by Fred Parker (review)

67 ysis, they may not need to. Young’s Night Thoughts is another great unread work which is explored in John A Baker ’s, ‘‘Wishful thinking? Theodicy and the Divine Economy in Edward Young’s Night Thoughts (1742–46).’’ In this account all forms of perceived ‘‘evil’’ are actually imperfections, because for Young, man is ‘‘a being who has not yet realised his full potential.’’ In ‘‘Aspects of Hume’s Treatment of the Problem of Evil,’’ Ian Simpson Ross discusses Hume’s debate with Bishop Butler as to whether ‘‘the balance of good and evil in the universe’’ can actually be determined . Of particular interest to Hume scholars will be Mr. Ross’s discussion of Hume’s excision of an ‘‘Early Fragment on Evil’’ from the Treatise. Arno Löffler’s ‘‘Goldsmith and the ‘Equal Dealings of Heaven’: The Problem of Evil in The Vicar of Wakefield’’ argues that the novel is neither a rewriting of the Book of Job as a Christian comedy, nor ‘‘an academic discourse on the problems of theodicy.’’ Instead the novel may be more profitably understood as a meditation on the ‘‘illusory nature, the ‘fictitiousness’ of reality,’’ with the result that ‘‘good and evil often cannot be clearly distinguished from each other.’’ In ‘‘The Panorama of Theodicy, Or, Appealing Impressions of Evil in Assorted 18th -Century Descriptive Writers, with a View toward Leibniz,’’ Kevin L. Cope explores the ‘‘aesthetic potential of evil’’ in eighteenth-century literature. Mr. Cope argues that, paradoxically , God’s perfection is also ‘‘expressed through the infinity of interesting deficiencies that compose our infinitely full universe.’’ Elaborating on what he calls ‘‘Amplification through negative enumeration ,’’ Mr. Cope explores the ways in which novelists ‘‘make use of faulty particulars to explore aesthetics, to examine the artistic potential of the vulgar and outrageous and to show the moral and economic advantages of extreme variety, including the full variety of evil.’’ Finally, the most useful of these essays, and the most relevant to the topic is Hermann J. Real’s ‘‘Conversations with a Theodicist: William King’s Essay on the Origin of Evil, with Some Sidelights on Hobbes, Milton, and Pope.’’ Mr. Real believes that King’s De origine mali (1702)—translated as An Essay on the Origin of Evil (1731)—deserves far greater attention than it has received. While he was not always an original thinker, King did provide a systematic and coherent synopsis of the various models of evil, ‘‘metaphysical, moral, and natural.’’ According to Mr. Real, ‘‘King propounds the ontology of an imperfect Creation, making evil, both natural and moral, consequent upon a world ‘order’ which is flawed from its inception.’’ For King, values do not inhere in objects themselves but in the ways we choose to use them. ‘‘The Essay on the Origin of Evil is more than merely an object of historical interest: it was instrumental in effecting a paradigm change in 17th -century philosophy of value, the shift, that is, from the objectivist axiological model to a relational one, with important implications for the questions that theodicists posed.’’ Roger D. Lund Le Moyne College FRED PARKER. Scepticism and Literature : An Essay on Pope, Hume, Sterne, and Johnson. Oxford: Oxford, 2003. Pp. ix ⫹ 290. $137.50. Given the importance of skepticism in eighteenth-century thought and the absence of a good general treatment of its literary manifestations, this illuminating 68 study seeks to fill the gap. Defining his critical practice against those commentators who ‘‘boil the literature down . . . into the history of ideas,’’ Mr. Parker is interested not in philosophical scepticism as such, but in its realization and consequent transformation ‘‘as literature .’’ Justifiable though the resistance to the reductive tendencies of history-of-ideas criticism is, Mr. Parker’s consequent recourse to the ‘‘concept of the literary’’ fudges the complexities of the relationships between philosophy and literature and leaves us with too few details of historical specificity. Wanting to sketch the history of scepticism, Mr. Parker’s first chapter discusses Bayle and Montaigne ; his second, Locke’s Essay. Lest the reader ‘‘whose interest is in imaginative literature’’ take the implied genealogy too seriously, however, they are invited to skip the chapter on Locke. While each chapter can ‘‘be read by...