David Hume: Reason in History (review)

Not the least interesting feature of this fine piece on Hume's philosophy is its intriguing Hegelian title, and particularly if one recalls that Hume claimed that reason is the slave of the passions and that "Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular" (EHU 8.7). Schmidt conclusively shows that a reader acquainted with the totality of Hume's works should not find her title puzzling. Thus the book is a contribution to recent efforts to read Hume as a philosopher who gives a much more important role to reason than is usually acknowledged, and who places reflection on history at the core of his philosophical enterprise.

Instead of seeking to reverse accepted views of Hume as an ahistorical naturalist by discussing the role of reason and history in Hume's writings, Schmidt argues that this reversal will occur naturally for someone who sees the unity of Hume's entire philosophical project. In this sense Schmidt sets for herself the ambitious task of meeting the challenge set out long ago by Norman Kemp Smith: that Hume scholarship will acquire a due perspective on his work only after the unity of his activities as historian, economist, philosopher, political theorist, and man of letters is appropriately appreciated.

Schmidt skillfully goes about her task by reviewing Hume's writings in an order that is reminiscent of the one Hume had in mind when he published the first two books of the Treatise. Hume wished to go on, after dealing with the understanding and the passions, to an "examination of Morals, Politics and Criticism." We know that he fulfilled this task only in part with volume three, "Of Morals." His views on criticism and politics were, though, later presented less systematically in his essays and in the History of England. Schmidt reviews Hume's work by dealing first (chapters 1-5) with the topics proper to book 1 of the Treatise and the first Enquiry, then with the passions (chapter 6) and Hume's philosophies of action (chapter 7), and of morals (chapter 8). Chapters 9-18 treat, in order, political theory, economics, aesthetics, religion, and history.

The general view of Hume that Schmidt presents makes it essential to establish that he has a more nuanced view of concepts than a long tradition of interpretation has acknowledged. Schmidt claims that Hume's way of ideas is by no means guilty of the charge of accounting only for private items in the mind at the expense of the public and historical dimensions of concept use. Schmidt argues that Hume gives a central role to the social and historical dimension of acquiring and mastering conceptual rules. It is not surprising, then, that Schmidt does not see Hume's distinction between ideas that are and are not copied from impressions as a philosophical razor for determining the limits of meaningfulness. She argues, rather, that Hume's first principle is intended to foster a better understanding of philosophical terms by tracing their genealogy either to sensation or to the imagination. The core of Schmidt's reading lies in showing how Hume can account for the stability and objectivity of the use of concepts like identity, cause, time, and external world, which are "merely" the product of the imagination. Hume's "deduction" of these concepts is to be found in his explanation of general rules, fictions and standards. Thus, in chapters 2 and 3,Schmidt maintains that Hume's discussion of causality is to be viewed as part of a more general discussion of knowledge and probability in which causal beliefs are seen as paradigmatic cases of natural beliefs justified and/or corrected by general rules. Once we see the role that general rules have in correcting and justifying beliefs we can also see how unfounded are the common charges that Hume fails to account for the normativity of belief, that he is a sceptic about induction, and that he...