Jack A Hill Adam Ferguson and Ethical Integrity, The Man and His Prescriptions for the Moral Life
Lexington Books, New York and London, 2017 Hardback pp 253 + xxxiv $95
In comparison with David Hume, Adam Smith and Thomas Reid, Adam Ferguson is the philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment who has attracted least attention. Despite his long life, his occupancy of what was arguably the most prestigious philosophical position in 18th century Britain, and two highly acclaimed books, for a century or more, Ferguson was a largely neglected figure. This has begun to change. In the course of the 20th century there were several major studies, beginning with Gladys Bryson’s seminal book Man and Society, published in 1945, and in the course of the 21st century a number of monographs have already appeared, alongside two collections of essays and a small but significant flow of journal articles. For the most part, though, these new studies have sought to interpret Ferguson’s historical significance – as an embodiment of the political and cultural times in which he lived, or as a founding figure in the emergence of sociology.
What marks out Jack Hill’s book, and makes it especially valuable, is the way in which it brings Ferguson to life as a philosopher, He accomplishes this in large part by a shift of emphasis. Ferguson chiefly attracted the attention and acclaim of his contemporaries with the publication, in 1767, of his Essay on the History of Civil Society. It ran to a good many editions, and has been republished in more than one modern edition. This is evidence of the fact that the Essay has retained a measure of scholarly interest. Since both its content and style now seem very dated, however, this interest has mostly related to its place in the history of ideas and of sociology in particular. By giving much greater prominence and careful attention to the two volume Principles of Moral and Political Science published in 1792, Hill persuasively shows Ferguson to be a systematic thinker whose reflections can still point us in promising directions for moral philosophy in our own day.
The Principles have been reprinted from time to time, but have never appeared in a modern edition. In part, this is because they were long overshadowed by the much more celebrated Essay, as well as Ferguson’s History of the Progress and Termination of Rome. But it may be that they were also discounted because the two volumes are less a work of original scholarship than a careful revision and resume of the lectures Ferguson gave over many years at the University of Edinburgh. Importantly, though, they differ significantly from the earlier Institutes (1769(, which were basically notes for students that Ferguson issued while still teaching. Comparing the two works gives us reason to regard the Principles as the most mature and considered expression of his thought.
The moral philosophy expounded in the Principles has three important features. First, in common with his contemporaries, Ferguson engages in a version of the ‘science of man’ that aims to draw on extensive empirical observation in the service of moral reflection. Second, the purpose of this reflection is ethical or moral education – that is to say, uncovering how human beings ought to live. This purpose accords with the appointed role of the Professor of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh, of course, and Hill makes a good case for thinking that Ferguson regarded it not merely as an occupation, but a distinctive calling. Thirdly, and most importantly, the Principles constitute a systematic moral philosophy strictly so called. That is to say, in contrast to, for instance, Hume and Reid, and to a lesser extent Smith, Ferguson’s moral philosophy pretty much eschews any interest in metaphysics, and has only a very limited concern with what we now think of as the philosophy of mind. This already marks him off as thinking differently from his contemporaries, and consequently gives his thought special interest. In fact, Hill shows that there are several other important points of difference between Ferguson and the principal philosophers of 18th century Scotland.
The central difference that makes Ferguson a strictly moral philosopher is this. Hume, from the outset of the Treatise, adopts the Cartesian assumption that human beings are first and foremost perceivers, and subsequently thinks of the self as a bundle of perceptions. Reid’s rejection of the ‘way of ideas’ leads him to think of human beings as active judges as well as passive recipients of sensation. Ferguson, however, makes human agency fundamental to our nature. The heart of his system is ‘the self as agent’. (This is an expression coined by John Macmurray, who held the same Edinburgh Chair of Moral Philosophy two hundred years after Ferguson. The Self as Agent is the title of the first volume of his Gifford Lectures, and there are interesting parallels worth exploring).
Perhaps we do not have to regard the perceiver/agent distinction as exclusive. What Hill brings out so well, however, is that the centrality of agency lends Ferguson’s moral philosophy its systematic unity. Conceived primarily as agents, human beings are ‘rational artisans’, or reasoning practitioners, rather than passive observers receiving ‘impressions’ or theorists forming ‘hypotheses’ about the world. They have needs, interests and drives, that are served by virtues and thwarted by vices. This generates both the necessity and the possibility of rational reflection and moral education. At the same time, individual agents are not acting in isolation, but in social contexts and political communities whose structuring influences rational agency must take into account. Two important spheres of influence that Ferguson details are ‘politics’ and ‘commerce’, both of which generate distinctive ‘arts’.
Ferguson’s moral philosophy is a ‘science’ because it admits of systematically relating universal facts about human nature, character traits, ideas of excellence, and the apprehension of circumstances. The claim for which he is most famous – the unintended consequences of human action – has, Hill thinks, been given too much attention. The point he wishes to emphasize is this: at the heart of Ferguson’s system is the self as agent, moved to act by internal ‘force’ or ‘exertion’, directed by reason.
Hill’s elaboration of Ferguson’s philosophy is very well done, and the book is both informative and illuminating. His purpose, though, is not merely exposition. He wants to set Ferguson’s moral philosophy within a broader interpretive perspective, and to draw from it important lessons about contemporary ethics. One both these scores, as it seems to me, some doubts must arise.
Hill’s subtitle -- ‘the man and his prescriptions’ – indicates his intention of attach philosophical significance to Ferguson’s biography. Ferguson’s philosophical thought differed from that of his contemporaries, and so did his background. Does this difference in background explain the difference in thought? Hume, Reid and Smith were all Lowland Scots, whereas Ferguson was raised in village on the Highland side of the Highland/Lowland divide. He spoke Gaelic as well as English, and this indeed was his main qualification for appointment as chaplain to a regiment of Gaelic speaking soldiers. Though he spent the larger part of his life in Edinburgh, and became fully integrated into the cultural and intellectual milieu of the Scottish literati, his Highland roots gave him a familiarity, and an admiration, for the Gaels, that set him apart from the widespread Lowland suspicion of ‘barbarous’ Highland culture with its Jacobite sympathies. His thought, according to Hil,l reflects this twofold cultural context, and the book opens with an argument against those – chiefly John Brewer – who think that Ferguson’s Highland identity is largely irrelevant. Hill thinks, on the contrary, that Ferguson’s Highland background explains the different attitude we find to ‘primitive’ and ‘barbarous’ people in the Essay. Ferguson does not subscribe to the standard ‘stadial’ view of history that moves through set stages of social and economic development. He sees in these ‘barbarous’ people confirming evidence of the same fundamental human nature that is to be found in much more developed societies – just as his view of progress is qualified by his extensive knowledge of Roman history and the eventual ‘termination’ of one of the most impressive social and political entities that has ever existed.
Still, as it seems to me, the case for this connection between biography and philosophy is at best associational. The philosophical differences are there, certainly, but attributing them to an educational upbringing about which, as a matter of fact, the evidence is somewhat scanty, is both speculative and unnecessary. The distinctive features of Ferguson’s philosophical history are interesting in their own right and can be articulated and defended without appeals to biography. Indeed, Hill gives us material to work with in doing that, even if we abandon the dispute with Brewer.
A similar reservation might be entered with respect to Hill’s desire to connect Ferguson’s moral philosophy with contemporary ethical questions. At one level this seems to me entirely correct. Studies of Ferguson such as those of Kettler, Allan and McDaniel are primarily interested in placing him in historical context, and showing the man and his thought to be very much of their time. Refreshingly, Hill demonstrates very persuasively that Ferguson’s conception of moral philosophy and the system of thought he articulates have application to human beings and human society as such. The result is that, like the work of any enduringly significant philosopher, Ferguson’s ideas are not confined to any one time or place. On the other hand, Hill wants to make Ferguson too relevant, so to speak, to make his system apply to issues in environmental ethics, and contemporary political culture. He even refers at one point to ‘the Trump phenomenon’, a reference that will unhappily date Hill’s own book for subsequent generations of readers who would in fact have much to learn from it.
My reservation about Hill’s attempt to extract contemporary relevance from Ferguson might be stated like this. Much modern moral philosophy has little normative relevance and seems to the uninitiated to be the product of an academic discipline as highly specialized as any other. This is what has given rise to ‘applied ethics’, which aims to recover the social relevance of philosophy, though it too has become rather professionalized. Hill’s interpretation of Ferguson shows that moral philosophy properly so called can have normative relevance. That demonstration stands without any additional need to connect it with ‘applied ethics’. Indeed, the attempt to make this ‘ethical’ connection may deflect attention from where Ferguson’s enduring relevance lies.
There is one further interesting issue raised by Hill’s book. In what way, if any, can religion be fitted into Ferguson’s moral system? This question arises because the explicit treatment of God that Ferguson included in the Institutes is dropped from the Principles that constitute his mature reflection. This is one reason for Hill to devote a chapter to the topic of Ferguson’s attitude to and appeal to religion. Once again, he wants to illuminate the issue with biographical material. As a young man, Ferguson served as a Chaplain. Later he professed to relinquish his clerical role entirely, and in all his writings, he barely mentions any recognizably Christian doctrines. At the same time, he remained active in the affairs of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, though there is not much evidence that he attended worship regularly. So how convinced a Christian was Ferguson as his life wore on? It is an interesting question, but even more so than in the matter of Ferguson’s Highland identity, there just is not enough evidence to answer it. Trying to establish the connection between Ferguson’s system and his view of religion by means of his personal beliefs is not any more promising than similar attempts that have been made to say something about Adam Smith’s religious beliefs. Both authors were largely silent on the subject.
So that leaves us with Hill’s other approach, namely treating Ferguson’s relation to religion as a philosophical question. Do theological ideas or presuppositions underlie and/or sustain Ferguson’s thought? On this score, Hill endorses the view held by others – that Ferguson assumes a conception of Providence without which his system would lack coherence. I am inclined to doubt this myself, but I will not discuss the matter here. Hill then goes on to consider a rather different dimension that he finds reflected in some thoughts to which Ferguson gives expression rather later in life. In a letter to Joseph Black, he refers to God as a ‘principle of existence’, one that provides the frame against which we come to apprehend the limitations of our individual ‘Period of Being’.
If Hill is right, though the claim about Providence is important, it is with respect to this last dimension that we are likely to find the deepest connection between ethical integrity and religious belief in Ferguson’s thought. To my mind, however, the resulting conception is too contemplative, too passive, and leaves us asking how, if at all, religion is to be fitted into Ferguson’s system. A number of interesting questions suggest themselves. How does religious practice relate to the life of the ‘rational artisan’? Do the religious practices of a society fall with the political arts, the commercial arts, or somewhere else? In what kind of religious activity, if any, can the ‘force’ or ‘exertion’ that drives human beings be given adequate expression?
In almost the same words as Hume, Ferguson refers to the corruption of religion as powerfully destructive, and like Hume, he is aware of the regular recurrence of religious sentiments. But whereas Hume in the Natural History of Religion is for the most part content to describe the phenomenon of religious sentiment, Ferguson is a normative moral philosopher. The aim of his system is to illuminate the best ways in which human beings, given their nature, should live, and to identify the dangers that stand in the way of their doing so. Ferguson’s ‘moral and political science’, accordingly, presents a philosophical framework within which the place of religion is to be understood. I incline to the view, however, that since he himself says so little about it, we will have to forge that understanding for ourselves.
But whatever the substance of these reservations, Adam Ferguson and Ethical Integrity is to be warmly welcomed as a major contribution to renewing study of Ferguson. It is the first full length study likely to awaken real philosophical interest in him. If others take up the subject as Hill has done, this might lead to a modern edition of the Principles, something that Hill’s book now shows to be long overdue.
Gordon Graham
Lexington Books, New York and London, 2017 Hardback pp 253 + xxxiv $95
In comparison with David Hume, Adam Smith and Thomas Reid, Adam Ferguson is the philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment who has attracted least attention. Despite his long life, his occupancy of what was arguably the most prestigious philosophical position in 18th century Britain, and two highly acclaimed books, for a century or more, Ferguson was a largely neglected figure. This has begun to change. In the course of the 20th century there were several major studies, beginning with Gladys Bryson’s seminal book Man and Society, published in 1945, and in the course of the 21st century a number of monographs have already appeared, alongside two collections of essays and a small but significant flow of journal articles. For the most part, though, these new studies have sought to interpret Ferguson’s historical significance – as an embodiment of the political and cultural times in which he lived, or as a founding figure in the emergence of sociology.
What marks out Jack Hill’s book, and makes it especially valuable, is the way in which it brings Ferguson to life as a philosopher, He accomplishes this in large part by a shift of emphasis. Ferguson chiefly attracted the attention and acclaim of his contemporaries with the publication, in 1767, of his Essay on the History of Civil Society. It ran to a good many editions, and has been republished in more than one modern edition. This is evidence of the fact that the Essay has retained a measure of scholarly interest. Since both its content and style now seem very dated, however, this interest has mostly related to its place in the history of ideas and of sociology in particular. By giving much greater prominence and careful attention to the two volume Principles of Moral and Political Science published in 1792, Hill persuasively shows Ferguson to be a systematic thinker whose reflections can still point us in promising directions for moral philosophy in our own day.
The Principles have been reprinted from time to time, but have never appeared in a modern edition. In part, this is because they were long overshadowed by the much more celebrated Essay, as well as Ferguson’s History of the Progress and Termination of Rome. But it may be that they were also discounted because the two volumes are less a work of original scholarship than a careful revision and resume of the lectures Ferguson gave over many years at the University of Edinburgh. Importantly, though, they differ significantly from the earlier Institutes (1769(, which were basically notes for students that Ferguson issued while still teaching. Comparing the two works gives us reason to regard the Principles as the most mature and considered expression of his thought.
The moral philosophy expounded in the Principles has three important features. First, in common with his contemporaries, Ferguson engages in a version of the ‘science of man’ that aims to draw on extensive empirical observation in the service of moral reflection. Second, the purpose of this reflection is ethical or moral education – that is to say, uncovering how human beings ought to live. This purpose accords with the appointed role of the Professor of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh, of course, and Hill makes a good case for thinking that Ferguson regarded it not merely as an occupation, but a distinctive calling. Thirdly, and most importantly, the Principles constitute a systematic moral philosophy strictly so called. That is to say, in contrast to, for instance, Hume and Reid, and to a lesser extent Smith, Ferguson’s moral philosophy pretty much eschews any interest in metaphysics, and has only a very limited concern with what we now think of as the philosophy of mind. This already marks him off as thinking differently from his contemporaries, and consequently gives his thought special interest. In fact, Hill shows that there are several other important points of difference between Ferguson and the principal philosophers of 18th century Scotland.
The central difference that makes Ferguson a strictly moral philosopher is this. Hume, from the outset of the Treatise, adopts the Cartesian assumption that human beings are first and foremost perceivers, and subsequently thinks of the self as a bundle of perceptions. Reid’s rejection of the ‘way of ideas’ leads him to think of human beings as active judges as well as passive recipients of sensation. Ferguson, however, makes human agency fundamental to our nature. The heart of his system is ‘the self as agent’. (This is an expression coined by John Macmurray, who held the same Edinburgh Chair of Moral Philosophy two hundred years after Ferguson. The Self as Agent is the title of the first volume of his Gifford Lectures, and there are interesting parallels worth exploring).
Perhaps we do not have to regard the perceiver/agent distinction as exclusive. What Hill brings out so well, however, is that the centrality of agency lends Ferguson’s moral philosophy its systematic unity. Conceived primarily as agents, human beings are ‘rational artisans’, or reasoning practitioners, rather than passive observers receiving ‘impressions’ or theorists forming ‘hypotheses’ about the world. They have needs, interests and drives, that are served by virtues and thwarted by vices. This generates both the necessity and the possibility of rational reflection and moral education. At the same time, individual agents are not acting in isolation, but in social contexts and political communities whose structuring influences rational agency must take into account. Two important spheres of influence that Ferguson details are ‘politics’ and ‘commerce’, both of which generate distinctive ‘arts’.
Ferguson’s moral philosophy is a ‘science’ because it admits of systematically relating universal facts about human nature, character traits, ideas of excellence, and the apprehension of circumstances. The claim for which he is most famous – the unintended consequences of human action – has, Hill thinks, been given too much attention. The point he wishes to emphasize is this: at the heart of Ferguson’s system is the self as agent, moved to act by internal ‘force’ or ‘exertion’, directed by reason.
Hill’s elaboration of Ferguson’s philosophy is very well done, and the book is both informative and illuminating. His purpose, though, is not merely exposition. He wants to set Ferguson’s moral philosophy within a broader interpretive perspective, and to draw from it important lessons about contemporary ethics. One both these scores, as it seems to me, some doubts must arise.
Hill’s subtitle -- ‘the man and his prescriptions’ – indicates his intention of attach philosophical significance to Ferguson’s biography. Ferguson’s philosophical thought differed from that of his contemporaries, and so did his background. Does this difference in background explain the difference in thought? Hume, Reid and Smith were all Lowland Scots, whereas Ferguson was raised in village on the Highland side of the Highland/Lowland divide. He spoke Gaelic as well as English, and this indeed was his main qualification for appointment as chaplain to a regiment of Gaelic speaking soldiers. Though he spent the larger part of his life in Edinburgh, and became fully integrated into the cultural and intellectual milieu of the Scottish literati, his Highland roots gave him a familiarity, and an admiration, for the Gaels, that set him apart from the widespread Lowland suspicion of ‘barbarous’ Highland culture with its Jacobite sympathies. His thought, according to Hil,l reflects this twofold cultural context, and the book opens with an argument against those – chiefly John Brewer – who think that Ferguson’s Highland identity is largely irrelevant. Hill thinks, on the contrary, that Ferguson’s Highland background explains the different attitude we find to ‘primitive’ and ‘barbarous’ people in the Essay. Ferguson does not subscribe to the standard ‘stadial’ view of history that moves through set stages of social and economic development. He sees in these ‘barbarous’ people confirming evidence of the same fundamental human nature that is to be found in much more developed societies – just as his view of progress is qualified by his extensive knowledge of Roman history and the eventual ‘termination’ of one of the most impressive social and political entities that has ever existed.
Still, as it seems to me, the case for this connection between biography and philosophy is at best associational. The philosophical differences are there, certainly, but attributing them to an educational upbringing about which, as a matter of fact, the evidence is somewhat scanty, is both speculative and unnecessary. The distinctive features of Ferguson’s philosophical history are interesting in their own right and can be articulated and defended without appeals to biography. Indeed, Hill gives us material to work with in doing that, even if we abandon the dispute with Brewer.
A similar reservation might be entered with respect to Hill’s desire to connect Ferguson’s moral philosophy with contemporary ethical questions. At one level this seems to me entirely correct. Studies of Ferguson such as those of Kettler, Allan and McDaniel are primarily interested in placing him in historical context, and showing the man and his thought to be very much of their time. Refreshingly, Hill demonstrates very persuasively that Ferguson’s conception of moral philosophy and the system of thought he articulates have application to human beings and human society as such. The result is that, like the work of any enduringly significant philosopher, Ferguson’s ideas are not confined to any one time or place. On the other hand, Hill wants to make Ferguson too relevant, so to speak, to make his system apply to issues in environmental ethics, and contemporary political culture. He even refers at one point to ‘the Trump phenomenon’, a reference that will unhappily date Hill’s own book for subsequent generations of readers who would in fact have much to learn from it.
My reservation about Hill’s attempt to extract contemporary relevance from Ferguson might be stated like this. Much modern moral philosophy has little normative relevance and seems to the uninitiated to be the product of an academic discipline as highly specialized as any other. This is what has given rise to ‘applied ethics’, which aims to recover the social relevance of philosophy, though it too has become rather professionalized. Hill’s interpretation of Ferguson shows that moral philosophy properly so called can have normative relevance. That demonstration stands without any additional need to connect it with ‘applied ethics’. Indeed, the attempt to make this ‘ethical’ connection may deflect attention from where Ferguson’s enduring relevance lies.
There is one further interesting issue raised by Hill’s book. In what way, if any, can religion be fitted into Ferguson’s moral system? This question arises because the explicit treatment of God that Ferguson included in the Institutes is dropped from the Principles that constitute his mature reflection. This is one reason for Hill to devote a chapter to the topic of Ferguson’s attitude to and appeal to religion. Once again, he wants to illuminate the issue with biographical material. As a young man, Ferguson served as a Chaplain. Later he professed to relinquish his clerical role entirely, and in all his writings, he barely mentions any recognizably Christian doctrines. At the same time, he remained active in the affairs of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, though there is not much evidence that he attended worship regularly. So how convinced a Christian was Ferguson as his life wore on? It is an interesting question, but even more so than in the matter of Ferguson’s Highland identity, there just is not enough evidence to answer it. Trying to establish the connection between Ferguson’s system and his view of religion by means of his personal beliefs is not any more promising than similar attempts that have been made to say something about Adam Smith’s religious beliefs. Both authors were largely silent on the subject.
So that leaves us with Hill’s other approach, namely treating Ferguson’s relation to religion as a philosophical question. Do theological ideas or presuppositions underlie and/or sustain Ferguson’s thought? On this score, Hill endorses the view held by others – that Ferguson assumes a conception of Providence without which his system would lack coherence. I am inclined to doubt this myself, but I will not discuss the matter here. Hill then goes on to consider a rather different dimension that he finds reflected in some thoughts to which Ferguson gives expression rather later in life. In a letter to Joseph Black, he refers to God as a ‘principle of existence’, one that provides the frame against which we come to apprehend the limitations of our individual ‘Period of Being’.
If Hill is right, though the claim about Providence is important, it is with respect to this last dimension that we are likely to find the deepest connection between ethical integrity and religious belief in Ferguson’s thought. To my mind, however, the resulting conception is too contemplative, too passive, and leaves us asking how, if at all, religion is to be fitted into Ferguson’s system. A number of interesting questions suggest themselves. How does religious practice relate to the life of the ‘rational artisan’? Do the religious practices of a society fall with the political arts, the commercial arts, or somewhere else? In what kind of religious activity, if any, can the ‘force’ or ‘exertion’ that drives human beings be given adequate expression?
In almost the same words as Hume, Ferguson refers to the corruption of religion as powerfully destructive, and like Hume, he is aware of the regular recurrence of religious sentiments. But whereas Hume in the Natural History of Religion is for the most part content to describe the phenomenon of religious sentiment, Ferguson is a normative moral philosopher. The aim of his system is to illuminate the best ways in which human beings, given their nature, should live, and to identify the dangers that stand in the way of their doing so. Ferguson’s ‘moral and political science’, accordingly, presents a philosophical framework within which the place of religion is to be understood. I incline to the view, however, that since he himself says so little about it, we will have to forge that understanding for ourselves.
But whatever the substance of these reservations, Adam Ferguson and Ethical Integrity is to be warmly welcomed as a major contribution to renewing study of Ferguson. It is the first full length study likely to awaken real philosophical interest in him. If others take up the subject as Hill has done, this might lead to a modern edition of the Principles, something that Hill’s book now shows to be long overdue.
Gordon Graham
James A Harris. Hume: an intellectual biography (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015) hb pp xiii + 621
This long awaited volume has been many years in the making. Unquestionably, however, it is a worthy outcome of all the labour that has gone into it. Harris’s intellectual biography of Hume is hugely informative, immensely readable, innovative and insightful. It is certain to be the definitive work on this subject for a long time to come. That is partly because it is the first truly intellectual biography. E C Mossner’s well known Life of David Hume, first published in 1954, is a wonderful repository of information, but it lacks the kind of coherence that Harris has achieved.
To say that Harris’s book is the first of its kind is not to suggest that Hume’s intellectual biography is a subject on which commentators have been silent. On the contrary, it has been very widely assumed that it does not need a great deal of explication since we are thoroughly familiar with its general outline. In fact, there are at least two versions of this outline that have circulated. According to the first, Hume was a philosopher whose work was accomplished early in life. His radically innovative thinking met with little success and his philosophical brilliance was not really recognized until after his death. But had he died much younger than he did, his intellectual accomplishments, and his philosophical legacy, would not have been much different. According to the second version, Hume began as a philosopher, was disappointed by the failure of his philosophical work to command much attention, and accordingly turned to other things – first essay writing, and then history.
Harris examines both these contentions in his opening chapter. They are not exactly wrong, he contends, but they completely fail to capture a genuine, life-long unity in Hume’s work. The key to uncovering this unity is to be found in Hume’s ambition, from start to finish, to be a man of letters. The ‘man of letters’ properly adjusts himself to times and fashions, and accordingly what he writes about will range over different subjects and adopt appropriately different styles. The principal concern is not to produce scholarly or scientific work that will endure across the ages, but to contribute to the discussion and formation of ideas that are of contemporary interest and importance.
One significant result of interpreting Hume’s intellectual biography in this way is that it must lead to a major re-assessment of the relative importance of his oeuvres. Hume’s Treatise was not as ‘still born’ as he alleged, but it was the rather different ‘Political Discourses’ that really enabled him to reach a wide audience, and began the career as a writer that made him rich. These ‘discourses’ are so clearly related to the issues of Hume’s day that they receive only antiquarian attention nowadays. Yet Hume could as readily describe them as ‘philosophical’ as he could the Treatise or Enquiries. This is because his ambition as a man of letters was to write about both perennial and contemporary matters in a spirit that rose above, or at any rate left to one side, the rhetoric that is inevitable when they are treated primarily as issues between factions, political or religious. To be a philosopher in this sense is not to be an academic philosopher as we now understand it.
It is philosophy so understood, Harris argues, that characterizes all of Hume’s intellectual endeavours, and thus unifies his life as an intellectual. With this understanding, we can see that there is no deep rupture or radical change of direction between the youthful author of the Treatise, the accomplished essayist, and author of the voluminous History of England. It is the same conception that enables Harris to throw new light on the posthumously published Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Commentators who identify Hume with the sceptical Philo have often been puzzled by the volte-face that Philo seems to make at the start of the final section. But Harris makes an impressive case for thinking that Hume’s purpose in the Dialogues is not primarily one of advancing a conclusion about God. Rather the Dialogues are a literary illustration, a demonstration perhaps, of how, in an ideal world, philosophical discussion would go. Differences of opinion, even of the deepest kind, would not be converted into point scoring, or lead to personal animus and division. In the Dialogues, we might say, we find civility dramatized.
If this was Hume’s ideal, it goes some way to explaining his enduring friendships with so many of the Presbyterian clergy, and their friendship with him for that matter. It also explains why, in the end, he chose Edinburgh for his final home rather than Paris which he liked greatly and where he had been warmly welcomed. Despite his own lack of religious belief, Hume’s ‘philosophical’ cast of mind found the company of moderate Scottish Christians more congenial than the company of dogmatic French atheists.
Harris’s book has much more to offer than this brief review can indicate. The book is especially good at conveying Hume’s somewhat intense concern with his own reputation as a man of letters. Harris adds an Afterword to the main text that on Hume’s own account of his life, and the manner of his death. He brilliantly reveals just how the apparent straightforwardness and modesty of ‘My Own Life’ can disguise Hume’s desire to shape the way that posterity would come to see him.
There is one respect, though, in which the book might disappoint some of its readers. Treating Hume’s philosophical works as the modern academy identifies them, as just one manifestation of a larger intellectual ambition occasions relatively little critical engagement with them. Harris does not devote any more attention to the adequacy of Hume’s arguments in the Treatise, for instance, than he does to the accuracy of his sources for the History of England. Yet the fact is that some of Hume’s works warrant a kind of attention that others do not. These are the works that have proved able to sustain philosophical debate over more than two centuries. Possibly despite his own understanding of what ‘philosophical’ and ‘philosophy’ mean, Hume in the Treatise, the Enquiries, some of the Essays and the Dialogues succeeds in articulating conceptions of action, motivation, knowledge, morality and religion that strike human beings, in quite different times and places, as either coming close to the truth, or as embodying profound errors. Again and again he produces ingenious arguments whose validity demands to be examined. Are they conclusive or sophistical? It is Hume’s ability to do this that has led these writings, correctly, to be regarded as enduring contributions to philosophical thinking of the sort that connects Plato to Wittgenstein. In short, while Harris shows just how much is to be learned if we place Hume firmly within the intellectual context for which he wrote, he is less good at showing why Hume continues to be of philosophical interest long after that context has slipped into the past.
Gordon Graham
This long awaited volume has been many years in the making. Unquestionably, however, it is a worthy outcome of all the labour that has gone into it. Harris’s intellectual biography of Hume is hugely informative, immensely readable, innovative and insightful. It is certain to be the definitive work on this subject for a long time to come. That is partly because it is the first truly intellectual biography. E C Mossner’s well known Life of David Hume, first published in 1954, is a wonderful repository of information, but it lacks the kind of coherence that Harris has achieved.
To say that Harris’s book is the first of its kind is not to suggest that Hume’s intellectual biography is a subject on which commentators have been silent. On the contrary, it has been very widely assumed that it does not need a great deal of explication since we are thoroughly familiar with its general outline. In fact, there are at least two versions of this outline that have circulated. According to the first, Hume was a philosopher whose work was accomplished early in life. His radically innovative thinking met with little success and his philosophical brilliance was not really recognized until after his death. But had he died much younger than he did, his intellectual accomplishments, and his philosophical legacy, would not have been much different. According to the second version, Hume began as a philosopher, was disappointed by the failure of his philosophical work to command much attention, and accordingly turned to other things – first essay writing, and then history.
Harris examines both these contentions in his opening chapter. They are not exactly wrong, he contends, but they completely fail to capture a genuine, life-long unity in Hume’s work. The key to uncovering this unity is to be found in Hume’s ambition, from start to finish, to be a man of letters. The ‘man of letters’ properly adjusts himself to times and fashions, and accordingly what he writes about will range over different subjects and adopt appropriately different styles. The principal concern is not to produce scholarly or scientific work that will endure across the ages, but to contribute to the discussion and formation of ideas that are of contemporary interest and importance.
One significant result of interpreting Hume’s intellectual biography in this way is that it must lead to a major re-assessment of the relative importance of his oeuvres. Hume’s Treatise was not as ‘still born’ as he alleged, but it was the rather different ‘Political Discourses’ that really enabled him to reach a wide audience, and began the career as a writer that made him rich. These ‘discourses’ are so clearly related to the issues of Hume’s day that they receive only antiquarian attention nowadays. Yet Hume could as readily describe them as ‘philosophical’ as he could the Treatise or Enquiries. This is because his ambition as a man of letters was to write about both perennial and contemporary matters in a spirit that rose above, or at any rate left to one side, the rhetoric that is inevitable when they are treated primarily as issues between factions, political or religious. To be a philosopher in this sense is not to be an academic philosopher as we now understand it.
It is philosophy so understood, Harris argues, that characterizes all of Hume’s intellectual endeavours, and thus unifies his life as an intellectual. With this understanding, we can see that there is no deep rupture or radical change of direction between the youthful author of the Treatise, the accomplished essayist, and author of the voluminous History of England. It is the same conception that enables Harris to throw new light on the posthumously published Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Commentators who identify Hume with the sceptical Philo have often been puzzled by the volte-face that Philo seems to make at the start of the final section. But Harris makes an impressive case for thinking that Hume’s purpose in the Dialogues is not primarily one of advancing a conclusion about God. Rather the Dialogues are a literary illustration, a demonstration perhaps, of how, in an ideal world, philosophical discussion would go. Differences of opinion, even of the deepest kind, would not be converted into point scoring, or lead to personal animus and division. In the Dialogues, we might say, we find civility dramatized.
If this was Hume’s ideal, it goes some way to explaining his enduring friendships with so many of the Presbyterian clergy, and their friendship with him for that matter. It also explains why, in the end, he chose Edinburgh for his final home rather than Paris which he liked greatly and where he had been warmly welcomed. Despite his own lack of religious belief, Hume’s ‘philosophical’ cast of mind found the company of moderate Scottish Christians more congenial than the company of dogmatic French atheists.
Harris’s book has much more to offer than this brief review can indicate. The book is especially good at conveying Hume’s somewhat intense concern with his own reputation as a man of letters. Harris adds an Afterword to the main text that on Hume’s own account of his life, and the manner of his death. He brilliantly reveals just how the apparent straightforwardness and modesty of ‘My Own Life’ can disguise Hume’s desire to shape the way that posterity would come to see him.
There is one respect, though, in which the book might disappoint some of its readers. Treating Hume’s philosophical works as the modern academy identifies them, as just one manifestation of a larger intellectual ambition occasions relatively little critical engagement with them. Harris does not devote any more attention to the adequacy of Hume’s arguments in the Treatise, for instance, than he does to the accuracy of his sources for the History of England. Yet the fact is that some of Hume’s works warrant a kind of attention that others do not. These are the works that have proved able to sustain philosophical debate over more than two centuries. Possibly despite his own understanding of what ‘philosophical’ and ‘philosophy’ mean, Hume in the Treatise, the Enquiries, some of the Essays and the Dialogues succeeds in articulating conceptions of action, motivation, knowledge, morality and religion that strike human beings, in quite different times and places, as either coming close to the truth, or as embodying profound errors. Again and again he produces ingenious arguments whose validity demands to be examined. Are they conclusive or sophistical? It is Hume’s ability to do this that has led these writings, correctly, to be regarded as enduring contributions to philosophical thinking of the sort that connects Plato to Wittgenstein. In short, while Harris shows just how much is to be learned if we place Hume firmly within the intellectual context for which he wrote, he is less good at showing why Hume continues to be of philosophical interest long after that context has slipped into the past.
Gordon Graham
H O Mounce ,Hume’s Naturalism, London Routledge, 1999
Hume was a sceptic. By his own account his reasoning undermines the rationality of a belief in the external world and renders incoherent the idea of necessary causal connections. He was also a subjectivist about ethics, broadly of the emotivist school in fact. Moreover he was an atheist whose most powerful work, the Dialogues demolished (some would say for ever) the intellectual pretensions of natural theology. Small wonder then that he was at loggerheads with the generally Calvinist outlook of his Scottish contemporaries.
These are all standard propositions from the textbooks, and so widely accepted as to be thought truisms. But if Mounce is to be believed, far from being truisms they are not even true. Hume was not a sceptic, and adheres to the reality of the external world and the necessity of causal connexions as firmly as any other of the Scottish philosophers. More striking yet, his conception of reason is in close accord with that of the Calvinists, he does not doubt that a version of the design argument is compelling, and he regards atheism as an intellectually empty position.
In this lucid, cogent and compelling book Mounce revives and revitalizes Norman Kemp Smith’s somewhat neglected interpretation in The Philosophy of Hume (1941), but gives it a strikingly novel twist by extending the general line of thought from the Treatise to the Dialogues. Kemp Smith’s principal contention is that there are two basic philosophical positions at work in Hume – empiricism and naturalism --and that there has been a tendency to consider the empiricism paramount just because it is most evident in Part One of the Treatise. Mounce argues that these two elements are not merely co-present, but deeply at war with each other. Hume’s naturalism, which is not a version of modern day scientific naturalism but that of his Scottish contemporaries, notably Hutcheson and Reid, is constantly thrown off course by his empiricism.
"The naturalism to which Kemp Smith refers is really present in Hume's philosophy and constitutes its most profound aspects. But empiricism is also present and is incompatible with the naturalism. In consequence the Treatise continually presents us with an acute tension between incompatible philosophies". (p. 7)
To put the matter simply, the naturalism which Hume shares with his contemporaries sets limits to pure rationality and hence both to scepticism and what is nowadays known as foundationalism. By making reason subservient to nature, it places bounds upon it. Yet what lies beyond those bounds is not nothing, but a transcendent realm of existence which creatures with our nature are unsuited to understand. We might say, indeed, that naturalism of this kind seeks to confine human reason to realistic ambitions.
Mounce explores Hume's empiricist assumptions at length, and then systematically illustrates their devastating effect upon his naturalism with respect to causation, the passions, reason, morality and finally theology. With respect to the last of these, it should be noted (lest Mounce be taken to be endorsing an absurd position) his contention is that, while Hume was deeply sceptical of established and accepted Christian doctrines, he remained a deist. This explains rather well the uncertainties and apparent ambiguities that are to be found in the Dialogues. Many have wondered whether the conclusion which in the end he seems to endorse -- that evidence of design must impress itself upon the least sensitive mind -- is a kind of coyness on Hume's part, a concession to the conventional opinions of his time. By Mounce's account it is not; what we should observe is that this conclusion falls very far short of the orthodox religious view then prevalent. In this way Hume's unorthodoxy is preserved. Nevertheless, when he concludes his famous version of the design argument with the contention that "the Author of nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man", it is this, and nothing more, to which he himself subscribes.
So much has been written, and still is, about Hume, that the likelihood of yet another book producing anything genuinely fresh is low. Mounce shows, however, that improbability is not impossibility. Here is a new view of Hume, not entirely new as the reference to Kemp Smith acknowledges, but new enough to be generally interesting. Moreover, it attributes to Hume a singular importance in the history of ideas.
"On the empiricist view, we reason on the basis of beliefs that are justified by sense experience. On the naturalist, we can justify some beliefs by sense experience only because we already have beliefs and, consequently, there is more in our beliefs than sense experience can explain or justify. . . . In the eighteenth century, empiricism was the dominant philosophy in Britain. At the beginning of the nineteenth it was some sort of naturalism which flourished. Hume's philosophy was decisive in producing the change." (p. 131)
There remains, to my mind, a more general question about Hume's status as a philosopher. Many years ago, at the conclusion of an essay about Hume on miracles, A E Taylor remarked that he had never been sure whether Hume was a great philosopher, or just a very clever man. Mounce, I am inclined to think, provides reason to hold the latter rather than the former. The Hume he reveals is a thinker wrestling ingeniously with the difficulties of the position he is trying to sustain, while failing to grasp the deeper philosophical tensions that have generated them.
Gordon Graham
Hume was a sceptic. By his own account his reasoning undermines the rationality of a belief in the external world and renders incoherent the idea of necessary causal connections. He was also a subjectivist about ethics, broadly of the emotivist school in fact. Moreover he was an atheist whose most powerful work, the Dialogues demolished (some would say for ever) the intellectual pretensions of natural theology. Small wonder then that he was at loggerheads with the generally Calvinist outlook of his Scottish contemporaries.
These are all standard propositions from the textbooks, and so widely accepted as to be thought truisms. But if Mounce is to be believed, far from being truisms they are not even true. Hume was not a sceptic, and adheres to the reality of the external world and the necessity of causal connexions as firmly as any other of the Scottish philosophers. More striking yet, his conception of reason is in close accord with that of the Calvinists, he does not doubt that a version of the design argument is compelling, and he regards atheism as an intellectually empty position.
In this lucid, cogent and compelling book Mounce revives and revitalizes Norman Kemp Smith’s somewhat neglected interpretation in The Philosophy of Hume (1941), but gives it a strikingly novel twist by extending the general line of thought from the Treatise to the Dialogues. Kemp Smith’s principal contention is that there are two basic philosophical positions at work in Hume – empiricism and naturalism --and that there has been a tendency to consider the empiricism paramount just because it is most evident in Part One of the Treatise. Mounce argues that these two elements are not merely co-present, but deeply at war with each other. Hume’s naturalism, which is not a version of modern day scientific naturalism but that of his Scottish contemporaries, notably Hutcheson and Reid, is constantly thrown off course by his empiricism.
"The naturalism to which Kemp Smith refers is really present in Hume's philosophy and constitutes its most profound aspects. But empiricism is also present and is incompatible with the naturalism. In consequence the Treatise continually presents us with an acute tension between incompatible philosophies". (p. 7)
To put the matter simply, the naturalism which Hume shares with his contemporaries sets limits to pure rationality and hence both to scepticism and what is nowadays known as foundationalism. By making reason subservient to nature, it places bounds upon it. Yet what lies beyond those bounds is not nothing, but a transcendent realm of existence which creatures with our nature are unsuited to understand. We might say, indeed, that naturalism of this kind seeks to confine human reason to realistic ambitions.
Mounce explores Hume's empiricist assumptions at length, and then systematically illustrates their devastating effect upon his naturalism with respect to causation, the passions, reason, morality and finally theology. With respect to the last of these, it should be noted (lest Mounce be taken to be endorsing an absurd position) his contention is that, while Hume was deeply sceptical of established and accepted Christian doctrines, he remained a deist. This explains rather well the uncertainties and apparent ambiguities that are to be found in the Dialogues. Many have wondered whether the conclusion which in the end he seems to endorse -- that evidence of design must impress itself upon the least sensitive mind -- is a kind of coyness on Hume's part, a concession to the conventional opinions of his time. By Mounce's account it is not; what we should observe is that this conclusion falls very far short of the orthodox religious view then prevalent. In this way Hume's unorthodoxy is preserved. Nevertheless, when he concludes his famous version of the design argument with the contention that "the Author of nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man", it is this, and nothing more, to which he himself subscribes.
So much has been written, and still is, about Hume, that the likelihood of yet another book producing anything genuinely fresh is low. Mounce shows, however, that improbability is not impossibility. Here is a new view of Hume, not entirely new as the reference to Kemp Smith acknowledges, but new enough to be generally interesting. Moreover, it attributes to Hume a singular importance in the history of ideas.
"On the empiricist view, we reason on the basis of beliefs that are justified by sense experience. On the naturalist, we can justify some beliefs by sense experience only because we already have beliefs and, consequently, there is more in our beliefs than sense experience can explain or justify. . . . In the eighteenth century, empiricism was the dominant philosophy in Britain. At the beginning of the nineteenth it was some sort of naturalism which flourished. Hume's philosophy was decisive in producing the change." (p. 131)
There remains, to my mind, a more general question about Hume's status as a philosopher. Many years ago, at the conclusion of an essay about Hume on miracles, A E Taylor remarked that he had never been sure whether Hume was a great philosopher, or just a very clever man. Mounce, I am inclined to think, provides reason to hold the latter rather than the former. The Hume he reveals is a thinker wrestling ingeniously with the difficulties of the position he is trying to sustain, while failing to grasp the deeper philosophical tensions that have generated them.
Gordon Graham