Hume and the Enlightenment

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Editors: Craig Taylor and Stephen Buckle

While Hume remains one of the most central figures in modern philosophy, his place within Enlightenment thinking is much less clearly defined. Although historically an Enlightenment figure, this identity is often missed due to misunderstandings of both his philosophy and of the movement itself. Taking recent work on Hume as a starting point, this volume of original essays aims to re-examine and clarify Hume's influence on the thought and values of the Enlightenment.

There are many books on Hume’s philosophy, but few that deal with his influence on Enlightenment thinking and ideas more generally. Indeed, while Hume is now widely regarded as one of the most significant of British philosophers, he was in his day also counted as a weighty essayist and historian. Further, the influences of Hume's empiricism stretch from encouraging the exploration of sentiment in literature to being a forerunner of the new discipline of cognitive science. This volume is a valuable resource to students and researchers seeking to establish what it is that counts as Enlightenment thinking, and whether Hume should really be regarded as a philosopher of the Enlightenment world.

Sample pages

• Sample pages: Introduction
• Sample pages: Index

Readership

Philosophy, Political Science, History, Theology, Psychology and Literature

Contents

Introduction: Hume and his Intellectual Legacy – Craig Taylor and Stephen Buckle
1 Hume and the Enlightenment – Stephen Buckle
2 Will the Real Enlightenment Historian Please Stand Up? Catharine Macaulay versus David Hume – Karen Green
3 Philosophy, Historiography and the Enlightenment: A Response to Green – Stephen Buckle
4 Hume’s Enlightenment Aesthetics and Philosophy of Mathematics – Dale Jacquette
5 Part 9 of Hume's Dialogues and 'The Accurate Philosophical Turn of Cleanthes' – Stanley Tweyman
6 'Strange Lengths': Hume and Satire in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion – Robert Phiddian
7 A Modern Malignant Demon? Hume’s Scepticism with regard to Reason (Partly) Vindicated – George Couvalis
8 Hume on Sympathy and Cruelty – Craig Taylor
9 Hume's Natural History of Justice – Mark Collier
10 Hume and Rawls on the Stability of a Society’s System of Justice – Ian Hunt
11 Can Hume’s Impressions of Reflection Represent? – Anna Stoklosa
12 Mechanism and Thought Formation: Hume's Emancipatory Scepticism – Anik Waldow

Related titles

• Adam Ferguson: Philosophy, Politics and Society
• Classical Writings on Economics: As Selected by J R McCulloch
• Dialogue, Didacticism and the Genres of Dispute: Literary Dialogues in the Age of Revolution
• Hobbes, the Scriblerians and the History of Philosophy
• The Case for Gold
• The Correspondence of Adam Ferguson
• The Correspondence of Dr William Hunter

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