This essay examines the content, context and relevance of Hume's characterization of the human condition in the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding as "whimsical." According to Hume, human beings are by nature both theoretical and practical beings and the whimsical condition is an instability generated by both theory and practice. It is the fact that by nature human beings must and do act, reason and believe with assurance and conviction, but are unable to satisfy their natural desire to justify their assurances and convictions. On Hume's account, this skepticism is cancelled neither by theoretical reflection nor human practice. Finally, Hume's text suggests that human beings suffer the "whimsical condition of mankind" not only collectively, but that it is a condition human beings experience individually, including dogmatic reasoners.

Hume refers to women as imaginative, compassionate, conversable, and delicate. While his appraisals of women seem disparate, I argue that they reflect a position about the distinctive role that Hume takes women to have in shaping and enforcing moral norms. On his view, I maintain, women provide us with the ideal model of a moral judge. I claim that Hume sees a tight connection between moral competency and those traits he identifies as feminine. Making this case requires clarifying a few concepts in Hume's philosophical toolbox and their relation to one another. The primary quality of a good moral judge, according to Hume, is a delicacy of taste. I show that Hume thinks of delicacy as a feminine skill that can only be developed in men imperfectly, thereby making women the ideal moral judges.

Reviewed by: Commerce and Politics in Hume's History of England by Jia Wei James A. Harris Jia Wei. Commerce and Politics in Hume's History of England. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2017. ISBN 978-1-78327-187-0, £65.00. Jia Wei claims in the Introduction to Commerce and Politics in Hume's History of England that significant aspects of Hume's achievement as a historian have yet to be properly appreciated. She intends to shed new light on 'the relationship between the three Humes: Hume the political thinker, Hume the historian, and Hume the political economist' (3). She continues: More specifically, this book pays greater attention to broad social, economic, and institutional changes which Hume wove into an entirely innovative fabric of causation. This becomes evident by examining three aspects of Hume's History: first, his championship of modernity, which he integrated into a historical narrative of England's development as a trading nation; second, his emphasis on maritime trade, which took place [sic] against the background of commercial revolution; and third, his endorsement of both liberty and authority. (3) Both the strengths and the weaknesses of Wei's account of Hume's history writing are apparent here. In her focus on the story Hume tells about the development of English commerce she succeeds in drawing out a thread of Hume's complex narrative that has not previously been considered in its own right. The attention she gives to maritime trade in particular is salutary. It is very interestingly complemented in the main narrative by a detailed examination of the way in which the administration of taxes features in the History. On the other hand, it is not news that Hume was a 'champion of modernity,' nor that he 'endorsed' both liberty and authority. In the parts of the book where she rehearses these themes, no fresh ground is broken. Generally, Wei's attempt to relate Hume the political thinker to Hume the historian and Hume the political economist is not a success. Her argument would very likely have been more convincing had it been less ambitious. The larger narrative framework for Wei's analysis of Hume's History is, as it had to be, the Harringtonian story of the effects of reforms made to the law of property during the reign of Henry VII. These relaxations of the feudal system made possible the sale and mortgaging of land, which made possible the purchase of luxury goods by the nobility, which in turn provided an impetus to English commerce and trade, which in turn, eventually, caused an increase of the relative influence in English politics of the 'middling' sector of society. In the short term, this amounted also [End Page 245] to a shift in the balance of power away from the nobility toward the crown, and allowed the Tudors to turn England into something approaching an absolute monarchy. In the longer term, it amounted to a shift in the balance of power away from the nobility toward the Commons, and set the scene for the great confrontation between crown and Commons that took place in the seventeenth century. In the first two chapters of her book Wei traces, as she puts it, 'the piecemeal progress of the Tudor government in promoting trade' (37). Wei describes this, convincingly, as a process whereby 'the rise of commerce enabled the Tudors to replace the local jurisdiction of the powerful nobles and clergy with a centralised legal order' (46). Hume, on her account, builds on and significantly qualifies the Harringtonian narrative: 'Henry [VII]'s role as a revolutionary legislator was … necessary but not sufficient; it was the rise of commerce that enabled him to use law as a means of removing the vestiges of feudalism' (57). The rise of commerce was supplemented by the Reformation and its attack on canon law as a jurisdiction independent of the crown. Centralisation of authority, however, did not entail financial autonomy for the crown. The exigencies of war finance caused Elizabeth to need to sell off large amounts of crown land. These were 'desperate measures' which, as Wei says, 'were to handicap the financial administration of the Stuarts' (73). In chapter 3 of Commerce and...

Reviewed by: Reflection and the Stability of Belief: Essays on Descartes, Hume, and Reid by Louis E. Loeb Kevin Meeker Louis E. Loeb. Reflection and the Stability of Belief: Essays on Descartes, Hume, and Reid. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Pp. xvii + 369. ISBN: 978-0-19-536876-5, Cloth, $99.00. ISBN 978-0-19-536875-8, Paper, $45.00. This book is (almost entirely) a collection of previously published essays by Louis Loeb. The first three essays focus primarily on advancing the general interpretive claim that Descartes’s main epistemological goal is achieving unshakable beliefs. While essays 5–10 address many topics in Humean interpretation, they all contribute in various ways to supporting Loeb’s claim that Hume’s primary epistemological goal is achieving stable beliefs. Essay 12 compares the naturalisms of Hume and Reid. All of the collected essays are excellent. Such excellence is not surprising, for Loeb is an influential interpreter of early modern philosophy, justly renowned for the ingenuity of his readings. Spanning the last three decades, these essays display many fine qualities that have helped make Loeb such a prominent historian. Here I will briefly mention three of these qualities. First, Loeb has remarkable command of the primary historical texts and the secondary literature. This mastery is perhaps best seen in his “What is Worth Preserving in the Kemp Smith Interpretation of Hume?” (essay 9). In addition to providing a detailed exposition of a wide range of texts from Hume and Norman Kemp Smith, Loeb also makes adroit comments about the literature discussing the secondary literature when he addresses the “Canonical Understanding” of Kemp Smith (246–47). Second, Loeb effortlessly integrates historical and contemporary concerns. His “Hume’s Agent-Centered Sentimentalism” (essay 8), for instance, has [End Page 257] an interesting discussion of how Hume’s moral theory might aid contemporary utilitarians (238–44). Moreover, essays 5 (“Integrating Hume’s Accounts of Belief and Justification”) and 10 (“Psychology, Epistemology, and Skepticism in Hume’s Argument about Induction”) fruitfully discuss Hume’s epistemology in light of issues important to the contemporary distinction between internalism and externalism. Third, Loeb’s intuitive knack for isolating important connections amongst various texts and figures allows him to tell a concise story about the evolution of certain philosophical ideas that panoramically covers large portions of the history of philosophy. His “Locke and British Empiricism” (essay 11), which connects epistemological themes in Locke with Descartes, Hume, Berkeley, Malebranche, and Reid, among others, is one example. (Because this essay is, as of this writing, still forthcoming, it is the only essay that is not previously published.) Finally, all three of these qualities are prominently on display in “Sextus, Descartes, Hume, and Peirce” (essay 4), which interestingly uses contemporary views about belief (especially as developed by David Velleman) to understand Descartes and Hume “against the backdrop of Sextus and Peirce” (107). To my mind this essay is the best in the book. There are at least two main advantages of collecting these excellent essays into a book. First, the collection allows Loeb to systematically emphasize the similarities between different early modern thinkers in a way that typically strengthens the cumulative case he makes for his readings of these philosophers. Second, the volume permits us to catch a rare glimpse of how an interpreter’s views can change over time. Considering the cumulative effect of the arguments as well as the changes in Loeb’s views also provides us with a great opportunity to reflect critically on many important issues in a fruitful way. The rest of this review will focus on such critical reflections. Let us start with Descartes, as Loeb does. In his introduction to the essays, Loeb helpfully contextualizes his discussions of Descartes. He points out that his paper “Was Descartes Sincere in His Appeal to the Light of Nature?” (not included here) maintains that the arguments Descartes presents are so poor that they “suggest” that “Descartes was insincere in offering his proofs of the existence of God and in appealing to Divine veracity to validate clear and distinct perception” (9; cf. 35). Of course others have likewise contended that Descartes was a dissimulator. But in the first four chapters...

In the Treatise , Hume writes several seemingly incompatible things about the moral sentiments, thus there is no general agreement about where they fit within his taxonomy of the perceptions. Some passages speak in favor of the view that moral sentiments are indirect passions, a few in favor of the view that they are direct passions, and yet a couple of explicit statements strongly suggest otherwise. Due to these tensions in Hume’s text, we find at least five competing characterizations in the literature: • Moral sentiments are calm emotions. • Moral sentiments are calm direct passions. • Moral sentiments are calm versions of the indirect passions of love or hatred. • Moral sentiments are unique species of calm indirect passions. • Moral sentiments are indirect secondary impressions. This paper assesses each of these interpretations. When their virtues are brought together, a new interpretation of the origin of moral sentiments starts to emerge.

Reviewed by: The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Philosophy ed. by Knud Haakonssen Stephen Buckle Knud Haakonssen, ed. The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp 1407. ISBN 0521418542, cloth, $250. The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Philosophy is a massive achievement, and in more than one sense. The most obvious is its sheer bulk: two volumes totalling 1400 pages, including over 150 pages of bibliography and index and another 100 pages of biobibliographical appendix. This last item, as its name suggests, provides thumbnail biographies of all the main figures referred to in the volumes together with a list of all their main publications with publication dates and also a short list of main secondary sources—and so can be expected to be a lifesaver for harassed scholars desperately trying to track down a missing reference. It is also a pleasure to record that, in an age when production standards often slip disastrously low, these are volumes built to last, with a high standard of proofreading as well. (I found only three typographical errors, and only one of those—“skepticism” instead of “rationalism” (419)—produced an errant meaning.) The main sense in which this is a massive achievement concerns, of course, the contents themselves. Knud Haakonssen has done an outstanding job in organizing the volumes and in collecting such a fine stable of contributors from Britain, Continental Europe, North America and Australia. This is a work of lasting value, with all the articles being genuine contributions to our understanding of eighteenth-century philosophy. The problems for a reviewer are twofold. In the first place, this is a reference work and so not intended to be read from cover to cover. Hence the reviewer’s experience, of reading about much the same sequence of figures on topics A–Z, has a repetitive air that would not afflict those using it as it is intended. The second problem, of course, is the simple impossibility of giving an adequate sense of the contents in a short review. So I will concentrate, in the main, on topics likely to be of interest to Hume Studies readers. The Cambridge History is organized into five parts: The Concept of Eighteenth-Century Philosophy, The Science of Human Nature, Philosophy and Theology, Natural Philosophy, and Moral Philosophy. The first part itself falls into two halves, theoretical and practical. The practically-oriented articles investigate institutional structures and their curricula and also the informal networks that provided the means by which many of the period’s most radical works found an audience. The theoretical articles begin with Haakonssen’s own overview of the period, in which he endeavours to break the hold of “the epistemological paradigm” imposed on the period by later generations. As we shall see, some of the other contributors [End Page 305] take this message to heart; but the other two articles in this section, by Werner Schneiders and Carl Henrik Koch, are more content to work with the broad epistemological categories. This divergence testifies to the truth of Haakonssen’s remark that “this is not a volume at peace with itself, nor was it meant to be” (21). For his part, Haakonssen puts his claim to work to draw out the connection then supposed to obtain between one’s philosophy and one’s life—and thereby to explain what otherwise looks like just bad philosophy in controversies of the period, the willingness to deploy the ad hominem. Part 2, on the science of human nature, is by far the longest of the five divisions. It also contains the longest article in the work, “Human Nature,” by Aaron Garrett. This article is striking by approaching its topic from the perspective of its, for the time, margins or exclusions: it examines views of animals, wild children, the blind and deaf, race and national character, and women and marriage. This makes it a mine of fascinating information, but it nevertheless lacks a center in not offering any positive account of what a conception of human nature was a conception of. (It is often said, for example, that Hume had a “static,” Rousseau a “historical” conception of human nature—but both these claims must be...

I argue that there is a unity between Hume’s philosophical reflection and his political views and that many interesting connections can be found that illuminate both aspects of his thought. This paper highlights two of these connections. First, I argue that the conclusions Hume comes to in his political writings are natural outgrowths of his skepticism, a skepticism that recommends limitation of inquiry, modesty, moderation and openness. Most scholars who view Hume’s skepticism as informing his political views see it as supporting a conservative politics, one which is concerned above all to preserve the status quo. I reject the idea that the kind of philosophical skepticism embraced by Hume leads to such conservatism. The second main aspect of the unity of Hume’s thought I discuss concerns that way in which he addresses normative questions in the epistemological and political realms. The question of what resources Hume has to evaluate some beliefs or philosophical systems as better than others, given his skeptical conclusions, is one that has been of central concern for Hume scholars. His evaluations of political systems and governments can be understood in a similar way; the principles we use to evaluate personal beliefs can also be applied in the evaluation of political systems.