Hume Studies Volume 33, Number 2, November 2007, pp. 289-296 On the 2007 Clarendon Critical Edition of David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature PETER S. FOSL I. Situating the Clarendon Critical Edition The Clarendon Edition of the Works of David Hume1 (hereafter the Clarendon Hume) was conceived thirty-four years ago in 1975, the year preceding the bicentennial of Hume's death. General editors of the Clarendon Hume are Tom L. Beauchamp, David Fate Norton, and M. A. Stewart. In Beauchamp's words, "Hume scholars had increasingly begun to appreciate that available editions of Hume's work were often textually and historically inaccurate, biased in favor of certain textual interpretations , and lacking in basic information essential for scholarly work on the text."2 The project of producing improved editions has since been realized by Stewart, Beauchamp, and the Nortons in the following manner. Beauchamp published in 1998 an Oxford Philosophical Text (hereafter "OPT") edition of Hume's second Enquiry—the Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (originally 1751)—together with Volume 4 of the Clarendon Hume, Beauchamp's Clarendon edition of that work. This new Clarendon EPM, of course, succeeds Selby-Bigge and Nidditch's 1975 Clarendon edition. Beauchamp's two editions of the EPM, like the two series of which they are a part, differ principally with regard to audience. The OPT editions—in their introductions, their annotations, and so on—are designed primarily to serve students, while the Clarendon editions Peter S. Fosl is Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, Transylvania University, 300 North Broadway, Lexington, KY 40508, USA. Website: www.peterfosl.us. E-mail: pfosl@ transy.edu. 290 PeterS.Fosl aim primarily to serve more advanced scholars. So, the Clarendon edition of the EPM, like Clarendon's other critical editions, includes elements proper to critical, but not to student editions. In addition to the critical texts themselves, then, the Clarendon critical editions include histories of each text, complete records of the emendations made by the editors, and accounts of variant readings, as well as a selection of copy texts used in the production of the new editions.3 In 1999, the year following the appearance of Beauchamp's editions of the EPM, his OPT edition of the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (originally 1748), Hume's first Enquiry, was published. A short while later, in 2000, Clarendon released Beauchamp's critical edition of the EHU (which is numbered Volume 3 of the Clarendon Hume), offering a replacement for Clarendon's 1975 Selby-Bigge/ Nidditch edition. Beauchamp's Clarendon edition oÃ- A Dissertation on the Passions and The Natural History of Religion (originally 1757), Volume 5 in the new edition, was released with a 2007 copyright. Volumes 6 and 7 will comprise Hume's Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, replacing in all likelihood Eugene Miller's Liberty Classics 1985 edition as the standard. Volume 8, when it appears, is to contain the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779) together with other posthumous materials; it will almost certainly supplant as the scholarly benchmark Norman Kemp Smith's 1935 Clarendon publication. The year 2000 also saw the release of David and Mary Norton's OPT edition of A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-1740), four years after their David Hume Library.4 Like Beauchamp's OPT editions, the Nortons' 744-page volume begins with introductory material comprising 93 pages aimed at a target audience of students, with 179 pages of annotations following along similar lines. The Nortons ' OPT Treatise includes the Abstract of a Book lately Published, which Hume issued in 1740 as a pamphlet to promote his Treatise, as well as the "Appendix" Hume attached to the third Book of the Treatise. In 2007 the Nortons published what is the subject of this essay—the Clarendon critical edition of A Treatise of Human Nature, an edition that will supplant Selby-Bigge/Nidditch's 1978 Clarendon edition. What then characterizes this new edition of the Treatise, and what distinguishes it? II. The Contents of the Volumes The Clarendon edition of the Treatise is divided into two volumes. Volume 1 (447 pages) contains the critical text of the Treatise itself, as well as of the 1740 Abstract. The Clarendon edition...

Hume Studies Volume 33, Number 1, April 2007, pp. 179-182 Book Reviews Marianne Groulez. Le scepticisme de Hume: les Dialogues sur la religion naturelle. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2005. Pp. 154. ISBN 2-13-053579-8, Paperback, €12. Marianne Groulez's book has two objects: 1) it offers a general interpretation of Hume's avowed "mitigated skepticism," based on the whole corpus of Hume's works; 2) it offers a study of moderate skepticism within Hume's Dialogues concaning natural religion, which is itself naturally grounded on the previous general interpretation. It seems to me that this second object actually turns out to be a global interpretation of Hume's Dialogues. Indeed, the study of the relationship between moderate skepticism and religious belief in the Dialogues enables Groulez to examine the whole economy of this book, the main arguments and the evolution of its protagonists, the place of the author himself and, finally, the link between the dialogue genre, skepticism, and religion. The first part of the book endeavours—successfully I think—to analyse the signification of Hume's skepticism. Groulez qualifies it as a "metaskepticism," thus alluding to the fact that Hume himself characterizes its own moderate skepticism as "skeptical of skepticism." The author provides an original interpretation of it, mainly through a comparison between Hume's and ancient skepticism. Of course, M. Groulez does not overlook the fact that in the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, Hume explicitly identifies its own mitigated skepticism with Volume 33, Number 1, April 2007 180 Book Reviews the skepticism of the New Academy, whereas he rejects the pyrrhonian doubt as excessive. Nevertheless, M. Groulez recalls that Sextus Empiricus considered pyrhhonian skepticism as "metaskeptical," that is, skeptical of the potentially dogmatical tendency of skepticism itself. This remark does not lead the author to see in Hume an unconscious pyrrhonian. Indeed, she notices that Hume's metaskepticism is also "naturalist." Hume thinks that both reasoning and practical beliefs are natural necessities, whereas Sextus did not clearly state that theoretical belief belonged entirely, as Hume says, to the "sensitive part of our nature." Groulez then shows that Academic skepticism may also be characterized as metaskeptical. More interesting, Carneades, one of the most prominent figures of the skeptical Academy, provided a quasi pre-Humean description of the consistent skeptic: a genuine skeptic knows that his judgment must be suspended in all matters, he nevertheless assents to what is the most probable and, meanwhile, he perfectly acknowledges that this approval is not rationally grounded. This portrait is, indeed, very similar to Hume's own descriptions of the true skeptic (see esp. A Treatise of Human Nature 1.4). But, once again, Groulez points out an important difference between this ancient description and Hume's one. According to Hume, the skeptical assent to natural beliefs is not a privilege of the wise: his ideal skeptic is not essentially different from the common man. To this precise analysis of Hume's debt to ancient skepticism and of his distancing from it, Groulez adds a direct examination of Hume's avowed mitigated and careless skepticism. Two points seem to me particularly noteworthy: first, the difference which Hume implicitly establishes between carelessness (a positive easiness) and indolence (a negative easiness), second, the affinity between excessive skepticism and abstruse philosophy on the one hand (both rejected by Hume on account of their uneasiness and of the seclusion and melancholy they induce), and the parallel affinity between moderate skepticism and "easy" and "accurate" philosophy on the other hand (both valued by Hume in order to attain and communicate true knowledge). Finally, the author suggests that besides the form of the essay, which Hume considered as the most able manner to unite accuracy and communicability, the genre of the dialogue could also serve the same purpose. The study of the relationship between careless skepticism and religious belief in the Dialogues concerning natural religion forms the second main part of Groulez's book. In my opinion, this examination proves to be a fruitful approach to Hume's last work. Indeed, both Philo (who is explicitly presented as an adept of "careless skepticism") and Cleanthes (the adept of "experimental theism") profess to be mitigated skeptics...

Hume Studies Volume 32, Number 1, April 2006, pp. 187-191 Book Review James A. Harris. Of Liberty and Necessity: The Free Will Debate in EighteenthCentury British Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. xv + 264. ISBN 0199268606, cloth, $74. As the title of Harris's book indicates, it provides a survey of the debate about freedom of the will in British philosophy of the eighteenth century (interpreted as the period beginning with the appearance in 1690 of John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and ending in 1828 with Dugald Stewart's The Philosophy ofthe Active and Moral Powers of Man). The book contains nine chapters, together with a Postscript which briefly discusses the direction taken by the debate in the later part of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century. While the chapters on Locke, Hume and Reid might be considered of particular interest , Harris succeeds admirably in bringing to light the distinctive contributions of other philosophers of the period, including lesser known figures like William King, David Hartley and Abraham Tucker. Harris's discussion is marked throughout by the high degree of scholarship displayed in his mastery of the material and the clarity with which the philosophical issues are expounded and discussed. His book succeeds not only in encouraging a greater degree of familiarity with a historical debate many of whose proponents are unduly neglected, but also in setting this debate in context and making clear its relevance to more recent treatments of the free will problem. Volume 32, Number 1, April 2006 188 Book Review It is possible to distinguish a number of philosophical threads which run throughout Harris's discussion of the philosophers with whom he is concerned. The following are perhaps the most significant: 1) The focus of the disagreement between the libertarian and the necessitarian . 2) The libertarian view that we are conscious of free will as a matter of fact. 3) The distinction between moral and physical necessity. 4) The relevance of the notion of free will to theological issues. We may appreciate something of the breadth and interest of Harris's discussion by seeing how these various themes are reflected in the views of philosophers engaged in the historical debate about free will. So far as 1) is concerned, as Harris makes clear in his Introduction, what is essentially at issue between the libertarian and the necessitarian is not the question of whether or not motives influence the will but, rather, whether they do so in such a way as to eliminate freedom of choice (10). For a necessitarian like Henry Home, Lord Kames, the only alternative to the necessitation of action by motives is action upon which motives have no influence at all. For a libertarian like James Beattie, however, the mind possesses a self-determining power which gives proof of the falsity of necessitarianism. An alternative approach is provided by Reid, who argues that motives stand in the same sort of relation to actions as advice, rather than providing the causes of actions. In the case of compatibilism (as represented, for example, by Hobbes), while experience reveals the necessitation of choice by motive, this is no threat to freedom since liberty is simply a matter of being able to act in accordance with one's choices rather than being free in respect of the choices themselves. 2) is a theme which provides Harris with another useful way of distinguishing the positions ofthe different philosophers to whom he refers. Thus, Harris suggests that Locke's view of freedom as consisting in our ability to weigh desires against each other reflects his concern with the experience of freedom rather than with the nature of the idea itself. Samuel Clarke—whose debate with Antony Collins is described by Harris as setting the terms for the free will debate for the rest of the eighteenth century—claims that our experience of the power of self-motion provides us with evidence for the reality of free will. For Kames, while the immediate efficient cause of action is the will as determined by the strongest motive, we nevertheless have a feeling of liberty which reflects the fact that in weighing motives we may...

Hume and contemporary "Humeans" have had prominent roles in reinvigorating the study of practical reason as a topic in its own right. I introduce a distinction between two divergent trends in the literature on Hume and practical reason. One trend, action-theoretic Humeanism, primarily concerns itself with defending a general account of reasons for acting, often one supposed to establish that moral reasons lack the categorical status the moral rationalist requires them to possess. The other trend, virtue-theoretic Humeanism, concentrates on defending the case for being an agent of a particular practical character, one whose enduring dispositions of practical thought are virtuous. I discuss work exemplifying these two trends and warn against decoupling thought about Hume's and a Humean theory of practical reason from Hume's and a Humean ethics. I conclude that the virtue-theoretic approach is a fruitful one for pursuing future work on Hume and Humeanism about practical reason.

Hume claims to prove in Treatise 1.3.3.3 that the causal maxim is neither intuitively nor demonstratively certain. The aim of this paper is to elucidate some puzzling features of his argument and thereby show that objections raised by James Beattie, Barry Stroud, and Harold Noonan can be answered. The conclusion is that Hume's argument goes through given convictions Hume expects his readers to share long before they reach this point of the Treatise. These convictions are that all ideas are imagistic entities, that all images must be fully determinate, and that there is no empirical evidence against the claim that nothing we can conceive or imagine in detail implies a contradiction.

Hume Studies Volume 31, Number 1, April 2005, pp. 181-183 FREDERICK G. WHELAN. Hume and Machiavelli: Political Realism and Liberal Thought. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2004. Pp. xii + 416. ISBN 0-7391-0631-7, cloth, $90. Most political theorists agree that modern political thought began with Machiavelli and that David Hume was a modern philosopher who made a notable contribution to political theory. Most philosophers do not spend great amounts of time either with Machiavelli or with Hume's political philosophy, and political theorists (with some Rawlsian exceptions) largely ignore Hume's ethics, epistemology , or histories. Still, it would come as little surprise to either philosophers or political theorists that as a modern political theorist, if not as a philosopher, Hume owes some debt to Machiavelli, whose focus on power, interest, and the vicissitudes of fortune set politics and political theory on their path through the nineteenth century. Noted Hume scholar Frederick G. Whelan is not content with such easy assumptions , and in this book explores in great depth and with admirable scholarly documentation the relationship between these two members of the "great conversation " of political theory. As Whelan makes clear, what Machiavelli and Hume share is a set of concerns related to political science, statesmanship, and foreign policy, even if, as is often the case, what they actually believe and say about these concerns diverges widely. Whelan devotes three chapters to an exploration of how both theorists focus on, among others things, the role of self-interest, ambition, custom, and fortune in politics, the rule of law, the need for prudence in leadership, the acceptability of religious influence and of the use of deception. In each of these discussions Whelan succeeds in showing how Hume follows Machiavelli in setting these topics as essential questions for political leaders to answer and according to which to establish their rule. Less successfully demonstrated is much agreement between the two about what the answers should be. Often Whelan is led to conclude that though, for example, both Machiavelli and Hume recognize the urge toward deception in politics, Machiavelli embraces and even encourages both the Prince and republican leaders to break faith, whereas Hume "does not openly advise the necessity of deception, [though] he describes some detailed examples of its use, both successful and unsuccessful (148). Such demurrals are many throughout the book and taken together cast some doubt on the extent to which the comparison of the two theorists really adds up. Furthermore, though Whelan's discussion of the joint reliance on custom or convention by both theorists is one of the stronger points in his case, even he Hume Studies 182 Book Reviews recognizes that Machiavelli's overall emphasis on how the Prince is to manage change tends to vitiate the comparison. For Hume, Whelan concludes, "custom, then, is the great guide of human life;" but, "[T]he problem in Machiavelli's analysis is that the ever-fluctuating contours of the political world continually create new circumstances that require innovations on the part of political leaders " (150). Finally, following Rawls many theorists (including Whelan in his fine 1985 book, Order and Artifice in Hume's Political Philosophy, Princeton University Press) might argue that Hume's greatest contribution to political theory is his discussion of the centrality of justice in politics and how justice itself relies on custom and convention for its meaning. It is curious therefore that Whelan devotes so little ink to exploring Machiavelli's influence in this regard, though even he acknowledges that the almost complete absence of a concern with justice in Machiavelli's thought "distinguishes his political theory significantly from Hume's as well as from other liberal theories" (63). In the final two chapters, which together represent the heart of the innovative thesis of this book, Whelan rises above the asymmetries in the comparison of the two works to flesh out what he terms the place of realism in liberal thought. Realist liberalism has debts to both Hume and Machiavelli, as Whelan makes abundantly clear, and it is as co-contributors to this synthesis of political thought that their philosophical conjunction is finally realized. Whelà n's argument here is subtle and persuasive, and his use of...

David Hume is an ardent supporter of practice of religions toleration. For Hume, toleration forms part of background that makes progress in philosophy possible, and it accounts for superiority of philosophical thought in England in eighteenth century. As he puts it in introduction to Treatise: the improvements in reason and philosophy can only be owing to a land of toleration and of liberty (T Intro. 7; SBN xvii)} Similarly, narrator of part 11 of First Enquiry comments:

Hume Studies Volume 30, Number 2, November 2004, pp. 297-327 A Symposium on Louis E. Loeb, Stability and Justification in Hume's Treatise Loeb on Stability and Justification in Hume's Treatise FREDERICK F. SCHMITT In Stability and Justification in Hume's Treatise,1 Louis Loeb ascribes to Hume a naturalistic account of justified belief, one on which Hume is fundamentally concerned with the question whether stable belief can be achieved. Loeb's interpretation is systematic, richly explanatory, and powerfully argued. He makes a compelling case that stability plays a central role in Hume's epistemology. Loeb's case is so compelling indeed that anyone who wants to defend an alternative interpretation will now have to assimilate or deflect the massive textual evidence in favor of the stability interpretation. I will argue here that, for some passages Loeb cites in favor of the stability interpretation, a veritistic interpretation explains the text at least as well as the stability interpretation does. 1. The Stability Account of Belief and the Aim of Truth On Loeb's interpretation, a belief is by its nature a steady or infixed disposition to thought, will, passion, and action—i.e., a disposition steady in its influence on thought, will, etc. (SJ 65-74). The nature of belief derives from its natural function, described by Hume at T 1.3.10.2 (SBN 119):2 Did impressions alone influence the will, we shou'd every moment of our lives be subject to the greatest calamities; because, tho' we foresaw their approach, we shou'd not be provided by nature with any principle of action , which might impel us to avoid them. On the other hand, did every Frederick F. Schmitt is Professor of Philosophy, Indiana University, Sycamore Hall 026,1033 E. Third St., Bloomington, IN 47405-7005, USA. e-mail: fschmitt@indiana.edu 298 Frederick F. Schmitt idea influence our actions, our condition wou'd not be much mended. For such is the unsteadiness and activity of thought, that the images of every thing, especially of goods and evils, are always wandering in the mind; and were it mov'd by every idle conception of this kind, it wou'd never enjoy a moment's peace and tranquillity. If impressions but not ideas influenced the will, our ideas of the future would provide no guidance in avoiding calamities or evils (or, I take it from the third sentence quoted, in achieving goods). But if every idea influenced the will, then, since ideas of all kinds of objects wander in the mind, the mind would enjoy no rest. Nature accordingly deprives "images" of a significant or regular influence on the will and reserves that influence for impressions and ideas of a special kind, so that we tend to act only when guided either by impressions or by such ideas. These ideas of a special kind must not waver and thereby deprive us of rest. The passage suggests that there is a natural kind of idea that serves the desired natural function. I take it that, on Loeb's interpretation, the kind belief is simply identified with this special kind of idea (or more accurately, disposition). That is, beliefs are, by nature, ideas that serve this natural function. To serve this function, beliefs must have a steady influence on thought and the will. A belief, then, is a disposition steady in its influence on thought and the will (with a qualification for countervailing influences to be mentioned below). Loeb argues persuasively that this stability interpretation of belief makes sense of a range of textual phenomena in Book 1. While Loeb convinces me that for Hume steady influence is part of the natural function and nature of belief, I find less plausible his assumption that it is the whole story. In interpreting Hume's account of belief, Loeb focuses exclusively on the point that beliefs differ from images in their function of a steady influence on will, allowing the mind a "peace and tranquillity" that would be disrupted by the influence of inconstant ideas on the will.3 If every image had a motivating effect, our will would turn every which way, with an attendant mental agitation. This is...