The Clarendon Edition of Hume’s Essays

Abstract

The Clarendon Edition of Hume’s Essays Lorne Falkenstein (bio) David Hume. Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary: A Critical Edition. Edited by Tom L. Beauchamp and Mark A. Box, with Michael Silverthorne, J. A. W. Gunn, and F. David Harvey. 2 volumes. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2021. Pp. 1200. ISBN: 97880198847090. $175. As reflected in its title, the Clarendon Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary contains essays that appeared over the course of Hume’s lifetime under the titles Essays, Moral and Political (EMP) and Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (EMPL). (The latter appears as a subtitle within Hume’s larger Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects [ETSS].) It includes pieces that were withdrawn from EMP or EMPL in later editions, as well as essays Hume added to EMPL in 1764 and 1777. These are the essays familiar to those who know Eugene Miller’s Liberty Fund collection of Hume’s Essays with some exceptions: My Own Life, “Of Suicide,” and “Of the Immortality of the Soul” are not included. Essays that Hume decided to withdraw from later editions of EMP or EMPL precede the retained essays, collected in parts by withdrawal date. (This is a nice touch, which better captures the history of their appearance and disappearance.) A dedication to John Home, which appeared in some copies of Four Dissertations, and a list of “Scotticisms,” which appeared at various places in some copies of the first edition of Hume’s Political Discourses (incorporated into EMP and EMPL) are included as appendices. These are decisions that reflect the contents of the published texts, as they appeared from 1741 to 1777 (1:xxvii–xxviii). Hume wanted My Own Life to be prefaced to the posthumous 1777 edition of ETSS (1:444–45), but his publisher, Strahan, chose to publish it as an independent pamphlet instead. The essays “Of Suicide” and [End Page 297] “Of the Immortality of the Soul” were only briefly intended for publication in Four Dissertations (incorporated into ETSS) and did not appear in the released edition. They, too, only appeared posthumously. The editors project a volume containing Hume’s posthumous writings (1:401n1), which should include these works. Though the essays on suicide and immortality are not included, their history is presented over 1:430–31, importantly supplemented by 1:467–68. The dedication to John Home was published during Hume’s lifetime, though only in his Four Dissertations of 1757. As the editors note (1:695–96) it was highly controversial at the time and historically significant, both as an episode in Hume’s own troubles with the Scottish Kirk, and as an indication of the weakening of the control of the clergy over Scottish culture. It merits inclusion somewhere in a critical edition of Hume’s writings. The obvious place is in the company of the works that originally appeared in Four Dissertations. Those works are distributed over three volumes of the Clarendon Hume editions, those containing the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, the Dissertation on the Passions, the Natural History of Religion, and EMPL. This raises the question of which volume would be the one a scholar would be most inclined to consult when searching for the dedication. Since the dedication raises the issue of free speech and Hume was in trouble over what he had said with bearing on religion, one appropriate location would be the volume containing the Natural History, as the dedication applauds a one-time Kirk minister who dared to write a tragedy and get it performed on the Edinburgh stage. Another would be in the company of the literary essays that appeared in Four Dissertations: “Of Tragedy” and “Standard of Taste,” which Hume assigned to EMPL. The editors have opted for the latter. Hume’s different editions of his essays were often prefaced with advertisements and notifications. The most famous is the note in the 1777 edition disowning the Treatise. It is rightly excluded from these volumes of the Clarendon Hume because it was directed for insertion in volumes of ETSS that do not contain EMPL.1 The remaining advertisements and notifications are hard to find. They are appended to the introduction to the third part of the emendations/variants (1:529–30...