Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1353/hms.2023.a910752
Zuzana Parusniková
Reviewed by: Academic Skepticism in Hume and Kant: A Ciceronian Critique of Metaphysics by Catalina González Quintero Zuzana Parusniková Catalina González Quintero. Academic Skepticism in Hume and Kant: A Ciceronian Critique of Metaphysics. Cham: Springer, 2022. Pp. 268. Hardcover. ISBN: 978-3-030-89749-9. £99.99. This book is a valuable contribution to the rapidly expanding field of research into the formative impact of ancient skepticism on early modern philosophy. This new paradigm was introduced several decades ago, as González Quintero acknowledges, by the pioneering work of Richard Popkin; and while Popkin emphasized the constitutive role of Pyrrhonism in this process, recent philosophical debates have been characterized by a more measured approach, carefully differentiating between the Academics and the Pyrrhonists, and their respective influence on modern skeptics. Gonzáles Quintero opts for the Academic interpretation of Hume’s skepticism, applying it to both his Treatise and the first Enquiry, and extending it to both of Kant’s Critiques—an area much less explored in the context of ancient skepticism. She thus heads into a complex philosophical landscape. The reader may be somewhat puzzled by the book’s subtitle, one which seems to add yet another theme to its already broad structure. However, as Gonzáles Quintero explains in the Introduction, she wants to take the discussions of Academic skepticism beyond the field of empirical science and concentrate on the attitude of the skeptics towards metaphysics; her aim is to show how Cicero, Hume, and Kant “used skeptical means to examine the justification of metaphysical claims and to determine, in this way, which resulting beliefs could be held non-dogmatically and for practical purposes” (1). Perhaps then, the book may be more accurately titled Academic Skepticism and Metaphysics: Cicero, Hume and Kant. Though this may seem a reduction in the scope of the topics, in this particular case it is an expansion, since the author reconstructs how the attitude of the skeptics to metaphysics unfolds from their general epistemological skepticism concerning the limits of reason. She divides the book into three main parts (Cicero, Hume, and Kant), with the first chapter of each part describing the skeptical method of that particular philosopher or school, and the second examining its application to metaphysical matters. This is a huge undertaking for one book, requiring the author to navigate a vast field of philosophical material, including a significant amount of primary and secondary literature, while turning it all back toward the main question concerning the role played by Academic (Carneadean) skepticism in the ancient, Humean, and Kantian treatments of religion and other metaphysical issues. The danger of topic-overload arises and a selective approach is crucial to avoid “dropping the ball.” Gonzáles Quintero tackles this task with varying success. [End Page 346] The first chapter of the first p
{"title":"Academic Skepticism in Hume and Kant: A Ciceronian Critique of Metaphysics by Catalina González Quintero (review)","authors":"Zuzana Parusniková","doi":"10.1353/hms.2023.a910752","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hms.2023.a910752","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Academic Skepticism in Hume and Kant: A Ciceronian Critique of Metaphysics by Catalina González Quintero Zuzana Parusniková Catalina González Quintero. Academic Skepticism in Hume and Kant: A Ciceronian Critique of Metaphysics. Cham: Springer, 2022. Pp. 268. Hardcover. ISBN: 978-3-030-89749-9. £99.99. This book is a valuable contribution to the rapidly expanding field of research into the formative impact of ancient skepticism on early modern philosophy. This new paradigm was introduced several decades ago, as González Quintero acknowledges, by the pioneering work of Richard Popkin; and while Popkin emphasized the constitutive role of Pyrrhonism in this process, recent philosophical debates have been characterized by a more measured approach, carefully differentiating between the Academics and the Pyrrhonists, and their respective influence on modern skeptics. Gonzáles Quintero opts for the Academic interpretation of Hume’s skepticism, applying it to both his Treatise and the first Enquiry, and extending it to both of Kant’s Critiques—an area much less explored in the context of ancient skepticism. She thus heads into a complex philosophical landscape. The reader may be somewhat puzzled by the book’s subtitle, one which seems to add yet another theme to its already broad structure. However, as Gonzáles Quintero explains in the Introduction, she wants to take the discussions of Academic skepticism beyond the field of empirical science and concentrate on the attitude of the skeptics towards metaphysics; her aim is to show how Cicero, Hume, and Kant “used skeptical means to examine the justification of metaphysical claims and to determine, in this way, which resulting beliefs could be held non-dogmatically and for practical purposes” (1). Perhaps then, the book may be more accurately titled Academic Skepticism and Metaphysics: Cicero, Hume and Kant. Though this may seem a reduction in the scope of the topics, in this particular case it is an expansion, since the author reconstructs how the attitude of the skeptics to metaphysics unfolds from their general epistemological skepticism concerning the limits of reason. She divides the book into three main parts (Cicero, Hume, and Kant), with the first chapter of each part describing the skeptical method of that particular philosopher or school, and the second examining its application to metaphysical matters. This is a huge undertaking for one book, requiring the author to navigate a vast field of philosophical material, including a significant amount of primary and secondary literature, while turning it all back toward the main question concerning the role played by Academic (Carneadean) skepticism in the ancient, Humean, and Kantian treatments of religion and other metaphysical issues. The danger of topic-overload arises and a selective approach is crucial to avoid “dropping the ball.” Gonzáles Quintero tackles this task with varying success. [End Page 346] The first chapter of the first p","PeriodicalId":29761,"journal":{"name":"Hume Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135161796","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1353/hms.2023.a910742
Taro Okamura
Abstract: Many scholars have claimed that the psychology of the indirect passions in the Treatise is meant to capture how we come to regard persons as morally responsible agents. My question is exactly how the indirect passions relate to responsibility. In elucidating Hume’s account of responsibility, scholars have often focused not on the passionate responses themselves, but on their structural features. In this paper, I argue that locating responsibility in the structural features is insufficient to make sense of Hume’s account of responsibility. I argue this on the grounds that without reference to the passions, Hume does not have the resources to distinguish between responsible and non-responsible entities. Instead, I attribute to Hume a distinctive, sympathy-based response-dependent conception of responsibility.
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Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1353/hms.2023.a910745
Alexander P. Bozzo
Abstract: Louis Loeb has identified a “nasty problem” in connection with Hume’s theory of meaning. The problem is that Hume seemingly claims we lack ideas corresponding to key metaphysical terms, such as terms like “substance” and “necessary connection,” but he then proceeds to explain why philosophers believe in the existence of entities denoted by such terms. In short, Hume seems motivated to explain belief in the existence of certain entities, despite his claiming we have no ideas corresponding to them. In this paper, I strive to solve the problem by noting the important role of clear and distinct perception in his thought. In particular, I argue Hume only wishes to deny that we have clear and distinct ideas of substance and necessary connection, and not that we altogether lack any idea of substance and necessary connection, traditionally conceived.
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Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1353/hms.2023.a910751
Tina Baceski
Reviewed by: Reading David Hume’s “Of the Standard of Taste.” ed. by Babette Babich Tina Baceski Babette Babich, ed. Reading David Hume’s “Of the Standard of Taste.” Berlin: deGruyter, 2020. Pp. VII + 333. ISBN: 978-3-11-058564-3, paper, $24.99. Reading David Hume’s “Of the Standard of Taste,” a volume of essays edited by Babette Babich, purports to offer the reader a “collective stud[y]” of Hume’s famous essay and its related concerns. Almost all the contributions have previously been published, either as journal articles or book chapters. “Of the Standard of Taste” is helpfully included at the beginning of the volume, though Hume Studies readers will already be familiar with the text. The book is divided into five parts. The editor’s introduction comprises part I. Hume’s essay makes up the entirety of part II. Parts III–V are organized around different general themes, with each part containing from three to five essays. In total the book contains twelve essays. Hume’s “Of the Standard of Taste” is a “classic” work in aesthetics today, but what entitles it to this appellation? Indeed, why do we judge any work to be of “classical value?” “Taste” plays a central role in evaluations of this sort, particularly the “taste” of modern scholars. But, as Hume knew, the historical sensibilities of judges are liable to change over the years, and so “some things that appear in their day to be sure classics, things that have until then withstood the test of time, can undergo a shift in value for another era” (13). In her Introduction, Babich tells an engaging, if not always easy to follow, story about Hume’s “deathbed readings” to illustrate the point. From final conversations with Adam Smith, we know that Hume was reading Lucian’s Dialogues of the Dead. But which of Lucian’s several such dialogues was he reading? When the question was put to Annette Baier (who was at that time herself writing about Hume and “last things”), she confessed to being puzzled by the very [End Page 341] question (6). Baier’s initial puzzlement and subsequent investigations to resolve this confusion revealed just how much her own sensibilities diverged from those of Hume’s day. Babich observes: “[T]he Lucian who was popular in Hume’s own day and even through to the beginning of the twentieth century, has today so diminished in “classical” value that he is sufficiently esoteric that Hume scholars like Baier have trouble tracking him down” (13). My own initial confusions reading the Introduction are likely attributable, in part, to the fact that I, too, was unfamiliar with Lucian. Ironically, this fact is, itself, further evidence of Babich’s point: yesterday’s literary gems have dimmed in value today because modern scholars are not conversant with their works. I have already ordered my copy of Lucian. The book’s rationale is explained as follows: “The entire concern of this volume is all about the critical basis for such claims [which works have “classical” value]. How can we determ
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Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1353/hms.2023.a910750
Anik Waldow
Reply to My CriticsExperience Embodied: Early Modern Accounts of the Human Place in Nature Anik Waldow (bio) I would like to thank Dario Perinetti and Hynek Janoušek for their thoughtful comments and the time and effort they invested into my work. Their reflections drive attention to important questions and make helpful suggestions about how some of the arguments of the book can be further developed and clarified. In what follows, I will first discuss the proposal to distinguish between a narrow and a broad sense of experience, then specify how I understand the connection between having a body and being able to engage in experiences. In this context, I will also discuss Janoušek’s suggestion to draw further distinctions between the different senses in which the concept of body relates to experience in Descartes and Hume. In the last section, I address the question of whether the focus on bodies risks undermining the claim that experience is intersubjectively constituted. 1. Narrow versus Broad Concept of Experience Dario Perinetti raises the worry that during the early modern period, and even before, the concept of experience was mainly used to discuss epistemological questions, and that therefore the Broad Experience Thesis fails. According to this thesis, it is reductive to think of experience in exclusively epistemological terms, since this ignores that many early modern writers approached questions about the benefits and dangers of experience from a wider moral perspective. This perspective, as I argue in [End Page 329] Experience Embodied, was concerned with the training of the mind’s intellectual and moral capacities, the role of pleasure and pain (and other affects) in epistemic and moral judgement, and, more generally, the question of how it is possible to be self-determined agents who do more than simply respond to the experiences they have. To support his claim, Perinetti cites the Historische Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Cauvin’s Lexicon Rationale sive Thesaurus Philosophicus, but also Aristotle, Bacon, and Hobbes. The approach I pursue in my book is based on the usage of the concept of experience by the authors examined (Descartes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Herder, Kant). I will turn to the analysis of this usage in a moment, but before this let me say a few words about dictionaries. It is in principle not surprising that a dictionary like the Historische Wörterbuch der Philosophie—and its discussion of Aristotle, Bacon, and Hobbes—supports the traditional approach to experience as a centrally epistemological concept. Its entry on “experience” revolves around the idea that philosophers are either empiricists or rationalists.1 Yet it is precisely the establishment of this distinction that has substantially contributed to promoting a reductive concept of experience. After all, rationalism and empiricism are labels typically used to describe competing epistemological positions.2 It is also worth noting that the dictionary’s entry is from the
我要感谢达里奥·佩里内蒂(Dario Perinetti)和海内克Janoušek，感谢他们对我的工作所作的深思熟虑的评论，以及他们为我的工作所投入的时间和精力。他们的反思推动了对重要问题的关注，并就本书的一些论点如何进一步发展和澄清提出了有益的建议。在接下来的内容中，我将首先讨论区分狭义和广义经验的建议，然后详细说明我如何理解拥有身体和能够参与经验之间的联系。在这种情况下，我还将讨论Janoušek的建议，即在笛卡尔和休谟的身体概念与经验相关的不同感官之间进一步区分。在最后一节中，我提出了一个问题，即对身体的关注是否会破坏经验是主体间构成的说法。1. Dario Perinetti提出了一种担忧，即在早期的现代时期，甚至更早，经验的概念主要用于讨论认识论问题，因此，广义经验的论点是失败的。根据这篇论文，仅仅从认识论的角度来思考经验是简化的，因为这忽略了许多早期现代作家从更广泛的道德角度来处理有关经验的好处和危险的问题。这个观点，正如我在[End Page 329] Experience Embodied中所说的，关注的是对心智智力和道德能力的训练，快乐和痛苦(以及其他情感)在认知和道德判断中的作用，以及更一般地说，如何可能成为自我决定的主体，而不仅仅是对他们所拥有的经验做出反应。为了支持他的观点，Perinetti引用了Historische Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Cauvin 's Lexicon Rationale Thesaurus Philosophicus，以及亚里士多德，培根和霍布斯。我在书中所采用的方法是基于所研究的作者(笛卡尔、洛克、休谟、卢梭、赫尔德、康德)对经验概念的使用。稍后我将分析这个用法，但在此之前，让我先谈谈字典。原则上，像Historische Wörterbuch der philosophy这样的词典——以及它对亚里士多德、培根和霍布斯的讨论——支持将经验作为中心认识论概念的传统方法，这并不奇怪。它关于“经验”的条目围绕着哲学家要么是经验主义者，要么是理性主义者的观点展开然而，正是这种区分的建立，极大地促进了经验的简化概念。毕竟，理性主义和经验主义是用来描述相互竞争的认识论立场的典型标签同样值得注意的是，该词典的词条来自20世纪70年代。正因为如此，它与哲学史的一幅图景相结合，这幅图景长期以来受到研究的挑战，这些研究表明，早期现代哲学远不止一些精选的权威人物的标准著作例如，当涉及洛克时，条目专门关注于《论人类理解》，甚至没有提到经验是《关于教育的一些思考》中的一个关键概念。肖文的《哲学词典》(1692)中关于经验的相当简短而笼统的条目也不太能说明问题——至少如果把它与同时期的其他词典和百科全书(如达朗贝尔和狄德罗的《百科全书》)分开来看是不太能说明问题的。《百科全书》是一部极具影响力的作品，根据其编辑的说法，它本身就是培根方法的一部分在这里，csamar Chesneau Du Marsais关于经验的条目直接强调了通过经验获得的知识的道德维度:经验，一个抽象的术语，通常意味着通过长期生活获得的知识，结合对所见之事的反思，以及对发生在我们身上的好事和坏事的反思。从这个意义上说，阅读历史是一种非常有益的获取经验的方式;它告诉我们事件，并向我们展示这些事件的好或坏的影响和后果…
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Abstract:The question broached in the title may sound odd. It makes sense to ask whether Hume’s empiricism is successful, and whether it is the best way of rendering rigorous the (vague) empiricist view. But is it not obvious that Hume is an empiricist? I shall argue that the answer is negative, at least when we are concerned with methodological empiricism, pertaining to the way inquiry, both scientific and philosophical, must proceed. In support of my claim, I will distinguish between the theoretical question, pertaining to the methodological view Hume endorses, and the practical question, concerned with the way he conducts his inquiry. My conclusion will be that the answer to the first question is contentious, and the answer to the second is negative.
{"title":"Is Hume a Methodological Empiricist?","authors":"Ruth Weintraub","doi":"10.1353/hms.2023.0000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hms.2023.0000","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The question broached in the title may sound odd. It makes sense to ask whether Hume’s empiricism is successful, and whether it is the best way of rendering rigorous the (vague) empiricist view. But is it not obvious that Hume is an empiricist? I shall argue that the answer is negative, at least when we are concerned with methodological empiricism, pertaining to the way inquiry, both scientific and philosophical, must proceed. In support of my claim, I will distinguish between the theoretical question, pertaining to the methodological view Hume endorses, and the practical question, concerned with the way he conducts his inquiry. My conclusion will be that the answer to the first question is contentious, and the answer to the second is negative.","PeriodicalId":29761,"journal":{"name":"Hume Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42131141","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:The purpose of Hume’s argument about induction, contra “literalist” interpretations that see it merely as psychology, is to show that induction cannot be justified. Hume maintains that the only way to justify induction would be to demonstrate or to produce a good inductive argument for the uniformity principle (UP). His most famous point is that any attempt to justify UP inductively would be circular. One may retort that no inductive argument can be circular, for a circular argument must be deductively valid. But there is a sense in which a purely inductive argument for UP is circular: it uses induction for the purpose of justifying induction. Therefore, the literalist interpretation cannot be right. For if the argument can be circular only if its purpose is to justify induction, and Hume has shown that it is circular, then its purpose must be to justify induction, and Hume shows that this cannot be done.
{"title":"Hume and Induction: Merely Cognitive Psychology?","authors":"G. Dicker","doi":"10.1353/hms.2023.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hms.2023.0011","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The purpose of Hume’s argument about induction, contra “literalist” interpretations that see it merely as psychology, is to show that induction cannot be justified. Hume maintains that the only way to justify induction would be to demonstrate or to produce a good inductive argument for the uniformity principle (UP). His most famous point is that any attempt to justify UP inductively would be circular. One may retort that no inductive argument can be circular, for a circular argument must be deductively valid. But there is a sense in which a purely inductive argument for UP is circular: it uses induction for the purpose of justifying induction. Therefore, the literalist interpretation cannot be right. For if the argument can be circular only if its purpose is to justify induction, and Hume has shown that it is circular, then its purpose must be to justify induction, and Hume shows that this cannot be done.","PeriodicalId":29761,"journal":{"name":"Hume Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41566118","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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