Skepticism as ethos: David Hume’s response to the epistemological revolution

ABSTRACT

This article examines David Hume’s mitigated skepticism as enacted through an ethos that refashions moral philosophy’s public identity by appealing to the virtues of England’s transforming scientific community in the eighteenth century. More specifically, this article shows how Hume’s Enquiry, amid competing efforts to escape rationalistic dogmatism and an emerging bourgeois readership, refashions moral philosophy through an antithetical scheme that subverted the Enlightenment’s obsession with certitude. In doing so, Hume invites readers to understand the purpose of moral philosophy as the pursuit of doubt over truth, an idea designed to humble the scientific profession at the peak of the epistemological revolution. Moreover, I propose two conceptual takeaways that extend beyond my close reading of Hume’s work. First, I explain how Hume’s philosophical persona draws upon his interpretation of Renaissance humanism, an orientation that focalizes rhetorical ethos by contrasting Aristotelian argumentation with Ciceronian eloquence. Second, I provide historical commentary on Pyrrhonism’s decline during the Enlightenment and the broader political implications of arousing suspicion toward knowledge.

KEYWORDS:

• Antithesis
• Renaissance humanism
• Enlightenment rhetoric
• epistemology
• Pyrrhonism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Stephen Buckle, Hume’s Enlightenment Tract: The Unity and Purpose of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 1–40. For research on the perceived relationship between casuistry and scholasticism, see Rudolf Schuessler, “Casuistry and Probabilism,” in A Companion to the Spanish Scholastics, ed. Harald Ernst Braun, Erik De Bom, and Paolo Astorri (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2021), 334–60.

2 John Gascoigne, Cambridge in the Age of the Enlightenment: Science, Religion and Politics from the Restoration to the French Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 7; Wayne Hudson, Enlightenment and Modernity: The English Deists and Reform (London: Routledge, 2009), 7–35.

3 Stephen Hawkins, “Desire and Natural Classification: Aristotle and Peirce on Final Cause,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 43, no. 3 (2007): 521–41.

4 David Hume, The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688, Foreword by William B. Todd, 6 vols (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1983): 5:155, 3:229, 2:283.

5 M.A. Box, The Suasive Art of David Hume (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 3–8.

6 Mark Garrett Longaker, Rhetorical Style and Bourgeois Virtue: Capitalism and Civil Society in the British Enlightenment, vol. 2 (State College: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015), 6.

7 Deirdre McCloskey, “Bourgeois Virtue,” The American Scholar 63, no. 2 (1994): 177–91; The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 305.

8 Adam Potkay, “Classical Eloquence and Polite Style in the Age of Hume,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 25, no. 1 (1991): 31–56; The Fate of Eloquence in the Age of Hume (New York: Cornell University Press, 1994), 86; James Sambrook, The Eighteenth Century: The Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature 1700–1789, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1994), 1–15.

9 Thomas Broman, “The Habermasian Public Sphere and ‘Science in the Enlightenment,’” History of Science 36, no. 2 (1998): 123–49; James Van Horn Melton, The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 19–26.

10 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), xix.

11 For research on scholastic theology’s bearing upon the curriculums of early modern universities, see Martin I. Klauber, Between Reformed Scholasticism and Pan-Protestantism: Jean-Alphonse Turretin (1671–1737) and Enlightened Orthodoxy at the Academy of Geneva (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 1994), 10–12; Peter Harrison, ‘Religion’ and the Religions in the English Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 19–41.

12 Carl Lotus Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 1–31; M. Jamie Ferreira, “Locke’s Constructive Skepticism—A Reappraisal,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 24, no. 2 (1986): 211–22.

13 Ronald C. Arnett, Communication Ethics and Tenacious Hope: Contemporary Implications of the Scottish Enlightenment (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2022), 148.

14 David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Eric Steinberg (London: Hackett Publishing Company, 1977).

15 Judith V. Grabiner, “Maclaurin and Newton: The Newtonian Style and the Authority of Mathematics,” in Science and Medicine in the Scottish Enlightenment, ed. Charles W.J. Withers and Paul Wood (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2002), 143–71; David Wilson, Seeking Nature’s Logic: Natural Philosophy in the Scottish Enlightenment (State College: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), 33–68.

16 Francis Higman, “Theology in French: Religious pamphlets from the Counter-Reformation,” Culture, Theory and Critique 23, no. 1 (1979): 128–46; Jonathan Israel, “Counter-Reformation, Economic Decline, and the Delayed Impact of the Medical Revolution in Catholic Europe, 1550–1750,” in Health Care and Poor Relief in Counter-Reformation Europe, ed. Jon Arrizabalaga, Andrew Cunningham, and Ole Peter Grell (London: Routledge, 2005), 64–81.

17 By “Pyrrhonism” I mean a form of skepticism that discourages blind acceptance of epistemological judgments, obstructs the search for essences, and promotes a relativistic orientation toward human experience. But unlike other forms of skepticism (i.e., such as sophistic skepticism) that endorse similar ideas, Pyrrhonism was considered a radical and dangerous form of skepticism during the Enlightenment because it led philosophers to embrace a nihilistic attitude toward the acquisition of knowledge.

18 Julia Annas and Jonathan Barnes, The Modes of Scepticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 10–18; Richard Bett, Pyrrho, His Antecedents, and His Legacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 14–60.

19 Gail Fine, “Descartes and Ancient Skepticism: Reheated Cabbage?,” The Philosophical Review 109, no. 2 (2000): 195–234; Bernard Williams, “Descartes’s Use of Skepticism,” in The Skeptical Tradition, ed. Myles Burnyeat (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983), 337–52.

20 René Descartes, Optics, in Discourse on Method, Optics, Geometry, and Meteorology, trans. Pual J. Olscamp (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), 3–10; Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy: With Selections from the Objections and Replies, trans. and ed. John Cottingham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 1–19.

21 Stephen Gaukroger, “Descartes’ Project for a Mathematical Physics,” in Descartes: Philosophy, Mathematics, and Physics (Sussex: Harvester Press, 1980), 12–14.

22 Richard Popkin, “Scepticism in the Enlightenment,” in Scepticism in the Enlightenment, ed. Richard Popkin, Ezequiel de Olaso, and Giorgio Tonelli (Dordrecht: Springer, 1997), 17.

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24 Popkin, “Skepticism in the Enlightenment,” 1.

25 Popkin, “Skepticism in the Enlightenment,” 17.

26 Kenneth R. Stunkel, “Montaigne, Bayle, and Hume: Historical Dynamics of Skepticism,” The European Legacy 3, no. 4 (1998): 49.

27 Stunkel, “Montaigne, Bayle, and Hume,” 49.

28 Pierre Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary: Selections. Translated by Richard Popkin (Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1991).

29 Popkin, “Skepticism in the Enlightenment,” 3.

30 J.P. Pittion, “Hume’s Reading of Bayle: An Inquiry into the Source and Role of the Memoranda,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 15, no. 4 (1977): 373–86.

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33 Jean-Pierre de Crousaz, Examen du Pyrrhonisme Ancien & Moderne Par Monsieur de Crousaz (A La Haye, Chez P. de Hondt, 1733); Anton Matytsin, The Specter of Skepticism in the Age of Enlightenment (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), 25–51.

34 de Olaso, “La Crisis Pirrónica de Hume,” 133.

35 de Olaso, “La Crisis Pirrónica de Hume,” 133.

36 Lisandro Aguirre, “David Hume y su Adhesión Inconsciente al Escepticismo Pirrónico,” Revista de Filosofía y Teoría Política 41 (2010): 13–40; Peter Kail, “Understanding Hume’s Natural History of Religion,” The Philosophical Quarterly 57, no. 227 (2007): 190–211.

37 Thomas Reid, The Works of Thomas Reid, vol. 1. MacLachlan & Stewart (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green, [1863] 2015), 462–8; Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. D.D. Raphael and A.L. Macfie (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund Press, 1982), 22.

38 Hume, Treatise, 3.

39 Hume, Treatise, 1.4.7, Emphasis in original.

40 Popkin, “Skepticism in the Enlightenment,” 6.

41 Peter Jones, “Hume’s Great Treatise,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 16, no. 2 (2008): 421–9; Michel Malherbe, “Hume’s Reception in France,” in The Reception of David Hume in Europe, ed. Peter Jones (London: Theommes Continuum, 2005), 43–95.

42 Eric Steinberg, “Introduction,” in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Eric Steinberg (London: Hackett Publishing Company, 1977), ix.

43 Laurence L. Bongie, “Hume, ‘Philosophe’ and Philosopher in Eighteenth-Century France,” French Studies 15, no. 3 (1961): 213–27.

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45 Israel, “Counter-Reformation.”

46 Denis Diderot and Jean-le-Rond d’Alembert, eds., Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonnée des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 17 (Paris: Briasson, David, Le Breton and Durand, 1751–65), 614.

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51 Box, The Suasive Art, 5–8.

52 Jill Kraye, “The Philosophy of the Italian Renaissance,” in The Renaissance and Seventeenth-Century Rationalism, ed. G.H.R. Parkinson (London: Routledge, 1993), 16–64.

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54 James Hankins, “Humanism, Scholasticism, and Renaissance Philosophy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 32. Also see Jerrold E. Seigel, “Ideals of Eloquence and Silence in Petrarch,” Journal of the History of Ideas 26, no. 2 (1965): 147–74.

55 Victoria Ann Kahn, Rhetoric, Prudence, and Skepticism in the Renaissance (New York: Cornell University Press, 1985), 30–6.

56 Jerrold E. Seigel, “‘Civic Humanism’ or Ciceronian Rhetoric? The Culture of Petrarch and Bruni,” Past & Present 34 (1966): 3–48; Tim Stuart-Buttle, “‘An Authority from Which There Can Be No Appeal’: The Place of Cicero in Hume’s Science of Man,” Journal of Scottish Philosophy 18, no. 3 (2020): 289–309.

57 Hanna H. Gray, “Renaissance Humanism: The Pursuit of Eloquence,” Journal of the History of Ideas 24, no. 4 (1963): 503.

58 Gray, “Renaissance Humanism,” 501.

59 Gray, “Renaissance Humanism,” 498.

60 David Hume, “Of Eloquence,” in Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Carmel: Liberty Fund), 98; “The Skeptic,” in Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Carmel: Liberty Fund), 170.

61 Richard Leo Enos and Karen Rossi Schnakenberg, “Cicero Latinizes Hellenic Ethos,” in Ethos: New Essays in Rhetorical and Critical Theory, ed. James S. Baumlin and Tita F. Baumlin (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1994), 197.

62 Lois Agnew, “Rhetorical Style and the Formation of Character: Ciceronian Ethos in Thomas Wilson’s Arte of Rhetorique,” Rhetoric Review 17, no. 1 (1998): 93–106.

63 Cicero, De Oratore, trans. E.W. Sutton and H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942), I.12.

64 Hume, “Of Eloquence,” 97–100.

65 Celeste M. Condit, “Public Health Experts, Expertise, and Ebola: A Relational Theory of Ethos,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 22, no. 2 (2019): 177–216; Coretta Pittman, “Black Women Writers and the Trouble with Ethos: Harriet Jacobs, Billie Holiday, and Sister Souljah,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 37, no. 1 (2006): 43–70; Grace Wetzel, “Winifred Black’s Teacherly Ethos: The Role of Journalism in Late-Nineteenth-century Rhetorical Education,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 44, no. 1 (2014): 68–93.

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67 Condit, “Public Health Experts,” 179.

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70 Jeanne Fahnestock, Rhetorical Figures in Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 4.

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73 Michael J. Buckley, “Philosophic Method in Cicero,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 8, no. 2 (1970): 145.

74 Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric, 142.

75 Hume, Treatise, 103, Emphasis in original.

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103 Hume, Enquiry, 104.

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108 Werner, “David Hume and America,” 440.

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112 Hume, Enquiry, 20, Emphasis in original.

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114 Hume, Enquiry, 23.

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118 Hume, Enquiry, 21.

119 Hume, Enquiry, 16.

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125 Hume, Enquiry, 111.

126 Hume, Enquiry, 111.

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129 Hume, Enquiry, 19.

130 Hume, Enquiry, 19.

131 Hume, Enquiry, 19.

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