Hume the Sociable Iconoclast: The Case of the Four Dissertations

Abstract

Though each of its four constituent essays has received scholarly attention in itself, Hume’s Four Dissertations (1757) has received virtually no consideration from scholars as a unified whole. This article offers such an assessment, and argues that two crucially Humean themes link the four texts. First, they show the applicability of Hume’s theory of the passions to a wide range of questions: to the philosophy of religion, to psychology, and to aesthetics. Second, they show Hume grappling with the tension between his iconoclastic religious skepticism and his valorization of tolerant and sociable exchange between thinkers with differing views.

Notes

1. This article is an expansion and development of an earlier piece by John Immerwahr, printed as the introduction to David Hume, Four Dissertations (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1995), v–xix. The authors are grateful to the staff of the Swarthmore College Friends Historical Library for permission to work with their copy of Four Dissertations, and for their advice on the details of printing and binding. Quoted in Ernest Campbell Mossner, The Life of David Hume (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1954), 289.

2. Hume’s clerical friendships are too numerous to summarize in a footnote, but representative is a letter to Hugh Blair sent from Paris in 1765, in which Hume jocularly testifies his “Remorse” at his epistolary “Neglect of my Protestant Pastors,” and follows with a paragraph each for the Rev. William Robertson, the Rev. John Jardine, the Rev. Alexander Carlyle, the Rev. Adam Ferguson, and finally Rev. Blair himself. David Hume, The Letters of David Hume, ed. J. Y. T. Greig, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), 1.496. For Hume’s positive vision of the role of an established church, see for instance the essay “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth,” in which “the Presbyterian government is established.” David Hume, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1985), 520. J. G. A. Pocock summarizes Hume’s attitude in the History of England as follows: “Religion is the object of a philosopher’s undying hatred when it erects an authority independent of that of civil society; but a religion controlled by society, or even a religion theocratically governing society, is not necessarily the enemy of sociability.” Barbarism and Religion, Volume Two: Narratives of Civil Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 246.

3. David Hume, A Dissertation on the Passions and The Natural History of Religion, ed. Tom L. Beauchamp (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007), cited hereafter as Dissertation and Natural History. “Of Tragedy” and “Of the Standard of Taste” have not appeared in the Clarendon Edition at time of writing.

4. Hume, Letters, 1.224.

5. The only essays written after “Of the Standard of Taste” were “Of the Jealousy of Trade,” “Of the Coalition of Parties,” and “Of the Origin of Government”—essays that focus on politics and economics rather than morals, aesthetics, and religion. Beyond these essays, Hume’s literary activity in the two decades before his death was largely limited to completing the History, revising his existing publications for new editions, and ensuring that further philosophical works, such as the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, would appear after his death. For a useful chronology of Hume’s publications, see the notes to the Foreword in Hume, Essays, ii–xiv.

6. A full account of the unusual history of this publication is included in the introduction to Hume, Dissertation and Natural History, xx–l.

7. Hume, Letters, 1.223.

8. Hume’s polemical opponent William Warburton saw exactly what he was up to: “You ask, why he chuses to give it this title. Would not the Moral history of Meteors be as full as sensible as the Natural history of Religion? . . . It is to insinuate, that what the world calls Religion . . . is not founded in the Judgment, but in the Passions only.” [William Warburton, Richard Hurd], Remarks on Mr. David Hume’s Essay on the natural history of religion: addressed to the Rev. Dr. Warburton (London, 1757). Reprinted in Early Responses to Hume’s Writings on Religion, ed. James Fieser (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2001), 314.

9. Hume, “My Own Life,” in Essays, xxxv.

10. See index to Letters, s.v. Home, John, for a list of Hume’s numerous favorable mentions of the play, which he promoted in Edinburgh, London, and Paris.

11. Hume, Letters, 2.252.

12. Hume, Letters, 2.253.

13. These two essays were still causing trouble for Hume seven years later. Millar kept a single copy and lent it out to John Wilkes, the notorious rake and populist politician. When Wilkes was forced to flee the country to escape prison and his books were put up for sale, Hume importuned Millar to recover the essays, which he did by tearing them out of a volume in Wilkes’s library and burning them. See Hume, Letters, 1.444.

14. Hume, Letters, 1.243.

15. “My Own Life,” in Essays, xxxvii. There is a slight irony here: Hume had already once changed his name, from its original spelling, “Home.”

16. Hume, Letters, 1.247.

17. Hume, Letters, 1.241; David Hume, Four Dissertations (London, 1757). Available via Eighteenth-Century Collections Online, http://find.galegroup.com/ecco/infomark.do?&contentSet=ECCOArticles&type=multipage&tabID=T001&prodId=ECCO&docId=CW3325288869&source=gale&userGroupName=camb55135&version=1.0&docLevel=FASCIMILE; accessed 29 September 2011. The spelling of John’s name as “Hume” rather than “Home” was part of a long-running friendly dispute between the two cousins, with David favoring the modern “Hume” and John favoring the more traditional “Home.” See Mossner, Life, 276 for an account of David Hume’s attempt to settle the dispute once and for all by casting lots.

18. Hume, Letters, 1.242.

19. Hume, Four Dissertations, ii–iii. The idea that polite disagreement is a form of friendship is ubiquitous in Hume’s letters. This dedication reprises a letter written by Hume to an unknown author (in the event, the clergyman James Balfour of Pilrig) who had published a critique of his works in 1753: “Let us revive the happy times, when Atticus and Cassius the Epicureans, Cicero the Academic, and Brutus the Stoic, could, all of them, live in unreserved friendship together, and were insensible to all those distinctions, except so far as they furnished agreeable matter to discourse and conversation.” Here too, Hume makes it clear that he does not expect that this discourse and conversation will lead either participant to a change of mind: “With regard to our philosophical systems, I suppose we are both so fixt, that there is no hope of any conversions betwixt us; and for my part, I doubt not but we shall both do as well to remain as we are.” Hume, Letters, 1.173–4.

20. Hume, Four Dissertations, v–vi.

21. Hume, Essays, 588.

22. John Home, Douglas, V.296, in British Dramatists from Dryden to Sheridan, ed. George H. Nettleton and Arthur E. Case (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969), 643–68.

23. “Alas! I fear / I’ve been too hasty! . . . If I have done amiss, impute it not!—/ The best may err.” Joseph Addison, Cato, V.iv.95–99, in Nettleton and Case, British Dramatists, 473–99.

24. Hume, Four Dissertations, 238.

25. Hume, Four Dissertations, 1.

26. Hume, Four Dissertations, 44.

27. See, for example, Mark Webb, “The Argument of the Natural History,” Hume Studies 17.2 (November 1991): 141–60.

28. Hume, Four Dissertations, 3.

29. Hume, Four Dissertations, 349.

30. For the history of the cancels, see the introduction to Dissertation and Natural History, xxiv–v. The editor, Tom Beauchamp, takes the position that these changes “have no clear connection to prudential amendment” and that they may have been made “from Hume’s desire to bring his description more in line with Islamic religious beliefs.” In the context of the passage as a whole, particularly the too-much-protesting parenthesis about Christianity being happily exempted from anthropomorphism, we think it far more likely that Hume is interested in an ironic attack on Christians than an anthropologically accurate critique of Islam. This in turn makes it seem likely, despite Beauchamp’s skepticism, that some sort of prudential motivation led to the cancel. Certainly Warburton took this passage in its revised form to be an attack on the God of the Old Testament; see Warburton, Remarks, 332.

31. For a more detailed discussion of “Of the Passions” and its reception by Hume scholars, see John Immerwahr, “Hume’s Dissertation on the Passions,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 32.2 (April 1994): 224–40.

32. Norman Kemp Smith, The Philosophy of David Hume (London: Macmillan, 1941), 535.

33. Hume, Four Dissertations, 173.

34. “Of Tragedy” has received extensive discussion from contemporary philosophers, nearly all of whom see serious problems with Hume’s argument. See Amyas Merivale, “Mixed Feelings, Mixed Metaphors: Hume on Tragic Pleasure,” British Journal of Aesthetics 51.3 (July 2011): 259–69; E. M. Dadlez, “Pleased and Afflicted: Hume on the Paradox of Tragic Pleasure,” Hume Studies 30.2 (2004): 213–36; Alex Neill, “Hume’s ‘Singular Phenomenon’,” British Journal of Aesthetics 39.2 (April 1999): 112–25; Malcolm Budd, “Hume’s Tragic Emotions,” Hume Studies 17.2 (November 1991): 93–106; Robert J. Yanal, “Hume and Others on the Paradox of Tragedy,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 49.1 (winter 1991): 75–76; Mark Packer, “Dissolving the Paradox of Tragedy,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 47.3 (summer 1989): 211–19; Eric Hill, “Hume and the Delightful Tragedy Problem,” Philosophy 57.221 (July 1982): 319–26.

35. Hume, Letters, 1.246.

36. Mossner, Life, 358–59; Letter 130, March 1757, Letters, 1.246.

37. Home, Douglas, epilogue, 8.

38. Hume, Four Dissertations, 185.

39. Hume, Four Dissertations, v.

40. Hume, Four Dissertations, 186, 188.

41. Hume, Four Dissertations, 193.

42. David Hume, History of England, ed. Frits van Holthoon, 6 vols. (Charlottesville, VA: InteLex, 1990), 5.151. http://beta.nlx.com./xtf/view?docId=hume/hume.11.xml;chunk.id=div.hume.hist.v1.1b;toc.depth=1;toc.id=div.hume.hist.v1.1;brand=default;query=. This edition reproduces the six-volume edition edited by William Todd (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1983), with the addition of textual variants. From 1773 onwards, Hume further strengthened this criticism by altering “we must abate somewhat of this eulogy” to “we must abate much of this eulogy.”

43. Hume, History, 5.151.

44. Hume, Letters, 1.215.

45. Hume, History, 5.152.

46. Hume, Four Dissertations, 190–91.

47. Hume, Four Dissertations, 198–99.

48. Hume, Letters, 2.253.

49. Hume, Four Dissertations, 207–8.

50. William Guthrie, An Essay Upon English Tragedy (London, 1757).

51. Letter 101, 24 October 1754, Letters, 1.209.

52. The quotations that follow are from Hume, Four Dissertations, 216–24.

53. Hume, Letters, 1.452.

54. Hume, Four Dissertations, 229.