The Cambridge Companion to Hume / Edition 2

by David Fate Norton, Jacqueline Taylor

Overview

Each Cambridge Companion to a philosophical figure is made up of specially commissioned essays by an international team of scholars, providing students and non-specialists with an introduction to a major philosopher. The series aims to dispel the intimidation that readers may feel when faced with the work of a challenging thinker. David Hume is now considered one of the most important philosophers of the Western world. Although best known for his contributions to the theory of knowledge, metaphysics, and philosophy of religion, Hume also influenced developments in the philosophy of mind, psychology, ethics, political and economic theory, political and social history, and aesthetic theory. The fifteen essays in this volume address all aspects of Hume’s thought. The picture of him that emerges is that of a thinker who, though often critical to the point of skepticism, was nonetheless able to build on that skepticism a constructive, viable, and profoundly important view of the world. Also included in this volume are Hume’s two brief autobiographies and a bibliography suited to those beginning their study of Hume. This second edition of one our most popular Companions includes six new essays and a new introduction, and the remaining essays have all been updated or revised.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521859868
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	12/08/2008
Series:	Cambridge Companions to Philosophy
Edition description:	Revised
Pages:	578
Product dimensions:	6.38(w) x 9.21(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

David Fate Norton is Professor of Moral Philosophy Emeritus, McGill University, and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, University of Victoria. He has published widely on Hume and eighteenth-century British philosophy, and recently co-edited the first critical edition of Hume's Treatise of Human Nature.

Jacqueline Taylor is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of San Francisco. She has published on Hume's philosophy in Hume Studies, Topoi, The Journal of Ethics, The Blackwell Guide to Hume's Treatise, and Feminist Interpretations of David Hume.

Table of Contents

1. An introduction to Hume's thought; 2. Hume's new science of the mind; 3. Hume and the mechanics of mind: impressions, ideas, and association; 4. Hume's theory of space and time in its sceptical context; 5. Hume on causation; 6. Hume and the problem of personal identity; 7. Hume's scepticism; 8. Hume's moral psychology; 9. The foundations of morality in Hume's Treatise; 10. Hume's later moral philosophy; 11. The structure of Hume's political theory; 12. David Hume: principles of political economy; 13. Hume on the arts and 'The Standard of Taste': texts and contexts; 14. David Hume: 'the Historian'; 15. Hume on religion.

Editorial Reviews

"....This volume moves beyond the two-dimensional description of Hume as the destructive skeptic in order to highlight the constructive and innovative dimensions of Hume's thought.... the essays offer a topical focus with a progression that is modeled after Hume's own development of thought.... a rich contextualization for the reader to gain a fuller sense of Hume's thoughts and influence in numerous arenas that have a lasting significance today."
—Jennifer Powell McNutt, Wheaton College, Illinois

From the Publisher