Customer Reviews

The Cambridge Companion to Hume (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy)

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The goal of this collection of essays is to provide background and commentary of important aspects of the work of David Hume. The intent of this book is to provide guidance and context for individuals reading Hume. This book easily exceeds those goals. The authors are all well known experts on Hume and this book covers the whole spectrum of Hume's output from his seminal philosophical works through his essays and historical works. While this is an apparently diverse set of topics, important themes connect the essays. Several essays stress the 'positive' or constructive aspects of Hume's epistemology and theory of mind, an aspect of his thought that recurs strongly in his writings on moral, political, economic, and historical topics. Several essays stress Hume's uniform emphasis on a 'scientific' methodology in approaching many subjects. Overall, this volume gives a strong sense of the underlying unity of Hume's work. All of these essays are at least good. There are particularly good essays by Norton on Hume's work on morals, Hakonsson's on Hume's political theory, Fogelin on Hume's skepticism, Gaskin on Hume's criticism of religion,and an enlightening essay on Hume's work as a historian. The other essays are useful. The high quality of these essays makes this book valuable for a broad audience. It can be read profitably by individuals just exploring Hume and I suspect it would be equally useful for more experienced scholars and teachers.

The complex and often radical ideas formulated by Scotland's "Man of the Millenuim" are explained clearly and plainly in this companion without neglecting the more difficult issues that will concern students of philsophy. This book is particularly helpful in its discussion of Hume's scepticism and his views on morality and politics. It also provides a concise overview of Hume's empirical psychology.

David Hume is a famous if somewhat controversial thinker. His skeptical approach to Philosophical issues created important questions on many vital issues in philosophy, especially concerning religion, metaphysics and epistemology. Hume was also a great historian, political writer, acute psychologist and budding economist, as the later essays in this volume show. As with the other Cambridge Companions, this offers a valuable guide to the thought of Hume with clarity and rigor by leading experts in the field. It is a must read for any student, undergraduate, graduate or lay, of Hume's philosophy or the philosophy of the early modern period.

I have not read this book, though I know it belongs to a series whose productions are excellent and represent the latest scholarship. Having perused the list of scholars who are contributors, I expect the same will be true of this volume.

I only wish to comment on the advertising blurb. I believe that it was Hume's aunt (or great-aunt) who is credited with this quote and what she actually said was that little Davie was "uncommon wake-minded" (meaning unusually bright and curious) not "weak-minded". It is also quite clear that she did not approve of this trait in the young Hume. Many others will no doubt agree with her about this, but certainly no one will think that he was in any way weak-minded.

Amazon's review has a funny error. They say Hume's mother said he was "weak-minded." What she said was that he was "wake-minded," which, at the time, meant very bright. I suppose it doesn't affect anyone's desire to read a book such as this, but they couldn't have gotten mother more wrong.