Hume: An Intellectual Biography Hardcover – October 6, 2015

This is the first major biography of Hume in a long time. The prior standard biography by EC Mossner was published initially in the 1950s and revised modestly in the 1970s. Mossner's enjoyable book focused on Hume's personal life and what might be termed his professional success as a literary figure. Harris' focus is quite different. This is a description and analysis of Hume's work with minimal, though effective narrative, of his personal. Harris works through all of Hume's work, starting with the great Treatise, and finishing with his major historical works.

Harris stresses some major themes. One is Hume's consistent pursuit of literary fame, though literature in this context includes his philosophical and historical work. This contained a large element of desire to make a substantial contribution to human improvement through careful reasoning and analysis. Another component was Hume's desire to participate in the cosmopolitanism of the Enlightenment. A second is his empricism; the insistence on impartial evaluation of things as they actually are. Hume's naturalism and search for underlying structural principles is also a major theme of all his work. Particularly good features of this book are Harris's attention to the historical works and essays that are often neglected by many readers. Harris is also very good on the relationship of the ideas presented in the Treatise and Hume's subsequent writings. Harris does well in discussing the context of Hume's work, particularly the Scottish context, and some of Hume's important antecedents. One surprising point for me was Harris' emphasis on the importance of Mandeville's work.

This is a well written and thoughtful book. Harris' discussions of Hume's works are judicious and presented clearly. For those familiar with Hume's work, this book will provide few surprises but is very useful for its broad coverage and identification of important themes in all of Hume's work. For those unfamiliar with Hume, this book will provide a useful introduction and resource. I would have liked to have more discussion of the Treatise and its reception. While perhaps limited by sources, I would also like a deeper discussion of some of the key issues in Hume's work, such as his skepticism towards religion. The rich discussion in Paul Russell's book The Riddle of Hume's Treatise is an example of what a carefully contextualized analysis can achieve. This is not a major criticism as Harris does very well in accomplishing his goal of a fair, thorough, and readable narrative. There is still a need for a major scholarly biography of Hume integrating all aspects of his life, work, and milieu.

Addendum: This bio received a civil, thorough, and pretty critical review from Paul Russell in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. Russell criticizes Harris for failing to emphasize Hume's critique of religion as a central focus of his work. He also criticizes Harris for spending too much ink on Hume's lesser work as opposed to more focus on the Treatise and its descendants. Russell's comments deserve respect because he is a really insightful Hume specialist and intellectual historian. I think the former criticism is well justified, and while the latter criticism is understandable, I'm a bit more sympathetic to Harris' discussion of these "lesser" works. Harris was aiming to portray all of Hume's life and work, not just the major philosophical work for which Hume is best known today. Some of the "lesser" work, such as the writings on political theory, political economy, and history are important and tend to be neglected in most work on Hume. Hume's essay, The Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth, for example, is probably one of the most important works in republican political theory.

Writing a proper biography of an intellectual subject presents the author of history with a difficult task. When your subject is a writer, or, worse yet, a philosopher, reflecting on the relationship between their thinking and their personal experiences in a way that is both entertaining and insightful can oftentimes be a challenge greater than the abilities of many, even very serious scholars.

The problem is very frequently a consequence of confusion about what counts as proper 'experience'. Hume, in many ways, lived a relatively boring life, at least externally speaking. He never seemed particularly interested in getting himself, or remaining 'fix'd' in some stable way of life. He worked few jobs, held only a handful of secretarial posts, and often spent many years at a time sequestrated at his family estate in NineWells reading. This is not a life of swashbuckling adventure or political intrigue, it is the life of someone who spent most of their time reading, thinking or writing. Tempting as it though may be, the philosopher does not always present himself as the most promising candidate for psychoanalytical investigation, in fact, in the case of Hume, little of his personal correspondence or private writing survives from which to draw any singular conclusions regarding, say, the impact of childhood trauma on his development as a thinker.

The success of "Hume: An Intellectual Biography" probably derives from Harris' relative disinterest in pursuing a purely psychological or biographically speculative account of his subject. He does not attempt to reconstruct Hume's thought from the purely physical circumstances of his life, such as his upbringing, his education, his profession, or his personal experiences. Instead the majority of the present volume is devoted to an intellectual account, a life of the mind. He realizes that ones cannot count on the general reader to have a full background in all of the literature with which Hume would have been familiar with, if only by contemporary reputation. Thus he takes the time to discuss the works and ideas of the many of authors whom Hume preoccupied himself for much of his life. The contextualization this book's biggest strength and greatest source of appeal.

Only in one or two pages at the beginning and end of each chapter does the author explicitly turn his attention to the immediate circumstances of Hume's life. The bulk of each chapter then is taken up with a chronicling of what book's Hume was reading, and furthermore, of which books were available to him or otherwise would have at least been known to him in some capacity. It is then the task of the author to sort out how Hume synthesized this material, and to explain why sometimes some ideas prevailed with him over others, usually by means of an appeal to contemporary party politics or their attendant prejudices.

Overall this is a very satisfying volume, it is at once very readable and very informative. It does not necessarily offer any great insight into Hume's, but it does present a very enjoyable intellectual narrative in which the various influences, both positive and negative, on Hume are connected to one another in a continuous and persuasive chain of interpretations.

The introduction is a bit uninteresting, focusing on how we should view Hume - as philosopher or man of letters. But the substance of the book is mostly excellent: Hume in intellectual context.

Well written discussion of Hume's opinions which keeps the reader interested. Could have use a bit more by way of philosophy and bit less personal experiences.