Hume's last lessons: The civic education of my own life

Review of Politics

Volumn 64, Issue 4, 2002, Pages 659-685

  Hanley, Ryan Patrick ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 34248082647     PISSN: 00346705     EISSN: 17486858     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0034670500035919     Document Type: Article

References (80)

1. On Hume's turn to more literary methods of presentation, see Nicholas Phillipson, "Hume as Moralist: A Social Historian's Perspective," in Philosophers of the Enlightenment, ed. S. C. Brown (Sussex: Harvester Press, 1979), pp. 140-161
2. T. H. Huxley, for example, insists that Hume "exhibits no small share of the craving after mere notoriety and vulgar success," in Hume (New York: Harper Brothers, 1879), p. 10;
3. quoted in Norman Kemp Smith, The Philosophy of David Hume (London: Macmillan and Co., 1941), p. 519.
4. On Hume's concern to encourage the growth of that "middling rank" in commercial society which he thinks necessary to counterbalance established political authority, see "Of Refinement in the Arts," in Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985), p. 277;
5. Nicholas Capaldi, "The Preservation of Liberty," in Liberty in Hume's History of England, ed. Capaldi and Donald W. Livingston (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1990), pp. 203- 207;
6. and Duncan Forbes, "Hume and the Scottish Enlightenment," in Philosophers of the Enlightenment, p. 102.
7. "Of Parties in General," in Essays, p. 55.
8. To ensure a wide circulation for My Own Life, Hume requested of Adam Smith, his literary executor, that it should be sent to "the Proprietors of my other Works to be prefixed to any future Edition of them." He repeated his request in a codicil to his will, insisting that My Own Life "be prefixed to the first Edition of my Works, printed after my Death" (The Letters of David Hume, ed. J. Y. T. Greig [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1932], 2: 318,453).
9. Ernest C. Mossner, The Life of David Hume, 2d ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 591.
10. Jerome Christensen likewise reads My Own Life as "Hume's effort to dictate to futurity" and thereby secure posthumous fame, but without emphasizing Hume's religious ideas; see his Practicing Enlightenment: Hume and the Formation of a Literary Career (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), pp. 17, 45-52.
11. In The Moral Animus of David Hume (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 1990)
12. Donald T. Siebert, like Mossner, finds in Hume's autobiography his "parting shot at the narrow-minded religionists," but also finds in it much more besides; noting (but not pursuing) its similarity to Franklin's work, and beautifully capturing its "sportive humor" and its subtle understanding of pride (pp. 197-212).
13. "Of Essay-Writing," inEssays,p. 535.
14. My understanding of Hume's attempts to bridge the gap between philosophy and common life owes much to Livingston, Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium: Hume's Pathology of Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998);
15. and John Danford, David Hume and the Problem of Reason: Recovering the Human Sciences (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).
16. J. G. A. Pocock observes that in his discussions of patronage Hume was led "to reject the republican ideal that government must rest on a foundation of virtue, and to concede that passion and interest must be recognized and even harnessed." ("Hume and the American Revolution: The Dying Thoughts of a North Briton," in Virtue, Commerce, and History [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985], p. 132). In some sense this is overstated; Hume never rejects virtue as the foundation of government-he merely emphasizes the virtues of self-interest over the virtues of disinterestedness.
17. "Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences," in Essays, p. 135.
18. An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals in L. A. Selby-Bigge's edition of the two Enquiries, 3d rev. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 216.
19. See Hume to William Robertson, Summer 1759, in Letters, 1: 315-316
20. Franklin to William Strahan, 27 October 1771, in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, eds. William B. Willcox, et. al. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 18: 236.
21. A full account of Franklin's visit in Edinburgh can be found in J. Bennett Nolan, Benjamin Franklin in Scotland and Ireland, 1759 and 1771 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1938).
22. Hume and Franklin had shared work before the visit. In 1760 Franklin sent several pieces to Hume, including at least his "Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind." In the same letter in which he acknowledges having sent Hume these essays, he also mentions having read Hume's "excellent Essay on the Jealous}/ of Commerce," and promises to send a "little Philosophical essay" in return (Franklin to Hume, 27 September 1760, inPapers, 9:227-30). The regard was mutual. Writing in 1762, Hume honored Franklin by observing that "America has sent us many good things, gold, silver, sugar, tobacco, indigo, etc.; but you are the first philosopher, and indeed the first great man of letters, for whom we are beholden
23. See the "Epistle Dedicatory" to Bacon's Essays in The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. James Spedding and Robert Leslie Ellis (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1865), 12:77.
24. Franklin quotes this in his "To the Royal Academy of *****," in Benjamin Franklin, Writings, ed. J. A. Leo Lemay (New York: Library of America, 1987), p. 954.
25. My Own Life, in Essays, p. xxxi. All subsequent citations are to this edition and are given in roman numerals in the text.
26. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, in Writings, p. 1307. All subsequent citations are to this edition and are given in the text in Arabic numerals.
27. See Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978), pp. 15-27;
28. Maclntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), p. 185;
29. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 48-54.
30. See also "The Sceptic," in Essays, p. 161
31. and Hume's discussion of "anatomists" and "painters" in the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, also in Selby-Bigge's edition of the two Enquiries, p. 10.
32. See J. A. Leo Lemay, "The Theme of Vanity in Franklin's Autobiography," in Reappraising Benjamin Franklin: A Bicentennial Perspective (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 1993), pp. 372-387
33. A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, 2d rev. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 491.
34. Though he admits that even advocates of the selfish system can lead "irreproachable lives": see Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, p. 296.
35. "Of the Dignity or Meanness of Human Nature," in£ssays,p. 86;
36. cf.Adam Smith's comments on the "real love of true glory" as good but second-best in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, eds. D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1984), VII.ii.4.8, p. 309.
37. See Hume to Francis Hutcheson, 17 September 1739, in Letters, 1: 34.
38. Students of Franklin will note that after reading the Whole Duty of Man Hume undertook to develop his own catalog of vices for the purposes of self-examination; see Mossner, Life of David Hume, p. 34
39. and cf. Autobiography, pp. 1383-8. The Whole Duty of Man was a popular book of Christian moralism.
40. Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, p. 236.
41. See also Hume to Gilbert Elliot, March or April 1751, in Letters, 1:158.
42. Hume to Henry Home, 13 February 1739, in Utters, 1: 26.
43. See the "Advertisement" printed at the front of Selby-Bigge's edition of the Enquiries, p. 2.
44. Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, p. 169.
45. See also Bacon, Advancement of Learning, in Works, 6: 259ff.
46. Smith, Lecture 24 in Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres, ed. J. C. Bryce (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1983), p. 146;
47. cf. Aristotle Rhetoric, 1356b32-1357a4; 1395b20-1396a3.
48. Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, pp. 5-7.
49. The Theory of Moral Sentiments, VI.iii.46, p. 259;
50. cf. Rousseau, Emile, or On Education, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1979), p. 202.
51. Again a project suggested by Smith: "The superior wisdom of the good and knowing man directs others in the management of his [read: their] affairs, and spurrs them on to imitate and emulate his industry and activity." (Lectures on Jurisprudence, eds. R. L. Meek, D. D. Raphael, and P. G. Stein [Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1982], A vi.20, p. 338).
52. See also the praises of industry and frugality in Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, pp. 237-238
53. On Franklin's initial appeal to his audience's vanity and ambition as means of inducing them to virtue, see Steven Forde, "Ben Franklin, Hero," in The Noblest Minds: Fame, Honor, and the American Founding, ed. Peter McNamara (Lanham, MD: Rowman and littlefield, 1999), p. 48;
54. Daniel Walker Howe,Making the American Self: Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 27-33;
55. and Ralph Lerner, "Franklin, Spectator," in The Thinking Revolutionary (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), pp. 46ff.
56. Siebert also points to Hume's equanimity, and notes its conjunction with benevolence (Moral Animus of David Hume, pp. 203-204). Franklin's and Hume's shared emphasis on optimism and hope is another point of connection with the modern project of their mutual mentor;
57. see Bacon, The New Organon, ed. Fulton H. Anderson (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1960), Book I, aphorisms 113-14, pp. 104-105.
58. Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, p. 275.
59. "Of Simplicity and Refinement in Writing," in Essays, p. 192.
60. As noted by Eugene Miller in his edition of the Essays, the Latin is a quotation from Horace, Epistles 1.18.103, translated by H. Rushton Fairclough in the Loeb edition as "the pathway of a life unnoticed."
61. The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688 (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1983), 6: 544.
62. Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, p. 266. But Hume of course insists that it is authors of works of practical morality (such as My Own Life), and not abstract reasoners, who enjoy the most durable and just fame;
63. see the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, p. 7.
64. This only compounds the irony noted by Christensen-that Hume's fame is that of a philosopher rather than an independent man of letters {Practicing Enlightenment, p. 49n).
65. Smith to Strahan, 9 November 1776, reprinted in Essays, pp. xlv-xlvi;
66. Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1124al8;
67. cf. Theory of Moral Sentiments, VII. ii.4.10, pp. 310-311
68. Smith to Strahan in Essays, p. xlix; cf. Plato Phaedo 117c-118a, as noted in Laurence Berns
69. "Aristotle and Adam Smith on Justice: Cooperation Between Ancients and Moderns?" Review of Metaphysics 48 (1994): 90.
70. Franklin's friends of course think him as a wise man as well; see Autobiography, p. 1375.
71. Theory of Moral Sentiments, VI. iii. 25, p. 248.
72. Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, p. 177.
73. Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, p. 176.
74. On Duties, trans. M. A. Atkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), I: 28, p. 12;
75. cf. Theory of Moral Sentimets, VI. ii. 3.6, p. 237.
76. It is worth noting that while Smith names Hume as the model wise and virtuous man, Hume names Cicero and Bacon; see Essays, p. 83.
77. "Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences," in Essays, p. 113;
78. cf. "Of the Middle Station of Life," in Essays, p. 549.
79. "Of glory/' in The Complete Essays of Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958), p. 469.
80. Siebert, Moral Animus of David Hume, p. 200.