Hume's Scepticism: And the Science of Human Nature (Ashgate New Critical Thinking in Philosophy)

This book explores the relationship between Hume's sceptical philosophy and his Newtonian ambition of founding a science of human nature. Assessing both received and 'new' readings of Hume's philosophy, Stanistreet offers a line of interpretation which, he argues, makes sense of many of the apparent conflicts and paradoxes in Hume's work and describes how well-known controversies concerning Hume's thinking about causation, induction and the external world can be resolved. Stainstreet argues that Hume's notorious sceptical arguments are not the episodic outbursts of an unsystematic philosopher, but emerge as part of his attempt to provide science and philosophy with grounds which face up to and withstand the scepticism to which reflective thinkers are naturally prone. Offering important new contributions to Hume scholarship, this book also surveys and assesses the new research responsible for the recent sea-change in thinking about Hume. It offers an accessible overview of these developments while suggesting significant revisions to current readings of Hume's philosophy. The purpose of this book is to provide the reader with an accessible guide to the most significant developments in Hume's scholarship, while, at the same time, defending a general interpretatation of Hume's philsophy. The main contention of the work is that by seeing Hume's metaphysical and epistemological arguments from this general perspective we can resolve certain interpretive controversies in Hume literature. It is possible to see Hume not as the arch-sceptic whose main contribution to the history of philosophy was to awaken Kant from his "dogmatic slumbers", but as an original and important theorist of human nature, whose true significance to the history of ideas is yet to be reckoned with Examining the tensions between Hume's skepticism and his ambition of discovering Newtonian laws of human nature, this book seeks to make sense of the numerous conflicts and paradoxes centering on Hume's views on causation, induction, and the external world. It provides a fresh interpretation of Hume's work, arguing that his arguments provide a groundwork by which science and philosophy can achieve knowledge in the face of radical skepticism. Stanistreet teaches at the University of Glasgow. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR