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The philosopher Paul Russell is well known for his scholarship on Hume and free will. This volume collects Russell's most important essays on Hume, with some articles addressing early modern philosophy more generally. The volume is organized thematically into five sections: metaphysics, free will, ethics, religion, and general interpretations of Hume's philosophy. In a substantive introduction, Russell outlines how his insights overlap and connect to various topics in contemporary philosophy.
Recasting Hume and Early Modern Philosophy presents the reader with Russell's substantial and interconnected observations and insights on the matters and figures of the greatest importance in early modern philosophy.
List of contents
- Contents
- Introduction
- Acknowledgments
- Sources
- I. Metaphysics and Epistemology
- 1. Hume's "Two Definitions" of Cause and the Ontology of "Double Existence"
- Appendix 2020: Was Hume a "Causal Realist"?
- 2. Probability, Induction and a Future State: Hume contra Butler
- 3. The Material World and Natural Religion in Hume's Treatise
- 4. Causation, Cosmology and the Limits of Philosophy
- II. Free Will and Moral Luck
- 5. Hobbes, Bramhall and the Free Will Problem
- 6. "Hume's Lengthy Digression": Free Will in the Treatise
- 7. Hume on Responsibility and Punishment
- 8. Smith on Moral Sentiment and Moral Luck
- III. Ethics, Virtue and Optimism
- 9. Hume's Anatomy of Virtue
- 10. Hume's Optimism and Williams' Pessimism
- IV. Skepticism, Religion and Atheism
- 11. Hume's Lucretian Mission: Is it Self-Refuting?
- 12. Hume's Skepticism and the Problem of Atheism
- Appendix: "Abduction and Hume's Atheism"
- 13. "True Religion" and Hume's Practical Atheism
- 14. Irreligion and the Impartial Spectator in Smith's Moral System
- V. Irreligion and the Unity of Hume's Thought
- 15. Hume's Legacy and the Idea of British Empiricism
- 16. Hume's Philosophy of Irreligion and the Myth of British Empiricism
- Other writings by Paul Russell on Hume and Early Modern Philosophy
- Index
About the author
Paul Russell is a Professor of Philosophy at Lund University (Sweden), where he also serves as Director of the Lund Gothenburg Responsibility Project (LGRP).
Summary
In this collection of essays, philosopher Paul Russell addresses major figures and central topics of the history of early modern philosophy. Most of these essays are studies on the philosophy of David Hume, one of the great figures in the history of philosophy. One central theme, connecting many of the essays, concerns Hume's fundamental irreligious intentions. Russell argues that a proper appreciation of the significance of Hume's irreligious concerns, which runs through his whole philosophy, serves to discredit the deeply entrenched framework for understanding Hume - and much of early modern philosophy - in terms of the idea of "British Empiricism". In a substantive introduction, Russell outlines how his various insights overlap and connect to each other.
The volume is organized thematically into five sections: metaphysics, free will, ethics, religion, and general interpretations of Hume's philosophy. The collection also features a previously unpublished essay on Hume's atheism and an essay on Adam Smith's views on religion and ethics that has not been previously published in English.
Recasting Hume and Early Modern Philosophy presents the reader with Russell's substantial and significant set of interconnected observations and insights on the matters and figures of the greatest importance in early modern philosophy. These essays not only provide different and original perspectives on the subject, they also show that the various issues addressed are very relevant to each other, as well as to a number of major topics in contemporary philosophy.
Additional text
Paul Russell is one of the two or three leading Hume scholars of the past quarter-century, and both the high quality of his work and the intrinsic interest of his themes will draw in a wide range of readers-including not only scholars of Hume and British empiricism (for whom it will be essential), but scholars of modern philosophy more generally, as well as practicing epistemologists and ethicists.
