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The late renowned scholar M. A. Stewart offers a comprehensive account of the life and works of David Hume. Stewart summarises Hume's achievements in his historical, moral, political, and literary writings, but argues for the centrality of the sceptical philosophy elaborated in
A Treatise of Human Nature.
List of contents
- Introduction
- 1: Hume, David (1711-1776), Scottish philosopher and historian
- 2: The Scottish Enlightenment
- 3: Hume's intellectual development, 1711-1752
- 4: The Stoic legacy in the early Scottish Enlightenment
- 5: The kirk and the infidel
- 6: Two species of philosophy: The historical significance of the first 'Enquiry'
- 7: Academic freedom: Origins of an idea
- 8: An early fragment on evil
- 9: The dating of Hume's manuscripts
- 10: Abstraction and representation in Locke, Berkeley, and Hume
- 11: Hume and the "metaphysical argument a priori"
- 12: Hume's historical view of miracles
- 13: Hume's reception in Ireland
- 14: The early British reception of Hume's writings on religion
About the author
The late M. A. Stewart was a historian of Philosophy and an authority on David Hume. He specialised in putting philosophical and theological views in their historical context. His work is marked by meticulous attention to detail, always returning to primary sources. He spent the larger part of his career at the University of Lancaster but held visiting positions at Aberdeen, Oxford, Canberra, and Sierra Leone. He was a towering figure in the establishment of history of ideas and history of philosophy in Britain, serving as President to the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society, the British Society for the History of Philosophy, and as the General Editor of The Clarendon Edition of the Works of John Locke.
Summary
The late renowned scholar M. A. Stewart offers a comprehensive account of the life and works of David Hume. Stewart summarises Hume's achievements in his historical, moral, political, and literary writings, but argues for the centrality of the sceptical philosophy elaborated in A Treatise of Human Nature.
Additional text
Hume's Philosophy in Historical Perspective is valuable not simply as a testament to Stewart's scholarship and as a collection of papers... It stands as a keystone in our understanding of the Scottish Enlightenment.
