Hume: An Intellectual Biography, by James A. Harris
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Hume: An Intellectual Biography, by James A. Harris
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This is the first book to provide a comprehensive overview of the entire career of one of Britain's greatest men of letters. It sets in biographical and historical context all of Hume's works, from A Treatise of Human Nature to The History of England, bringing to light the major influences on the course of Hume's intellectual development, and paying careful attention to the differences between the wide variety of literary genres with which Hume experimented. The major events in Hume's life are fully described, but the main focus is on Hume's intentions as a philosophical analyst of human nature, politics, commerce, English history, and religion. Careful attention is paid to Hume's intellectual relations with his contemporaries. The goal is to reveal Hume as a man intensely concerned with the realization of an ideal of open-minded, objective, rigorous, dispassionate dialogue about all the principal questions faced by his age.
Hume: An Intellectual Biography, by James A. Harris- Amazon Sales Rank: #49018 in Books
- Published on: 2015-10-06
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.98" h x 1.61" w x 5.98" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 633 pages
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26 of 26 people found the following review helpful. Very Good; 4.5 Stars By R. Albin 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.
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful. Quite Good By RogerMcguinn 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.
5 of 9 people found the following review helpful. Hume, the sixties and ganga By j a haverstick Back in the sixties in the back waters of upstate philo bios were hard to find. You paid a dollar for a "booksearch': a dealer would put a want ad in ABBookmans Weekly. Took years to obtain Luce on Berkeley; Mossner on Hume only a year or so. At Syracuse, empiricism was still the reigning orthodoxy. Russell and Ayer still read, Locke, Berkeley and (the logical, skeptical conclusion) Hume the historical trio. Investigations coming on strong, but I still have a leaf of ganga pressed in the Tractatus.Addall.com used booksearch and the series of bios published by Cambridge and Oxford over the last 40 years have much improved this situation. Many readers will come to this intellectual biography with fresher recollections than I. And tho I've read all the essays at one time or another never read seriously in the History, so others may have a different angle, as mine is mostly epistemological. I was surprised to be reminded that Hume didn't proceed from Treatise to Enquiries, but published the individually self contained essays as a authorial strategy in between. Was reminded again of the immense part that form played in the literary culture of the day. I very much enjoyed being refreshed on those lesser figures who played such a significant part, Hutcheson, Kames, etc. and especially Mandeville (with whom I've retained my acquaintance thru the years). That's a good feature of this particular series, the placement of the author in his (!) miieu. A very instructive and thorow treatment. Although Harris's style is turgid and humorless (another feature of this series) all academics treating of Hume will have to read this book. The above review by Macguin does an excellent job of giving an overview. I'm still about half way thru and eagerly anticipating the historical analysis of the History where much will be new to me and I'm sure Harris will have a lot to teach.
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