Completion of an intellectual biography of David Hume

完成大卫·休谟的知识分子传记

基本信息

批准号：
AH/I022759/1
负责人：
James Harris
金额：
$ 8.53万
依托单位：
University of St Andrews
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Fellowship
财政年份：
2011
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2011 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FI022759%2F1
关键词：
Completion intellectual biography David Hume

项目摘要

The book I am writing is the first comprehensive account of Hume's intellectual development. It is, of course, not the first biography of Hume. But it is the first study of the entirety of Hume's career, from his earliest literary experiments to the early philosophical masterpiece A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), and on through a brilliant series of essays on politics and political economy to the six-volume History of England (1754-62). Hume's achievement was, by any standard, extraordinary. Even his detractors, of whom there were many, recognised him as the most important British philosopher and historian of his age. My book sets him in the context of the complex world of British intellectual life at the time when Britain was defining itself into an imperial power, while at the same time keeping open the question of why it is that, of all the literary figures of the mid-eighteenth century, Hume seems to many particularly relevant today. Different philosophers require different sorts of intellectual biographies, according to the nature of the philosophical career to be described, and according also to the amount and kind of evidence that is available. In Hume's case, there is very little in the way of manuscript material: no student lecture notes, almost no notebooks, and very few relevant letters. What one has to go on are the published works. But those published works themselves present a real challenge to the intellectual biographer, just because they are so apparently different from each other in their subject matter. Hume wrote books that are today a central part of the philosophy curriculum at colleges and universities around the world; he wrote essays on the party political disputes of Britain in the 1740s; he wrote groundbreaking contributions to the developing science of political economy; he wrote sharply and provocatively about the basis of religious belief; he wrote a history of England from the Roman invasion to 1688. The question is whether there is a unitary narrative to be constructed, sufficient to make sense of these various literary endeavours as part of a single intellectual project. For a long time it was assumed that the answer to this question is No. It was assumed, that is to say, that in early life Hume's ambitions lay in philosophy; that those ambitions were thwarted by the lack of success of Hume's first book, the Treatise of Human Nature; and that after the Treatise Hume turned away from philosophy to more popular kinds of writing (including the presentation of his philosophical ideas in more acceptable and anodyne form). This view of Hume's career has been successfully challenged, and justice has been done to the intellectual seriousness of his later writings, but it continues to be assumed that there is a sharp distinction to be drawn between his 'philosophy' and his other texts. I believe that this belief is false. It has its origin, I think, in the relative narrowness of present-day philosophy's conception of itself. For Hume, at any rate, 'philosophy' was not so much a subject-matter or a discipline as a particular style of thinking, a method of analysis, a mode of engagement, such as could be applied to political, economic, religious, and historical problems just as it could be applied to issues in epistemology and ethics. My book is an account of the initial development, subsequent refinement, and full extension this conception of philosophy.

我正在写的这本书是第一本全面描述休谟智力发展的书。当然，这不是休谟的第一本传记。但这是对休谟整个职业生涯的第一次研究，从他最早的文学实验到早期的哲学杰作《人性论》（1739-40），再到一系列关于政治和政治经济学的精彩论文，再到六本著作。 -英国历史卷（1754-62）。无论以任何标准衡量，休谟的成就都是非凡的。甚至连他的批评者（其中有很多）也承认他是他那个时代最重要的英国哲学家和历史学家。我的书将他置于英国知识分子生活的复杂世界中，当时英国正在将自己定义为帝国强权，同时也对英国所有文学人物中为什么会这样的问题保持开放态度。十八世纪中叶，休谟对今天的许多人来说似乎特别重要。根据要描述的哲学生涯的性质，以及现有证据的数量和种类，不同的哲学家需要不同类型的知识分子传记。就休谟而言，手稿材料非常少：没有学生讲义，几乎没有笔记本，相关信件也很少。必须继续的是出版作品。但这些出版的作品本身对知识分子传记作者来说是一个真正的挑战，因为它们在主题上彼此明显不同。休谟所写的书籍如今已成为世界各地学院和大学哲学课程的核心部分。他撰写了有关 1740 年代英国政党政治争端的文章；他为政治经济学的发展做出了开创性的贡献；他对宗教信仰的基础进行了尖锐而具有挑衅性的写作；他写了一部从罗马入侵到 1688 年的英格兰历史。问题是是否存在有待构建的统一叙述，足以使这些不同的文学努力作为单一智力项目的一部分来理解。很长一段时间以来，人们都认为这个问题的答案是否定的。也就是说，人们认为休谟早年的志向在于哲学。这些雄心壮志因休谟的第一本书《人性论》的失败而受挫；在《论》之后，休谟从哲学转向更流行的写作形式（包括以更容易接受和镇痛的形式表达他的哲学思想）。这种关于休谟职业生涯的观点已经受到成功的挑战，他后期著作的学术严肃性也得到了公正的对待，但人们仍然认为他的“哲学”和他的其他文本之间存在着明显的区别。我认为这种信念是错误的。我认为，它的根源在于当今哲学自身概念的相对狭隘。无论如何，对于休谟来说，“哲学”与其说是一个主题或一门学科，不如说是一种特定的思维方式、一种分析方法、一种参与模式，例如可以应用于政治、经济、宗教、和历史问题，就像它可以应用于认识论和伦理学问题一样。我的书描述了这一哲学概念的最初发展、随后的完善和充分扩展。