Product Description

Recent books on Hume have concentrated only on particular issues in his philosophy. This study offers a more consistent, unified interpretation and emphasizes the interest and importance of Hume's views for philosophers today.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #405638 in Books
• Published on: 1981-01-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 292 pages

Review
'A rounded picture of Hume's philosophical intentions as a whole.' - Times Literary Supplement

From the Back Cover
Many recent books on Hume have concentrated only on particular issues in his philosophy and have presented at best a fragmentary picture. This study, which is intelligible to the virtual beginner in philosophy as well as being of interest to Hume scholars and to philosophers dealing with the problems he discussed, offers a more consistent, unified interpretation and emphasizes the interest and importance of Hume's views for philosophers today.

Professor Stroud describes and discusses Hume's philosophical intentions as a whole, and expounds and evaluates his treatment of particular topics in the light of those intentions. He considers seriously Hume's claim to be introducing 'the experimental method of reasoning' into the study of human nature, and shows how his subjects such as causality, induction, the external world, personal identity, freedom and determinism, human action, moral approval and disproval and the nature of justice and society are part of this general philosophical project.

Contrary to the standard interpretation, the author argues that it is a serious distortion to represent Hume as an early logical positivist or 'analytical empiricist' who seeks analyses or definitions of our concepts. His originality and greatness are shown to lie much more in the radical conception and execution of his 'naturalistic' programme than in his attachment to the 'theory of ideas' as such, or in the merely negative scepticism he has traditionally been supposed to embody. Hume's current importance, Stroud believes, is to be found rather in the philosophical implications of a completely general 'sceinec of human nature'.

About the Author
Barry Stroud is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. His philosophical writings have included studies of Wittgenstein and Quine in addition to examinations of transcendental arguments, knowledge and scepticism, logical necessity and meaning, and related topics.