Hume's Enlightenment Tract: The Unity and Purpose of an Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

ISBN-13: 9780199271146 / Angielski / Miękka / 2004 / 368 str.

Stephen Buckle

Opis

This is the first full book-length study in forty years of David Hume's Enquiry concerning Human Understanding-which, contrary to its author's expressed wishes, long lived in the shadow of its predecessor A Treatise of Human Nature. Stephen Buckle presents the Enquiry in a fresh light, aiming to raise it to its rightful position in the history of philosophy. He argues that the Enquiry is not, as so often assumed, a mere collection of watered-down extracts from the earlier work. It is, rather, a coherent work with a unified argument; and, when this argument is grasped as a whole, the Enquiry shows itself to be the best introduction to the features of its author's general philosophy.

Recenzje

Buckle's work is undoubtedly an important addition to the recent growth in scholarly writing on the Enquiry ... the only single-author work to offer both a critical overview of the Enquiry, a systematic general interpretation, and a section-by-section commentary on its contents... He succeeds in the important task of establishing the Enquiry as an independently significant philosophical work, central to the interpretation of Hume's thinking as a whole, and his book should help ensure that the work remains at the forefront of the new critical thinking about Hume's epistemology.