James Harris awakened me from my Humean dogmatic slumber

 I'm sure that he had no idea he was doing this, though we've had a brief exchange of emails, focused on Hume's racism and related issues.

But, he did.

What follows below is an edited and expanded version of my Goodreads review of his 2015 biography of Hume.

A week from now, I plan to post an edited version of my review of E.C. Mossner's old 1954 bio, including some points of comparison (and definite contrast) with Harris.

This is the second in a series, one that started with last week's post about presentism, as that piece was focused on Hume (as a stand-in for Enlightenment philosophers in general) and racism.

After the Mossner biography post, I plan to post every other week about some specific aspects of Hume as brought to new focus, and awakened from uncritical dogmatic slumber about Hume, by Harris and Harris prodding me into looking at some of Hume's lesser works, or anew at some of his major ones, and his major ideas.

With that, let's dig in!

Hume: An Intellectual Biography by James A. Harris
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a tough, tough book to review. I took a lot of notes. Early on, my appetite whetted by the Introduction, I would have been very ready to five-star it. The framing of Hume as a man of letters, or to go French along with the mot of him as "le bon David," as a "litterateur," seemed a promising new focus. And yet?

Direct vs indirect passions is an interesting matter, one that was but touched on by Harris. It probably could have been studied even more, and by Hume as a philosopher as well as Harris analyzing him as a philosopher. (One of the upcoming posts in the series will be about "young Hume" vs "old Hume," whether or not there were two different Humes, and if so, how much "the passions" was part of that split.

Harris rejects the claim that Hume was a "divided" philosopher. So does the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Other commenters on this book accept that, and accept Hume's own claim he rejected the Treatise because it was "the manner, not the matter" of how it read, rather than what it said. Rather, this is to accept Hume's public self-preservation at face value. Especially on the issue of the passions, Hume DID reject "the matter" of the Treatise and never did accept it — or return to it — again. (Mossner disagrees, and I think he has "the goods" to at least partially support this.)

Then, the biggie. I knew what to look for, as far as how Harris handled it.

By the time I got to Harris' mishandling (that's the best I can call it) about Hume's infamous footnote about "the Negros" in "Of National Characteristics," it lost a star right there, and was slipping a bit before then. Sadly, at the time of this review on Goodreads, no other reviewer had noted this there.

Hume was challenged on his racist views in his own time, above all by the Scottish philosopher James Beattie. Harris treats both the footnote and Hume's editing of it, and why, in only a footnote. He then claims that it was NOT in response to Beattie, though the evidence is pretty clearly against him. Worse, in an email, he said he couldn't remember what he wrote. This area will be covered much more in the specific post.

Also, the sharpness of Hume's reaction to Beattie undercuts le bon David, which is part of Harris' whole focus.

How it handled his "Essays Moral and Political" in general shoved it into three-star territory. That said, Harris later admitted to me that he agreed many of the essays are "shallow" [and they are], along with other things. I'll be offering a few thoughts on "Of National Characteristics" as part of a piece on Hume and race and going beyond my "presentism" piece.

Then, his handling of Hume the historian moved it back into four-star range.

But, next, while this is an intellectual biography, it could have been more personal on the Hume-Rousseau situation. Finally, tying back to "that footnote," Hume's reaction to James Beattie — and Harris' take on that — undercut "le bon David" of legend.

Harris claims Mossner, in his bio of Hume, is too hagiographic. 

And, that leads me to the New York Review of Books, take, which said: "Mossner’s life of Hume is suffused with an affection for its subject that, according to Harris, sometimes obstructs a 'properly dispassionate' examination of the facts.” This is the petard-hoisting area. Again, I think Harris is guilty of some of this himself.

I'll touch on some of this when I do my comparison-contrast of Mossner's bio with Harris'.

Next, whether it's Hume himself stressing the claim, or Harris burnishing it? On "The Natural History of Religion," polytheistic gods weren't, and aren't, always kind and cuddly, and monotheistic ones aren't always harsh father figures. Contra the former, see Shiva, or even more, Kali. Contra the latter, see the deified versions of the Buddha in many "denominations" within Mahayana.

The book was generally good on Hume's skill as a historian. And, I agree that Elizabeth was an absolute monarch and that the Stuarts got bad press. Nonetheless, in his later revisions to his volumes of history, Hume comes off as a "trimmer." If that's part of how one gets to be "le bon David," pass.

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