Reply to Ainslie, Lemmens and Pettigrove
Reply to Ainslie, Lemmens and Pettigrove
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回复 Ainslie、Lemmens 和 Pettigrove
DOI：
10.1080/23269995.2017.1285610
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发表时间：
2017
期刊：
影响因子：
1.5
通讯作者：
Harris J
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Harris J
在《休谟：一部知识分子传记》中，我想做的一件事是，探索当《人性的觉醒》没有被放在中心位置时，休谟的知识发展是什么样子的。所以我把它作为休谟写的书之一，并不比其他任何一本书更重要。这并不是因为我怀疑它对后来哲学的重要性。这是我读过的休谟的第一本书，也是我教休谟时所教的书。我这样继续下去，是因为我怀疑休谟本人是否认为这是他所写的最有意义的东西。我的书的评论告诉我，休谟的大多数当代读者是多么不愿意和我一起拒绝给予休谟最早出版的作品重要性的优先权。[1]因此，我要感谢我的评论者们，他们注意到我试图从一个新的角度来介绍休谟的事业。尽管唐纳德·安斯利详细论述了休谟的哲学成就，特别是在第一卷的结尾，但他在结束对我的书的评论时，推测了一个结论，如果我正确地声称，正如安斯利所说，“休谟自己对他的哲学成就的看法与我们倾向于为他辩护的观点完全不同”，那么就需要得出这个结论。(For不过，在记录中，我不赞同安斯利自己在这一点上的任何建议。我不认为我们现在的哲学方法需要改变，休谟也不是唯一一个对自己作品的评价与后世大相径庭的伟大作家。威廉·莱蒙斯评论说，“主流休谟学术界”会感到惊讶的是，“接受最详细和最具创新性解释的”不是《休谟传》，而是《英格兰史》。(In事实上，我给《历史》和《知识》的篇幅几乎完全相同，而且，正如我希望清楚的那样，我在《历史》的两章中比在本书的任何其他部分都更依赖现有的学术研究。）Glen Pettigrove指出，仅用一章的篇幅来阐述这一问题，必然意味着做得不够公正，或者完全忽略了其他学者非常感兴趣的话题。（实际上，我认为第一章和第二章都是关于理性的，正是因为我相信，与我给安斯利的印象相反，休谟早期的哲学经历在很大程度上塑造了他的第一本书，特别是它对理性和激情之间关系的革命性重建。可以说，我试图用休谟自己可能认为合适的术语来理解休谟的智力发展，而废黜哲学是其中的一部分。所以我决定接受并探索休谟首先是一个文人的概念。我的假设是，休谟是一种特殊的文学家--一种哲学家。这里的重点并不是要向休谟在19世纪的批评者们承认，他其实根本不是一个哲学家。更确切地说，这是为了提出休谟可能理解的哲学究竟是什么的问题。不用说，我不认为我在书中对这个问题给出了完整的答案。我认为，事实上，关于18世纪英国哲学的本质，或者更确切地说，关于哲学的本质，还有很多工作要做。[2]当时的哲学和现在的哲学之间一个非常明显的区别是，它的大部分内容都是在学院的范围内完成的。事实上，可以肯定的是，在某种意义上，
One thing that I wanted to do in Hume: An Intellectual Biography was to explore how Hume’s intellectual development looks when A Treatise of Human Nature is not put centre stage. So I presented it as just one of the books that Hume wrote, no more important than any of the others. This was not because I doubt its importance to subsequent philosophy. It was the first book of Hume’s that I ever read, and it is the book that I teach when I teach Hume. I proceeded in this way because I doubt that Hume himself regarded it as the most significant thing that he wrote. What reviews of my book have taught me is how reluctant most present-day readers of Hume are to join me in refusing to allow priority of importance to Hume’s earliest published work. 1 I am grateful, then, to my reviewers here for registering the fact that I attempt to present Hume’s career in a new light. Despite the fact that he dwells on the Treatise, and on the end of Book One in particular, Donald Ainslie concludes his remarks on my book by speculating as to the conclusion that would need to be drawn if I am right in claiming that, as Ainslie puts it,‘Hume’s own conception of his philosophical accomplishments is quite different from what we tend to champion him for’.(For the record, though, I do not endorse either of Ainslie’s own suggestions on this score. I don’t believe that our present approach to philosophy needs to be changed, and Hume is not the only great author whose estimations of his own works are very different to those of later ages.) Willem Lemmens remarks on the fact that it will surprise ‘mainstream Hume scholarship’that it is not the Treatise but the History of England ‘that receives the most detailed and innovative interpretation’.(In fact I give the Treatise and History almost exactly the same amount of pages, and, as I hoped would be clear, I rely more heavily on existing scholarship in my two chapters on the History than in any other part of the book.) Glen Pettigrove points out that giving only a single chapter to the Treatise was bound to mean doing less than justice, or ignoring altogether, topics that other scholars are keenly interested in.(Actually I think of both Chapter One and Chapter Two as being about the Treatise, precisely because I believe, contrary to the impression I gave Ainslie, that Hume’s early philosophical experiences shaped his first book to a significant degree, especially its revolutionary reconstruction of the relationship between reason and passion.)Dethroning the Treatise, so to speak, was part of an attempt on my part to understand Hume’s intellectual development in terms that Hume himself might have accepted as fitting. So also was my decision to take up and explore the notion that Hume was first and foremost a man of letters. My supposition was that Hume was a particular kind of man of letters–a philosophical man of letters. The point here was not to concede to Hume’s nineteenthcentury critics that really he wasn’ta philosopher at all. Rather, it was to open up the question of what, exactly, Hume might have understood philosophy to be. Needless to say, I do not think that I gave a full answer to that question in my book. I think, in fact, that a great deal more work needs to be done on the nature of philosophy–or, perhaps better, of philosophizing–in eighteenth-century Britain. 2 One very obvious difference between philosophy then and philosophy now is that much of it was done outwith the confines of the academy. Indeed it is arguable that university philosophy at this time was, in a sense,
哲学家：六种类型的历史
DOI：
--
发表时间：
2016
期刊：
影响因子：
--
作者：
J. Smith
通讯作者：
J. Smith