Hume Studies

Ryu Susato's book is a comprehensive assessment of Hume's thought that defies usual labels and categorizations while operating in an unprecedented interdisciplinary spirit. It is slightly iconoclastic on two levels: from a Hume-studies point of view, Susato contextualizes Hume's oeuvre as a dynamic and ultimately unclassifiable whole within its 18^th century context. In this sense, this book is an idiosyncratic follow up on the recent, path-breaking intellectual biography of Hume given by James Harris. In the same vein, 21st century labels prove to be equally inadequate to cover Hume's multiform intellectual production. Intellectual history, history of ideas, (history of) philosophy, political theory and history of political thought claim Hume's legacy on legitimate grounds. Similarly, Susato is original in adding a closing chapter on Hume's reception in 19th century British thought, which itself bequeathed us various lenses through which we still envision Hume's thought. Overall, Susato uses the Sceptical Enlightenment frame to accommodate Hume's multilayered approach and style without (too much) anachronism.

The title, Sceptical Enlightenment, combines together two highly-debatable conceptual and historical spaces: skepticism and Enlightenment. Susato discusses the complex and controversial statuses of both. Instead of using the frame of moderate, radical (J. Israel), pragmatic (D. Rasmussen), or other typology of Enlightenment, Susato locates Hume's oeuvre—including rare pieces such as "A true account of the behavior and conduct of Archibald Stewart" and various letters [End Page 103] that go often unnoticed—within the Scottish enlightenment, focusing on Hume's French, English and Scottish predecessors, interlocutors, and critics. In doing so, he opts for a conception of Enlightenment as an "historical awareness" (7) of partaking in a common "civilizing process" (23) in Europe, potentially involving non-Europeans in the long run. In the context of Hume scholarship, it remains a matter of speculation whether the very distinction between civilization and barbarism, or, put in the period's phrasing, between rudeness and refinement, is a normative one. To be sure, Hume clearly sides with modernity regarding the undeniable progress of "industry, knowledge and humanity." The advancement of worldly pleasures and refined sociability leads to individual and social betterment. However, it always takes place over grey areas of uncertainty and black holes of relapse into barbarity or novel forms of rudeness. At this point the Skeptical nature of Humean Enlightenment kicks in. At first glance, as Susato acknowledges, it may appear, as conservatism. Hume's reception from his own times onwards abounds with such interpretations. For more perceptive eyes though, Hume's attitude is anti-dogmatic, with strong demystifying tendencies: "In sum, Hume's Sceptical Enlightenment is the concept representing his distinctive way of supporting what he believes to be the core of modern values (refinement and politeness), while avoiding falling into any kind of dogmatism, including philosophical dogmatism. In doing so, Hume levels his criticism against what has been considered the alleged 'Enlightening' credo of 'Reason and Progress', while simultaneously refusing to side with naïve traditionalism" (21).

Susato deals with the issue of Hume's skepticism in an original way. Firstly, he shifts the debate about Hume's skepticism from the theory of knowledge and, less often, moral epistemology, to social and political philosophy. Indeed, Susato presents a path-breaking view of Hume's skepticism as grounded in a pervasive, multilayered, and variously-expressed skeptical spirit permeating Hume's oeuvre. Susato demonstrates the importance of the status of "Sceptical spirit" that inextricably links morality, politics, aesthetics, history and philosophical anthropology. To this extent, Popkin seems to be right: Hume is a rather unique case of an idiosyncratic skeptic. Despite obvious connections with Bayle or ancient skepticism, Hume's mitigated Skepticism grows out of multiple, often non-skeptic sources, far beyond the religious, mainly fideist context. Susato strategically sets up a gateway between epistemology and the rest through the first chapter on the status of imagination and the association of ideas in social philosophy.

The book's main topics are: imagination and its problematic institutionalization (chap. 2), opinion...