James Buchan
Prudential Man
Hume: An Intellectual Biography
By James A Harris
Cambridge University Press 575pp £35
For years, David Hume was seen as a traitor to philosophy. When his masterpiece of 1739, A Treatise of Human Nature, merely boggled or terrified its readers, he is said to have retreated into mercenary journalism and history writing. The brief autobiography Hume wrote a few months before his death in 1776, My Own Life, is principally about how much money he had made from writing and public service.
In the 20th century, as Hume’s reputation as a thinker revived, opinion altered. In the modern view, Hume remained forever true to the comprehensive scepticism of the Treatise and devoted the rest of his life to chipping off bits and carrying them into the fields of politics, trade, finance, religion and taste.
James Harris, an intellectual historian at St Andrews University, believes he has found a middle way into Hume’s biography. For Harris, Hume was devoted all his life to literature and to the vocation of the philosopher, who from a position of financial independence seeks in the particularities of experience –
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
It is a triumph @arthistorynews and my review @Lit_Review is here!
In just thirteen years, George Villiers rose from plain squire to become the only duke in England and the most powerful politician in the land. Does a new biography finally unravel the secrets of his success?
John Adamson investigates.
John Adamson - Love Island with Ruffs
John Adamson: Love Island with Ruffs - The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham by Lucy Hughes-Hallett
literaryreview.co.uk
During the 1930s, Winston Churchill retired to Chartwell, his Tudor-style country house in Kent, where he plotted a return to power.
Richard Vinen asks whether it’s time to rename the decade long regarded as Churchill’s ‘wilderness years’.
Richard Vinen - Croquet & Conspiracy
Richard Vinen: Croquet & Conspiracy - Churchill’s Citadel: Chartwell and the Gatherings Before the Storm by Katherine Carter
literaryreview.co.uk