Dr Margaret Watkins - Hume's Essays: Beyond Progress and Decline
IASH Work in Progress talk
My project is a book-length study of David Hume's Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary. I contend that Hume's Essays have some things to say to those open to the possibility that philosophical thinking can improve life. The Essays teach us about politics, our tendency to domineer over one another, our individual and collective industry, our aesthetic experience, our passions for ourselves and others, and our passion for philosophy itself. In crafting the Essays, Hume sought to overcome divisive modes of thinking, including stultifying nostalgia for the past and complacent optimism about the future. My aim is to show that Hume's philosophical scepticism implies caution, not fatalism, about both individual and social progress, as well as philosophy's role in forwarding that progress.