Chapter 4 - Hume’s Essays as Philosophy

Summary

Is there philosophy in Hume’s Essays? In this contribution, I argue that the form of the Essays implies an ongoing philosophical project with a significant sceptical difference from the systemic form of Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature. There is evidence in the Essays that Hume thought of himself thinking philosophically in these works, even if philosophy is narrowly conceived as the search for general principles associated with the ‘abstruse philosophy’ of the Treatise and Enquiries. The distinction between the forms of the Essays and the form of the Treatise indicates, however, that the Essays are not merely continuing the Treatise’s project. The pedagogy of the Essays, revealed in their form, teaches that philosophy is an ongoing project, a sceptical search that is sceptical even about its limits, rather than the system that the young Hume was confident could be completed within the boundaries of a treatise. There is not philosophy in the Essays. The Essays are philosophy.