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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2010
A distinctive characteristic of contemporary Hume scholarship is the attempt by scholars to read Hume both critically and sympathetically. This is itself quite encouraging, especially in view of the misinterpretations to which Hume's views have traditionally been subject. More positively, how-ever, we now have a systematic attempt, hitherto absent, to appreciate the richness and complexity of Hume's views and of the many positive things Hume has to say in philosophy.
1 References to Hume's views are to the Selby-Bigge, L. A. and Nidditch, P. H. editions of both A Treatise of Human Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978)Google Scholar and the Enquiries Concerning the Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975).Google Scholar These texts, alternatively referred to as Treatise and Enquiries, are respectively abbreviated as T and E. Thus T 1 means A Treatise of Human Nature, page 1.
2 Johnson, Oliver, Ethics, 5th ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984), p. 175.Google ScholarPubMed For a short but nevertheless important list of critics who have read Hume as a subjectivist, see Norton's, David FateDavid Hume: Common Sense Moralist, Sceptical Metaphysician (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1982), p. 110, n.14.Google Scholar Norton convincingly demonstrates the implausibility of the subjectivist readings of Hume. (See especially his discussion in pp. 111-20.) Norton also observes, however, that Pall Ardal had much earlier argued against the view of Hume as a subjectivist.