Overview

David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature, published anonymously in 1739–40, was his first major work of philosophy, and his only systematic, scientific analysis of human nature. It is now regarded as a classic text in the history of Western thought and a key text in philosophical empiricism, scepticism, and naturalism. This Critical Guide offers fourteen new essays on the work by established and emerging Hume scholars, ranging over Hume's epistemology and philosophy of mind, the passions and ethics, and the early reception of the Treatise. Topics include the significance of Hume's treatment of the passion of curiosity, the critical responses to Hume's account of how we acquire belief in external objects, and Hume's depiction of the human tendency to view the world in inegalitarian ways and its impact on our view of virtue. The volume will be valuable for scholars and students of Hume studies and in eighteenth-century philosophy more generally.

Full Product Details

Author:   Elizabeth S. Radcliffe (College of William and Mary, Virginia)
Publisher:   Cambridge University Press
Imprint:   Cambridge University Press
Weight:   0.500kg
ISBN:  

9781009218092

ISBN 10:   1009218093
Pages:   300
Publication Date:   08 January 2026
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available, will be POD  
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Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. The association of ideas in Hume's treatise John P. Wright; 2. Methodizing Hume's metaphysics Donald L. M. Baxter; 3. Hume on belief Jennifer Smalligan Marǔsić; 4. 'All the logic I think proper to employ': Hume's rules by which to judge of causes and effects Hsueh Qu; 5. Imagining the unseen: the external world of Hume's treatise Angela Coventry; 6. The updating problem for Hume's account of belief in personal identity Annemarie Butler; 7. Experimental philosophy, blind submission, and Hume's other 'sceptical principles' Miren Boehm; 8. How to read book 2 of the treatise Katharina Paxman; 9. Hume on curiosity: the conclusion to treatise book 2? Emilio Mazza; 10. Hume's geography of feeling in a treatise of human nature Don Garrett; 11. Some vexations about character in Hume's treatise Elizabeth S. Radcliffe; 12. Hume on promising and self-obligation Rachel Cohon; 13. No men are created equal: rank, passions, and virtues in Hume's treatise Margaret Watkins; 14. The eighteenth-century British reception of Hume's a treatise of human nature Mark G. Spencer and Mikko Tolonen.

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Author Information

Elizabeth S. Radcliffe is Professor Emerita in the Department of Philosophy at William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. She is author of Hume on the Nature of Morality (2022) and of Hume, Passion, and Action (2018).

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