Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Preface
- Notes on contributors
- Introduction
- PART I
- PART II
- 10 The sceptic in his place and time
- 11 The sceptic's two kinds of assent and the question of the possibility of knowledge
- 12 The concept of “trust” in the politics of John Locke
- 13 Berkeley and Hume: a question of influence
- 14 Frege: the early years
- 15 Moore's rejection of idealism
- 16 The nature of the proposition and the revolt against idealism
- Index
13 - Berkeley and Hume: a question of influence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Preface
- Notes on contributors
- Introduction
- PART I
- PART II
- 10 The sceptic in his place and time
- 11 The sceptic's two kinds of assent and the question of the possibility of knowledge
- 12 The concept of “trust” in the politics of John Locke
- 13 Berkeley and Hume: a question of influence
- 14 Frege: the early years
- 15 Moore's rejection of idealism
- 16 The nature of the proposition and the revolt against idealism
- Index
Summary
Introduction
‘While until recently the tendency was to deny any influences [on Hume] other than Locke and Berkeley, the present tendency appears to be going the other way’ (Laing 1932:69). The most interesting thing about that sentence is that it was written over fifty years ago. The question of Hume's relationship to Berkeley is involved in a rather curious situation in the historiography of philosophy. On the one hand, a certain view of the formative period of modern philosophy remains more or less frozen in lecture-courses, examination schedules and, no doubt, in the minds of some teachers and students. Philosophers are slotted into distinct traditions like animals into their species. On the other hand, something of an academic industry has grown up over many years which is devoted to the business of attacking just that ‘standard’ view. The assumption that Hume followed Berkeley in the ‘British Empiricist’ tradition has long been seen as one of its main points of weakness.
One very good element in this critical reaction is a wider awareness of the intellectual promiscuity of the early modern period, of significant alliances which cut across the old superimposed categories, of radically disparate purposes which exist within them. Such connections often cross the boundary of what is regarded as centrally philosophical, into theology, physics, biology and so forth; and they may do so in ways which remind us that that boundary suffers from a certain fluctuation and indeterminacy.
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- Philosophy in HistoryEssays in the Historiography of Philosophy, pp. 303 - 328Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1984
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