RR 2008/291 A Companion to Hume

摘要

Some thinkers become so familiar that we end up thinking of them only in simplified or even stereotyped forms. Perhaps this is another way for editors and scholars to suggest that the critical ideas used to interpret such figures have got rather tired and need freshening up - a process that usually takes two forms - reinterpreting the original ideas and works and their context, and reassessing their influence and legacy. New knowledge also emerges - of ideas and thinkers that have been ignored or underestimated as shapers of the great arguments and key texts, or new insights into the ways in which ideas like moral sentiments or non-cognitivism or epistemology can and should be regarded today. It is with these thoughts in mind that I approached this new companion, one of some 40 such companions from Blackwell. Others likely to interest readers of this one on Hume include rationalism, aesthetics, political philosophy, cognitive science, and Descartes.