ABSTRACT
The recent interest in ethics by composition scholars has highlighted the need for more studies discussing the historical relation between ethics and rhetoric. 1 In light of the need for such studies, this chapter focuses on the ethical dimension of taste in the 18th century, particularly as it is articulated in the work of Hume. The ethical components of Hume’s work have been largely ignored, primarily because of his reputation in intellectual history as a radical skeptic who sought to dismantle the foundations of empirical philosophy. 2 Lüthe (1984), however, argued that the received view of Hume is largely the result of late 18th-century German interpretations of Hume’s work. Philosophers such as Hamann, Jacobi, and particularly Kant, Lüthe asserts, read Hume through their own tradition of German idealism. Recent studies in fact have begun to recover a broader view of Hume by focusing on his engagement in the social, ethical, and political issues of his day. Jones (1982) argues that Hume was primarily interested in the social nature of humans and “the need to reason and communicate with others” (p. 7). Raphael (1974) views Hume as a scholar who was first and foremost concerned with problems of ethics. He reads Hume’s epistemological critique of his predecessors in the Treatise (1964) not as an attempt to undermine the foundations of Western thought but as an integral part of the development of his own theory of moral philosophy. More recently, Potkay (1994) focuses on Hume’s public view of morality in the social and political context of the mid-18th 18century. 3 This chapter builds on these studies by continuing to recover a more social view of Hume through an examination of the ethical components of his work as they are revealed in his discussion of taste.
