ABSTRACT
It would be hard to overstate the importance of Hume in philosophical discourse in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Tom L. Beauchamp notes that “several hundred discussions of Hume’s writings were published between the date of the Treatise (1739-40) and the end of the eighteenth century” (EPM lxiv). Among these were serious refl ections by such thinkers as Richard Price, Thomas Reid, and Adam Smith. Most of these many commentaries, which put Hume on the defensive from early on in his career, focused on his perceived skepticism and its supposedly pernicious consequences. In A Letter from a Gentleman to his Friend in Edinburgh (1745), Hume, stunned perhaps by the opposition of Francis Hutcheson to his candidacy for the Chair of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh University no less than by clergyman William Wishart’s scurrilous pamphlet, aimed at blighting his hopes for appointment,1 answers six specifi c charges lodged against the Treatise. The most important of these, and the one that stuck for decades, was that of “Opinions leading to downright Atheism” (LGF 21-22). Although Hume responds fi rst to the charge of philosophical skepticism, his dismissive tone suggests that this is not the central issue. Nobody takes the arguments of Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus seriously: “As to the Scepticism with which the Author is charged, I must observe, that the Doctrine of the Pyrrhonians or Scepticks have been regarded in all Ages as Principles of mere Curiosity, or a Kind of Jeux d’ esprit, without any Infl uence on a Man’s steady Principles or Conduct in Life” (LGF 19). Hume approaches the second charge-of atheism-with more caution: “To give you a Notion of the Extravagance of this Charge, I must enter into a little Detail” (22). In this connection, philosophers distinguish four kinds of evidence: “intuitive, demonstrative, sensible, and moral.” One type does not necessarily provide greater “assurance than another. For instance, “Moral Certainty may reach as high a Degree of Assurance as Mathematical.” “Certainty” does not always depend on evidence of the senses or the rules of logic. Nor does this modest observation threaten the imminent downfall of Christianity.
