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CRITICAL NOTICE

DAVID HUME AND THE SHE-PHILOSOPHERS

 -
The University of Cambridge

In a recent article devoted to the figure of Gaston Bachelard, Cristina

Chimisso shows how his flowing beard helped to create his myth. “A bearded
chin is a very old symbol of the philosophical mind,” she points out: a beard
is a crucial feature of the archetypal philosopher.1 Today’s practitioners of the
discipline do not, of course, consistently follow this fashion: if we leaf through
the striking photographs in Steve Pyke’s Philosophers we find no more than a
handful of beards, and among these only one, David Lewis’s, could rightfully
enter the mythical dimension.2 But the ancient icon of the bearded philo-
sopher is still immediately recognisable and powerful, and this could well be
used as evidence that, as observed by Nancy Tuana, the general editor of the
series to which this volume belongs, “the discourses of philosophy are not
gender-neutral” (p. ix). This seems to make good sense, since these discourses
have been practised for so long mostly, if not exclusively, by men.
As today, throughout the eighteenth century beards were not very much in
fashion; and, like most of his contemporaries, David Hume was clean-shaven.
He had, contemporary sources invariably report, a kindly as well as a most
acute mind; and his stated attitude to women was as gentle as it was patron-
ising, just as his views of race and class were not ahead of his times.3 Indeed,
in an elegant and insightful study some years ago Jerome Christensen concen-
trated on these aspects of Hume’s intellectual personality and made him the

1. C. Chimisso, ‘Painting an Icon: Gaston Bachelard and the Philosophical Beard’, in M. Kusch
(ed.), The Sociology of Philosophical Knowledge (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), pp. 61–91,
p. 67 and p. 84. I thank Nick Jardine, Peter Lipton and Sandy Stewart for their advice.
2. S. Pyke, Philosophers (Cornerhouse Publications, 1993). It is interesting that moustaches, the
sign of the great ‘mad’ philosopher according to Foucault, also are represented only scantily
(by Jürgen Habermas, Casimir Lewy, and Graham Priest), while in 22 of the 78 portraits
(including two of the dozen or so women) the philosopher is wearing spectacles.
3. Examples of Hume’s paternalism to women are easily found in his essays—for example, in
‘Of the Study of History’ or in ‘Of the Rise and Progress of Arts and Sciences’; for his racism
see his ‘Of National Characters’; for his views on class issues see the well-known passage in
the Treatise version of ‘Of Liberty and Necessity’ in which he states that ‘The skin, pores,
muscles and nerves of a day-labourer are different from those of a man of quality: so are his
sentiment, actions and manners . . .’ (A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge, 2nd ed.,
revised by P.H. Nidditch, Clarendon Press, 1978, p. 402).

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Malden, MA 02148, USA
embodiment of the dark side of the Enlightenment.4 But, despite his personal
opinions on gender, race and class issues, Hume is not so easily pigeon-holed,
at least not once and for all. The defining feature of a classic is its openness,
that is, its capacity to provoke ever new readings: and in this sense Hume’s
philosophical works are among the greatest classics of Western philosophy.
There have been and there are many possible Humes: and as for readers with
a metaphysical leaning there are Humes old and new, so, for those with a
keener interest in the philosophy of history there is also, together with the
Hume who epitomises the bad faith of the programme of modernity, a Hume
whose philosophy is a rich resource for present-day feminism. In particular,
in recent years Annette Baier has argued with passion and authority, in her
A Progress of Sentiments and in classic articles, that Hume could make a very
good ‘women’s moral theorist’ and ‘the reflective women’s epistemologist’.5
It is therefore timely that, after volumes of feminist readings of such philo-
sophical luminaries as Plato and Aristotle, Descartes and Locke, Kant and
Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche and Mill, Hannah Arendt and Jean-Paul Sartre,
Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, the series ‘Re-reading the Canon’ now
devotes one to Hume.6 Edited by Anne Jaap Jacobson, this is a wide-ranging
collection offering a good coverage of Hume’s diverse works, from meta-
physics and epistemology, ethics and political theory to aesthetics, historio-
graphy and philosophy of religion. The collection explores themes which are,
if not unheard-of, at least unusual: such as the attitudes to women represented
in and exemplified by Hume’s writings; his (for the most part implicit) reliance
on a communitarian background to his discussions; and the possibility of
reading his naturalism in non-essentialist and constructivist terms.7
Given the crucial role of Baier’s work in the development of Hume for the
she-philosopher, it is useful to find a reprint of her inspiring ‘Hume: The
Reflective Women’s Epistemologist?’ of 1993 at the beginning of this volume,
after the editorial introduction. After that, as is the case with other volumes
in the same series, the contributions reflect a variety of different historio-
graphical assessments and approaches. Some contributors follow Baier in
regarding Hume’s work as a positive resource. So for instance Genevieve

4. J. Christensen, Practicing Enlightenment: Hume and the Formation of a Literary Career ( University of
Wisconsin Press, 1987).
5. See A. Baier, A Progress of Sentiments: Reflections on Hume’s ‘Treatise’ (Harvard University Press,
1991). I am in fact citing from the titles of two of Baier’s articles: ‘Hume, the Women’s Moral
Theorist?’, in E.F. Kittay and D.T. Meyers (eds.), Women and Moral Theory ( Rowman and
Littlefield, 1987), pp. 37–55; and ‘Hume: The Reflective Women’s Epistemologist?’, in L. Antony
and C. Witt (eds.), A Mind of One’s Own: Feminist Essays on Reason and Objectivity ( Westview, 1993),
pp. 35– 48 (the latter is reprinted in the volume here under discussion, see footnote 6).
6. Feminist Interpretations of David Hume, ed. by A.J. Jacobson (Pennsylvania State University Press,
2000. £46.50 cloth, £16.95 paper).
7. For works in which similar themes are treated from a perspective different from that of
feminist philosophy see for example Christensen’s Practicing Enlightenment, which contains bril-
liant treatments of issues of gender, genre and style; and D. Livingston, Philosophical Melancholy
and Delirium. Hume’s Pathology of Philosophy (University of Chicago Press, 1998), which is largely
devoted to spelling out the importance in a Humean view of the feeling of belonging to a
community.

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Lloyd reserves for Hume an important place within the canon of feminist
philosophy: for his “passion for truth”, like Spinoza’s amor dei intellectualis,
unites reason and the emotions, thus expressing the wholeness of the human
mind. Lloyd starts by exploring the symmetries between the concluding
sections of the three books of the Treatise, then focuses on the four essays on
the Epicurean, the Stoic, the Platonist and the Sceptic, in order to map the
operations of the natural and imaginative propensities which, according to
Hume, guide philosophical investigations. And Jacobson suggests that Hume’s
apparent inconsistencies provide yet another reason to insist on questioning,
as some feminist philosophers do, the typical Anglo-American ideal of philo-
sophy as a disinterested intellectual pursuit investigating abstract concepts by
means of pure logical argumentation. There is much in this very compressed
and ambitious article which I wish I had the space to discuss in detail. For
example, it is true that Hume’s attitude to inconsistency is a point of great
historical and theoretical interest, on which years ago Christine Battersby,
for instance, wrote very acutely.8 I agree with Jacobson that if we “give up
the idea that Hume gives us . . . a consistent response to all the problem he
addresses” we may see his texts “as more complicated, instructive and inter-
esting” (p. 75). It is also true that in Book I of the Treatise Hume both con-
cludes, in ‘Of Scepticism with Regard to the Senses’, that the theory that our
perceptions represent objects out there is unwarranted and monstrous, and,
in other sections, talks of our perceptions in apparently representational
terms. This is the case, for example, with his discussion of the resemblance
between impressions and the corresponding ideas, in a passage, cited by
Jacobson, where he wonders whether one’s idea of Paris, however founded on
the actual experience of Paris, is a perfect representation of all of Paris’s
streets and houses.9 But it seems to me that we should look more closely at
the pattern of Hume’s inconsistencies. As I see it, Hume’s method is typically
to analyse one issue at a time, each against the background of the relevant
commonly held beliefs, no matter if some of these too are in the firing line at
some other point. Hume’s emphasis is on the pursuit rather than on the
achievement of truth; his philosophy is rather a style of investigation than the
building of local conclusions into a system. In this sense he may be regarded
as endorsing and happily practising a form of inconsistency. While analysing
individual issues, however, he seems very keen to argue as consistently and
rigorously as possible (and of course, in spite of the numerous readers who
have found him imprecise, inconsistent or contradictory, mostly does so very
effectively indeed). Thus his ‘moderate scepticism’ combines keen rigour in
philosophical argumentation when tackling the individual metaphysical and

8. C. Battersby, ‘The Dialogues as Original Imitation: Cicero and the Nature of Hume’s Skepti-
cism’, in D.F. Norton, N. Capaldi and W.L . Robinson (eds.), McGill Hume Studies (Austin Hill
Press, 1979), pp. 239 –52.
9. For further examples and an enlightening discussion see M. Greene, ‘The Objects of Hume’s
Treatise’, Hume Studies 20/2 (1994), pp. 163–77. I discuss this issue in detail in my ‘Hume on
Sense Impressions and Objects’, in M. Heidelberger and D. Stadler (eds.), History of Philosophy
of Science. New Trends and Perspectives, Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 9/2001 (Kluwer Aca-
demic Publishers, 2002).

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epistemological questions themselves, with appeals to common sense for the
general background of each discussion, and with ‘carelessness and inattention’
as the recipe for the conduct of the philosopher’s everyday life.10
So according to Lloyd and Jacobson Hume may be a Big Boy in a canon
of Dead White Males; but for them his philosophical writings are inspir-
ing enough to make it worthwhile to recruit him as a fellow-traveller. In the
same vein Jacqueline Taylor suggests in her carefully argued essay that a
reinterpretation of Hume’s thought about passions and emotions, including
our aesthetic and moral sentiments, can yield important insights for the
feminist philosopher; Susan Martinelli-Fernandez’s non-essentialist, social-
constructivist Hume has a lot to contribute to feminist discussions of moral
education; and according to Christine Swanton Hume has important suggestions
to offer in answer to the difficulties posed by Nietzsche for the status of pity
and compassion as virtues.
Other contributions highlight less sympathetic elements of Hume’s philo-
sophical views and attitudes. Among the more openly antagonistic readings,
Aaron Smuts casts a jaded deconstructive eye on the section of the Treatise ‘Of
Scepticism with Regard to the Senses’, identifying the opposition between the
feminine “nature”, “imagination” and “reason” on the one hand, and the
masculine “philosopher” and “reasoning” on the other, to show how “Hume’s
gendered dramas reflect his society’s androcentrism” (p. 103). Here the author
self-consciously and laboriously employs the tool-box of pomo litcrit to show
that Hume did take for granted what was commonly taken for granted at his
time and place—montes laborant. . . . Jenkins and Shaver contrast the conserv-
ative paternalism of Hume’s programmatic benevolence towards such inferior
creatures as animals, native Americans and women with Mill’s more appeal-
ing and fully developed form of utilitarianism. Nancy Hirschmann points out
the tension between individualism and sociability underlying Hume’s political
philosophy, and suggests that a feminist reinterpretation of Hume’s notion
of sympathy can open up the possibility of a less conservative Hume, giving
space to the more dynamic and democratic aspects of his thought. Sheridan
Houghton finds that while Hume compares unfavourably to Nietzsche on the
issue of the natural vs. the socially constructed nature of women’s comport-
ment, his notion of sympathy, especially in his re-telling of the Platonic story
of the androgynes, is a promising starting point for an answer to the problem
of inequality. Jennifer Herdt identifies a tension between Hume’s apparent
endorsement of an education which makes women the “weak and timid” sex,
and his wariness of weakness and timidity as potential ways into superstition
and religiously motivated violence. Christopher Williams concentrates on the
wonderfully stimulating philosophical issue of the distinction between a neg-
ative reaction to a work due to an enhanced moral sensibility, and one due to
prudishness. He considers Hume’s approach to the question in ‘Of the Stand-
ard of Taste’, criticises it, and proposes a ‘Humean’ way of improving on it.

10. On philosophy “in a careless manner” and philosophical opinions which can, however,
stand “the test of most critical examination” see A. Baier, A Progress of Sentiments, Ch. 1, esp.
pp. 26 –27.

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In her lively piece, Kathryn Temple reads Hume’s account in the History of
England of the story of Frances Howard against his report in the same volume
of the reign and death of James I, as revealing of the connection between
gender and genre—the woman’s history is narrated in the voice of romances
and secret histories and takes on the task of expressing the disorder and chaos
of James’s reign, which can then be minimised in the historian’s final assess-
ment of the King’s life. The story of Howard attracted much historiographical
attention among contemporary authors and pamphleteers as it has among
later historians, and I suspect Temple’s reading would have acquired a further
dimension had she investigated what sources Hume used, and how, to con-
struct the two narratives.11
I leave it to feminist philosophers to assess the part Hume and his writings
played in the process of construction and preservation of the gender stereo-
types; and to decide how convincing the articles in this volume are in indic-
ating Humean philosophy’s possible or actual contributions to feminist
philosophy—the support that ‘moderate scepticism’ can bring to gender
anti-essentialism, the methodological or confirmatory value for feminist
approaches of Hume’s philosophy ‘in a careless manner’, and the stimulus
which his specific insights may bring to the various areas of investigation of
feminist philosophers. From my point of view as an historian of philosophy
and Hume scholar, I find the image of Hume which emerges from reading
the best among these articles—Baier’s, of course, and, say, Lloyd’s, Jacobson’s,
Taylor’s and Temple’s—provocative, stimulating and fresh. There is here a
rich potential for profitable insight, enthusiasm and unconventional styles of
thought; and, even taking into account lapses and the occasional pretentious-
ness, this book has the crucial merit of opening up questions rather than
trying to close them down.12 As the Editor declares invitingly in her introduc-
tion, “The essays in this volume can easily be seen as constituting an extended
conversation . . . readers are very welcome to join in the discussion” (p. 13).
For me there is, however, a difficulty. In her article Jacobson is clear in stating
that her defence of inconsistency “does not incorporate a recommendation
that anything goes” (p. 61). But she says nothing of the criteria to distinguish
what does go from what does not. And she also says, of Stephen Stich’s The
Fragmentation of Reason, that even though he writes “against a kind of privileg-
ing of reason and rational argumentation”, since his book “purports to be
very rigorously argued, it is hard to believe that he really thinks rigorous
arguments confer no epistemic benefits” (p. 65). Here Jacobson expresses
disapproval of Stich’s book by pointing to the tension between his conclusion
and the means by which he reaches it. The very same tension can be found,
as I have suggested above, in Hume’s Treatise; and it is worth noting that a

11. See D. Lindley, The Trials of Frances Howard. Fact and Fiction at the Court of King James (Routledge,
1993). I am grateful to Lauren Kassell for her advice on this point.
12. Compare with Don Garrett’s unattractive claim, in his otherwise careful and well-informed
Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 1997), that each of his
chapters (devoted to Hume’s views on such issues as induction, personal identity, miracles,
etc.) is intended as the solution, indeed as the last word on its topic (p. 10).

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sceptic, even a ‘moderate’ one, is likely to be comforted rather than dismayed
by the use of rigorous argument to demonstrate the limitations of abstract
reason. Now, I would not want to defend an ultra-rationalist approach
according to which rigorous argument is the only legitimate means of philo-
sophical persuasion; and I share Jacobson’s suspicion of readings which seek
at any cost to restore consistency to apparently inconsistent texts. Yet I freely
admit that I routinely try very hard to make my own arguments stick, and
that I tend not to find fully persuasive the philosophical writings in which I
identify basic and irresolvable inconsistencies; hence my reservations about
some of the articles in the volume. I hope there is enough common ground
for us to engage in a discussion.

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