🎉   Please check out our new website over at books-etc.com.

Seller
Your price
£106.87
RRP: £130.00
Save £23.13 (18%)
Printed on Demand
Dispatched within 7-9 working days.

Hume on Art, Emotion, and Superstition

A Critical Study of the Four Dissertations. Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Philosophy

By (author) Amyas Merivale
Format: Hardback
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd, London, United Kingdom
Imprint: Routledge
Published: 26th Nov 2018
Dimensions: w 147mm h 231mm d 24mm
Weight: 480g
ISBN-10: 1138351466
ISBN-13: 9781138351462
Barcode No: 9781138351462
Trade or Institutional customer? Contact us about large order quotes.
Synopsis
This book offers the first comprehensive critical study of David Hume's Four Dissertations of 1757, containing the Natural History of Religion, the Dissertation on the Passions, and the two essays Of Tragedy and Of the Standard of Taste. The author defends two important claims. The first is that these four works were not published together merely for convenience, but that they form a tightly integrated set, unified by the subject matter of the passions. The second is that the theory of the passions they jointly present is significantly different-indeed, significantly improved-from that of the earlier Treatise. Most strikingly, it is anti-egoist and anti-hedonist about motivation, where the Treatise had espoused a Lockean hedonism and egoism. It is also more cognitivist in its analysis of the passions themselves, and demonstrates a greater awareness of the limits of sympathy and of the varieties of human taste. This book is an important contribution to the scholarly literature on Hume's work on the passions, art, and superstitious belief.

New & Used

Seller Information Condition Price
-New£106.87
+ FREE UK P & P

What Reviewers Are Saying

Submit your review
Newspapers & Magazines
"Merivale provides the reader with an exceptionally clear, systematic overview of Hume's arguments in the Four Dissertations. He does an excellent job contextualizing Hume's writings in their historical contexts, providing useful overviews of the positions of lesser known authors such as Trenchard, Bolingbroke, and DuBos. Merivale also does a fine job distinguishing his own account from a wide variety of alternative contemporary interpretations of Hume's positions on emotion, art, and religion. These sections illuminate the Four Dissertations in a way that has never been done before." - Mark Collier in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

"This book proposes a bold new thesis on the development of Hume's thought, challenging long-held opinions. It demonstrates that Hume's account of the passions is more central to his positions on other topics than has up to now been assumed and makes a strong case for why it should be recognized to have changed over time, contesting the received view that Hume's philosophical opinions were constant throughout his lifetime." - Lorne Falkenstein, University of Western Ontario, Canada