Professor Emeritus
Adjunct Professor of Philosophy,
University of Victoria

Addresses

8-4305 Maltwood Lane
Victoria, BC V8X 5G9

davidnorton@telus.net

Degrees

MA (Philosophy), Claremont Graduate School, 1964
PhD (Philosophy), University of California, San Diego, 1966

Teaching and research areas

Eighteenth-century British philosophy, especially scepticism and moral theory; David Hume; Francis Hutcheson

Recent publications

“Hume and Hutcheson: The Question of Influence” Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy 2 (2005), 211-56.

“The Academical or Sceptical Philosophy,” in Reading Hume on Human Understanding, ed. P. Millican (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 2002), 371-92.

“From John Locke to Dugald Stewart,” Journal of the History of Ideas 61 (2001), 359-65.

“Substantive Differences between Two Texts of Hume’s Treatise” (with M. J. Norton), Hume Studies 26 (2000), 245-77.

The Oxford Philosophical Texts Edition of David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000; revised 9th printing, 2005).

Work in press

1. The Clarendon Edition of Hume’s Treatise, Abstract, and Letter from a Gentleman, edited with Mary J. Norton, 2 volumes. Publication is currently scheduled for spring 2006. An excerpt from the Preface to volume 1:

A Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume’s earliest and most comprehensive philosophical work, was first published, anonymously, in January 1739 (Volumes 1 and 2) and late October 1740 (Volume 3). The first volume included a brief Advertisement, an Introduction, and Book 1, ‘Of the Understanding’; the second volume contained Book 2, ‘Of the Passions’; the third volume included a second brief Advertisement, Book 3, ‘Of Morals’, and an Appendix, ‘Wherein some Passages of the foregoing Volumes are illustrated and explain’d’. Between these two instalments of the Treatise, Hume published, in March 1740, a short work, An Abstract of a Book lately Published; Entituled A Treatise of Human Nature, intended to make the Treatise more intelligible by outlining the ‘CHIEF ARGUMENT’ of the larger work. In 1745, when the Treatise was under attack from certain Church of Scotland ministers who wished to prevent Hume from becoming Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, Hume wrote a letter defending it. Hume’s friend Henry Home (later Lord Kames) lightly edited this letter, combined it with the statement of charges made against the Treatise , and published both under the title A Letter from a Gentleman to his Friend in Edinburgh. None of these works was republished in Hume’s lifetime.

Critical texts of the Treatise, the Abstract, and the Letter make up this volume. The accompanying second volume begins with an ‘Historical Account’ of the Treatise, an account that runs from the beginnings of the work to the period immediately following Hume’s death in 1776. This second volume also includes ‘Editing the Texts’, an account of our editorial procedures and policies and a record of the differences between the first-edition text of the Treatise and the critical text that follows; an extensive set of ‘Editors’ Annotations’ intended to illuminate, but not interpret, Hume’s texts; a four-part bibliography of materials cited in both volumes; and a comprehensive index.

These two volumes, the one of texts, the other of editorial materials, will contain about 450 pages each.

2. Review of Mark G. Spencer, ed. Hume’s Reception in Early America, for Hume Studies.

3. “The Foundations of Morality Debate,” with Manfred Kuehn, in The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Philosophy, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Work in Progress

1. With Dario Perinetti, Université du Québec à Montréal, a paper, “The Bibliothèque raisonnée Review of Volume 3 of the Treatise: A New Translation.” A variant version of this paper, “Responses to Hume’s Treatise in the Bibliothèque raisonnée, 1739-41,” also co-written with Dario Perinetti, is to be presented at the 32nd Annual International Hume Society Conference, University of Toronto, July 2005. An abstract of the conference paper:

The earliest response to Hume’s Treatise was a short notice of the work published in the French-language journal, Bibliothèque raisonnéedes ouvrages des savans de L’Europe (BR) in its spring 1739 issue. One year later, the BR published a review of vol. 1 of the Treatise, and then in spring 1741, published the only known review of vol. 3. We undertake to show 1) that the author of the BR notice was Pierre Des Maizeaux (1673-1745); 2) that the two BR reviews were very likely written by a single author; and 3) that the author in question was most likely Armand Boisbeleau de La Chapelle (1676-1746). After setting out our reasons for these conclusions, we offer brief accounts of these two founding members of the society of Hume scholars.

The conference paper can be viewed here: Hume [.pdf].

2. A second edition of The Cambridge Companion to Hume. This new edition is to add five new essays. The new papers are: “Hume and the Mechanics of Mind: Impressions, Ideas and Association,” by David Owen; “Hume’s Theory of Space and Time in its Sceptical Context,” by Donald Baxter; “Hume on Causation,” by Martin Bell; “Hume and the Problem of Personal Identity,” by Jane McIntyre; and “Hume’s Later Moral Philosophy,” by Jacqueline Taylor. Revised or updated versions of essays from the first edition will include those by John Biro, Robert Fogelin, Terence Penelhum, David Norton, Knud Haakonssen, Andrew S. Skinner, Peter Jones, David Wootton, and John Gaskin.

3. A paper on the genesis of certain moral ideas (of virtue, duty, and justice, for example) in Book 3 of Hume’s Treatise.

4. An enquiry into possible sources of Hume’s subtraction or cancellation account of expectation or belief in probable matters. See Treatise 1.3.12.19 and Enquiry concerning Human Understanding 10.35.