Norton saw Hume as a constructive skeptic, later interpreters would tend to emphasize the “constructive” aspect of this characterization. So Donald Livingston, who declares himself indebted to David Hume: Philosophical Historian for helping him see the unity of Hume’s philosophical and historical work, argues that Hume adhered to a philosophy of common life, according to which philosophy’s task is to “methodize and correct” the customs and judgments of common life, repudiating philosophy’s false pretension to stand above and outside all social convention.7 Hume gave up on the misguided attempt to know the real apart from human custom and judgment and accepted instead the task of reflecting on the real through these human conventions. This might be regarded as a form of mitigated skepticism, but it is better understood as a form of pragmatism, although Livingston himself does not invoke the term. Total skepticism, in contrast, is understood to be the outcome of a falsely autonomous conception of the task of philosophy. It continues to lurk as a threat only insofar as the temptation to an autonomous philosophy also continues to exercise residual charm. Within the philosophy of common life, in contrast, the process of piecemeal internal criticism continues unscathed.
It is hardly surprising that such an interpretation of Hume’s thought would prove compelling in a postfoundationalist context, nor that Hume so understood would become the focus of a surge of philosophical attention. What, then, becomes of Norton’s diagnosis of the failure of Hume’s critical method, on this interpretation? “Custom and education” do play a key role in the formation of judgments and claims, including the evaluation of historical evidence. But if there is no “external” standard, there are nevertheless “shared” standards; the alternative is not between subjectivism on the one hand and autonomous, external, philosophical judgments on the other. Repudiating as an illusion the aspiration to external standards, Hume regards objectivity as constituted by intersubjective standards. These may, to be sure, be corrupted or provincial, but they are also, by the same token, always open to correction.
History and the Task of Sympathetic Understanding
There remains a danger that the philosophy of common life, having given up on objective standards of judgment in the strongest (if illusory) sense, will strive to portray as shared, communal standards the judgments of a narrow minority. And indeed Hume has been seen as having done precisely this. R. G. Collingwood, for instance, indicted Hume for imposing eighteenth-century values on the past and found Hume incapable of understanding a past age on its own terms. Alasdair MacIntyre accused Hume, more precisely, of championing the values of the English landowning class.8 But Hume was certainly well aware of the challenges posed to human society by differences in perspective: “‘twere impossible we cou’d ever make use of language, or communicate our sentiments to one another, did we not correct the momentary appearances of things, and overlook our present situation.” (T 3.3.1.16/582)9 Moral judgment, he argued, requires that we give up our particular point of view, and consider character “in general, without reference to our particular interest” (T 3.1.2.4/472). It is not enough that we be disinterested, though; we must achieve a “sympathy with those, who have any commerce with the person we consider” (T 3.3.1.18/583). So a sympathetic understanding of the perspectives of others is vital to our capacity to evaluate others and hence bound up with the enterprise of history, which Hume unabashedly regards as normative.10 Historians, unlike poets, philosophers, and politicians, are the “true friends of virtue, and have always represented it in its proper colours” (E 567). History “keeps in a just medium” between the extremes of a cold and abstract philosophical perspective on the one hand and the “warped” judgment of the man of business on the scenes of life on the other; history “places the objects in their true point of view” (E 568). History is capable of doing this because it gives us a sympathetic understanding of those whose perspectives are initially alien to us, allowing us both to perceive and to assess their reasons for acting.
This normative task is regarded by Hume as enhancing, rather than interfering with, the explanatory enterprise; “history is not only a valuable part of knowledge, but opens the door to many other parts, and affords materials to most of the sciences” (E 566). Hume’s science of man did not amount to a reductive naturalism. Doubtless Hume held a naturalist ontology, regarding social and psychological phenomena as taking place at a secondary level of organization that is materially dependent on a more basic or primary level of material reality. And it is true that within the Treatise Hume employed association as a far-reaching explanatory principle, which might lead to the conclusion that he adhered to a kind of descriptivism, wishing to explain all phenomena at one privileged level of explanation.11 But while he certainly does offer covering-law explanations to account both for regularities in human behavior and particular historical events, he finds it most satisfying to offer explanations that refer to the reasons an agent had for acting.12 It is a mistake to oppose this kind of hermeneutical understanding to the enterprise of explanation, for understanding agents’ reasons for action can allow us to more fully explain an event. The business of explanation is highly context dependent, and it is crucial to know what particular why-question is being asked. The simple question, “why did she die?” may be satisfactorily answered in a variety of ways that refer to different levels of explanation: “because of the poison in her system,” “because she committed suicide,” “because she was depressed,” “because of an imbalance in brain chemicals,” and “because of her estrangement from her son’” may all be appropriate answers in particular contexts, some of which have their home in the social exchange of reasons, others in the search for covering laws, whether at biological, psychological, or sociological levels of organization.
Hume was optimistic about the possibility of achieving sympathetic understanding of foreign points of view, and insistent that this understanding did not imply moral relativism.13 We see this particularly clearly in “A Dialogue,” appended to the Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals. There the well-traveled Palamedes describes for Hume the strange inhabitants of the country of Fourli, where incest and homosexual liaisons are smiled on, marital fidelity disparaged, infanticide accepted, and honor disregarded. Hume’s response is disbelief: “such barbarous and savage manners are not only incompatible with a civilized, intelligent people, such as you said these were; but are scarcely compatible with human nature” (EPM 112–13/328). To call manners “barbarous” and “savage” is to declare them beyond the reach of sympathetic understanding. But in this case the label turns out to be, in Hume’s own judgment, falsely applied. Fourli turns out to be Athens, and only a thicker description is required in order to see these foreign practices in the light of community life as a whole, and thus as performed in the pursuit of intelligible goods. Whereas Palamedes, confronted with the cultural variation between ancient Greece and contemporary Paris, finds it impossible “to fix a standard for judgments of this nature,” Hume advises him that the problem can be resolved “by tracing matters . . . a little higher, and examining the first principles, which each nation establishes, of blame or censure” (EPM 116/333). So, for instance, “Greek loves” arose from the frequency of gymnastic exercises and were regarded as a source of friendship and fidelity. Moreover, the Greeks recognized incest as contrary to reason and public utility but simply defined its limits differently than canon lawyers. And infanticide was practiced only in the face of extreme poverty and was regarded as saving the child from an evil greater than death. Even where Greek practices remain blameworthy, they are understandable, directed toward ends that we, too, can recognize as good.
The Problem of Artificial Lives
As optimistic as Hume was about the possibility of extending sympathetic understanding across cultural and historical boundaries, he believed that he had at the same time identified inherent limits to its scope. He sought to differentiate between natural variations in moral sentiment and practices, on the one hand, and artificial lives and manners, on the other. When it comes to the latter, the “maxims of common life and ordinary conduct” no longer apply; instead, speculative principles determine morality. Palamedes offers Hume two examples, one culled from ancient philosophy, the other from modern Christianity: the Cynic Diogenes and the Jansenist Blaise
