Hume's Reception in Early America (History of American Thought) - Hardcover

9781855069343: Hume's Reception in Early America (History of American Thought)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1855069342 ISBN 13: 9781855069343

Publisher: Thoemmes Continuum, 2002

"Hume's Reception in Early America" presents 87 American responses to David Hume dating from 1758 to 1850. Besides classic responses, like those written by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, these two volumes contain dozens of hitherto unknown and hard-to-locate items, many of which have not been reprinted since their original publication. There are selections from early American books, letters, essays, pamphlets, poems and official reports. Newspapers, religious magazines, literary and political journals are all well represented. Some of the selections are philosophical and scholarly; others are anecdotal and intended for a popular audience. The assessments of Hume and his ideas presented in these more obscure writings are valuable for understanding his reception in early America. The set's wide-ranging contents are divided into four parts containing responses to: Hume's "Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary" (Part 1); his Philosophical Writings (Part 2); his "History of England" (Part 3); and his character and death (Part 4). Each of these parts has a separate introductory essay, and every selection is introduced by a short headnote that sets the piece in its historical context and provides a list of bibliographical references.

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Review:

"This is an exceptionally good book: it unequivocally establishes the prevalence of 'flawed assessments of Hume's reception in America, (and) serious misunderstandings about the intellectual origins of the American Revolution.' The book is very well-written, impeccably documented, and should be in every self-respecting library - private or institutional." --Peter Jones, Enlightenment and Dissent "One central truism about historical scholarship is challenged head-on by Mark Spencer's new book. This is that all answers are necessarily provisional, subject to endless adjustment and further revision in the light of subsequent evidence and refinements in argument. That David Hume and Eighteenth-Century America is likely to brook no such contingency will be obvious to all who read it. For with exemplary commitment to the recovery and analysis of previously unknown data, it will scotch forever a series of assumptions, important to an understanding of the relationship of the Scottish Enlightenment and the American Revolution, that have hitherto enjoyed remarkable currency." --David Allan, Scottish Historical Review Copiously researched, David Hume and Eighteenth-Century America recovers Hume's importance, particularly as a political theorist, to a wide range of readers and writers in the late colonial, revolutionary, and early republican periods. Spencer gives the impression of leaving no stone unturned: book, catalogues, newspaper articles, political tracts, correspondence, and subscription lists are all mined for Hume's appearances and echoes. Spencer's book is a model of rigorous investigative scholarship, and is likely to remain the standard work for years to come on the topic of David Hume and eighteenth-century American political thought. --Adam Potkay, College of William & Mary, in EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LIFE

About the Author:

Mark G. Spencer is associate professor in the Department of History at Brock University, ON. He teaches courses on colonial and early U.S. history and the history of ideas in the Atlantic world, including the early U.S. history survey and upper-level and graduate courses on the American Enlightenment and American Revolution. His current research projects include a SSHRC-supported volume on David Hume as historian (contracted with Penn State University Press) and work on the American Enlightenment.

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