Abstract

This is a wonderful book that ambitiously and impressively brings to convergence two parallel, perennial lines of inquiry in Hume’s scholarship. One is the classic Kemp Smith question concerning the relation between Hume’s naturalism and skepticism. The other is about the relation of the first Enquiry to book 1 of the Treatise. Qu observes that the Treatise is most distinctively naturalist or descriptive, while the Enquiry is decidedly normative. His approach is to examine the two questions through a single lens by inquiring into the nature and causes of Hume’s epistemological evolution.Any evolutionary account must identify what evolutionary biologists refer to as the “transitional form.” For Qu, this is part 4 of...