Hume's Philosophy in Historical Perspective

The late M. A. Stewart was a historian of Philosophy and an authority on David Hume. He specialised in putting philosophical and theological views in their historical context. His work is marked by meticulous attention to detail, always returning to primary sources. He spent the larger part of his career at the University of Lancaster but held visiting positions at Aberdeen, Oxford, Canberra, and Sierra Leone. He was a towering figure in the establishment of history of ideas and history of philosophy in Britain, serving as President to the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society, the British Society for the History of Philosophy, and as the General Editor of The Clarendon Edition of the Works of John Locke.

• James Harris, John P Wright, and Ruth Barlow: Introduction 1: Hume, David (1711-1776), Scottish philosopher and historian 2: The Scottish Enlightenment 3: Hume's intellectual development, 1711-1752 4: The Stoic legacy in the early Scottish Enlightenment 5: The kirk and the infidel 6: Two species of philosophy: The historical significance of the first 'Enquiry' 7: Academic freedom: Origins of an idea 8: An early fragment on evil 9: The dating of Hume's manuscripts 10: Abstraction and representation in Locke, Berkeley, and Hume 11: Hume and the <"metaphysical argument a priori> " 12: Hume's historical view of miracles 13: Hume's reception in Ireland 14: The early British reception of Hume's writings on religion

Hume's Philosophy in Historical Perspective is valuable not simply as a testament to Stewart's scholarship and as a collection of papers... It stands as a keystone in our understanding of the Scottish Enlightenment.