18th-Century 2

Naturalizing Minds: Genealogies of Thought in Hume and Nietzsche

In Hume and Nietzsche. Peter Kail and Paolo Stellino (eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Claims that once we recognize the genealogical form taken by Hume’s and Nietzsche’s methodological pragmatism, we can see how both manage to avoid cruder views that identify the meaning, truth, or value of things with their effects.

genealogy, methodological pragmatism, Hume, Nietzsche, 18th century, truth

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Making Past Thinkers Speak to Us Through Pragmatic Genealogies

In Historiography and the Formation of Philosophical Canons. Sandra Lapointe and Erich Reck (eds.), 171–191. New York: Routledge. 2023. doi:10.4324/9781003184294-9

Instead of treating Hobbes and Hume as answering the same questions we ask today, this article proposes that we start from the practical predicaments their political concepts addressed in their own time. Hume’s account of property and Hobbes’s account of sovereign power are reconstructed as historically local, yet structurally revealing, responses to predicaments—over conflict, security, and cooperation—that still structure our political life.

historiography, history, Hume, early modern philosophy, 18th century, political philosophy

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