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Hume and Bayle on Localization and Perception: A New Source for Hume’s Treatise 1.4.5

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Scepticism in the Eighteenth Century: Enlightenment, Lumières, Aufklärung

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Abstract

Next to the five major areas listed by Norman Kemp Smith in which Bayle had exercised greater influence on Hume’s work, we shall add here a new Baylean source. It is not only the second part of section V (“Of the immateriality of the soul”) of Treatise I, IV that depends on Bayle (for the article Spinoza), but also the first part. The topic at issue is the difficulty of finding a “relation” between “perceptions, which are simple, and exist no where”, on the one hand, and on the other hand some “conjunction in place with matter or body, which is extended and divisible”. A primary source (not listed in Norton & Norton commentary) for this topic is an extensive chapter in Bayle’s Réponse aux questions d’un provincial (III, xv), where the problem of a possible (and impossible) ‘local conjunction’ of the spirit and the body is dealt with in considerable depth.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Norman Kemp Smith, The Philosophy of David Hume. A critical study of its origins and central doctrine, London, MacMillan and Co., 1941, pp. 284–288, 294–295, 325–338, 506–516. For a bibliography of studies on the relationship between Hume and Bayle see my recent article: “Hume, Bayle, et les Dialogues concerning natural religion”, in A. McKenna and G. Paganini (ed.), Pierre Bayle dans la République del Lettres, Paris, Champion, 2004, pp. 527–567 (see above all pp. 527–528). A recent volume dedicated to the themes of space and geometry further confirms the importance of the article “Zénon d’Elée”, whereas new points of interest have emerged concerning the problem of the existence of mathematical objects (their ideal existence in Bayle) and about the discussion of the vacuum, on which the article “Leucippe” in the Dictionnaire was significant (see Marina Frasca-Spada, Space and the Self in Hume’s Treatise, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 32–33, 129, 161, 169).

  2. 2.

    T 1.4.5. The following abbreviations have been used for Hume and Bayle’s works: T = David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, David F. Norton and Mary J. Norton (eds.), Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004, and also: L. A. Selby-Bigge and P. H. Nidditch (eds.), Oxford, Clarendon Press, Second Edition, 1978. References are to book, part, section, paragraph and page.; OD = Pierre Bayle, Œuvres diverses, P. Husson et al. (ed.), La Haye, 1727–1731, 4 vols., reprints, Hildesheim, G. Olms, 1966, 5 vols, 1964–1968. References are to volume and page. All translations are mine unless otherwise stated.

  3. 3.

    Cf. N.K. Smith, op cit., p. 506–516 (Appendix to Ch. XXIII: “Bayle’s article on Spinoza, and the use which Hume has made of it”).

  4. 4.

    OD, III, xv.

  5. 5.

    OD, III, 937b–943a.

  6. 6.

    T, 1,4,5,8, 235.

  7. 7.

    In this section of Réponse, Bayle treats questions that were to be typically Humean, such as the comparison between atheism and idolatry, the question of whether belief in God is easy and natural, and the controversial theme of the utility of religion, and in particular of Christianity, for the maintenance of society.

  8. 8.

    OD, III, 940a.

  9. 9.

    Ibid., p. 940b.

  10. 10.

    Ibid., p. 941a.

  11. 11.

    Ibid., p. 940a. In truth this was an inference of Bayle’s.

  12. 12.

    Ibid., p. 942a.

  13. 13.

    Ibid., p. 942b.

  14. 14.

    Ibid., p. 942b. On the sense and limits of Cartesian dualism in Bayle’s philosophy, see Elisabeth Labrousse’s refined analysis, Pierre Bayle, t II: Hétérodoxie et Rigorisme, La Haye, M. Nijhoff, 1964, Ch VI. On the same theme from a different perspective, may I refer readers to my book: G. Paganini, Analisi della fede e critica della ragione nella filosofia di Pierre Bayle, Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 1980, p. 385–403; and G. Mori, Bayle philosophe, Paris, Champion 1999; and Todd Ryan, Pierre Bayle’s Cartesian Metaphysics: Rediscovering Early Modern Philosophy, New York, Routledge, 2009, p. 33–49.

  15. 15.

    T 1.4.5.7, 234.

  16. 16.

    Ibid.

  17. 17.

    T 1.4.5.8, 235. “This argument affects not the question concerning the substance of the soul, but only that concerning its local conjunction with matter; and therefore it may not be improper to consider in general what objects are, or are not susceptible of a local conjunction. This is a curious question, and may lead us to some discoveries of considerable moment”.

  18. 18.

    T 1.4.5.10, 235.

  19. 19.

    Ibid., pp. 235–236.

  20. 20.

    Ibid., pp. 236.

  21. 21.

    Ibid.

  22. 22.

    OD, III, 940b; see also p. 941a.

  23. 23.

    T 1.4.5.13, p. 238.

  24. 24.

    Ibid.

  25. 25.

    Ibid.

  26. 26.

    Ibid.

  27. 27.

    Ibid., p. 239.

  28. 28.

    Ibid., p. 235.

  29. 29.

    Ibid., p. 238.

  30. 30.

    Ibid., p. 240. Hume addresses himself ironically to the theologian: “Is the indivisible subject, or immaterial substance, if you will, on the left or on the right hand of the perception? Is it in this particular part, or in that other? Is it in every part without being extended? Or is it entire in any one part without deserting the rest? ‘Tis impossible to give any answer to these questions, but what will both be absurd in itself, and will account for the union of our indivisible perception with an extended substance”.

  31. 31.

    Ibid., 234.

  32. 32.

    OD, III, 940b.

  33. 33.

    T 1.4.5.13, 238.

  34. 34.

    OD, III, 941a.

  35. 35.

    See above, note 23.

  36. 36.

    Cf. John W. Yolton, Thinking Matter. Materialism in Eighteenth-Century Britain, London, Blackwell, 1983, p. 52 (“He [Hume] takes as an example an ordinary object – a fig or an olive – but he obviously has his eye upon the metaphysical debate between materialist and immaterialist”).

  37. 37.

    T 1.4.5.14, 239.

  38. 38.

    T 1.4.5.6, 234.

  39. 39.

    N. K. Smith, op cit., p. 322.

  40. 40.

    T 1.4.5.15, 239.

  41. 41.

    T 1.4.5.16, 240.

  42. 42.

    T 1.4.5.33, 250.

  43. 43.

    T 1.4.5.30, 247.

  44. 44.

    T 1.4.5.29, 246.

  45. 45.

    Luigi Turco, “Mente e corpo nel Trattato di Hume”, in L’età dei Lumi. Saggi sulla cultura settecentesca, Santucci (ed.), Bologna, Il Mulino, pp. 165–166. Actually, the theme indicated in the title is left to the last two pages (pp. 186–187) of the article.

  46. 46.

    Kenneth P. Winkler, “The New Hume”, Philosophical Review, 100, 1991, pp. 541–579, p.541. The essay is reprinted, with a “postscript”, in R. Read and K. A. Richman (eds.), The New Hume Debate, London, Routledge, 2000, pp. 31–51.

  47. 47.

    John P. Wright, The Sceptical Realism of David Hume, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1983. See also Peter Kail, Projection and Realism in Hume, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007; Giambattista Gori, “Da Malebranche a Hume: modelli della mente umana, immaginazioni, giudizi naturali” in A. Santucci (ed.), Filosofia e cultura nel Settecento britannico, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2000, pp. 113–124, is a strong endorsement of Wright’s thesis. The connection Hume-Malebranche has been deepened and extended to the field of passions and pleasure of research respectively by Susan James and Peter Kail in their articles included in M. Frasca-Spada and P. J. E. Kail (eds.), Impressions of Hume, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2005.

  48. 48.

    Galen Strawson, The Secret Connexion: Causation, Realism, and David Hume, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1989.

  49. 49.

    A. Santucci, “Hume vecchio e nuovo?” in Luigi Turco (ed.), Filosofia, scienza e politica nel Settecento britannico, Padova, Il Poligrafo, 2003, pp. 255–276, p. 269.

  50. 50.

    Addressing myself in the main to scholars of Bayle, I had already pointed to a wider influence of him on Hume. See G. Paganini, “Hume et Bayle: conjonction locale et immatérialité de l’âme”, in M. Magdelaine et al. (eds.), De l’Humanisme aux Lumières, Bayle et le protestantisme (Mélanges en l’honneur d’Elisabeth Labrousse), Oxford-Paris, Universitas-Voltaire Foundation, 1996, pp. 701–713; but – doubtless due to the increasing specialisation of studies – this information appears not to have had any impact on Humean literature. For this reason I have returned to this theme and developed it further in the present article, framing it within the discussions on the “new Hume”.

  51. 51.

    Cf. J. P. Wright, op. cit., pp. 3–5.

  52. 52.

    John W. Yolton, op. cit., p. 53.

  53. 53.

    P. Russell, “Hume’s Treatise and the Clarke-Collins Controversy”, Hume Studies, 21, 1995, pp. 95–115.

  54. 54.

    L. Turco, loc. cit., p. 186.

  55. 55.

    See G. Paganini, Skepsis. Le débat des modernes sur le scepticisme, Paris, Vrin, 2008, Ch. VI.

  56. 56.

    Wright, op. cit., p. 79 n. 10; R. F. Anderson, “In Defense of Section V, A Reply to Professor Yolton”, Hume Studies, 6, 1980, pp. 26–31, in reply to Yolton’s article, “Hume’s Ideas”, ibid., pp. 1–25.

  57. 57.

    Yolton, op. cit., p. 58.

  58. 58.

    Thus the conclusion drawn by John Bricke from his analysis of Treatise 1.4.5 appears surprising: J. Bricke, Hume’s Philosophy of Mind, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1980, p. 43. In the light of what we have seen of Hume’s relationship with Bayle, other considerations, such as that of “a mind-body dualist” (p. 44) or the more general assertion that, in the case of Hume, “a bundle dualist may be an interactionist” (p. 26) also appear highly debatable.

  59. 59.

    Yolton, op. cit., p. 60.

  60. 60.

    Donald W. Livingston, Hume’s Philosophy of Common Life, Chicago/London, The University of Chicago Press, 1988, Ch. I: “Post-Pyrrhonian Philosophy”.

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  1. Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici, Università del Piemonte Orientale, Vercelli, Italy

    Gianni Paganini

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Paganini, G. (2013). Hume and Bayle on Localization and Perception: A New Source for Hume’s Treatise 1.4.5. In: Charles, S., J. Smith, P. (eds) Scepticism in the Eighteenth Century: Enlightenment, Lumières, Aufklärung. International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 210. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4810-1_8

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