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11/15/2021

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Tad Brennan

"This happens in two ways, when in the Introduction of that influential book, Smith is first introduced, alongside Hume and Hartley, only Hume's views are briefly summarized and Hume's views are treated as not especially significant for ethical matters. They...."

I wonder whether the third instance of "Hume" was meant to read, "Smith"?

Eric Schliesser

Hi Tad, Thank you for reading this post with care. But I think the third instance of "Hume" is fine. The point being that Smith barely registers a mention and seems to be treated by Sidgwick as a very junior to Hume side-kick in that context.

Aaron V Garrett

Sidgwick treats Smith this way because his overall goal is to show the evolution of plausible methods of ethics, i.e. comprehensive and coherent normative moral theories, and as far as he can see Smith does not really contribute greatly to this. He makes a related claim about the relative importance of Gay and Hume. Hume is a far greater philosopher, but Gay is far more important to the rise of utilitarianism. Smith's normative ethics is still mysterious to me after twenty-plus years of thinking about it, so I empathize with Sidgwick who I fear has become part of my own academic impartial spectator.

Olivia Harman Carosello

I just happened upon this while searching for something else pertaining to Mr. Gil Harman (my father). I am (was) his younger daughter (not a philosopher), and when I asked him about his views on history of philosophy he said basically what you have quoted here… that he greatly enjoys the history of philosophy, and thinks it should be a separate department much the way art and art history are separate departments. But there is context missing here, which is that my father had such a dry sense of humor it was at times impossible to know when he was joking, and at the same time he never took himself—or life—too seriously. I’d imagine the sign on the door, as well as various conflicts that may have involved him, may have been due to this lack of self seriousness. He always enjoyed it greatly when people said things like, “that view is insane” about his own work, and perhaps assumed everyone was like him. When he was very progressed in his Alzheimer’s he related a story (a few times in a row, actually) from his time in Boston, when he was working on his dissertation (which he flunked the first time, by the way, a fact that did not seem to have had much effect on him). My dad was telling my husband and me a wonderful story about Chomsky. As a grad student he would go over and talk to Chomsky, which was fabulous, he said, and Chomsky would encourage him to write up what they’d been discussing. So my dad put out a paper with his view, and right away Chomsky published his own piece arguing vehemently against it. My dad thought this was so great.

Most academics aren’t like this. Most people have fragile egos. So I imagine when my dad argued against them, or about the nature of philosophical work, he might not have realized that most people don’t get a kick out of it when you argue against their life’s work.

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Here's a link to my past blogging (and discussions involving me) at: New APPS.

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