Abstract

Book 1 of Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature was reshaped into the first Enquiry, while the second Enquiry further develops some themes from Book 3. What became of Book 2, “Of the Passions”? Did Hume never extend his thinking in that area? Amyas Merivale notes that the standard answer to that question is that Hume did not do much in the way of rethinking T2 beyond selecting a few passages to excerpt, almost verbatim, in his “Dissertation on the Passions.” In this fine, wide-ranging, scrupulously researched and carefully argued book, Merivale offers a more intriguing and satisfying answer: the essays collected in the Four Dissertations, “The Natural History of Religion”, “Of the Passions”...