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This paper examines the role of the imagination in Hume's epistemology. There specific powers of the imagination are identified -- the imagistic, conceptual, and productive -- as well as three corresponding kinds of fictions based on the degree of belief contained in each class of ideas the imagination creates. These are generic fictions, real and mere fictions, and necessary, fictions, respectively. Through these manifestations, it is emphasized, Hume presents the imagination both as the positive force behind human creativity and a subversive presence that transforms experience while at once making it possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the claim that Hume was hostile to religion and religious belief, and hoped for their demise. Part one examines his approach to belief, showing how commentators take him to see religious belief as non-natural. Part two challenges this conclusion by arguing, first, that Hume's distinction between natural and artificial virtue allows the term ``natural'' to cover religious belief as well; second, that Hume himself never denies religious belief is natural, and, third, that he takes religion to be a necessary part of any flourishing society. The target of Hume's critical remarks on religion, it is then emphasized, are forms of ``false'' religion, which arise from the corrupting influence of passion, hypocrisy, bigotry, enthusiasm, and superstition. At best, it is concluded, the claim that Hume was hostile to religion requires qualification, while the view that he was in favor of its actual demise is largely unwarranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the possible link between David Hume's aesthetics and Immanuel Kant's later thought. Translation of Kant's Antinomy into Humean language; Parallels between 'Of the Standard of Taste' and the Antinomy in the 'Analytic of the Beautiful'; Nature of reason in the epistemological and metaphysical positions each thinker develops.

Explores aspects of author Jean-Jacques Rousseau's moral philosophy in light of his book 'Lettre à M. d'Alembert sur les spectacles' published in 1758. Discussion on the literal concept of theater and Rousseau's anthropology of art; Analysis of the metaphorical sense of theater in the book; Nature of moral and philosophical life intimated in Rousseau's presentation.

This paper investigates the concept of “sociology” and the logical limits which, it is argued, are imposed upon its practice by the nature of the subject matter it investigates. This thesis is developed, first, by examining Michael Oakeshott’s distinction between “technical” and “practical” knowledge, and his concept of “abridgment”. The view of human action which follows from this is then applied to sociological practice in order to show how the latter involves a unique sort of abridgment. Then, drawing on Ludwig Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy, it is argued that sociological inquiry has its own form of investigation which is most accurately termed “description”. Finally, Harvey Sacks' notion of “primitive, natural science” is critically examined as an account of social science which approximates most closely to the one being articulated here. The weakness of Sacks’ account, it is suggested, can be explained by his failure to appreciate the Oakeshottian insights about human action with which the argument began. The paper concludes by drawing out some implications of the proposed thesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attempts to document the connection between aspects of George Herbert Mead's social psychology and Adam Smith's `Theory of Moral Sentiments'. How the legitimacy of the connection is established; Parallel drawn between Mead and Smith on the universal facts of human nature and the moral community.

This article begin with a presentation of researcher Alfred Schutz's phenomenology by way of his great mentor, Edmund Husserl. Schutz sees an artificiality in the concept of "life world" produced by Husserl's method of reduction and as an alternative, proposes to assume intersubjectivity as a given of everyday life rather than a category which needs to be derived philosophically. The phenomenology that Schutz develops thus appears to replace Husserl's search for apodicticity with a sociological project aimed at describing the "structures of the life-world." Schutz, however, actually retains Husserl's emphasis on the subject and this creates a tension between the assumption of intersubjectivity and individual experience upon which, it transpires, Schutz's account is based. Thus caught, between intersubjectivity on the one side and the subject on the other, Schulz presents the social world as an achievement in the face of solipsistic intransigencies in which understanding between individuals is a mysterious and chancy affair. The burden of overcoming this purported weakness in the commonsense structures of everyday life falls to the social scientist.