A Response to Our Colleagues

Hume Studies Volume 33, Number 2, November 2007, pp. 313-334 A Response to Our Colleagues DAVID FATE NORTON AND MARYJ. NORTON We recognize—indeed, we emphasize—that our annotations are neither complete nor definitive, and thus we welcome suggestions for their improvement. (Clarendon Treatise 2:687) Let us begin this Response by thanking those, and especially Manfred Kuehn, who arranged for a symposium on the Clarendon Edition of Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature at the 34th Annual Hume Conference (Boston University, August 2007). We also thank our three colleagues, John Bricke, Peter Fosl, and Jacqueline Taylor, for comments that provide us with a further opportunity to clarify and expand on what we have done in both the Clarendon Treatise and in our earlier Oxford Philosophical Texts edition of this work, and for suggestions that will lead to improvements in any subsequent versions of the editorial materials published with the Clarendon Treatise or the two pamphlets, An Abstract of...A Treatise of Human Nature, and A Letter from a Gentleman, associated with it and included in volume 1 of this edition. As Fosl has summarized the contents of the two volumes of the Clarendon Treatise, we can turn directly to the questions or issues raised by the three commentators mentioned. We look first at Fosl's concern to "situate" The Clarendon Edition of the Works of David Hume and the Clarendon Treatise, and then respond to the questions he raises in Part III of his paper, questions about the relationship of David Fate Norton is Macdonald Professor of Moral Philosophy Emeritus, McGiIl University, and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, University of Victoria. His address is 8-4305 Maltwood Lane, Victoria V8X 5G9, Canada. Email: davidnorton@telus.net. Mary J. Norton is an independent scholar. Her address is 8-4305 Maltwood Lane, Victoria V8X 5G9, Canada. Email: mjnorton@telus.net. 314 David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton the new edition of the Treatise to earlier editions of it. Our final section concerns illumination , interpretation, and omissions. We close our response with a suggestion of our own for improving the annotations related to the Clarendon Treatise (CT). 1. Situating the Clarendon Critical Edition of the Works of David Hume In his contribution to this Symposium, Fosl traces the beginning of The Clarendon Edition of the Works of David Hume to a particular historical context by quoting Tom Beauchamp's comment that by 1975 many Hume scholars had realized that the then "available editions of Hume's works were often textually and historically inaccurate" and "lacking in basic information" needed for satisfactory scholarly work on critically important texts.1 As evidence that Beauchamp was not merely beating a drum for the Clarendon Edition already in progress by the year of his remark (2000), we can look at the views and comments of P. H. Nidditch. By the mid-1970s Peter Nidditch's edition of John Locke's An Essay concerning Human Understanding2 would have established him asa leader among textual editors of English-language philosophy of the early modern period. And it was exactly at this time that Nidditch turned his attention to the widely used and highly regarded editions of Hume's most important philosophical works, his Treatise and the two works, An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding ana An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, that since 1902 had been bundled together as Hume's Enquiries? In his 1975 edition of this bundle, the third edition of the Enquiries, Nidditch pointed out that the text of the highly praised Selby-Bigge edition of EHU and EPM was significantly "faulty" in "about eighty places" when compared to the 1777 texts on which they were said to be based.4 The faults to which Nidditch referred were substantive or textual errors and a few "defects of punctuation" that he "remedied."5 This was not, however, the end of Nidditch's critique of Selby-Bigge, or of the revised third edition of the Enquiries, the edition to which his name is affixed. Taking issue with the high praise T. E. Jessop had given to the Selby-Bigge editions "of the Treatise and of the two Enquiries," Nidditch reported that even after his revisions...

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