In Memoriam: Michael Alexander Stewart (1937–2021)

In Memoriam:Michael Alexander Stewart (1937–2021) John P. Wright Sandy, as he was known to so many Hume scholars, died peacefully in Salisbury, England on July 30, 2021. For many years, Sandy welcomed Hume scholars to Edinburgh where he was often found working in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Departments of the National Library of Scotland and the University of Edinburgh. He shared his vast knowledge of all things Humean in conversation with visitors from all parts of the world, as well as in his many publications. He was especially generous with his time and expertise to younger Hume scholars at the start of their careers. In various collections including Studies in The Philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment (1990) and in the co-edited Hume and Hume's Connexions (1995) Sandy published important papers by Hume scholars. In his own work he often focused on Hume's philosophy of religion and on Hume's intellectual relations with his Scottish contemporaries including Hutcheson. One of his most remarkable achievements was his meticulous work on the dating of Hume's manuscripts, which he analysed using the best tools of modern scholarship. A collection of Sandy's writings on Hume will be published by Oxford University Press in January of 2022 under the title Hume's Philosophy in Historical Perspective. Sandy received his first degree in Greek, and Logic and Metaphysics from the University of St. Andrews in 1961, and his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania in 1965. In 1965 he joined the University of Lancaster as lecturer in ancient philosophy, and soon, in the history of philosophy—carrying the concerns of the classics scholar into the study of early modern philosophy, something recognizable in his later work on Hume. He was Lecturer in Philosophy 1965–77, Senior Lecturer 1977–93, and Professor of the History of Philosophy [End Page 5] 1993–2000. He also served terms as Head of the Department of Philosophy, and Associate Dean of Research, Faculty of Humanities. Sandy was joint general editor of the Clarendon edition of the Philosophical Works of David Hume—as well as being involved in the supervision of many other publication projects in the history of modern philosophy. He was general editor of the Clarendon edition of the Works of Locke, founding chairman of the British Society for the History of Philosophy in 1984, elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2006, and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society in 2009. Sandy contributed immeasurably to Hume studies by his endless ingenuity in ferreting out the figures and events around Hume, and combining such findings with the acute reading of Hume's philosophical texts. [End Page 6] Copyright © 2022 Hume Studies

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