Did David Hume retract 2 essays on immorality to avoid religious controversy? | Hacker News Reader

Did David Hume retract 2 essays on immorality to avoid religious controversy?

retractionwatch.com

47 pointssamizdis27 comments

Interesting article that leaves me wanting to read the two missing essays.

My head tilted at the statement, "His writings... were considered masterpieces when they appeared in the 18th century."

Hume remembers it differently, commenting on the arrival of his famous Treatise, which in his own words "fell dead-born from the press".

Well, some of his writings.

His The History of England was his big hit in his lifetime.

Both views are true, his first philosophical book got no traction. Then his Histories made him very famous, and a rewrite of his philosophical views was much better received.

even these days, true intellectuals have to censor themselves to please modern religions (yes, they are religion).

It's a good thing "true intellectuals" are not motivated by the desire to please any particular audience, except perhaps Σοφία.

The alternative is to be deplatformed, lose your job, or both

Betteridge's law of headlines strikes again.

So what if he did?

Leo Strauss wrote "Persecution and the Art of Writing" where he argued, among other things, that many ancient and early-modern writers would hide their true beliefs in their works underneath all of the publicly acceptable stuff. This has implications for how we read those texts now: if you're reading a summary, did the summarizer pick up on the esoteric meanings? Did the translator? If we stick to what was said in the text, we're missing what the writer really said. If Hume retracted essays, the Straussian reading of this would be that that's what he probably truly believed, or at least closer to that. Is this something the HN might care about? Not sure, but that's some of the implied context here.

> many ancient and early-modern writers would hide their true beliefs

Still true today. To reveal your true thought needs courage. You could get doxxed, beheaded, lose your job or else...

Depends on if, in what directions, and how far your beliefs stray from the local accepted ranges.

Or (gasp!) called out on Twitter! Which in this day and age, people pretend is a fate worse than beheading.

Kierkegaard said that in the old days you would lose your head, but nowadays you're allowed to talk your head off in Hyde park.

Alt.wittgenstein: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGksgZKecKE

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be singing.

Oh agreed, 100%. I was trying to summarize Strauss's point in the book. But really, you've hit on the Straussian interpretation of Strauss!

With enough layers of thought abstraction, combined with uttering the correct philosopher’s names, we can make anything mean anything.

I don't doubt that Strauss has a strong point.

However, that point could lead down Deconstructionist roads where the reader starts injecting nin-existent personal will-o'-wisps into source material.

Suddenly, "Blessed are the cheesemakers" refers to an entire dairy industry, where that may not be supported in the original.

Not 'could'. This point lead to Derrida quite explicitly.

Blind spot in any philosophy essay can be deconstructed, sometimes within the text itself, without external reference (the Derrida way).

And I know nowadays, with the American political discourse trying to sell Derrida like he tried to kill older authors, it's controversial, but his method allows anyone to at least appreciate Bentham even more (I only deconstructed Bentham, so I cannot say for other authors, but to me it makes his philosophy even more revolutionary and visionary).

Some of this is interesting, but mind-reading is not a thing. Or maybe mind-reading is a thing when one is French.

It's not mind reading. It's opposing a book against itself. The author himself is irrelevant.

If you're successful, you can then emit theories on why. Those aren't scientific but a new way of reading the book. If you can't find any 'key' or if the theories you emit makes you read the book the same way, it's a solid theory.

> you can then emit theories on why

And therein lies the rub. Derrida didn't really write "Speech and Phenomena" as a subliminal manual on the joys of Emacs; I just pulled that line of nonsense from an unlikely place.

Yet we are beset everywhere with abject folly passed of as some Hermetic wisdom. If it sells books, fine. But let us not claim an author said things that are simply not in view. Label "Pulp Fiction" as such.

Unlike deconstruionnists as portrayed in the media, Derrida doesn't care at all about the author, or about what he said. What the author want to convey or want to explain does not matter. You can read Emma Goldman as a disapointed revolutionnary, or you can read her book as a description of the failing of the Russian revolution from a specific point of view. What this point of view isn't "Emma Goldman" herself but discovered by reading the book itself.

In a perfect world, i should have read her without knowing her wikipedia page to be able to deconstruct "My Life". I do not have the time to do so (and i already know her wikipedia page, so i would be biased).

The problem is this is very prone to confirmation bias, where you would see and likely find 'evidences' to prove your prior guess of what the authors actually wanted to say.

I've done this. Re Occam's Razor when that principle was sacrosanct. Wouldn't do it again, I think. Those willing to reword what I wrote more strongly, got the credit, for one thing.

In the end if any one view got me kicked out of Philosophy, it was prematurely defending String Theory - just as a possibility. Politics and my being drugged and assaulted by a Professor were larger factors, though.

that makes me think of research papers

I thought I read that newton (or another famous scientist or mathematician) published something that was clear enough for non-scientists to read, and the unexpected amount of controversy and hounding he received caused him to withdraw and he didn't write clear papers afterwards.

So - research papers now - I wonder if they are written for peers instead of the general public by design (maybe subconsciously)

The article answers that question in its first paragraph.

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