Style Of Argument Research Articles

Late Eighteenth-Century Music and Visual Culture, edited by Cliff Eisen and Alan Davison

Book Review| December 01 2020 Late Eighteenth-Century Music and Visual Culture, edited by Cliff Eisen and Alan Davison Late Eighteenth-Century Music and Visual Culture, edited by Cliff Eisen and Alan Davison. Music and Visual Cultures. Turnhout: Brepols, 2017. v, 231 pp. Anne Leonard Anne Leonard ANNE LEONARD is Manton Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where she also teaches for the Williams Graduate Program in the History of Art. She is coeditor of The Routledge Companion to Music and Visual Culture (2014), and continues to explore intersections between music and visual art as coeditor of Routledge's Music and Visual Culture series and in a forthcoming scholarly publication on the arabesque. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the American Musicological Society (2020) 73 (3): 795–799. https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2020.73.3.795 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Anne Leonard; Late Eighteenth-Century Music and Visual Culture, edited by Cliff Eisen and Alan Davison. Journal of the American Musicological Society 1 December 2020; 73 (3): 795–799. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2020.73.3.795 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of the American Musicological Society Search The field of music and visual culture has seen substantial flux in recent years, migrating from its historical focus on iconography to embrace a much wider range of materials and methodologies. Recent changes in the field concern everything from objects of study and forms of evidence to styles of argumentation. The present anthology, edited by Cliff Eisen and Alan Davison, reflects some of the new diversity of approaches and also betrays hints of growing pains. How so? A snapshot view: three of the volume's nine essays have “Mozart” in the title; two others are iconographical studies of a rather traditional kind; three essays, including one of the Mozart ones, center on music's visual qualities; while two take literature as music's primary partner and leave visual art largely to the side. This disparity in approaches is signaled, even reinforced, by the considerable unevenness in chapter length. Zdravko Blažeković and Thomas Tolley... You do not currently have access to this content.

Practice and Theory in The Concept of Law

This paper challenges the widely held assumption that H.L.A. Hart endorsed in The Concept of Law a fatally flawed theory of rules known as ‘the practice theory’. In the first section I lay out the practice theory. The second section marshals evidence of the theory’s inconsistency with central aspects of Hart’s philosophy of law, in particular his insistence on the distinction between the validity and efficacy of legal rules. In section three I revisit the passages of the book from which the practice theory is ostensibly culled and suggest an alternative. Finally, in section four, I consider some of the methodological implications of Hart’s style of argument and what it says about the importance or not of conceptual analysis in legal philosophy.

Not So Well Campaign Speech in Swahili

Abstract The political campaign speeches can be used not only as platform to promote election manifestos of the candidates but also as communication channels imbued with creative manipulation of words, phrases, sayings and proverbial expressions to lure voters. Of interest in this study, is how some erudite public figures in Tanzania tend to interspace their political campaign speeches with proverbial elements. As campaign speeches aim to weaken political rivals, the use of subverted form of standard adage became inevitable on the process of waging verbal war to disarm opponents’ argumentative style, didactic wisdom and explanatory prowess. This paper goes beyond the exploration of standard proverbial expressions in political campaign speeches, to specifically target the deliberate modification, parody, subversion on existing proverbs and proverbial expressions in Swahili by the two major political parties of CCM and UKAWA as contested in the 2015 Tanzania general election campaigns.

The argument style in research article discussions to support research findings in language studies

The argument quality in a research article discussion (henceforth RAD) determines the quality of the article as a whole, and therefore this section must be written as convincingly as possible. However, authors in different disciplines such as Language Studies (LS) may address this section in a different argument style. This study is aimed at investigating how Indonesian writers in LS support their findings in their RADs. There were 40 RADs taken from four different Indonesian journals in LS; the articles were chosen from the latest volumes of the nationally accredited journals. This study used a genre analysis method in which the major source of data is a collection of texts as a product of language activity. The results show that the majority of Indonesian writers use Style 1 (interpreting the research findings or suggesting what the research findings mean), Style 2 (explaining or elaborating the research findings), Style-3 (stating the possible cause/s of the research findings), and Style 4 (illustrating or exemplifying the research findings) to support their research findings. However, unlike international authors, Indonesian writers do not relate their research findings with those of previous related studies; if they do so, it is to confirm the interpretation or explanation of their research results. The results of this study may help Indonesian authors in LS improve the quality of their RADs especially when writing articles in English to be submitted to an international journal.

The influence of procedural features of constitutional control on the style of argumentation: a comparative study

The subject of the study was the procedural features of constitutional control that affect the style of constitutional and judicial argumentation. The author sought to identify and analyze the parameters of norm-control activity that determine the content of argumentation techniques, using as an empirical basis of the study the experience of organizing constitutional control in Russia, Australia, Austria, Germany, Israel, Spain, Italy, Canada, USA, Taiwan, France and South Africa. Particular attention was paid to such procedural and procedural factors as the model of constitutional control, the procedure for considering cases, including the specifics of raising questions addressed by judges to participants in court proceedings, the availability of texts of procedural documents, the tradition of presenting the text of a court decision, the number of judges, the collegial procedure for making a decision and the content of the institute of dissenting opinion. Using the concept of argumentation style and identifying the correlation between specific procedural rules and argumentation patterns arising in the practice of constitutional justice, the author outlined the advantages and disadvantages of certain parameters of judicial control over the constitutionality of normative acts. In general, the conducted research allows us to conclude that the institutional environment of norm-controlled activity is formed not only by procedural rules, but also by legal traditions that dominate in a particular state, since the relevance, suitability and relevance of individual argumentation strategies used within the framework of constitutional control largely depend on their compatibility with the nature of legal thinking.

'It's not worse than eating them': the limits of analogy in bioethics.

Bioethicists often defend novel practices by drawing analogies withpractices thatwe are already familiar with andcurrently tolerate. Ifsome novel practice is less bad than some widely-accepted practice, then (it is argued) we cannot rightly reject it. Using the bioethics literature on xenotransplantation and interspecies blastocyst complementation as a case study, I show how this style of argument can go awry. The key problem is that our moral intuitions about familiar practices can be distorted by their seeming normality. When considering the ethics of emerging technologies and novel practices, we should remain open to the possibility that our moral views about familiar practices are mistaken.

How can necessary facts call for explanation?

While there has been much discussion about what makes some mathematical proofs more explanatory than others, and what are mathematical coincidences, in this article I explore the distinct phenomenon of mathematical facts that call for explanation. The existence of mathematical facts that call for explanation stands in tension with virtually all existing accounts of “calling for explanation”, which imply that necessary facts cannot call for explanation. In this paper I explore what theoretical revisions are needed in order to accommodate this phenomenon. One of the important upshots is that, contrary to the current consensus, low prior probability is not a necessary condition for calling for explanation. In the final section I explain how the results of this inquiry help us make progress in assessing Hartry Field’s style of reliability argument against mathematical Platonism and against robust realism in other domains of necessary facts, such as ethics.

Argumentum ad morti в дискурсе насилия: семантика и прагматика «радикальной» аргументации

The appeal to death is a type of argument that either explicitly or implicitly invokes hu­man finitude. This rhetorical device contributes to the credibility of requests, wishes, etc., or blocks communication. The illocutionary power of the appeal to death is determined by the means it uses, which range from inductive generalisation and deductions to approaching the limit of this generalisation, to the threat of going beyond the existential boundaries of the dis­course, to the problem domain losing its existential status, and to the threat being carried out. All of them make communication insignificant and the subject, or even the opponent, non-existent. This style of argumentation is peculiar to ‘pre-logical’ communities where the logical culture of social communication is underdeveloped and unwanted, where an instrumental appeal is made not to the law but force, not to freedom but arbitrariness.

Argumentation in journalism A. Baitursynova

The paper identifies A. Baitursynov’s author’s style and methods of argumentation. A. Baitursynov’sjournalistic articles had made big impact on consciousness of the Kazakh people and on formation ofnational views. The main feature of his publicist works is his ability to convince the reader and prove hispoint. A. Baitursynov was able to find the right words and convey them directly to the reader. This waspossible only due to his thorough knowledge of argumentation techniques and their appropriate use.The publicist was able to apply the entire arsenal of logical methods. These are, first of all, methods ofinductive inference, as well as – methods of deductive inference based on the truth of generally validknowledge for a particular range of phenomena. The central idea of this work is to analyze the methodsof argumentation inherent in the journalistic works of A. Baitursynov. The results of the analysis showthat A. Baitursynov had a deep knowledge of laws of the logic, such as assimilation, justification, sufficiency of logic in the argumentation of his ideas, as well as methods of deduction and induction. Inaddition, A. Baitursynov skillfully used popular methods of national oratory (assessment, comparison,approval, recognition, repetition of the world as a whole).

What’s the Weather?

What’s the Weather? Kyle Bladow (bio) We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast Jonathan Safran Foer Farrar, Straus and Giroux https://us.macmillan.com 288 pages; Cloth, $25.00 We Are the Weather is a book cleverly aware of the fact that facing the compounding and accelerating challenges of climate change requires nuanced approaches, and that conventional styles of argumentation are often not enough to motivate behavioral changes that would decrease greenhouse gas emissions. As studies and publications demonstrate with increasing frequency, the “problem” of climate change is as much psychological, philosophical, even spiritual as it is economic or political. Although Foer embeds in the book a proposal as clean, pragmatic, and reasoned as any you’ll find — stop consuming animal products — he does not fail to attend to the psychological complexities of effectively advocating for such a position. Environmentalist discourse has advanced enough that most people can now recognize the folly in the old refrain, “If people just knew the science, they’d change their behavior.” This misconception that knowledge alone changes action is longstanding, and especially frustrating in the face of the climate crisis. We Are the Weather revises that refrain from knowing to believing, as Foer probes his own conscience, wrestling with resignation and astonished at his own inability to believe with conviction. The result is a quasi-jeremiad that manages to be more compelling for its honesty. Foer attends to the difficulties of addressing climate change as much stylistically as he does narratively: short sections rapidly change topics, matching the frenzied shifts in attention to which the internet has acculturated its users, yet these different topics harmonize throughout the book in ways that ultimately reveal a precise architecture crafted to arrest and to stir emotional resonance in readers. Foer carefully arranges and deploys data from his research within the book; he demonstrated his skill at exploiting the sublimity of scale in his earlier book Eating Animals (2009), to which We Are the Weather seems a successor or an update. Akin to looking at the artwork of Edward Burtynsky or Chris Jordan, Foer’s nonfiction immerses readers in staggering figures and artful comparisons. He correctly points out the recurrent omission or underestimation of animal agriculture’s role in climate change, including an appendix detailing two significantly different findings of the percentage of total greenhouse gas emissions for which animal agriculture is responsible, one published by the Food and Agriculture Organization (14.5%), the other by the Worldwatch Institute (51%). Foer argues for the higher end of this range, and his findings align with more recent estimates (e.g. Nicholas Carter’s 2019 thesis, Animal Agriculture’s Contributions to Climate Change, which also reviewed the FAO and Worldwatch figures and arrives at an estimate of 37%). Foer condenses his evidence for the necessity of ending current systems of animal agriculture into a series of bulleted lists in Part II, “How to Prevent the Greatest Dying.” No stranger to formal experimentation with textual arrangements, Foer here uses negative page space alongside concise statements to further invest the striking statistics he presents with a sense of rational, straightforward urgency: if information alone were enough to change behavior, this is how it might be best presented. Part II’s form also calls to mind such inventions of digital journalism as the listicle or the abbreviated bullet points increasingly posted above news stories to accommodate this distracted era of tl;dr. One of the points that stand out from this presentation of data (culled from a bibliography of over three hundred sources) is the calculation that eating vegan for two out of three meals has a smaller carbon footprint than the average full-time vegetarian (from the article “Country-specific Dietary Shifts to Mitigate Climate and Water Crises” by Brent F. Kim and colleagues, which echoes Mark Bittman’s dietary recommendation to be “vegan before 6:00”). The book invokes many of the historical moments commonly compared to the present climate crisis, especially World War II. Yet the most compelling instances of such moments that Foer includes are not those hortative examples of human bravery, sacrifice, or even ingenuity (e.g...

Analytical Survey of Teachers Perception towards Writing Skills

Researchers from four states in the US surveyed 29 teachers on their views about writing andthe variables that impacted them. After conducting interviews with instructors in high- andlow-income schools, researchers found substantial differences in writing teaching. Instructorsat high-income schools place a greater focus on rhetorical style, establishing one's own voice,and making reading and writing connections than teachers in low-income schools. It appearsthat, whereas instructors in high-income schools are more flexible in picking curricularmaterials and focusing on writing quality beyond grammar and mechanics, teachers in lowincomeschools tend to be constrained by a certain curriculum set by their districts. Manyelements, including the school atmosphere, programmes and resources, and evaluations, havean impact on teachers' attitudes. The study highlights concerns that students in low-incomeschools are missing out on true, tough, and important writing chances because of theemphasis on skills-based training. A new study shows that for students to be successful,teachers must provide them opportunities to develop their argumentative style, their ownvoice, and connections between what they read and what they write.

Hyperboles in advertising: a serial mediation of incongruity and humour

Visual hyperbole is a widely used yet understudied rhetorical figure in advertising. This experimental study examined the effectiveness of visual hyperbole over non-hyperbolic visual and verbal hyperbole. A significant serial mediation is found in that visual hyperbole is considered more incongruous than literal visual, and the increased perceived incongruity exerts a positive influence through perceived humour on ad attitude. A similar serial mediation is found when visual hyperbole is compared with verbal hyperbole. In addition, visual hyperbole ads generated stronger product belief than non-hyperbolic visual and verbal hyperbole ads. The advantage of visual hyperbole is attributed to both argument style and mode of delivery. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Da arte combinatória à arte inventiva: proposições matematizantes para uma abordagem tópico-problemática da ciência do direito

The effort to promote the return to the topic-problematic way of thinking promoted by Theodor Viehweg, in application directed to the practice of law, was translated into the compilation and publication, in 1953, of the work Topic and Jurisprudence. In it, theoretical parameters are laid down to justify the questioning of the effectiveness of the methodological consideration of law as a science susceptible of logical-deductive systematization. In defense of the rise of a material ethic of values, Viehweg argues that the repositioning of concrete legal questions at the highest level of the process of appreciation and decision-making favors the perception that abstractly formulated legal statutes deserve to occupy the status of points socially accepted – topoi –, on an equal footing with any other adamant arguments to provide appropriate solutions, taking into account temporal and spatial criteria, to the problem presented, with a view to unveiling, in particular, the most appropriate way to fill the gaps corresponding to the aporia of justice. In this scenario of attempts to counteract prevailing logical-deductive and formalist thinking, there has been a notable and expressed consideration by Viehweg of Leibniz's efforts to seek mathematical solutions to legal problems in order to become susceptible of proof and demonstration, for arithmetical stratagems, without, however, yielding irrevocably to the systematized inves- tors of law. The main objective of this work is to investigate the use of ars combinatoria in the recent presentation of ars inveniendi applied to Jurisprudence. Specific objectives linked to that generic objective are the elucidation of the way in which the juridical topic presented by Viehweg was structured in the preludial stage; and in turn the investigation of which contributions – conclusive or refutative – can be drawn from the intertwining of Arithmetizing thinking in Leibniz and the argumentative topic style of presentation presented by Viehweg. Among the main conclusions reached is that the experience proposed by Leibniz allowed the conglomeration of the style of thought by problems with the algebraic spirit of the seventeenth century, and with this, allowed the construction of mathematical bases presumably able to give sufficient security to the appreciation casuistry of legal problems.

Arguing over the Buddhist Pedigree of Tibetan Medicine: A Case Study of Empirical Observation and Traditional Learning in 16th- and 17th-Century Tibet

This article examines the relationship between the practice and theory of medicine and Buddhism in premodern Tibet. It considers a polemical text composed by the 16th–17th-century Tibetan physician and tantric Buddhist expert Sokdokpa Lodrö Gyeltsen, intending to prove the Buddhist canonical status of the Four Medical Tantras, the foundational text of the Tibetan medical tradition. While presenting and analyzing Sokdokpa’s polemical writing in the context of the broader debate over the Buddhist pedigree of the Four Tantras that took place during his time, this discussion situates Sokdokpa’s reflections on the topic in terms of his broader career as both a practicing physician and a tantric Buddhist ritual and contemplative specialist. It suggests that by virtue of Sokdokpa’s tightly interwoven activities in the spheres of medicine and Buddhism, his contribution to this debate gives voice to a sensibility in which empiricist, historicist, and Buddhist ritual and contemplative inflections intermingle in ways that resist easy disentanglement and classification. In this it argues that Sokdokpa’s reflections form an important counterpoint to the perspectives considered thus far in the scholarly study of this debate. It also questions if Sokdokpa’s style of argumentation might call for a recalibration of how scholars currently construe the roles of tantric Buddhist practice in the appeal by premodern Tibetan physicians to critical and probative criteria.

Sometimes Silence is Golden: 'Dell Compliance' Following Aruba III

Speculation that interpersonal conflicts among Delaware judges influenced the adjudication of Verition Partners v. Aruba Networks has unfortunately chilled a more productive discussion of the three judicial opinions in this case – decisions whose subtext is key to interpreting the Delaware Supreme Court’s final determination on the case rendered last month. That opinion, “Aruba III”, simultaneously elevated the importance of the “Dell Compliance” standard – that threshold of M&A process adequacy above which the Chancery Court should lend weight to deal price in appraisal proceedings – while saying almost nothing about how that standard should be administered. Aruba III concluded a rich colloquy between Vice Chancellor Travis Laster and the Delaware Supreme Court that began with Dell in which both courts utilize reductionist arguments to debate the appropriate implications of modern ECMH theory for the adjudication of appraisal fair value in public company M&A. While often used to normatively criticize reasoning, reductionism – the practice of analyzing complex phenomenon by reference to simplified abstractions held to represent more fundamental principles –is simply used in its descriptive sense here (for want of a better term). While not inherent, reductionist reasoning in judicial opinions yields tricky precedent because the assumptions that underlie its abstractions are often poorly defined and evaluated for materiality, reducing confidence in how well they track reality. In the Dell and three Aruba decisions, reductionism in the translation of ECMH “principles” to economic reality is used so frequently and with such lax tracking of assumptions that analysis of the literal reasoning in these decisions provides little guidance on how the Chancery Court should determine Dell Compliance. Conversely, a review of their styles of argumentation is more illuminating. When evaluated in this light, Aruba III clarifies that, while couched in terms of the deference to “ECMH principles”, the bounds on the Chancery Court’s discretion found in Dell and DFC were motivated by the desire to focus public-company appraisal on atypically poor and transaction-specific process defects to avoid the categorical application of de novo valuation to broad categories of M&A transactions. By casting Dell and DFC as outlier cases in which identified process defects were simply too generically relevant and non-specific to the case record, Aruba III liberates the Chancery Court, should it so choose, to continue to utilize public company appraisal to police fiduciary misfeasance under a flexible “all relevant factors” standard, but only when process defects fall outside structural failings of “run-of-the-mill” processes and are linked to the deal price based on record evidence. By remaining silent on Dell Compliance beyond these requirements of atypicality and specificity, this bounded but consciously undefined standard appears designed to frustrate both the attempts of transaction attorneys to circumvent functional process review via formalism and the attempts of petitioners to indiscriminately pursue claims based on categorical case theories. Rather than an oversight, such silence may strike the perfect balance of preserving a useful role for public-company appraisal to improve the increasingly feckless state of post-Corwin fiduciary law, while discouraging unfettered appraisal “arbitrage”.

How Balinese Argue


 
 
 The Imaginary of Bali as paradise stands in stark contrast to what is actually going on. To understand the split requires examining who is authorized to represent Bali as what under what conditions. The issue concerns the nature of argument – whether argumentation and disagreement – and how it disarticulates and marginalize alternatives. The preferred, hegemonic style of argument in Bali is monologue, favoured by those in power, which effectively anticipates and prevents contradiction. By contrast, dialogue is open, democratic and widespread in daily life, but often passes relatively unnoticed. Whereas dialogue enables discussion and problem-solving, monologue re-asserts ideology in the face of uncomfortable actualities. In Bali, the form ideology takes centres on fantasies about an imaginary ‘age-old culture’. The drawbacks are evident in how claims over the cultural antiquity of Tri Hita Karana disguise its grave shortcomings in practice.
 
 

Argumentative Style: A Complex Notion

This theoretical expose explores the complex notion of argumentative style, which has so far been largely neglected in argumentation theory. After an introduction of the problems involved, the theoretical tools for identifying the properties of the discourse in which an argumentative style manifests itself are explained from a pragma-dialectical perspective and a theoretical definition of argumentative style is provided that does full justice to its role in argumentative discourse. The article concludes with a short reflection upon the next steps that need to be taken in argumentation theory in further substantiating the notion of argumentative style.

Violencia interpersonal y arrogancia neutralista. Un abordaje ético-epistemológico sobre la argumentación y la objetividad

Este trabalho propõe uma abordagem interdisciplinar sobre a violência interpessoal entendida como um fenômeno complexo e multidimensional. Como inicialmente expostos, há uma ampla visão socialmente compartilhado na ideia de que conflitos de interação só pode ser resolvido por meio de práticas de conversação racionais, com base no argumento. No entanto, existem alguns estilos argumentativos que funcionam mais como uns motores de violência epistemológica. Tais estilos de plotagem (chamado de "vertiginosa") estão intimamente relacionados com a pretensão de neutralidade que os participantes adoptem em disputas, trazendo o campo da comunicação as prerrogativas do princípio de objetividade da ciência (e derivado de uma aplicação indiscriminada da lei do terceiro excluído para as áreas de compreensão do comportamento humano). O principal objetivo das reflexões aqui apresentadas é mostrar que o exercício argumento tem implicações avaliativas e cognitivas, no sentido de que tanto a defesa eo ataque das razões que validam o conhecimento, representam formas de relação social pode seja profundamente desqualificante e desvalorizando os motivos alegados pelos Outros. Se assim for, ele requer uma abordagem filosófica para retomar o problema da violência relacional a partir de um diálogo profundo entre a epistemologia, a ética e ciências sociais.

A Cosmos Without a Creator

In the years after the first circulation of Sidereus Nuncius, Galileo’s Padua anti-Copernican colleague, the staunch Aristotelian philosopher, Cesare Cremonini, published a book on ‘traditional’ cosmology, Disputatio de coelo in tres partes divisa (Venice, 1613) which puzzled the Roman authorities of the Inquisition and the Index much more than any works on celestial novelties and ‘neo-Pythagorean’ astronomy. Cremonini’s disputation on the heavens has the form of an over-intricate comment of Aristotle’s conceptions, in the typi­cally argumentative style of Scholasticism. Nonetheless, it immediately raised the concern of Cardinal Bellarmin, the Pope and other Inquisitors. At a close reading, Cremonini’s interpretation of Aristotle’s cosmos proved radically anti- Christian. It represented a radicalization of Pomponazzian Alexandrism. In fact, Cremonini did not only circulate Aristotelian principles used by Pom­ponazzi to argue for the soul’s mortality (first, no thought is possible without imagination and the latter faculty is dependent on the body; secondly, all that is generated will eventually perish). He also wiped away all transcendence from the Aristotelian cosmos. In fact, he marginalized the function of the motive Intelligences by explaining heavenly motions through the action of animal-like inseparable souls although he did not erase nor reduced all Intelligences to only one, in accordance with Alexander. Also, he put at the center of Aristotle’s cosmos the idea of its eternity, a thesis which he explicitly connected with the rejection of the idea of God the Creator. Cremonini assumed that the univer­sal efficiens, that is the efficient cause of all motion and change in the world, is nothing but the first heaven. As a result of this radically naturalist reading of Aristotle, he banned God from the cosmos, reduced Him to the final cause of the world, and deprived Him of any efficiency and will. This essay on less ex­plored sources of Renaissance astronomical debates considers the institutional, cultural and religious setting of Cremonini’s teaching and conceptions. It as­sesses the reasons for his troubles with the religious authorities, and the politi­cal support he was granted by the Serenissima Republic of Venice inspite of the scandalous opinions he circulated as a university professor. My reconstruction of his views is based on the Disputatio de coelo of 1613 and later works, which are directly connected with cosmo-theological polemics with the religious au­thorities: his Apologia dictorum Aristotelis de quinta coeli substantia (1616) and the unpublished book De coeli efficientia, two manuscript copies of which are preserved in the libraries of Padua and Venice.

Hume as an Essayist: Comments on Harris's Hume: An Intellectual Biography

Hume as an Essayist:Comments on Harris's Hume: An Intellectual Biography Mikko Tolonen (bio) I was a Leverhulme visiting fellow at the University of St Andrews in 2012–13 when James Harris was working on Hume: An Intellectual Biography. At the time, I expected his book to take decades to finish due to the daunting nature of the task. During those years there were periods when we sat daily discussing Hume at the National Library of Scotland and its near vicinity. As a result of those conversations, we also wrote and published an article about Hume in the Scottish context.1 I look back to those days with warmth. I wanted to say this to point out that I am not impartial towards Harris, who I consider a friend, nevertheless, I am not responsible for what is advanced in James's book, and thus I can comment on it. James Harris succeeded in his undertaking much faster and better than what I expected—and my expectations were high. The focus of this paper is on Hume's essays in a broad sense. The topics I will engage with include writing an intellectual biography, style, method, political perspectives, religion, and what I call "a defense of the unity thesis" in Hume, in contrast to Harris's argument that, surprisingly bluntly, claims that there is no real continuity throughout Hume's works. What is it that you do when you write an intellectual biography? To me, it seems that the responsibility is overwhelming because you are not engaging in a regular scholarly debate, or what Quentin Skinner encourages us to do in historical research. The goal in Skinnerian intellectual history is not to put forward a "refereed perspective," but to find a new perspective which often means purposely arguing against what others have said. The objective is thus to formulate a novel, justified stance on some particular aspect of political thought. This approach is apt also due to the practical reasons. We do not have access to the past as such that would enable us to formulate an "objective" perspective on intellectual history qua facts. [End Page 29] Hence, we are always engaged in a hermeneutic undertaking of a dialogue between previous interpretations and what we take away from our reading of the original sources, trying to find some new angle to a debate that is justified within some context of previous scholarship.2 If we share this idea of what intellectual history is, then we are willing to allow that even going to the extremes of the argumentative style will advance our understanding of the past, as long as the perspective is contextualized. This, I believe, can be contrasted to some extent to what Harris does in his book, which is about carefully considering the different sides of previous arguments in scholarship and formulating a position based on it. In a sense, the question then is whether it is possible to act as a referee and write an intellectual biography that would be more objective than other studies of Hume's intellectual development, to be flagged out as the general point of reference. To illustrate what I mean in Harris's case, let us consider the influence of Mandeville on Hume, a topic that I have been keenly interested in in my own past, and which Harris takes to be a relevant part of his story about Hume. When I attended my first Hume Society conference in 2005, I was afraid to defend the position of Hume as a Mandevillean thinker, because it was an unorthodox stance in the Hume Society at the time. Has this thinking about Mandeville's positive influence on Hume now become orthodox? I am not entirely sure about it. The reason why I am pointing this out is just to illustrate the nature of the game when one begins to write an intellectual biography—it is a tricky business to canonize different perspectives, because scholarship is consistently on the move. Whether we want it or not, this process of canonizing different perspectives, is also what separates a "regular" study of Hume's intellectual development from an intellectual biography. Balancing Act Over the years there have...