Gordon Graham. David Hume and the Aberdeen Philosophers: Reid, Campbell, Gerard, Beattie

What Do Philosophers Believe?' identified with David Hume (1711-76) than with any other non-living philosopher. 1 Monty Python famously accused Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) of being a 'pissant.'But the worst they would muster against Hume was the accusation that he could outdrink G.W.F.Hegel (1770-1831).Hume is essential reading in most undergraduate philosophy programs, often cast as the greatest philosopher to write originally in the English language.His statue on the Royal Mile is a prime tourist attraction in Edinburgh, even for those whose familiarity with him extends only as far as his big, bronze toe.In short, Hume is a celebrity, in the academic world and beyond, loved, admired, and widely lauded, as his close friend Adam Smith (1723-90) wrote shortly after Hume's death in 1776, 'approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit' ( 14).In his lucid, provocative, and eminently readable new book, Gordon Graham aims to take Hume down a peg.Graham's objective is not to strip Hume of the fame and adulation that he has acquired as the leading figure of Scottish Enlightenment philosophy, at least not entirely.Instead, the principal objective of this book is to widen the spotlight's beam to illuminate some of the players who have been consigned to the dark recesses of the stage by the beam's tight focus on Hume.