Hume 001: Which version of the text should I use?
The SQA provides two versions of the required extracts from Hume’s Enquiry. There is the original text as written by Hume and a version using more contemporary language written by the philosopher Jonathan Bennet. The rationale behind updating the text is that it makes it easier for students to access Hume’s philosophy if they don’t first need to struggle with the more old-fashioned language.
An obvious problem in changing the words is ensuring that the meaning hasn’t been changed. The SQA has judged that the level at which Higher students are working the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
It is worth looking at some examples of how the two texts differ. The first two examples are already flagged up in the text supplied by the SQA.
Firstly, there is a passage where Hume introduces what some people might regard as almost technical terms. Here the updated text seems to capture the meaning well.
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Hume's original
...all this creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us by the senses and experience. |
Bennett's version
...all this creative power of the mind amounts merely to the ability to combine, transpose, enlarge, or shrink the materials that the senses and experience provide us with. |
In a passage describing a thought experiment known as ‘the missing shade of blue’ the updating goes a little further and, rather than just updating the vocabulary, tries to capture the meaning by giving a more specific example. There is an interpretive judgment to be made here as to whether Hume was at this point still talking about different colours or whether he was already talking about shades of the same colour. Either way the essence of what Hume was saying has been preserved and his point made much clearer.
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Hume's original
...if this should be denied, it is possible, by the continual gradation of shades, to run a colour insensibly into what is most remote from it; and if you will not allow any of the means to be different, you cannot, without absurdity, deny the extremes to be the same. |
Bennett's version
We can create a continuous gradation of shades, running from red at one end to green at the other, with each member of the series shading imperceptibly into its neighbour. If the immediate neighbours in the sequence are not different from one another, then red is not different from green, which is absurd. |
In Section IV, Hume's text can be much harder to follow. To deal with this Bennett sometimes adds additional examples to clarify things. These additions are indicated by small dots at the beginning and end of the example as in this case from Section IV.
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Hume's original
If a body of like colour and consistence with that bread, which we have formerly eat, be presented to us, we make no scruple of repeating the experiment, and foresee, with certainty, like nourishment and support. Now this is a process of the mind or thought, of which I would willingly know the foundation. It is allowed on all hands that there is no known connexion between the sensible qualities and the secret powers; and consequently, that the mind is not led to form such a conclusion concerning their constant and regular conjunction, by anything which it knows of their nature. As to past Experience, it can be allowed to give direct and certain information of those precise objects only, and that precise period of time, which fell under its cognizance: But why this experience should be extended to future times, and to other objects, which for aught we know, may be only in appearance similar; this is the main question on which I would insist. |
Bennett's version
If we are given some stuff with the colour and consistency of bread that we have eaten in the past, we don’t hesitate to repeat the experiment ·of eating it·, confidently expecting it to nourish and support us. ·That is what we do every morning at the breakfast table: confidently experimenting with bread-like stuff by eating it!· I would like to know what the basis is for this process of thought. Everyone agrees that a thing’s sensible qualities are not connected with its secret powers in any way that we know about, so that the mind isn’t led to a conclusion about their constant and regular conjunction through anything it knows of their nature. All that past experience can tell us, directly and for sure, concerns the behaviour of the particular objects we observed, at the particular time when we observed them. ·My experience directly and certainly informs me that that fire consumed coal then; but it is silent about the behaviour of the same fire a few minutes later, and about other fires at any time·. Why should this experience be extended to future times and to other objects, which for all we know may only seem similar? — that is what I want to know. |
While the SQA continue to provide both versions of the text it is safe to assume that either is acceptable and Bennett's version is certainly the more readable. However, it would be good to be aware of when material has been added that doesn't occur in Hume's original.