David Hume in Chicago : A twentieth-century hoax

Journal article


Waldmann, Felix. (2020). David Hume in Chicago : A twentieth-century hoax. Journal of British Studies. 59(4), pp. 793-820. https://doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2020.127
AuthorsWaldmann, Felix
Abstract

This article alleges that two letters attributed to the philosopher David Hume (1711–1776) were forged in the twentieth century. The letters were first published in 1972 and 1973 by Michael Morrisroe, an assistant professor of English in the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle, after which they became monuments of conventional scholarship on Hume's life and writings. Both letters are cited without qualification by scholars of Hume's thought in dozens of publications, including Ernest Campbell Mossner's celebrated Life of David Hume (1980), and John Robertson's entry for Hume in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004). This article reconstructs the history and transmission of Hume's extant letters and attempts to account for why the forgeries published by Morrisroe were accepted as genuine. It makes a systematic case against the authenticity of the letters, and focuses in particular on the question of whether Hume met the Jansenist homme de lettres Noël-Antoine Pluche (1688–1761) and had access to his library, in Reims, in 1734. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of the exposé for modern editorial scholarship and intellectual history.

KeywordsDavid Hume; forgery; Michael Morrisroe; Noël-Antoine Pluche; intellectual history; history of philosophy
Year01 Jan 2020
JournalJournal of British Studies
Journal citation59 (4), pp. 793-820
PublisherCambridge University Press
ISSN0021-9371
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2020.127
Web address (URL)https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-british-studies/article/david-hume-in-chicago-a-twentiethcentury-hoax/CF9254653337DC7A42966CCAF3E0EF12
Open accessOpen access
Research or scholarlyResearch
Page range793-820
Publisher's version
License
File Access Level
Open
Output statusPublished
Publication dates
Online07 Oct 2020
Publication process dates
Deposited18 Nov 2024
Additional information

© The North American Conference on British Studies, 2020.

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the
terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits
unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Place of publicationUnited States
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https://acuresearchbank.acu.edu.au/item/910yz/david-hume-in-chicago-a-twentieth-century-hoax

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