Livingston, Donald W.:Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium: Hume's Pathology of Philosophy (PSYCHIATRY, PSYCHOLOGY)
- signed or inscribed book ISBN: 9780226487175
Hardcover
Octavo, 35 letters, 484 manuscript pages, dated 26 October 1884 to 10 January 1885, letters mounted on stubs within a leather bound album, boards lacking, spine badly chipped, lettering o… More...
Octavo, 35 letters, 484 manuscript pages, dated 26 October 1884 to 10 January 1885, letters mounted on stubs within a leather bound album, boards lacking, spine badly chipped, lettering on spine reads "Letters"; text block split, some leaves loose, edges of some letters chipped, several with slight tears, otherwise good, written in ink, in legible hand. Five of the letters are illustrated with cleverly rendered drawings to accompany Noyes' intelligent, lengthy, and astute observations of his travels. The small ink illustrations are of figures, caricatures, architecture, etc., for a total of twenty-eight illustrations. The letters are all signed by Noyes and addressed mainly to his parents, or his mother separately, with one letter to his brother, one to his grandfather, and several to a woman by the name of "Jenny," likely his sister Jane. The letters tend to be written from the various hotels in which Noyes was staying while traveling in Europe, including: Liverpool, Chester, London, Oxford, all in England; a couple of letters written while aboard the S.S. Venetia, which he took from England to Gibraltar; and from hotels in Seville, Cordoba, Granada, Madrid, and Barcelona in Spain, where he spent a lot of time. There are also a number of letters from Marseilles and Nice in Southern France; and Genoa and Florence in Northern Italy. Alexander Dana Noyes (1862-1945) Alexander Dana Noyes was a distinguished American financial columnist born in Montclair, New Jersey on 14 December 1862, the second of four sons and the third of six children born to merchant Charles Horace Noyes and his wife Jane Radcliffe Dana, both of 17th Century New England families. Alexander studied at Amherst College, where he received his A.B. in 1883, he was editor of the college weekly, and he completed his education with several months of European travel. Noyes got his start in journalism with The Commercial Advertiser, where he reluctantly became the paper's Wall Street correspondent in 1884 when the banking house Grant and Moore failed and he happened to be the only reporter in the office not on assignment. Noyes recalls these formative experiences in "The Market Place: Reminiscences of a Financial Editor," a memoir that tends to pay more attention to historically significant financial crises than to autobiographic milestones. When Noyes began work as a financial editor of the New York Tribune in 1891, most financial columns in the popular press were "tout" pieces (writings advertising risk-free investments as insider tips) and agency handouts, meant more to promote certain investments than to illuminate the inner-workings of the market. According to historian Robert Sobel, Noyes was one of the first American journalists "to combine economic analysis and a knowledge of the market in such a way as to interest the general reader." Through his work as a reporter and financial editor for the Tribune and New York Evening Post, Noyes covered the Great Panic of 1891, the 1907 Banker's Panic, and the closure of the stock market in 1914, establishing himself as "an American counterpart to Walter Bagehot [editor of London's The Economist], which is to say that he was read by serious students of the market and had a trans-Atlantic audience." During his career, Noyes also authored several monographs, including "Forty Years of American Finance" (1907) and "The War Period in American Finance" (1926), which would become standard financial histories in university circles. He started writing the monthly "Financial World" feature for Scribner's Magazine in August 1915. Noyes initially used this space in the magazine to discuss the financial problems arising from the outbreak of World War I, but the feature (later known as "The Financial Situation") would continue to run well past the war. In his article "The Speculative Markets," Noyes warns against the belief on Wall Street that America had entered a New Era that "differs so greatly from any in the past that old-fashioned precaution is out of date." In the numerous articles he wrote for Scribner's, Noyes uses a strategy of analogy to describe World War I, using The Seven Years' War, America's Civil War, and the Napoleonic Wars to draw out questions about America's apparent wartime prosperity and the fate of Europe's economy following the war. Several of Noyes' contributions to Scribner's Magazine during the war years were compiled into a book, "Financial Chapters of War." In 1920 Noyes became the financial editor of the New York Times, where he continued to prove himself an adept reader of the market. During his tenure at the Times, Noyes predicted the bull market that would emerge in 1921 and was "one of only a few voices that chose not to sing in the all-bulls choir" the led up to Black Tuesday in 1929. The skepticism of the Times in the months leading up to the Depression strongly contrasts with the outlook of the Wall Street Journal and several other financial publications that failed to realize the danger signs in the market. Noyes remained at the Times until his death in 1945. Sample Quotations: "London, Monday Nov 3 /84Dear Folks,Having finished my breakfast, and making myself as comfortable in my room as the morning fog will permit, I am ready to take an hour or two and scribble off a few pages in time for the Republic, which goes back from Liverpool tomorrow. This time is the best for writing. It would be useless to start out before ten or eleven o'clock to see the city; for London is a lazy place, and doesn't get itself started until pretty well along in the morning. Harry Warren and the other Americans settled here complain more than anything else of the slow living, and the slow manner in which business moves something especially unpleasant to an American businessman Without the guide, I have seen considerable already, though I make a point of never going over more than one great point of interest in a day. Last Thursday I went to the Health Exhibition, which was then open for the last day. As a whole it was rather a bore, consisting mostly of preserved fruit, groceries, mammoth squashes, patent grates and fire places, etc., but there were some more picturesque departments. The most interesting was a representation of a street in old London, where houses were built up and shops arranged in studious imitation of the city before the Great Fire. As a historical work, it was extremely valuable, and was made still more so by the shops, which were occupied by business firms whose men with the costume and implements of the seventeenth century plied their several trades to the great admiration of the nineteenth century public. What was interesting in another way was a double modern house, full-size, one half of which was fitted up as a sanitary house and the other as an "insanitary" house. The object was to exhibit and contrast good and bad arrangements for sewerage, drainage, heat, light, comfort, and ventilation. The insanitary house, through which the visitor first passed, had arsenic wall paper, deficient traps, insufficient ventilation, and all the other modern improvements. The other was an exactly duplicate house, but had all the proper appliances and the contrast was both instructive and interesting. [On] Friday I went to see the Tower of London and on the whole, was rather disappointed. It is really a splendid specimen of mediaeval architecture, but these stupid Englishmen have spoilt the whole effect by building modern brick walls with chimney pots, between the turrets and using them as barracks for the soldiers. The flag of England floating from the White Tower was very grand, but not half so impressive as two or three dozen articles of underclothing waving from a clothes-line attached to the same tower I like my lodging place more every day, and have reason to be satisfied at being placed so pleasantly. The street is quiet, except for an occasional hurdy gurdy or news boy. The latter animal is most distressing here. He hasn't the cheerful shout of a New York boy with his "Nyawk Herrltime Stribyunean World" or even the Boston boy, whose "Morn papes" is a trifle more melancholy. These boys are angry, indignant, in tone. They shout as if they were forced to sell papers for punishment. One came by our place last night with the false news of Gordon's capture. It is impossible to describe the vindictive malice with which he yelled, in a curious rhyming chant: "Pa Par! Tairble slaugh-Tar! Genl Gordon a pris-NAR! Special Edition of the Obser-VAR!" Everything is high in London, especially food. The restaurants are very expensive; indeed, one can't get a first-class table-d'hote dinner under five shillings ($1.25). The things that are generally cheap are hack hire and well, I don't know of anything else that is, except the buses. On one of them a visitor can travel five miles through the city for three pence. They are queer looking objects not at all like a Broadway stage, for they have a pair of steps at the back and seats on top. The conductor or guard, stands on a little platform behind and hangs on by a strap; his duty is to shout out the They are all good drivers, however and have a good deal of the traditional grandeur of the old stage coach driver. The buses look very odd at first, with the crowd on top and a collection of stovepipe hats sticking up like destination of the bus with a view to alluring passenger and as no human being was ever capable of understanding what he says, his usefulness will be apparent. The driver's duties aside from driving, are to hit his horses over the neck, hit all covered wagons with his whip and shout sarcastic remarks to the drivers of all other vehicles. corks in all directions. Their appearance is made still more striking by the flaring advertisements boarded up against the sidesHoping to hear often from you all, I am aff. yours Alex D. Noyes""Hotel de Madrid, SevilleSpain, November 30, 1884Dear Folks, When I was half dressed this morning, and sipping my chocolade in our bedroom, it suddenly dawned upon me that I had neglected you of late; and I determined as soon as I had taken a walk and finished my almuerzo that I would begin a long letter, to pay for the long delay.My excuse for not writing during the past three or four days is valid. I have been travelling nearly all the time. The consequence is, I have seen Spanish scenery and Spanish life about as thoroughly as one can do. All this country is true Spain. Madrid and the north is Parisian; this is Spain and retains in its buildings and customs the peculiarities of centuries ago Let me tell you, then, that Gibraltar is the hardest place to get out of that I ever knew. We came by the P and O boat. Our plan was to go to Tangier and back and then on to Cadiz. Now it rained nearly all the time we were at Gib and the Levanter, the sharp east wind of the Mediterranean, had stirred up the sea. Some of our fellow passengers from England started by the little boat Hercules for Tangier the day after we arrived in Gibraltar. The boat broke one paddle wheel and made the best of its way back to Gibraltar. From that time on, the sea was so rough that no Tangier boat started. There were several ways to get out of Gibraltar. Gregory and his wife and I could get to Cadiz either by steamer from Algeciras or by diligence from the same place. Burroughs was going by steamer from Algeciras to Malaga and so to Barcelona. We decided to leave Gibraltar on Thursday. Then we learned that the sea was too rough for the Cadiz boatFortunately, we had engaged seats on the Friday diligence as the coach was to start at five a.m. Friday we were obliged to spend the night of Thursday in Algeciras. So, at noon Thursday we prepared to go. A little steamer sails three times a day across the bay from Gibraltar to Algeciras. When we were all ready to go we suddenly learned that the bay was too rough, and there was no boat that day from Gib. This is the only conveyance. We thought of chartering a steam yacht, but Senor Carrara wanted two pounds for it, and would not guarantee that the vessel could land at Algeciras in the gale. The only other way to get from Gib to Algeciras was by land around the bay a distance of nearly fifteen miles, along the beach and over very bad roads. There was no alternative; so, we hired a crazy little two wheeled trap like a prison van. This was drawn by a two-mule tandem. Mrs. Gregory and the luggage went in this, with one man in front driving and another riding the leading mule. The three men of the party were in the saddle, Gregory and I riding horses and Burroughs astride of a mule. In such state we left the Spanish lines. The Spanish custom house officers at the Spanish lines beyond Gibraltar began to take down our baggage for examination, but a silver peseta about twenty cents, fixed themAnd here let me tell you one thing, which I do not think is generally known, but which we soon learned to our cost. Baggage is examined by the custom house officials in every city in Spain, no matter if you come direct from another Spanish city. Ours has been overhauled at the lines, San Fernando, Cadiz, and Seville. But a peseta goes a good way with these scoundrels. The roads to Algeciras were bad horrible. Half of the distance was along the beach, and as the tide was high we rode sometimes in two feet of water. The interior roads were all ruts, and there were two rivers to cross by a pontoon bridge. When it began to grow dark we were somewhat anxious, and the last and worst of the way was traversed by moonlight. At last we rode into Algeciras, and such a desolate, deserted place you never saw. A fierce gale blowing from the bay and scarcely a human being could be seen in the streets. We drove to the Hotel Vittoria Marina, facing the bay, and then we saw the inhabitants. In accordance with what we have since found to be the universal custom in Spain, a dozen ragged and dirty cut throats flung themselves on our baggage We have learned now that the only way to do is not to allow an outsider to touch your luggage, unless he is porter of the hotel. They are not satisfied with small fees, and whatever you give them, they invariably demand more. A ruffian in a blue jacket, with a face made for the gallows, hauled our luggage upstairs. Then he came into my room and demanded twenty-five pesetas or five dollars. He was drunk, and refused to take six pence. The hotel was as deserted as the town. I offered the man through a woman who spoke English, the alternative of taking six pence or being kicked down the stairs. He refused and resisted, but the proprietor coming up the ruffian was hustled off. Such a lonely place you never saw. Our steps echoed over the brick floors. The hotel people were in a different part of the house, and in our two big rooms w, 0, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.: Univ of Chicago Pr. New. 1998. Hardcover. 0226487172 .*** FREE UPGRADE to Courier/Priority Shipping Upon Request *** - *** IN STOCK AND IMMEDIATELY AVAILABLE FOR SHIPMENT - 454 p. 6 x 9 inches -- -- DESCRIPTION: The Scottish philosopher David Hume is commonly understood as the original proponent of the "end of philosophy." In this powerful new study, Donald Livingston completely revises our understanding of Hume's thought through his investigation of Hume's distinction between "true" and "false" philosophy. For Hume, false philosophy leads either to melancholy over the groundlessness of common opinion or delirium over transcending it, while true philosophy leads to wisdom. Livingston traces this distinction through all of Hume's writings, providing a systematic pathology of the corrupt philosophical consciousness in history, politics, philosophy, and literature that characterized Hume's own time as well as ours. By demonstrating how a philosophical method can be used to expose the political motivations behind intellectual positions, historical events, and their subsequent interpretations, Livingston revitalizes Hume's thought and reveals its relevance for contemporary dicussions of politics, nationalism, and ideology for the first time. -- TABLE OF CONTENTS: Preface, List of Abbreviations, Pt. 1: Humean Reflections, 1: Is Hume an Empiricist? , 2: The Dialectic of True and False Philosophy; 3: The Origin of the Philosophical Act in Human Nature; 4: The Ancient Philosophy 5: Philosophy and Christendom 6: The Modern Philosophy 7: True Philosophy and the Skeptical Tradition 8: True Philosophy and Civilization 9: False Philosophy and Barbarism 10: English Barbarism: "Wilkes and Liberty!" 11: English Barbarism: "The Poor Infatuated Americans" Pt. 2: Humean Intimations12: Hume and America 13: The Right of Resistance: A Humean Free State versus a Modern Consolidated Leviathan 14: The Right of Resistance: Secession and the Modern State 15: Preserving One's Humanity in the First Philosophic Age + Notes + Index. -- with a bonus offer ., Univ of Chicago Pr, 1998, 6<
