David Hume and 18th-Century British Literature

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25370264
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Literature in English
• Research Institution: Tohoku University
• Principal Investigator: Okochi Sho 東北大学, 文学研究科, 教授 (60194114)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: デイヴッド・ヒューム / 啓蒙主義 / 美学 / 小説の勃興 / 政治経済学 / 政治的保守主義

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study attempted to map political and literary discourses in eighteenth-century Britain in terms of their relation to David Hume’s philosophy. Firstly, the focus is laid on his sentimentalist position that regard “feeling” or “passion” as the most important motivating force of human actions as an integral part of his thought. I clarified that his sentimentalism functions as an ideological principle that supported civil society and market economy formed in eighteenth-century Britain. Further, I considered the process of the formation of “domestic novel” that is closely connected with the ideal of civil society. Lastly, I elucidated the formation of political conservatism of Edmund Burke in term of aesthetic ideology.

Free Research Field

18世紀イギリス思想史・文学、イギリスロマン主義文学