Review of Willie Henderson's The origins of David Hume's economics. London and New York: Routledge, 2010, 228 pp.
The " origins " in the title refers narrowly to the link between Hume's Political discourses (1987 [1752]) and A treatise of human nature (2002 [1739-1740]). As this locution indicates Henderson wants to argue for a unity and continuity in Hume's thinking—hence a detailed discussion of the " Abstract " (of A treatise of human nature) and a chapter on the two However, he argues that notwithstanding this coherence Hume deliberately changed his " textual strategy " and embarked on what Henderson calls a " rhetorical turn " (Henderson 2010, 4, et passim). In the context of this book's own " strategy " the way this argument is executed produces an odd outcome. Henderson is careful to advertise that this is not a book of " advanced scholarship " but is a " general book " intended " to help those new to Hume " (pp. xvi, 20, xv), yet the first third of the book is devoted to a discussion of textual analysis in general and of some passages of Hume in particular. The more general analysis goes on at some length about the various meaning of " summarization " and " selection " , citing in the process some standard histories of economics. It is questionable whether Henderson's intended audience is as concerned as he is with this issue. Henderson's own commitment to textualism is relatively unreflective. There is not here any excursus into Derridean or Foucauldian concerns about " authorship " (merely some occasional secondhand references to post-structuralism) nor is there any acknowledgement of the Cambridge School's and their critics' deliberations on intentionality. This unreflectiveness does reveal itself in some naivety, as when he states " meaning is rarely given in a sentence, being rather constructed within a sweep of sentences in a surrounding discourse " (p. 36). He also does not subscribe to this dictum wholeheartedly since he is able to declare that Hume's admiration for commercial society is exhibited " at sentence level " (p. 89). At the heart of Henderson's textualism is what he calls " close reading " which he