Talk:An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals

Information about this edition
Edition:	An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, 1777
Source:	http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/4320
Contributor(s):	Caton, Zhaladshar and others
Level of progress:	Text complete
Notes:
Proofreaders:

Appendices

This resource is missing two of the appendices, as shown on Project Gutenberg. These appendices are titled Of Self Love and Of Some Verbal Disputes. Huz and Buz (talk) 21:12, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi, I would be very cautious about making any sort of assertion based on Gutenberg. They frequently do not provide any details of the actual edition of a work used, they are known to 'improve' the works they transcribe, and also to use multiple editions of works when 'compiling' their transcriptions.

The edition of An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals transcribed here is the first edition of 1751. To quote from A Bibliography of David Hume and of Scottish Philosophy from Francis Hutcheson to Lord Balfour (1966), by Thomas Edmund Jessop, p.22.,

"PRINCIPLES OF MORALS

1751. An enquiry concerning the principles of morals. By David Hume, Esq;. London (pr. for A. Millar). 12mo. 4 ll. (half-title; t-p; contents; errata), 1-253 (verso of 253, “books by the same author”) ; 1 l. (list of books sold by Millar). Price 3s. In some copies sig. L3 (pp. 221 f.) is a cancel, differing from the leaf it replaces by adding at the end of Appendix II a paragraph beginning “We may just observe” and ending “so iniquitous a behaviour”.

Announced in the Gentleman’s Mag., Dec., 1751 (vol. 21, p. 574) and reviewed by [Wm. Rose] in the Monthly Review, London, Jan. 1752 (vol. 6, pp. 1-19).

Written at Ninewells. Hume says of it in the Auto., “Of all my writings incomparably the best. It came unnoticed and unobserved into the world.” The last few pages of his MS. are extant, in the library of the Royal Scty. of Edin.

Intended to replace bk. III of the Treatise [of Human Nature]. Contains the familiar 9 sections, 2 appendices (on moral sentiment, and on justice; that on verbal disputes was not added until the 1764. ed. of Essays & Tr., being transferred from part I of sec. vi; and the one on self-love not until the 1777 ed., in all earlier editions being part i of sec. ii), and the Dialogue."

Hence, the two appendices you refer to were not part of the edition that has been transcribed here. Chrisguise (talk) 07:24, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply. I saw the appendices on this Oxford course syllabus described as "important appendices", and it also links to this website which also contains the extra appendices. I don't know the rules of wikisource, but I feel like this warrants their inclusion in some form, even if they were not in the first edition. Huz and Buz (talk) 16:06, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Wikisource transcribes complete works, not parts or made up ones. The editions containing these two essays should be available and could be uploaded and transcribed. The 1772 edition of listed under Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects contains both of them. Chrisguise (talk) 16:31, 23 May 2024 (UTC)