Centre and Circumference: Shelley's Defence of Philosophy

‘The Modern Disciple of the Academy’: Hume, Shelley, and Sir William Drummond

“…The whole picture is framed by Drummond's fallibilism, which itself seems intended both as a standing reproach to the dogmatic style of contemporary Romantic-age British philosophy, and also as a self-conscious harkening back to the late Academy, to Cicero, and to the appropriation of the Academic tradition of mitigated scepticism in Hume's own 'Academical or Sceptical Philosophy' (EHU 12 title). 34 references 5 Scholars who have approached Drummond from an interest in Shelley's intellectual influences include Brett 1931, Pulos 1954, Wasserman 1971, Hoagwood 1984and 1989, Milnes 2004 (Vicario 2007: 189, see also 168, 263 note 40). The notorious immaterialist Drummond is thus unmasked as a closet Epicurean atomist -one who 'titled his work [Academical Questions] to position it in the tradition of the Athenian academy of Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus' (Vicario 2007: 164, my emphasis).…”