Elena Yi-Jia Zeng
My doctoral thesis 'The Politics of Belief in David Hume and Enlightenment Scepticism' looks into the history of scepticism from Pierre Bayle to the Kant-Jacobi debate, supervised by Professor Richard Bourke FBA. It investigates how thinkers in this period understood the relationship between faith, science and philosophy. In advancing this perspective, I am particularly interested in the nature and status of belief in Hume’s religion, morality and politics. I argue that Enlightenment scepticism’s mode operates on the principles of reasonableness and justifiability, which, in historical terms, laid the ground for Rawlsian ideas of ‘public reason’. My work overturns the stereotype of scepticism’s negative effects derived from the British idealists’ interpretation, showing that contemporary liberalism has its roots in this sceptical tradition. As my thesis indicates, certain strands of Enlightenment scepticism encouraged a mode of politics that could accommodate disagreement, address people’s credulity, and curtail extreme beliefs.
I was elected as a Postgraduate Member of the Royal Historical Society in 2022. Before Cambridge, I obtained the MA in History of Political Thought and Intellectual History from University College London and Queen Mary University of London with Distinction. My BA dissertation won the best undergraduate research award in Taiwan.
Enlightenment political thought and intellectual history
British and Irish political history c. 1700–present
political epistemology
ethics of belief
'Opinion and Prudence from James Harrington to David Hume', British and Irish Association for Political Thought Conference, Jesus College, University of Cambridge, 4–6 January 2024, Cambridge, UK.
'The Role of Philosophy in Hume’s Critiques of British Imperial Politics', Early Moderns on the Power of Philosophy, University College Dublin, 14–15 October 2022, Dublin, Ireland.
'Hume’s Political Epistemology and the Critiques of Empire', Histories of Knowledge: Political, Historical and Cultural Epistemologies in Intellectual History, ISIH Conference, Università Ca' Foscari, 12-15 September 2022, Venice, Italy.
‘History as the Ethics of Belief: the Case of Hume’s History of England’, Intellectual History Graduate Conference, European University Institute, 7–8 June 2022, Florence, Italy.
'Belief and Action in Hume’s Religion', Naturalizing Religion in the Scottish Enlightenment Conference, organised by the Center for Ethics, University of Antwerp and the Institute for the Study of Scottish Philosophy, 8–10 September 2021, Antwerp, Belgium.
'Adam Ferguson on Political Representation and the Liberty of the British Empire', Oxford Graduate Conference in Political Theory, 26–27 April 2021, online.
'Empire and Liberty in Adam Ferguson's Republicanism', Research Center for Humanities and Social Science, Academia Sinica, 21 August 2020, Taipei, Taiwan.
'Beyond Liberal and Conservative: The Third Way of Reading Hume', Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 13 August 2020, Taipei, Taiwan.
History of Political Thought from c.1700 to c.1890 (Part I Paper 20/POL 8)
States between States: the history of International Political Thought from the Roman Empire to the Early Nineteenth Century (Part II Paper 6)
Contact
Tags & Themes
515 King's College, Cambridge, CB2 1ST
Key publications
Peer-reviewed Journal Articles & Book Reviews
'The Role of Philosophy in Hume's Critique of Empire', International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 31:2 (2023), 136–57. DOI: 10.1080/09672559.2023.2235580.
'Empire and Liberty in Adam Ferguson’s Republicanism', History of European Ideas, 48:7 (2022), 909–29, DOI: 10.1080/01916599.2022.2040045.
‘The Multifaced Hume’, New History, 32:2 (2021), 331–42.
‘The Role of Consent in Locke’s Theory of State’, Historical Inquiry, Journal of National Taiwan University, 66 (2020), 201–36.
‘The Political Ideal of the Enlightenment in the American Revolution’, Intellectual History, 9 (2019), 491–506.
‘The Historical Depth of Ancient and Modern Political Thought: On Melissa Lane’s Greek and Roman Political Ideas’, New History, 30:1 (2019), 167–78.
‘A Review of Alexander Broadie’s A History of Scottish Philosophy’, National Taiwan University Philosophical Review, 56 (2018), 177–202.
Commissioned Article
‘Scepticism from the Pyrrhonian Crisis to Hume‘, Journal of the History of Ideas Blog, 28th July, 2021.
Edited Collection
Guest-editor of the special issue 'David Hume and Political Epistemology', Cosmos and Taxis, 12:1–2 (2024).