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WISE SKEPTIC: A Review/Essay of David Hume's Life & Thoughts.
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WISE SKEPTIC: A Review/Essay of
“The Pursuits of Philosophy
Introduction to the Life and Thought of David Hume”
by Annette C. Baier (2011)
© H. J. Spencer [05November2018] <3,740w>
ABSTRACT
This book is a brief introduction to the life and thought of the major philosopher, David Hume. It only
takes a few hours to read but the rewards are well worth it, as Hume was one of Europe’s earliest
skeptics, who challenged the widely accepted beliefs of his fellow citizens. He is still one of our wisest.
INTRODUCTION
This short book is an expanded retelling of Hume’s own autobiography written in the last year of his
life (1776) by Annette Baier, one of the world’s leading experts on David Hume. Unusually, each
chapter here begins with the appropriate section from the autobiography, leading to quite a bit of
duplication. Baier’s aim in her book is to connect Hume’s life to his radical thoughts, published in only
four books, augmented by his many private letters. Unlike earlier, more academic efforts, this little
book is designed for the general reader, not the experts. The author admits there is little new but
hopefully it is a useful, personal commentary. Baier begins with the surprising admission that although
Hume is viewed as a great philosopher, he saw himself more as a historian. She also admits that Hume
wrote very well, as is not true of most philosophers (a view I readily agree with). His ‘History of
England’ (1754) is filled with the concerns of his moral and political philosophy, so she sees it as
‘applied philosophy’. After a brief nervous breakdown in his youth, Hume had described in a letter to a
physician that the moral philosophy of the Ancients was not based on an understanding of our nature
that had to be the basis of any useful ethics, so his own study of our nature was all along a foundation
for his ‘moral conclusions’. However, Hume could be very scathing, so much so, that his treatment of
Thomas à Becket so infuriated the Catholics that all his books were put on their infamous Banned
books list (better known as the Inquisition’s Index). Ironically, he ended up as a pessimist, at least
about the prospects for the English. As appropriate for his death year, Hume ended his life cheering on
the American rebels, especially his deep admiration for Benjamin Franklin, who had been his personal
guest in Edinburgh 4 years earlier. He was not surprised to find that his final enemies included the
English Tories and Whigs but also the Irish and Welsh but he was disappointed that so too were many
fellow Scotsmen but he consoled himself with the insight that “no man is a prophet in his own country”
plus the fact that he could hold up his head under all this prejudice. Today, the world’s strongest
admirers are in the ‘American Hume Society’. Baier concludes with the hope that her book will spread
Hume’s wisdom to a new wider audience as his hope was that a sound philosophy could diffuse itself
though a whole society; (a wish I strongly applaud).
CHILDHOOD and YOUTH
Hume’s autobiography begins with a disclaimer about vanity in creating such a personal history so he
intends that this be mainly a History of his Writings. Hume was born in Edinburgh in 1711, proud of
his family being a minor branch of the Earl of Home. His mother’s father was the Chief Justice of
Scotland, entitled the President of the College of Justice, Sir David Falconer, later made Lord
Halkerton. However, coming from a line of younger sons, he admits his own family were not “rich”.
Unluckily, his own father died when he was an infant but was very lucky to be raised by a very loving
mother and a caring elder brother and a sister. Later, in his Treatise, he wrote that the strongest love is
the love of parents for their children and he was indeed very fortunate with his mother.
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He was obviously a good student and confesses to being seized at an early age by a passion for
literature that stayed with him all his life. With his studious disposition and family connections, he was
expected to pursue a career in the law but Hume would rather read the Roman greats: Cicero and Virgil.
When Hume was growing up, Scotland was a dour God-fearing nation, so Hume was puzzled by the list
of sins that he was to continuously check in himself, not least being the terrible sin of pride. His later
account of ‘justice’ emphasizes the element of arbitrariness in many social rules, for as the smarter but
younger son, he must have thought about the rules of inheritance. He entered Edinburgh University
when about ten where he learned Latin, a little Greek, logic, ethics and divinity. He was also exposed
to the new natural philosophy theories of Isaac Newton. He soon developed a deep aversion to the Law
as he obsessed on philosophy. At an early age, he was impressed with the reality of empiricism and
rejected the orthodoxies about original sin or the myth of human rationality. There is some suspicion
that his psychosomatic ill health may be connected to his loss of faith during this time. His uncle was a
minister at a local church, where sinners were put in the pillory and heresy trials were still being held.
He admitted that reading the defenses of Christianity by Locke and Clarke undermined rather than
strengthened his own faith. His personal experiences reinforced his conviction that the Christian
religion was a force against, not for a humane morality. His sister and mother were pious believers but
even his mother once described her famous son as “a fine, good-natured creature but uncommon wakeminded.” His mother was implying weak-minded but Hume himself saw it as ‘strength of will’.
Perhaps, this is why Hume had to leave home before he could become a full-time writer?
WRITING THE TREATISE IN FRANCE
Baier actually entitles her second chapter “At a Distance from Relations” to emphasize Hume’s
motives. In his autobiography, Hume admits he tried working for a Bristol merchant for a few months
before he set off for France to continue his studies in a country retreat that had a fine Jesuit library used
by Descartes. He resolved to follow a very frugal life style so as to maintain his independence in the
face of limited financial resources. It took him three years to compose his revolutionary “Treatise on
Human Nature” in Anjou. He returned to London in 1737 to publish his masterpiece, taking a year to
find a publisher. He confesses to his huge disappointment in its largely ignored launch but he soon
recovered because of his self-admitted “cheerful and sanguine temper”.
In contrast to Aristotle’s view of humans as ‘rational animal’ and the Christian theologians obsession
with our sinful passions, Hume offered a wholly secular account of our nature but still with a focus on
our passions, seeing reason as no more than their servant, agreeing with Thomas Hobbes, the English
cynic. Our main concern, he thinks, should be to live well during this life, which he saw (as I do) is all
we have and in which the quality of any person’s life is always entangled with those around us; so our
focus has to be for our lives. Hume wrote his treatise in the form of three books: the first one on our
understanding, one on our passions and one on our morals. All intelligent animals, Hume claims, use
their reason to help them pursue their ends; our human language makes us capable of conversation.
Like most animals, we learn and remember from past experience but unlike other animals (it seems),
we can share our experiences by speech and writing. Like Descartes, he is scathing about the beliefs
we acquire from education that they both see as indoctrination. Hume recommends (as I do) that our
own personal experience is the best teacher. In contrast to Hobbes, who saw fear of Death as man’s
strongest passion, Hume viewed death (but not painful dying) as holding no terror for us with no Hell
awaiting us. Baier suggests that Hume saw himself as a natural rebuttal of Descartes, with greater trust
in our senses, with an explicit rejection of Descartes infamous credo by writing: “I am not now
thinking, nor claiming anything.” As a skeptic, he admits at the conclusion of book one that he found
no account of what he himself is”. This is no surprise, as we now know that our conscious is only a
tiny part of our mental activities (see Memory). Book one is most famous for including Hume’s new
account of “causal inference” as our shared animal ability to learn from our experience, so to expect
the future to exhibit the same regularities of temporal sequence, seen to be displayed in the past.
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This is generally reliable [and does not have to be 100%, as the naive desire]; this is why most animals
have useful memory as none would have evolved if it were too unreliable. He views the link between
cause and effect as simply a human projection; a ‘trick’ of intelligent minds more than how the world
is. It is this linear simplification that most scientists fall into, ignoring the implicit complexity of interrelated reality, as we enforce only simple connections. Reason cannot assure us that the future will be
like the past, in the regularities and frequency displayed – it is by instinct that we take this for granted.
Contra to Leibniz, who proposed that animals only know mere regularities, we theorize connections
(“causes”) that occur across time; Hume challenged the assumption that humans know the ‘cause’ in
‘because’. As Darwin later approved, Hume believed that a solid philosophy must extend from humans
to animals, especially those with similar behaviors. Hume, followed Locke and Berkeley, and built his
world-view on the concept of ‘perceptions’. He separated these into original impressions, which when
processed by our minds, were transformed into ‘ideas’. He saw memory and other beliefs as
intermediate ideas with less ‘vivacity’ than the original impressions. We believe all perceptions are “of”
something, so our sense impressions are seen as related to physical causes. He extended this
perspective to our passions, as examples of our direct experience of the Life Force. Contra Descartes,
Hume saw beliefs not as voluntarily chosen (or selected) but quite involuntary.
The second book of the Treatise discusses our human passions, beginning with his analysis of pride.
He astutely inverts the normal view to: “I am pleased with myself, so everything that is mine must be
pleasing.” He expects most people to have some touch of vanity because he believes we need “to keep
ourselves in humor with ourselves” and, for that, most need the good opinion of others. It is critical to
his psychology that we are sociable creatures, needing others as mirrors of ourselves and as confirmers
of our evaluations. Unlike the common Christian view, Hume sees due pride as a virtue. He moves on
to love and hate; love is taken to be the pleasure in the fine qualities and possessions of selected others.
Family love is based simply on being accustomed to their company, feeling at pleasant ease with them.
He also provides a cynical (male) explanation of ‘amorous passion’ that combines goodwill and esteem
with admiration for the beloved’s beauty merged with lust (“the bodily appetite for generation”). The
major problem for biographers is that almost nothing is known of Hume’s own amorous passions (as he
left no known children) so his own appetite for generation went unsatisfied. Finally, Hume ends this
second book with his analyses of desire, aversion, fear and hope. Desire is for pleasure, while what is
feared is pain. He astutely admits that while we may be quite good at predicting what others will do,
the motives of our own actions are often hidden from us, producing a false sensation of liberty. Baier
sees this second book as Hume’s rebuttal of the puritan Christian moral psychology that Hume had
been raised under; he was convinced that most natural desires are not ‘sinful’.
The third book of the Treatise (“of Morals” and published two years after the first two) is a deeper
examination of the subject of beliefs, especially our belief in our own personal identity. Also, Hume
looks at our approvals, finding that it is a special sympathy-dependent sentiment that decides which
character traits in one another we welcome and approve of; the outcome of this process is our morality
as a ‘catalogue of virtues’. Contra the religious doctrine, this makes morality depend not on God’s
commands but what we ourselves find acceptable and praiseworthy. This view is extended to Hume’s
obsession with “Justice”, which he sees, not as prohibitions, but as a minimal set of Rules enabling our
common interest in a peaceful Social Game. He identifies our ‘limited generosity’ extending our
concern for ourselves to family and friends. This is critical in a world of scarce resources that are
desired by many as personal possessions (private property). Without the widespread acceptance of
these ‘conventions’ we would soon degenerate into permanent violence to seize these goods. Once the
rules of ownership are agreed to, then related rules were evolved to transfer them voluntarily between
the citizens subject to the same conventions. Promises (contracts) arise along with property rights.
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The last social artifice that Hume discusses here is marriage, which he takes to be what enables children
to get the care and protection of both parents, who need to be assured of their partners’ long-term
commitments. Although a mother always knows her children, the father (until recently) had no such
guarantees. This becomes important in societies that transfer accumulated property (particularly land)
between the generations of the same family. As Hume’s perpetual bachelor status confirmed, he was
skeptical about the ongoing persistence of the amorous passions, so that marriage is best built on the
more lasting foundations of common interests and sober friendship. Hume recognized that it was the
long extended childhood that was important for them to learn to speak and learn the customs of their
group: becoming acculturated. Hume regards gentleness as a virtue and cruelty as the most detestable
vice. He believed most people grew up with an intrinsic sense of these behaviors without any need of
Platonic-like ‘definitions’. He offered a long list of public virtues, such as: benevolence, generosity,
gratitude, kindness, courage, modesty, frugality, cheerfulness, patience, and perseverance. He also
added some new ones, such as foresight, wit, eloquence and good-sense. Intelligence was also implied,
as he felt that no one wanted to be thought stupid, adding stupidity to his list of vices. He truly believed
that people had an instinct (involuntary) in these matters and did not need formal training. It was here
that Hume really annoyed his fellow intellectuals (not just theologians) by minimizing the role of logic
and reason in our moral judgments. He points out that intelligence can anticipate the effects of actions
but the decision as to whether such effects are welcome is made by our emotional capacity to feel
pleasure or distress; thus, reinforcing his earlier view that the role of reason is to serve (not control) our
passions. Hume concludes his Treatise with the claim that his version of morals has the advantage of
showing how it arises from a ‘noble source’, namely our capacity for sharing good and ill, through
sympathy and action for the ‘common good’. The logic of this common approach is that human cooperation is a more effective social force for learning from our mutual experiences than the warrior’s
competition and selfishness. Hume anticipated the modern science of psychology but was unaware of
the distinctions between our episodic and declarative memories [see my Memory essay]. It is also our
highly personalized, time-ordered episodic memory that provides our sense of personal identity.
Hume was one of the first of the modern philosophers to base his account of human activity on purely
naturalistic grounds. His religious enemies certainly saw his threat to their old religious beliefs; this
was demonstrated when his application in 1745 for the professorship in moral philosophy at Edinburgh
University was blocked on the grounds of his “atheism’. Unfortunately, he was too far ahead of his
time, so most of his early readers found his abstract speculations on human nature were too cold and
“rational”. The Treatise has grown in respect over time, so (Darwin’s ‘bulldog’) T. H. Huxley hailed it
as a truly revolutionary account of our nature and its relation to that of other animals. Huxley wrote
that Hume’s Treatise (written before he was 25) “is probably the most remarkable philosophical work,
both intrinsically and in its effects on the course of thought, that has ever been written.”
AFTER THE TREATISE
In his thirties, Hume decided he needed to write better-selling books, so in 1742 he published a set of
essays with the collective title: “Essays: Moral, Political and Literary”. Some of the most popular were
the four essays portraying four types of temperament exhibited by philosophers, who claimed to be
Platonists, Epicureans, Stoics or Skeptics. Not surprisingly, the last and longest (and most revealing),
being more auto-biographical, is his description of philosophical skeptics. In 1745, Hume got a letter
from the Marquis of Annandale offering the in-house tutorship of this young but mentally unstable
nobleman for one year. This was a tough year but alleviated by ever-welcome cash. Perhaps, Hume’s
book sales still continued to disappoint him because by 1748 he was retained as secretary to his distant
cousin, General St. Clair with whom he spent two years on a military embassy at the end of the War of
the Austrian Succession, implementing the peace terms agreed to in Vienna and Turin. He must have
pleased his master, as he returned from his army service a little richer (almost a thousand pounds).
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In 1749, Hume was living with his brother, where he wrote the second part of his essays that he called
“Political Discourses”, which were successfully published in 1752 in his new home city of Edinburgh.
A diverse range of subjects were analyzed critically in this essay, including luxury, government, the
British political party system, the Protestant Succession and ‘remarkable customs’. In addition, he was
one of the first to write on economics with discussions on money, credit, interest, trade and taxes; all of
these had a major influence on his friend, Adam Smith. In his remarkable customs, Hume criticized the
old tradition of the Royal Navy to seize men (“press ganging”) for service in its warships. It is little
known today, but this was one of the major reasons for the American colonies to start their rebellion: it
did not stop until 1814. Hume was a natural liberal as he often criticized the ancient practice of slavery.
HUME AS HISTORIAN
Although Hume is best known as a first-rank philosopher, he developed a well-deserved reputation as
an independent historian. This phase of his life began in 1752, when he became the (unpaid) librarian
of the Scottish Legal Society (‘Faculty of Advocates’); this gave him unlimited, free access to one of
the best libraries in the U.K. This generated the idea of writing A History of England but he was
nervous about spanning 1700 years in one book, so decided to work backwards, beginning like a ‘good
Scot’, with the reign of James I in 1603, when a deep political/religious divide started in the United
Kingdom. Next he planned to cover the preceding Tudor period and then onto the medieval period.
Viewing himself as an independent, he anticipated great success but when published in 1754, he
confessed he was more than “miserably disappointed” being greeted with detestation by the “English,
Scotch, Irish: both Whig and Tory, churchmen and freethinkers, who he felt were all united because of
Hume’s explicit sympathy for the fate of Charles I in 1649.” In fact, his publisher said it only sold 45
copies in its first year of sales. He was surprised that only two of his rare supporters were the
Archbishops of England and Ireland. Plowing onwards, he wrote one his most controversial essays:
“Natural History of Religion”. In spite of everything, Hume published the second volume of his
History from the execution of Charles I up to the Whig (Anti-Royalist) Revolution in 1688 when the
last Stuart (James II) resigned. This was better received by the winning Whigs, who picked the
compliant William of Orange as next king, who was much more co-operative with the new, powerful
business class. Encouraged, in 1759 Hume had his third volume published covering the history of the
Tudor dynasty; upsetting many with his open critique of “Good Queen Bess”. He wrapped up this
massive project in 1761, covering the periods from the Roman invasion in 43AD to Henry VII; the
whole project helped Hume to achieve his personal objective of “Understanding the Present”. One of
the ironies of history was having all his writings put on the banned Catholic Index after this History
was translated into Italian. Historians now admit that Hume was the first to describe the social progress
of peoples as well as the traditional narrative of events. Ultimately, Hume was delighted to see
sufficient sales revenues from his writings to retire comfortably to Scotland’s capital: Edinburgh.
HUME’S FINAL YEARS
Ironically, in 1763, Hume was invited to become the secretary to the English Ambassador in Paris, then
followed by eleven months as an Undersecretary of State in London; eventually in 1769 returning to
Scotland, much wealthier with a large government pension. While in France he was greeted warmly,
even having to reject amorous advances from the king’s mistress. His last seven years were satisfactory
but his health deteriorated in 1775 with perhaps stomach cancer. Never-the-less, he finally claimed that
even this did not diminish his usual positive attitude and he still continued to write and study; enjoying
conversations and real friendships, including those of ‘modest women’ – young and old. Some wellmeaning Christians unsuccessfully tried to get him to die a Christian, as news of his fatal illness soon
became well known. Hume was not afraid of death (like any real philosopher) and logically saw his
imminent demise as “cutting off a few years of infirmities”. Fortunately, he died peacefully in his own
bed, after making some welcome financial additions in his will for his nephews, returning the favor
their father had shown him many years before. What an admirable, inspiring (and fortunate) life !!
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