The “Philosophical Death” of David Hume

2,427 words

“Can you show me even one person who sets a price on his time, who knows the worth of a day, who realizes that every day is a day when he is dying? In fact, we are wrong to think that death lies ahead: much of it has passed us by already, for all our past life is in the grip of death.”—Seneca, Epistle 1.2

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David Hume died on August 25, 1776 of a protracted illness, most likely of cancer of the colon. In his autobiography, “My Own Life,” he refers to his physical deterioration in a matter of fact, almost casual manner: “In spring 1775, I was struck with a disorder in my bowels, which at first gave me no alarm, but has since, as I apprehend it, become mortal and incurable. I now reckon upon a speedy dissolution.”

Hume’s “dissolution” was not quite as “speedy” as he had suggested. He lived for six more months after writing that. What we learn from his thoughts of an approaching death is most remarkable as they succinctly capture not only the personality of a man whose life was singularly devoted to philosophy, but also the features of a most admirable nobility of character. Hume was not only an unparalleled intellect and superb literary stylist, but also a man of great friendships, a mentor of talent, a distinguished diplomat, and, in retrospect, the centerpiece of the Scottish Enlightenment. His six volume The History of England, though largely unread today, was highly influential, a masterpiece of philosophical history, a delight to read.

In April 1776, he wrote “My Own Life,” a document of a mere seven or so pages. Yet, for any reader who has traversed the Hume’s corpus of philosophical, historical, and literary work, “My Own Life” is an extraordinary document of introspection in which he makes a candid assessment of his writings and his disappointment with the reception with which they were frequently greeted.

Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise of Human Nature [Hume’s first published work, begun at age 23 and finished when Hume was twenty-eight years old]. It fell dead-born from the press, without reaching such distinction as even to excite a murmur among the zealots. But being naturally of a cheerful and sanguine temper, I very soon recovered the blow, and prosecuted with great ardour my studies in the country.

Note that Hume conjoins its failure to the resilience of his “temper.”

Hume then attempted to make his “dead-born from the press” Treatise more accessible.

I had always entertained a notion, that my want of success in publishing the Treatise of Human Nature, had proceeded more from the manner than the matter, and that I had been guilty of a very usual indiscretion, in going to the press too early. I, therefore, cast the first part of that work anew in the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, which was published while I was at Turin. But this piece was at first little more successful than the Treatise of Human Nature. On my return from Italy, I had the mortification to find all England in a ferment, on account of Dr. Middleton’s Free Enquiry, while my performance was entirely overlooked and neglected. A new edition, which had been published at London of my Essays, moral and political, met not with a much better reception.

Hume made yet again another attempt at making his philosophy known.

In the same year was published at London, my Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals; which, in my own opinion (who ought not to judge on that subject), is of all my writings, historical, philosophical, or literary, incomparably the best”

But, again, he was disappointed: “It came unnoticed and unobserved into the world.”

Hume’s best single piece, in his own estimate, was again a failure.

To all of this, however it is most important to add that in”My Own Life,” in spite of the failure of his epic philosophic work to garner the appropriate the respect and acclaim it would eventually achieve, Hume is at great pains to give the reader a true and complete picture of his character as a philosopher, a picture of equanimity and composure, unperturbed by keen disappointment, detached from criticism and censure.

Hume remained undeterred by the failure of his published writings and pressed on, stressing for the reader the unperturbability of his “natural temper.”

Such is the force of natural temper, that these disappointments made little or no impression on me. I went down in 1749, and lived two years with my brother at his country-house, for my mother was now dead. I there composed the second part of my Essays, which I called Political Discourses, and also my Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, which is another part of my Treatise that I cast anew.

Hume’s persistence would eventually lead to success.

Meanwhile, my bookseller, A. Millar, informed me, that my former publications (all but the unfortunate Treatise) were beginning to be the subject of conversation; that the sale of them was gradually increasing, and that new editions were demanded.

It should be noted here that while Hume’s philosophical and literary circles in Edinburgh were composed of gifted minds capable of the open exchange of controversial ideas, particularly relating to religion, eighteenth-century, Scotland was firmly in the grasp of an austere, version of Jean Calvin’s determinist theology. Hume makes elliptical reference with intended irony to it in “My Own Life”: “Answers by Reverends, and Right Reverends, came out two or three in a year; and I found, by Dr. Warburton’s railing, that the books were beginning to be esteemed in good company.”

Hume’s religious skepticism, as evidenced in his essay “On Miracles,” put him up against the powerful Presbyterian Kirk whose leaders successfully lobbied against Hume for the post of Chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh (Edinburgh Enlightenment & David Hume: The Great Infidel).

In a letter to his friend William Strahan, Hume writes of the commotion his writings had exited among the Scottish clergy:

Did you ever hear of such madness and folly as our clergy have fallen into lately? For my part, I expect that the next Assembly will very solemnly pronounce a sentence of excommunication against me. But I do not apprehend it to be a matter of any consequence. What do you think? (The Letters of David Hume, edited by J.Y.T Greig [New York: Greenland Publishing, 1983], vol. 1, p. 246).

Once again, Hume resorts to his “temper” that keeps him grounded in his work and resistant to rancor and bitterness, enemies of a genuinely philosophical disposition.

However, I had fixed a resolution, which I inflexibly maintained, never to reply to any body; and not being very irascible in my temper, I have easily kept myself clear of all literary squabbles. These symptoms of a rising reputation gave me encouragement, as I was ever more disposed to see the favourable than unfavourable side of things; a turn of mind which it is more happy to possess, than to be born to an estate of ten thousand a year. 

I cannot help but add to the mention of Scotland’s Calvinism, its austerity and dogmatism aside, my enthusiasm for the title of firebrand preacher John Knox’s sermon directed against Catholic Mary Tudor, Queen England and Ireland: “First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regimen of Women.” Perhaps a version of it could be drafted with reflections on the noxious feminism of Hillary Clinton and her ilk that currently reigns in Western politics.

Particularly moving in “My Own Life” is Hume’s equanimity with his approaching death.

I have suffered very little pain from my disorder; and what is more strange, have, notwithstanding the great decline of my person, never suffered a moment’s abatement of my spirits; insomuch, that were I to name the period of my life, which I should most choose to pass over again, I might be tempted to point to this later period. I possess the same ardour as ever in study, and the same gaiety in company. I consider, besides, that a man of sixty­-five, by dying, cuts off only a few years of infirmities; and though I see many symptoms of my literary reputation’s breaking out at last with additional lustre, I knew that I could have but few years to enjoy it. It is difficult to be more detached from life than I am at present.”

Death possessed no terror for Hume and, as he notes, his passion for philosophy remained unabated to the end as well as his enjoyment of the company of his friend.  Near the conclusion of “My Own Life” and the summation of his character he writes:

[T]o conclude historically with my own character. I am, or rather was (for that is the style I must now use in speaking of myself, which emboldens me the more to speak my sentiments); I was, I say, a man of mild dispositions, of command of temper, of an open, social, and cheerful humour, capable of attachment, but little susceptible of enmity, and of great moderation in all my passions.

 This is an extraordinary sentence. For with its switch to pass tense “was,” Hume removes himself from the land of the living and speaks candidly (“emboldens me to speak my sentiments”), as if a ghost from the grave, a final epitaph to affirm his natural goodness of personality and character.

Particularly noteworthy of Hume’s final days was a visit by James Boswell, presumably to pay his respects, but more likely to satisfy a morbid curiosity and test Hume’s equanimity.

Ever tactful, Boswell immediately brought up the subject of the afterlife, asking if there might not be a future state. Hume replied that ‘it was possible that a piece of coal put upon the fire would not burn; and he added that it was a most unreasonable fancy that we should exist for ever’. Boswell persisted, asking if he was not made uneasy by the thought of annihilation, to which Hume responded that he was no more perturbed by the idea of ceasing to exist than by the idea that he had not existed before he was born. What was more, Hume ‘said flatly that the morality of every religion was bad, and … that when he heard a man was religious, he concluded he was a rascal, though he had known some instances of very good men being religious.’ (He died as he lived: David Hume, philosopher and infidel)

When Boswell reported the conversation with Hume to his friend and eventual subject of a famous biography, Samuel Johnson, Johnson retorted: “Sir, if he really thinks so, his perceptions are disturbed; he is mad. If he does not think so, he lies. He may tell you he holds his finger in the flame of a candle, without feeling pain; would you believe him? When he dies, he at least gives up all that he has” (1 Prelude, Hume’s Death).

Of Hume’s sincerity, nobility of character and decency, we have the testimony of his friend Adam Smith. In a visit shortly before Hume’s death he writes: “His cheerfulness was so great, and his conversation and amusements run so much in their usual strain, that, notwithstanding all bad symptoms, many people could not believe he was dying.”

Hume had been reading Lucian’s Dialogues of Dead, and the excuses given to Charon, the mythical ferryman who delivered souls across the river Styx to the land of the dead. In keeping with his character, Hume states no such excuses. Smith writes: “he could not find one [excuse] that fitted him; he had no house to finish, he had no daughter to provide for, he had no enemies upon whom he wished to revenge himself” (Adam Smith’s letter about the death of David Hume).

Smith goes on to add that Hume remarked: “I have done every thing of consequence which I ever meant to do; and I could at no time expect to leave my relations and friends in a better situation than that in which I am now likely to leave them. I therefore have all reason to die contented.”

In this letter eulogizing Hume, Smith wrote:

Thus died our most excellent and never to be forgotten friend; concerning whose philosophical opinions men will, no doubt, judge variously, every one approving or condemning them, according as they happen to coincide or disagree with his own; but concerning whose character and conduct there can scarce be a difference of opinion. His temper, indeed, seemed to be more happily balanced, if I may be allowed such an expression, than that perhaps of any other man I have ever known….   Upon the whole, I have always considered him, both in his lifetime and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit.

In the annals of philosophy, it is difficult to find a more complete and admirable human being than David Hume. It is with the greatest of disgust I add that in the aftermath of the George Floyd riots in the U.S. in 2020, the David Hume Tower in Edinburgh was renamed “40 George Square,” a cowardly capitulation to Black Lives Matter bullying by the Edinburgh University administrators. “An online petition claiming David Hume wrote ‘racist epithets’ and calling for the building to be renamed has been signed more than 1,700 times. The university said Hume’s comments on race, ‘though not uncommon at the time, rightly cause distress today’” (Edinburgh University renames David Hume Tower over ‘racist’ views).

No “distress” allowed. The name of Scotland’s greatest philosopher replaced by that of a street thug who died resisting arrest for yet one more of his many crimes.

One final note on My Own Life that is somewhat of a puzzle to decipher. In the last paragraph Hume writes. “My company was not unacceptable to the young and careless, as well as to the studious and literary; and as I took a particular pleasure in the company of modest women, I had no reason to be displeased with the reception I met with from them” (emphasis added). What to make of this? What “reception” did he meet from them? Hume, like Immanuel Kant, was a lifelong bachelor. In his youth he was named in a paternity suit that apparently came to nothing. Hume was very popular with the blue stockings in their salons in Paris, Le bon David, as he was known in France. Perhaps there is nothing to it beyond what it states. Still, one wonders about the “reception” and the “particular pleasure” he experienced.