David Hume’s Humanity

Hume’s situates his philosophy of common life in the broad context of ancient and modern treatments of human capacities. The Treatise contains an explicit discussion “Of the Antient Philosophy” and “Of the Modern Philosophy” (Book 1; Part IV; Sections III and IV, respectively), though his views on both permeate this Part and Book. The elements that concern Hume include how previous philosophers have accounted for the nature of matter, the intelligibility of nature, and explaining how or if people reliably sense matter. The most telling question concerns the reliability of the senses and the tendency of previous philosophers to entertain “skepticism with regard to the senses” (1.IV.II) because that is where human capacities intersect with the broader world. Previous thinkers provided an account of nature that allowed people to depend upon the accuracy of the senses or perhaps not to rely upon them. The previous accounts of first things require a penetration into the hidden recesses of nature and a showing of how people fit into that stream of nature (or do not). These are questions of metaphysics, a word of opprobrium for Hume (see, e.g., EHU 165, T 268). Hume criticizes these previous treatments to reveal the true sphere of human knowledge. He continues the work of “some late philosophers in England, who have begun to put the science of man on a new footing” (T xvii), yet he furthers and radicalizes this work to reveal a footing both less and more sure.

The humane virtues are the proper reaction to the “mixed kind of life” to which nature has consigned human beings. In its tranquility, order, moderation, and gentleness, the commercial polity reflects the fortified temper, softened passions, self-conscious reflections and relatively steady equilibrium central to a happy disposition (cf. E 177n with EPM 256–7). Hume’s History of England shows how the unique achievement of England’s humane constitution arose in history and how the constitution relies on a complex set of mores to arise and sustain itself. No one in the depths of the Middle Ages would have predicted that England, of all places, would lead the world into an era of humanity and liberty. Only when the superstitious edifice of feudalism crumbled did an ethos of humanity, learning, and industry arise. The edifice crumbled in unexpected ways (through enthusiastic religion) as initiated by unexpected people (the Tudors). This chapter outlines the destruction of the feudal order so we can understand the political, economic, and social underpinnings for a humane polity.

It should be clear that I oppose the very old, vulgar view that Hume abandoned philosophy for the study of history and for the pursuit of literary fame. Hume’s philosophic achievement lies in an articulation of the “mixed kind of life” to which human beings are consigned. The human condition is defined by inescapable oppositions between reasonableness and sentimentality, reason and the imagination, the need for action and the need for rest, the particular and the universal, sociality and individuality, and history and nature, among others. The proper political and ethical reaction to the paradoxes and contradictions defining human nature is best found in modern commercial republics, where the virtues of humanity, gentle political authority, and an easy-going tolerance find a home. Modern arrangements provide freedom for people to work out the contradictions in their nature in a manner consistent with their own character and inclinations. Hume has, to a large degree, brought about a de-mystified, disenchanted, moderately skeptical, humanist ethos. The philosophy of common life arises almost of itself in the modern commercial republic, though it sometimes needs to be maintained and restored by humanizing philosophers when excessively rationalist or excessively mystical ways of thinking emerge.