David Hume: Judge him, not me. Please I’m too young to be cancelled

Second, I was in the midst of research when I realized I had forgotten all the fuss about the slavery connections. judge him. Do not judge me. Just the messenger. Please I’m too young to be cancelled.

Also this week we’re going to get to the bottom of breasts and place David Hume’s work on his life. Since you are all familiar with the tenets of his philosophy, I will not go into detail. Or at all.

Suffice it to say that Hume was a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher associated with humanism, skepticism, naturalism, metaphysics and obesity.

He viewed philosophy as the science of human nature and believed that knowledge came solely from experience. That makes him – now all together – “an empiricist”! Correct.

If you think about it, Hume also agrees that human behavior is determined by passions rather than reason. “Reason,” he said, “is and should only be the slave of passions.” Disputed.

Hume’s law, or the is-should problem, denies the possibility of logically deducing what ought to be from what is. I’ll just read that again. Right-oh. I hope that’s all clear. Now for life.

Hume was born in Edinburgh’s Lawnmarket near the Castle in April 1711. His name was actually Home, but he later changed it as it was uncommon in his beloved England, and was still pronounced Hume. Laddie had to turn everything into a problem.

He was the second of two sons of Joseph Hume, a lawyer and laird of Ninewells, a small estate near Chirnside, Berwickshire. His mother, Catherine, was the daughter of Sir David Falconer of Newton, President of the Scottish Court of Cassation.

Fathers are brilliant characters

As is often the case with brilliant men, his father died when David was just two years old and his mother raised the two brothers and their sister alone.

Back then, you could practically enter Embra Yoonie as a child, although David waited until maturity and matriculated around the age of 11. He studied Latin and Greek, but also read widely in history, literature and philosophy, and also dabbled in mathematics and mathematics. Sounds like he hasn’t been bullied enough.

Certainly he would not let his family pressure him into studying law, which he, like all decent taxpayers, found “disgusting.” He never completed his studies, but spent the next few years reading and writing, which rightfully caused him to have a nervous breakdown. Scurvy spots appeared on his fingers, which his doctor diagnosed as “scholar’s disease.” crazy times

He was prescribed “anti-hysteria pills” washed down with half a liter of red wine. Happy Days. He also began eating better, with a particular fondness for port and cheese. And so began the journey to obesity.

Despite minor noble lineage, Hume in 25 had neither income nor occupation. And so he went to Bristol. After a period as a merchant’s clerk, he moved to France where living was cheaper, settling in the sleepy village of La Flèche in Anjou and conversing with the local Jesuits.

We find here that his alleged “atheism” (he was certainly a skeptic and critic, but not the most die-hard denier) thwarted attempts at university or a literary career, although he eventually landed a job as a librarian in Edinburgh of little or no interest no money was paid at all, but at least it meant he didn’t have to buy books.

A curiosity by nature

Hume worked on his first major work, A Treatise of Human Nature, for four years, completing it in 1738 at the age of 28. Although it is now considered one of the most important books in Western philosophy, contemporary critics described it as “abstract and incomprehensible”. phew Then not just me.

In 1745, during the Jacobite risings, Hume was spending time near St Albans tutoring the Marquess of Annandale, who turned out to be insane, and so he began his six-volume history of England, lasting 15 years and over a million Copies covered words, nevertheless it became a bestseller. strange times

In 1746 Hume served as secretary to his cousin, Lieutenant-General James St. Clair, envoy to the courts of Turin and Vienna. He also began another tome, “An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Ken?” But after years of sitting on his ass, he became, in the words of biographer Ernest Mossner, “a man of enormous stature.” .

His wallet soon filled up too. The publication of the aforementioned History of Englandshire between 1754 and 1762 brought him coveted fame (his ‘ruling passion’), ​​and life revived in 1763-65 when he became Secretary of the British Embassy in Paris there. Despite his inelegant girth, the salons (not the hair) opened their doors for him to squeeze through. He was popular with the ladies (he never married) and was also often involved in epistemology.

Eventually, however, he wrote of Parisian life: “I do wish often that the plain roughness of the Poker Club of Edinburgh … corrects and qualifies so much lushness.”

A placard hangs by the statue of 18th-century philosopher David Hume on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile following the Black Lives Matter protest rally on June 7, 2020 in Holyrood Park

I commend it

Right, here’s the part I wasn’t expecting. When Hume returned to Britain in 1766, he encouraged his patron Lord Hertford to invest in slave plantations in the Windward Islands and facilitated the purchase of such a plantation by writing to the French governor of Martinique on behalf of a wine merchant friend.

According to one scholar, Hume’s “views served to strengthen the institution of racial slavery in the late eighteenth century.” Not good.

So I suppose we should now turn to his death, which occurred on 25 August 1776 of colon cancer in what is now St David Street, on the northern edge of Edinburgh’s fashionable New Town.

Top economist Adam Smith later recalled that Hume had dreamed of asking Charon, the ferryman of Hades, to give him a few more years to witness “the demise of some of the prevailing systems of superstition.” He imagined Charon replying, “You loitering scoundrel! Get in the boat immediately!”

David Hume’s grave is in Old Calton Cemetery and his statue is next to a pedestrian crossing on the Royal Mile.

In September 2020, Embra Yoonie’s appallingly ugly David Hume Tower was imaginatively renamed 40 George Square following a student campaign protesting against the philosopher’s offensive nicknames and writings on race.