 Welcome to Free Thoughts from Libertarianism.org and the Cato Institute. I'm Aaron Powell. And I'm Matthew Feeney. And joining us today is Thomas Merrill. He's Associate Professor of Government and Associate Director of the Political Theory Institute at American University. He's also author of the new book, Hume and the Politics of Enlightenment from Cambridge University Press. So a couple of years back, the philosophy podcast, Philosophy Bites, did a episode where they had a bunch of their guests, I mean, I'm guessing 50, 60, 70 of them, just briefly say who their favorite philosopher was. And these were all academic philosophers. And the two front runners by an enormous margin. I tried to look up the tally this morning, but couldn't find one. So I'm relying on recollection. But the two front runners were Aristotle and then David Hume. And I think Hume probably edged out Aristotle. So maybe we start with – and we're going to get into the specifics of Hume's thought and his biography and all that. But what is it about him that makes him this popular? Well, I think Hume exemplifies a certain kind of skeptical spirit that speaks to a lot of people who get interested in philosophy. And I think that's probably the most important thing for the fact that you mentioned. I mean, I think in terms of politics, I mean, he's a gigantically influential person on things that people at Cato care about. I mean, he has a big influence on the American founding. He's – when James Madison sits down to write Federalist 10, he has Hume's essays by his hand. And there's a pretty close connection that you can draw between Hume and Madison and therefore the rest of the American founding, Hamilton in particular. Also he's Adam Smith's best friend. So he's right there at the origins of what we like to think of as classical liberalism or commercial republicanism. So I think those two things are the reason why people think Hume is important. And he was he exactly? I mean, very influential in the American founding, but he was a Scottish originally? Yes. Right. So he was a Scottish philosopher. I'm not sure that anybody ever has philosophers of job title. He actually has a bunch of different jobs including being – he took care of a crazy guy for a while. He was a librarian and he was – and eventually he's an author who publishes lots of books and is able to live off his royalties. But he's born in 1711 and he dies in 1776. He writes one book, Threes of Human Nature, this gigantic failure and then tries again. It's a good lesson for all of us authors. And eventually becomes an extremely popular – his history of England is one of the major bestsellers in the 18th century and a very important work of political theory. And what was his, I suppose, philosophical project? Why are philosophers interested in him? What's his – Well, I would say in the 20th century philosophers interested in him because they liked the empiricism and the skepticism. I would say in his time he's not known for that so much as he is known for really – what I think was the first generation of classical liberalism or what scholars sometimes call commercial republicanism. So I think it's in that mode as a political educator or as a person who's talking about ideas and trying to justify what really is in the mid-18th century a radical new regime that that's why he's important from a sort of a political moral point of view. We could talk about the 20th century and why philosophers like him if you want. But I think just from the political point of view that's the main thing. So what do we mean by – I mean he's known as a skeptic. So what do we mean by that? What was he responding to and what did the skepticism look like? Well, so the skepticism – this is a way that the most complicated topic in Hume, he gives us – in his treatise he gives us a kind of autobiographical description of that he understands himself to be a philosopher who wants to know what's the truth about why some things cause other things. And he gets to a point when he realizes in order to answer that question, in order to explain why science explains the world, he's got to have some answer to the question of what the ultimate cause is. Science doesn't have that and Hume doesn't have that and I'm not sure that anybody else really does either. And he presents it almost as though he has an existential crisis, right, that there's this kind of like, oh my goodness, I don't know, why does the sun rise tomorrow? How do I know that? And I think a lot of – many, many philosophers have had that kind of experience and recognize that as perhaps not inspiring but more honest than this kind of story that you might get from Aristotle. But one of the things that I argue in the book is that that's not just a personal thing for Hume that he sees this – he's sort of telling this story as it were as kind of a political parable. He sees that in European history that it's not just him that has been interested in these questions about the ultimate cause but that in medieval times this is what he calls superstition that people come up with these accounts of what the ultimate cause is. And then they try to rule in politics on the basis of that. But if, as seems to be the case, nobody has kind of a subtle answer to that, the political consequence of trying to make your philosophy in the grandest sense the basis for politics means religious warfare, nonstop religious warfare, which is really the political story of Europe between 1500 and 1700. So his skepticism is I think an attempt to try to recognize first of all that that's insanity. This is horrible and many, many people die without I think giving up on the idea that somehow those questions are questions that we can't stop asking that there's some part of the human spirit that in Plato's image wants to be outside of the cave and that Hume knows very well. And so I think his skepticism when he talks about it in the treatise and in the essay says it's really an attempt to somehow do justice to both of those truths that we are beings that want to know the truth about the world but we're also beings that need a certain amount of political sanity and want to be down to earth and not go off in crazy religious crusades or something like that. So is this related to, this is probably his most famous idea is the problem of induction. Is this, is that related to the skepticism? Absolutely. What is that? So the problem of induction is how do you know that causes produce effects and so when we start reasoning inductively about the world we say, you know, well what causes or tuberculosis or something and you go out and you try to figure out what the cause is and as a good empirical scientist. And that makes a lot of sense and it's tremendously powerful and you know there's no doubt that our entire world has been transformed by it but when you start asking what's the, why do we think that causes actually produce effects and if you turn the inductive process on to itself then you sort of have to look for what's the evidence that you know the world is a rational place and there is no evidence as Hume's most basic point and so that's kind of a problem right? Yeah so that's the... Seems like a rather large one. It's a rather large one. Yep. That's right. Yeah. And I think that Hume would say you have to sort of face up to that. You can't just try to like push that into a corner and forget about it but you also don't want to keep you from trying to figure out more in sort of a piecemeal way that you can about the world that we live in. So that's his I suppose epistemology and sitting here in Washington in the Cato Institute we spent a bit more time worrying about politics which you've just written a book about and so given Hume's conception of how we know things and how people are what was he thinking about politically especially given that Hobbes before him had written a very influential book called The Leviathan. So what was Hobbes sorry excuse me what was Hume's politics and his attitudes towards that? So I think the scholarly term for Hume's politics is commercial republicanism. What that means in the first instance is the political good for Hume is individual liberty under law. It's not just individual liberty because that would be anarchy and strong people beating up weak people but on the other hand it is having a kind of protected space for individuals to lead their lives in the way that they see fit. So I think of Hume and really Hume and Monoski would almost exactly the same time I think from different points of view arrive at the same basic position that what you want out of a government is protection from violence but also protection from arbitrary power and that means you want a regime that has rule of law as the most important thing and you want a regime that is able to back that up. So when he thinks about individual liberty I think today we often think about it as democracy that you get to have your say in politics and Hume's view is more I want to have a government that's strong enough to protect me but that is not going to come and do bad things to me basically. So how does he fit into the group of philosophers that we might call the social contract theorists who were also operating in I suppose similar sort of time period? So yeah. Well around then. So Hume is in some ways very close to someone like Locke but I would say there's a sort of a family quarrel between the two. Hume has got famous criticisms the whole idea of the social contract, the idea that somehow there was this moment when everyone comes together and agrees and Hume thinks that historically that's false and if you say that the only legitimate regimes are ones in which everyone gave explicit consent then that's very difficult to actually have happen and that undermines the regimes that we actually have without sort of a clear better alternative and so Hume is quite harsh on the idea of the original contract but I think you have to you know so that sometimes people say well Locke is the liberal and Hume is the conservative but I think it's more complicated than that because Hume also he says look the contractarians the effective truth of contractarianism is if the government is screwing you over you have a right to rebel and Hume definitely agrees with that that it's he thinks maybe we shouldn't talk about it as much as Locke or Jefferson or something like that. It's politically dangerous but it's also pretty clearly a truth for Hume that when the government is oppressing people people are going to push back. So it's kind of a mixed bag it's wrong in the theory but right on the practice I guess would be one way of saying it. He was he was a bit more reserved in his willingness to embrace revolution than say Locke like Locke you know as soon as the government is here to do these things the government stops doing these things you need to overthrow it and make a better one right but Hume seems to think like no as long as the government is largely working or isn't too awful then you have an obligation to support it is that a fair or obligation is a tricky word. I think the difference is that Locke thinks you know if you're going to have a revolution you have to you know the people are naturally conservative and so you have to really talk them up into it so you have to go way on the other end of you know let's you know go get your guns and Hume thinks it's much more fragile that political order can be destroyed pretty easily and he's thinking of you know the English Civil War and things like that but so here's an example of the difference between of how Hume treats the right of rebellion in the history of England he tells the story about Charles I who is executed by the parliamentarians and in general Hume is pretty clearly on the side of the parliamentarians that he thinks this is sort of the way that the right regime should be a representative democracy that protects property. Charles I gets executed and Hume tells this very you know it's this sort of tragic story of this guy who couldn't somehow figure out how to live with the the new world that he was in and then Hume after telling the story he says oh and by the way if there was ever a truth that you should hide from the people it's the idea that you can ever legitimately oppose your monarch and maybe even kill him so never ever talk about this in public okay and which is sort of funny I mean the history of England is like the most read history in British right and so this and then he goes on for three pages to talk about all the cases in which you might do exactly that right so it's a very weird kind of dance that he does that on the one hand don't talk about this but I am talking about this right this kind of a performative contradiction my own senses that he's playing with us that it's kind of a joke right that he knows that you're gonna see through that he's that he doesn't really keep it a secret but he's trying to give you kind of a lesson like exemplify how to handle it that it this is a very sensitive thing that you shouldn't just you know tell people go have a rebellion over every small thing but you want to sort of preserve it as a possibility over the long run this saying like I guess not saying what he's really saying or what he wants to say seems to be a theme throughout his life though I mean so we get with the the treatise there are many chapters that were cut from the original yes right and his castrated of its noblest parts his work on I mean he was using atheist right yes and he kind of hid that his work on religion was published after his death was this I mean how much did this kind of play into the so obviously his work on religion atheism we had to cut out because it would have been bad for him but these other ideas how much did that sense of like people don't like what I'm gonna say play into maybe how he colored I think he's I mean I think a lot of the great philosophers are very self-conscious about how they say things in public and I think that's that's an important theme that you have to keep in mind it should also be said so this thing we just talked about induction I mean that is in a way the religious question without talking about religion because it is that's that that's the thing behind it what's the ultimate cause or you know what is God I guess would be the one way of saying it yeah I mean you know hide certain things he says it's category of its nobles parts but many many people were not fooled I mean Hume tried to get a job as a professor at the University of Edinburgh and fails because everyone says he's an atheist so you know in some ways he's not so good at that right and if you really if you really want to keep a secret that you would just not say anything but I think Hume both wants to be discreet but also to say what he really thinks so I think it's yeah I'm not sure if answer your question so your mention of Edinburgh remind me of another Scott that played a big role in Hume's life which Adam Smith right who think a lot about here at the Cato Institute so what was what was their relationship they were friends but then also perhaps more importantly what was that influence on one another okay so human Smith are best friends and they have a lot in common Hume is the elder by I think 11 years I guess from intellectual point of view Hume writes in the essays he and right around late 1740s early 1750s writes a whole series of essays about commerce that you might think of as kind of sketch for the kind of arguments you're going to see in wealth of nations wealth of nations is not published until 1776 so you're really talking about 25 years later and wealth of nations is the much more sophisticated fully worked out version of those arguments but I would say that yeah that what we think of as the arguments for commerce really come out of that milieu I mean I would say it's really Montesquieu in France and the spirit of laws give some version of this Hume gives a version of this and then Adam Smith gives you the great wealth of nations but they did agree I mean correct me if I'm wrong but it's I seem to remember that that Hume is like Smith thought commerce was a good thing that it helped perfect perfected or helped them people improve their life yes and depressingly I think I mean so Hume dies in 1776 which is the year of the wealth of nations is correct yes and he did read it I think but the I know that there was a letter written where he brings up some issue with I think the pricing system although he's a fan of the book he says he has some calls with shame I think we don't know his in-depth criticisms but does this attitude towards commerce come from some sort of deeper philosophical foundation where does that come from yeah so I would say so if you were to Hume thinks government government's job is to basically let you live your life and for that you need a regime that supports rule of law but it's not enough just to have like a constitution that says we're gonna have rule of law right you know what Madison would call parchment barriers that it has to be the regime has to be rooted in a group of people who are actually willing to support and stand up for the rule of law so when Hume looks at the the history of England between 1500 and his time the big sociological change is what we now call rise in the middle class and Hume is really the guy who first kind of puts this on the map as an intellectual matter he's and and he says commerce is good because it allows people who were previously serves to basically get off the plantation and to become artisans and manufacturers and live in cities and that they start to see themselves differently and so from his point of view they're really the sociological the middle class is a sociological basis for regime that's going to protect individual liberty so it's good politically it's better for them because they are no longer under some you know feudal lords thumb and they can live their own lives which might not be lives like Hume's they're not going to be philosophers right but I think the most important reason is really just the support of a regime that supports rule of law that's the thing that that he thinks it's ultimately that it's a good thing. So behind all of this is Hume's moral theory which he also I mean I understand so Adam Smith has his theory of moral sentiments and Hume is often sees also a moral sentiments guy yes and also gets I mean today in kind of the modern virtue ethics tradition he's seen as part of that as well. So how what is his what is his underlying moral theory look like and how does it play into this you know we need to base our morals on something but this problem of induction makes it awfully hard to find the floor figure out where to start. Yeah so that's a good question. I mean Hume is a skeptic and I think you know people scholars today want to go back and find in moral sentiment theory kind of a new foundation for morality. I'm not so sure that that's what Hume understands himself to be. I think he thinks he thinks human beings are moralizing animals so they can't stop having moral opinions of praise or blame like this is right or wrong. That's quite a different thing than saying that they always act morally right and he's and you know Hume is there's a lot of irony he says you know the best regimes the freest regimes so republics are often the worst for the provinces because people in the regime it's really good for them but when they conquer another regime they're perfectly willing to do all kinds of awful things and so I think for him the question is less can we establish the one true morality than it is thinking sort of prudently about what are our actual interests and so he's less on the sort of moralizing telling people how to live kind of side of things than he is on. Well if we see things in a very clear minded empirical point of view we'll realize that it's actually in our interest to have a regime that protects people's property rights no matter who they are and you know I can't have my I can't expect that my rights are going to be protected unless we have a regime that's protecting everyone's rights and so it's that kind of self interest rightly understood I think is would be a better description of Hume's moral stance than some highfalutin here's the you know universal principle that solves everything. So does this then depend on the people's intuitions like if is it is it kind of the state and the rules of justice and what the state ought to be doing have a conventional direction to them because if so you're depending on this group of people saying look I have a set of interests and these interests are going to be furthered by political liberty of this kind and having a state that protects these things but we can see broad differences and say cultures between what they value and so would the ideal political system or would Hume's system look different or fall apart in say places that weren't 18th century England. Okay so that's a tough question Hume thinks if you take an unvarnished look at what the human condition is that we want to better our conditions and he thinks that that is kind of an elemental truth that can be hidden by all kinds of crazy cultural things but that is you know part of just what it means to be a human being. He definitely doesn't think that England should go around trying to tell everyone else that they should be just like England or trying to conquer them into into being liberal democracies or anything like that but I think he thinks if you once you break the spell of religion as the sort of glue that holds society together and people start thinking honestly about what their interests are they will more or less come around to seeing that something like a regime of rule of laws is really the way to go but it's his arguments are always more on here's what your interest is and this is why it leads to this kind of regime. I guess one way that I think about this when he presents his political scientist he presents himself as a political scientist more than as a moral philosopher. Okay I think that's an important thing to say and his main source we read the essays when he explains his political science like what's the source well it's all Machiavelli like explicitly it's Machiavelli and I think that's that's an important truth that that's he he thinks realism is a better basis for a solid regime and for people's commitment to the regime then then it is talking about moral sentiments so. Well your question Aaron made me think I mean the fact that yeah maybe huma applicable to 18 century England but we started the discussion by talking about the American founding and why what was it exactly that that made him so attractive to figures like Madison Hamilton or or Jefferson. Is it this the the role of government exactly or yeah. Yeah so it's not Jefferson Jefferson. But yeah in Hume's political science is a political science that starts from the proposition that you can't expect people you can't expect rulers to do the right thing just because they're nice guys that you need to set up institutions that are somehow going to think he says make it the interest even of bad men to preserve the Constitution and preserve the rule of law. So yeah I mean you could think of Hume is the place where Machiavelli insights enter the constitutional tradition that you want to design institutions that ambition is going to check ambition in the phrase of Federalist 51. Everything that you see I would say in Federalist 10 and Federalist 51 are it's not just Hume it's there are lots of other people but that's the general spirit of Hume in constitutionalism. We want to design institutions they're going to build competition into the institution so that people are sort of more likely to do the things that we want them to do rather than the things that you know just colonizing everybody else is they're likely to do. Yeah. Why did Jefferson hate you? So well it's a complicated story. It's you know so the American founder split as you know after the Federalist Papers and there's a big fight between Hamilton on the one side and Jefferson and Madison on the other and I think so after 1800 Jefferson writes many many letters maybe a dozen letters saying that Hume is a really awful person. I think and there's one letter in which he says something like Hume has done more to undermine the rights of man in Europe than all the troops of Napoleon's armies and I think the easy answer is that he sees Hume as he's associated team with Hamilton and there's this residual bitterness over this titanic battle over what the Constitution means in the 1790s but I think there's I think Jefferson in my own sense is Jefferson is kind of an enthusiast that he he thinks if you're on the more if you're morally correct than everything you do is going to be the right thing and Hume is much more of a skeptic that Hume doesn't think that at the end of the day that if you have majority rule that majorities are going to do the right thing and so I think there's just a different kind of disposition that you know Jefferson I think Hume would say Jefferson is more of an ideologue and that Hume is more of a disillusioned realist or something like that. Is that willingness to or that embrace of kind of the messiness like that we can't have these perfect systems that we apply but that we've kind of got to work with. Is that part of the distinction between like you mentioned he thought of himself more as a political scientist than a political philosopher. Is that part of that difference or is what does it what does it mean to say he's more of a political scientist than a political philosopher. So I wouldn't say I wouldn't make the contrast between political science and political philosophy. I would say political science versus moral philosophy. And I think that it goes back to the kind of the insight that you can't preaching is not going to get you anywhere getting people to do what you think is the right thing that you need somehow to speak to their interests rather than to because morality is what we all say in public right but oftentimes we when we get the chance we don't do we don't do that and this is I think when he makes that that line about republics being the worst for their provinces right when when there's no check on your power you are going to act like a tyrant and he thinks that's true about everyone including maybe himself. So I think he he always thinks you know you have to somehow start by speaking to where people are rather than where you want them to be and so I'll give you an example that goes back to the commerce thing when he makes his case for commerce he starts by asking by taking the point of view of the sovereign right the sovereign is is the guy who's going to make the choice let's say the king of England and he says to the king of England he says okay you want to increase your power what's the best way that you can do that well maybe you would want to do that by going back to ancient sparta and making sure that everyone's devoted to the cause right and having everyone on the same team and then you can all you know have this army that you're going to send out and beat your enemies but if you think about that's actually not the right way to increase your power because it's going to be much better if you say to the people okay you can go out and benefit yourself by engaging in commerce you're going to become richer and he says sort of like this sneaky advice to the sovereign so they're going to get richer and richer and then when you need them when you need an army you can always come and take their stuff and force them to an end of the army you have a much stronger army because they're basically they're going to think that they're working for themselves when they're actually working for you right and so it's a very Machiavellian kind of realpolitik if you want to have a strong country you should allow commerce you should allow the freedom of commerce because the country is going to be richer and then you have a stronger army I think humans basically write about that okay so that sounds very Machiavellian like there's no morality it's just all realpolitik but then the thing that I think is really striking and this is the other side of the story that people sometimes fail to note right is that as humans essays go on becomes clear what what happens when the sovereign allows commerce to proceed well you're going to get this rising middle class the middle class is going to become stronger and stronger and more and more people are going to be part of it and then there's they're going to start to see themselves as political actors and they're going to say hey wait a minute we're like a big part of the society we want representation in parliament and this is basically the story of England between 1500 and 1700 right is that the sovereigns right the Tudor Kings basically allow commerce to go and they even while they're killing off all the aristocrats and but what what's the the ultimate outcome well eventually the middle class rises up and kills the king right so and I think he knows that in his audience knows that and this advice that he gives to the sovereign that looks very realpolitik is it's sort of like a poison poison apple right you the sovereign has to do it it's in his interest to allow commerce to move proceed but over time over generations it's also going to lead to the undermining of his own regime and eventually right so Charles the first is going to have his head cut off right so I think that's that's an example so if you think about it Hume's advice to the sovereign allow people to think they're working in their own self-interest and it's going to be down to your benefit actually describes the advice that he gives to the sovereign himself he says to the sovereign do what you think is in your self-interest and it's going to have this long-term effect that supports free governments and is actually opposed to absolute monarchy that's an example of what I would think of it's the Hume sort of MO in trying to you know support political freedom and rule of law and that kind of stuff so then what did the political classes think of Hume at the time did I mean was he expressing what was in the zeitgeist or was he going against the grain did they have do we know what sort of opinion they had of his political philosophy yes that's a good question I mean lots of people think that Hume is dangerous right like he's you know they they I mean he has this reputation as an atheist or as a hobsist or something like that and I'm not sure you know what the ruling classes of Great Britain in 1765 thought about this I mean I would just say you know in a way I mean Hume's legacy is are the Americans right in the whole discussion about you know the battle between Jefferson and Madison on the one side and Hamilton on the other right that's that's the place where Hume's influence really shows itself and I would say Hamilton in a way says we need more commerce we need less agriculture and that's that's one interpretation of what the mess Hume's message is right so I would see Hume sort of on both sides of the American struggle but that's that's where I would see the the main influence so I want to ask a question about the English Civil War so it seems interesting to me that so we have Charles the first who seems to be a monarch who didn't follow Hume's ideal I guess advice and but then what was Hume's attitude then on republicanism because it seems hard to square Hume's attitudes if I mean am I wrong in thinking that he was skeptical of republics and and you know okay with monarchy under certain circumstances because I unless I'm wrong he was he seemed to think that perhaps reluctantly that the execution of Charles the first was or the outcome of the English Civil War was the right one or am I wrong about that I'm trying so it's been a while since I thought about it it's a complicated question Hume is on the side of the parliament so it's a long battle between parliament and the Stuart Kings not just Charles it's also his dad and Charles's father James the first hat was you know representative of the divine right of Kings theory and Hume thinks that that's crazy and that that is you know all in the long run a really bad thing and so he's on the side of the parliament I would say through the 1620s all the way up to the beginning of the English Civil War but you know look I mean there there aren't and final analysis there are no good guys in the conversation right so once the parliament overthrows the king they kind of go crazy right they can't restrain themselves and I would say that you know the for Hume Charles the first the person may be not so important but that somehow the institution represents some sense of constitutionalism right that we're all on the same team and we're going to allow ourselves to be bound by whatever the rules of the game are right now and once that's undermined the the parliament can't can't get anyone to obey its its orders right and so the rest of stories is the important part right that parliament kills the king and then parliament is immediately overthrown by the army which is a bunch of religious fanatics and and then you have ten years of rule of dictatorship and Hume says look you know in the grand scheme of things would be much better to have a republic with a rule of law rather than to have a dictator but under the circumstances in which you've undermined any sense of common belonging right dictatorship may have been the only regime that was possible in England in 1650 that doesn't mean that we like it but it's it's that's just kind of the way that it is so I think that Hume thinks you know it's better to have a regime where parliament is the main thing and you've got a king that somehow represents the nation as a whole but once you've done away with the king you have this long period between 1650 and really 1688 that's one long sort of the civil war as a cold war right with some hot moments but it takes a long time to build up that sense of trust that you really need in order to have a regime that that can rule by rule of law yeah how well so Hume has obviously in philosophy has had an enormous influence yeah but in political science I mean one of the risks of being super empirical in your work is that as we learn more over time your conclusions can look wrong because it turns out we have better data so how well has his as Hume as the political scientist held up over the years well as Hume as the political scientist well I would say pretty well I mean I would say I would say maybe the most important point is that Hume doesn't say my empirical results are the only thing or the most important thing right the most important thing is a certain kind of skeptical empirical spirit attitude towards politics like the stance and so even if the particular results are wrong that you're still exemplifying a certain kind of stance okay so that part I think is still is still strong but you know look I mean it was he so wrong that regimes that are devoted to allowing individuals to lead their lives way they see fit are you know better on the whole than other kinds of regimes that doesn't seem wrong is he wrong that we need to have separation of powers and a certain kind of competition between different branches of government in order to keep any one government any one part from becoming tyrannical that doesn't seem wrong is he wrong that in order to have these kinds of regimes you need to have a kind of middle class that that is dependent on it can't be that the government just gives everyone stuff right because sooner or later the government's going to run out of places to get the stuff that you need to have a vibrant economy that doesn't seem to be wrong either right so those would I think are the most important sort of empirical conversations right or the conclusions that he would he would draw so yeah that's what I would say so we ask about this is maybe jumping backwards in the order of how we want to have been discussing things but okay for for listeners who are you knew to whom or haven't read him the one line that base that lots of people know from Hume yes is this reasons the slave of the passions yes line what does that mean so the classical model was so if you replay this republic right there in inside the soul there are three parts right and they're on the bottom is desire like you want all this stuff you know sex and money and all that kind of stuff in the middle of spiritedness the part that gets make you get angry and you want to stand up and fight with people and then on the top should be reason right and reason as calculate of reason but also reason as somehow comprehending the whole of universe that seems you know whether that's accurate I mean it's clearly something to that we all to recognize this the three parts but that's a very hierarchical picture of what the self is Hume's view is much more the Machiavellian view that passion is the core of what human beings are that the core of what human beings are is the sort of infinite desire for more and more stuff that way he's like Hobbes and that reason is in many cases is an instrument of those passions rather than the thing that is somehow dominating or ruling the passions that it's not a separate faculty in the way that Plato seems to say and I mean I think that he thinks it's an empirical that's an empirical question he's also he has a different conception of reason than I think than Plato does I mean he think he's thinking of something like calculate of reason or Cartesian reason in which you're just sort of saying you know what are the pros and cons or what are the benefits and the the vices of this course of action so and lots of people especially Kantians find that to be a really disturbing thing to say that somehow we're just these animals that don't really have because I think Kantians want to say there's this part of us that's pure reason that can somehow stand above our passion itself and put it all in order and that that's I don't have any great answer to that question but I would say that Hume also has this sense that there is a sense of reason itself as a passion that there is this part of us that wants to know the truth about things and so that when he says that in the treatise of human nature he says at the end of book two and then several chapters later he's got a chapter on the love of truth as sort of like the culminating passion of the entire discussion so he seems to think that there's some part of the human being that wants to know what the actual truth is and no matter how ugly or disturbing that might be and that from a certain point of view in Hume's accounts of himself that looks like that's the ruling passion right that's the passion that that dominates his own understanding of who he is so in that way that's not so far from the platonic notion that we're not I mean passion does isn't simply the same thing as I want a lot of stuff and I want you know more food and I want more sex or whatever that their philosophy itself for Hume is a passion and that's that's an important fact there's another dimension to that question that if you want me to sure about yeah which is that I mean the passions also learn for Hume the passions get smarter and they get smarter and more efficient about fulfilling themselves and that his political science is in a way an attempt to educate the passions to being more sensible about you know what does it mean to try to seek satisfaction right so Hume's political science is an attempt to bring reason to bear on passion so that also has to be part of that conversation that's one of the things I mean there's a real sense in reading Hume that you get less of in say Kant or many other philosophers of like a humanity that I think is a big part of his appeal that that even even if you're disagreeing with what he says there's a sense of like a that that passion for basically everything is there throughout it if I mean I was trying to think of this like is there anyone any major figure in the western canon outside of maybe Socrates that it would be more fun to go to a pub with then David Hume yeah that's a good question I mean I don't know Boccaccio maybe or somebody like that no I think that's right I think that that's that's part of the attraction of Hume is that's when he he understands himself as a philosopher that in order to understand all these high-falutin philosophy things you have to start by understanding human beings and that means that you have to understand them sort of as they understand themselves and you know this is great line from a Roman playwright nothing human is alien to me that I think really get captured something of the spirit of Hume's political science that it's not we're going to solve all these problems or create a rational order in human beings but that somehow that's part of the you know the joy of the thing is to somehow see human beings in all of their greatness and all of their ugliness right that Hume has a vivid sense of just what crazy weird wonderful awful maybe things that human beings are so I think that does go very much to the to your question about humanity yeah well when I was first introduced or first read Hume in undergrad I mean something that really comes out is that he is a joy to read which you can't say all philosophers it's he clearly has a style that is still that still resonates today that is still engaging and interesting and I think some of our listeners who are perhaps not familiar with you might want to know where to start if someone has listened to this and is convinced that he's worth reading where would you recommend that people knew to Hume dig their feet in first yeah so I think that the core of the political teaching if you want to understand classical liberalism for me are really the essays right and both that so their political essays at the beginning when he lays out his political science that's the stuff that leads into Madison there's also a really brilliant series of essays on philosophers that I think is also political in a strange kind of way and then in the second part of the essays there's all these essays about commerce and there's essays about how to think about politics think about political controversies so I think I mean he means those essays to be accessible to the middling rank of men right to normal human beings not a philosopher sitting in their offices somewhere not definitely not a professional philosophers but the human beings who are just trying to figure out what's this messy world so that's one place I would start I would also in the text that's closest to my heart is the is the text at the end of book one of the treatise of human nature in which he describes his what you might call his existential crisis about philosophy and his turn to moral and political things and to me that's that's a very short text it's harrowing right I mean he goes off the rails and it seems like he's going to commit suicide or something but that's a text you know when I you know I teach a lot of undergraduates and I think that that you know they often sort of when they really start thinking about the world they also have that kind of skeptical crisis and that there's something that's very vivid and very honest about that that's but in some ways all of Hume is contained within that one you know it's like a ten page chapter so I would say those two things are the things that I would I would start with so for those of us today listening to this I mean obviously Hume is of terrific historical interest he's of just plain literary interest but what is his does he have his thought have significance for where we find ourselves and the issues we face today right so I would say I mean I think classical liberalism is still you know it's not a force to be reckoned with and a serious contender in the in the marketplace of ideas but I would say I mean from Hume's point of view we human beings are always falling into ideological like we want to have answers to the to the world they're going to put everything into a box and then just solve it and he would say part of the danger of democratic politics is that we're working out our own psycho dramas on the we want to solve the problem of the world and so we look for some savior who's going to come along and Hume is just very skeptical that there is any such person who's going to save us from ourselves but there's a passage that I think it's not so much the specific conclusions that I think are important for us today as a certain kind of ethos or certain kind of stance towards politics and so if it's okay with you I'd like to just read this this is from Hume's essays the very end of the book and he's been discussing political controversies in English history and basically saying there's something to be said on both sides of the question so this is from the essay of the Protestant secession says it appears to me that these advantages and disadvantages in the positions he's just been talking about are allowed on both sides at least by everyone who is at all susceptible of argument or reasoning and so this is a conference that we just have to work through and then he goes on it belongs therefore to a philosopher alone who is of neither party to put all the circumstances in the scale and assigned to each of them its proper poise and influence such a one will readily at first acknowledge that all political questions are infinitely complicated and that they're scarcely ever occurs in any deliberation a choice which is either purely good or purely ill consequences mixed and varied may be maybe foreseen to flow from every measure and many consequences unforeseen do always in fact result from every one hesitation and reserve and suspense are therefore the only sentiments that he brings to this essay or trial or if he indulges any passion it is that of derision against the ignorant multitude who are always clamorous and dogmatical even in the nicest questions of which from want of temper perhaps still more than of understanding their altogether unfit judges I think it's that temperament that kind of ethos that is humus trying to give us an education in and one thing that's really striking right so obviously there's nothing that's purely good or purely bad and so you sort of have to work through what are the pros and cons even of a commercial republicanism right there's some things that are good and some things that are bad and there are gonna be unforeseen consequences that are gonna mess all of your expectations up you just need to be ready for that but I think the thing that's really interesting is he says hesitation and reserve the only sentiments he brings to this essay or trial that the attitude of the philosopher from his point of view and and what a skeptical philosopher in politics will see himself as doing is doing essays right the original meaning of essays you try something out well if you put this together with the fact that the title of the book is essays right moral political and literary I think he's kind of clueing you into what the what the meaning of the book as a whole is that if you translate it what the book of essays is practice in being a philosopher right it's not giving you the answer it's more like taking you to the gym and saying well I need to work out I need to exercise every day for you know three months before I run a marathon or something and that that's what all you sort of have to take all these things in the right spirit that you're sort of being forced to habituate yourself to trying things out to seeing what the pros and cons are I think that's really the spirit that's I mean not to make any contemporary political statements but that we need in American politics more than anything else it's so easy to become ideological and to me that's you know that's the spirit of classical liberalism at its heart that's the thing that that's really still living about it thank you for listening free thoughts is produced by Evan Banks and Mark McDaniel to learn more find us on the web at www.libertarianism.org