Opinion A philosopher in love: Hume and reason

His life,like his work,does offer insights about how to live. Consider an episode in Hume’s life that reflects his most provocative and misunderstood claim: that reason is and will be the slave to our passions. Predictably,it happened in Paris.

In 1761,Hippolyte de Boufflers,mistress of the Prince de Conti,sent a fan letter to Hume. His History of England,she wrote,“enlightens the soul and fills the heart with sentiments of humanity and benevolence.” It must have been written by “some celestial being,free from human passions.”

From Edinburgh,the rotund and flustered Hume,long resigned to a bachelor’s life,thanked Mme de Boufflers. “I have rusted amid books and study,” he wrote,and “been little engaged … in the pleasurable scenes of life.” But he would be pleased to meet her. Boufflers and Hume quickly became intimate friends,visiting and writing to each other often. Hume soon confessed his attachment and his jealousy of Conti. Boufflers encouraged him,though no one knows how far: “Were I to add our deepened friendship to my other sources of happiness … I cannot conceive how I could ever complain of my destiny.”

Gilbert Elliot,a Scottish friend of Hume’s,became alarmed by Hume’s preoccupation with the comtesse. After leaving,Elliot wrote to warn him: “I see you at present upon the very brink of a precipice … the active powers of our mind are much too limited to be usefully employed in any pursuit more general than the service of that portion of mankind we call our country.”

In seeing his friend in danger of losing himself to passion,Elliot might have heard an echo of Hume’s own philosophical precepts. In his Treatise of Human Nature,Hume argued that “reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will.” Desire,for example,“arises not from reason.” And yet it can (and ought to be) “directed by it.”

As Elliot foresaw,his friend’s bliss was soon shattered. The comtesse’s husband died; she was free to try to convince the Prince de Conti to marry her. A distressed Hume was transformed into her platonic adviser and confidant.

Yet he acquitted himself with dignity. When it became clear to everyone except Boufflers that the prince would not marry her,Hume urged her to be reasonable.

In effect,Hume did for her as Elliot had done for him. He reminded her that,insofar as it never causes or creates our desires,reason is indeed passion’s slave. But it is a most useful slave,for it helps us understand and guide our competing passions.

Scholars of the urbane and portly Hume typically see him as an unlikely candidate to place alongside Socrates as a philosopher of this “art of living.” So it’s worth remembering that Hume proved himself equal to his philosophy in his relationship with Boufflers.

He corresponded with her until the end of his life. In fact,he was on his own deathbed when news of the Prince de Conti’s death reached him. Yet he took up his pen to commiserate with the greatest love of his life. And at the letter’s end he said goodbye: “I see death approach gradually without any anxiety or regret. I salute you,with great affection and regard,for the last time.”

The writer is a professor of history at the Honors College,University of Houston,is a co-author of ‘The Philosophers’ Quarrel: Hume,Rousseau and the Limits of Human Understanding.’