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休谟不仅是一伟大的哲学家,他也是一位伟大的历史学家和经济学家.

(2007-10-07 00:01:00)
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休谟不仅是一伟大的哲学家,他也是一位伟大的历史学家和经济学家.他写的六卷本英国历史是18世纪的畅销书.

David Hume, 1711-1776.


One of the greatest philosophers in Western history, as well as an accomplished historian, economist, perennial skeptic and delightful fellow.  David Hume was one of the most prominent figures of the Scottish Enlightenment and a close friend of Adam Smith. Hume's contributions to economics are found mostly in his Political Discourses (1752), which were later incorporated into his Essays (1758).  

Hume was a virulent anti-Mercantilist.  He was adamant that wealth was measured by the stock of commodities of a nation, not its stock of money.  He was also one of the better articulators of the Quantity Theory and the neutrality of money ("It is none of the wheels of trade: it is the oil which renders the motion of the wheels more smooth and easy", Of Money, 1752).  Contrary to the Mercantilists, Hume related low interest rates not to abundant money, but to booming commerce.  He was one of the first to spell out the "loanable funds" theory of interest, arguing that interest rates are determined by the demand for loans and the supply of saving.  Low interest rates are thus symptoms of a booming, commercial economy, where thrift and the desire for gain and accumulation take hold.  However, he admitted that in the short-run (and only the short-run), a rising supply of money could have a beneficial effect on industry.

Hume's most famous contributions are in international trade.  Contrary to the Mercantilists, he did not conceive of foreign trade as a zero-sum game but argued that there are mutual gains.  Far from being fixed, Hume argued that the total volume of international trade is directly related to the diversity and wealth of all nations.  As he concludes, "I shall therefore venture to acknowledge that not only as a man, but as a British subject I pray for the flourishing commerce of Germany, Spain, Italy and even France itself." (Of the Jealousy of Trade, 1758).   

Hume also introduced the automatic "price-specie flow" mechanism and the "reflux principle".  Its basic argument was to deny the old Mercantilist policy proposition that the inflow of gold specie into a nation could be accomplished by manipulating the external trade balance.  Hume argued that the inflow of specie would, by his Quantity Theory, lead to a rise in domestic prices, thereby changing the terms of trade against the recipient nation.  The demand for its exports abroad would consequently decline, and its own demand for foreign imports would increase, thereby reversing the external trade balance so that specie now would flow back out.  Hume also used this logic to deny the idea that rises in prices can be blamed on rising wages. Specifically, if there was a wage-induced rise in the price level in England, the terms of trade between England and other nations would change in a manner detrimental to English exports and favorable to the imports from other nations.  This would thereby induce an outflow of money from England , and thus a reduction in England's money stock which would bring the price level in England back down. 

Hume's automatic flow mechanism of international trade lent credence to the idea that there was a "natural balance" of trade between nations which deliberate policy moves could not contradict. But Hume was not a believer of the "natural law" or "social contract" theories popular with contemporary political and social philosophers.  He was a thorough empiricist in both his political and philosophical work.  His hedonistic theory of morals served as a foundation of utilitarianism.  His theories of "evolution" of ethics, institutions and social conventions and were highly influential upon the Hayek and later evolutionary theories.  Other particulars of Hume's thinking are outlined in our Introduction to David Hume.

Major Works of David Hume

Enlightened enemies

When the philosopher David Hume offered refuge to the persecuted writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau it was apparently a meeting of minds. But the friendship soon soured, casting a shadow over the Age of Reason and calling into doubt Rousseau's sanity and Hume's reputation

David Edmonds and John Eidinow
Saturday April 29, 2006

Guardian

David Hume comes down to us as among the greatest of philosophers. He also exemplifies the man of pristine character, saluted in his own age for his uncommon virtue. Hume was immensely proud of his upright reputation; one might say he gloried in his goodness. In 1776, close to death from bowel cancer, he summarised his life in a short, unrevealing essay. He was, he wrote, "a man of mild disposition, 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".

His friend, the economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith, agreed, eulogising Hume after his death as the exemplar of as "perfectly wise and virtuous man as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit". Historians and biographers have gone along with this image - ignoring Smith's caveat ... "as the nature of human frailty will permit" ...

That human frailty had faced its severest test 10 years earlier when Hume offered to succour the radical author Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

The year was 1766 and Rousseau had just cause to fear for his life. For more than three years he had been a refugee, forced to move on several times. His radical tract, The Social Contract, with its famous opening salvo, "Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains", had been violently condemned. Even more threatening to the French Catholic church was mile, in which Rousseau advocated denying the clergy a role in the education of the young. An arrest warrant was issued in Paris and his books were publicly burned.

In The Confessions, a literary landmark described as the first modern autobiography, Rousseau spoke of "the cry of unparalleled fury" that went up across Europe. "I was an infidel, an atheist, a lunatic, a madman, a wild beast, a wolf ..."

Fleeing France, he had found safe haven in a remote village in his native Switzerland. But soon the local priest began to whip up hatred against him, charging him with being a heretic. The atmosphere turned ugly. Rousseau was abused in the street. Some believed this lean, dark man whose eyes were full of fire was possessed by the devil.

One night, a drunken mob attacked his house. Rousseau was inside with his mistress, the former scullery maid Thérèse le Vasseur (by whom he had five children that he notoriously abandoned to a foundling hospital), and his beloved dog, Sultan. A shower of stones was thrown at the window. A rock "as big as a head" nearly landed on Rousseau's bed. When a local official finally arrived, he declared, "My God, it's a quarry."

Rousseau had no choice but to uproot once more. So where next? His saviour would be the Scotsman David Hume.

In October 1763, Hume had gone to the French capital as under-secretary to the newly appointed British ambassador, Lord Hertford.

Today, Hume is known above all for his philosophy, but then he was renowned for being an historian. His first philosophical work, The Treatise of Human Nature, had been, if not exactly ignored, then certainly not acclaimed as the sublime work of genius it is. But his epic six-volume History of England, which had appeared between 1754 and 1762, had become a bestseller, and made him financially independent. Turning his back on the previous mode of history writing as a sequence of dates, names and glorifications, Hume brilliantly combined character studies and the detail of events with an analysis of the broad sweep of underlying forces. The tone was thoughtful, civil, temperate. The series would go through more than a hundred editions and still be in use at the end of the 19th century.

Hume still felt, justly, under-appreciated. The "banks of the Thames", he insisted, were "inhabited by barbarians". There was not one Englishman in 50 "who if he heard I had broke my neck tonight would be sorry". Englishmen disliked him, Hume believed, both for what he was not and for what he was: not a Whig, not a Christian, but definitely a Scot. In England, anti-Scottish prejudice was rife. But his homeland too seemed to reject him. The final humiliation came in June 1763, when the Scottish prime minister, the Earl of Bute, appointed another Scottish historian, William Robertson, to be Historiographer Royal for Scotland.

The invitation from Lord Hertford must have seemed irresistible. Hume's friends travelling in France had already told him about his incomparable standing in Parisian society. And the two years he spent in Paris were to be the happiest of his life. He was rapturously embraced there, loaded, in his words, "with civilities". Hume stressed the near-universal judgment on his personality and morals. "What gave me chief pleasure was to find that most of the elogiums bestowed on me, turned on my personal character; my naivety & simplicity of manners, the candour and mildness of my disposition &tc." Indeed, his French admirers gave him the sobriquet Le Bon David, the good David.

Soon in the French capital it became social death not to be acquainted with him. In his Journal, Horace Walpole (on a prolonged visit to Paris) records, "It is incredible the homage they pay him." To a fellow historian Hume wrote: "I can only say that I eat nothing but ambrosia, drink nothing but nectar, breathe nothing but incense, and tread on nothing but flowers. Every man I meet, and still more every lady, would think they were wanting in the most indispensable duty, if they did not make to me a long and elaborate harangue in my praise."

The lavish attention paid by women must have come as a pleasant shock to this obese bachelor in his 50s. James Caulfeild (later Lord Charlemont), who'd once described Hume's face as "broad and fat, his mouth wide, and without any other expression than that of imbecility", observed how in Paris, "no lady's toilette was complete without Hume's attendance".

Hume was glorified both in court circles and in the so-called "Republic of Letters", that unique French Enlightenment territory of salons governed by outstanding women. The salons became the transmission system of the French Enlightenment, creating, focusing and broadcasting radical opinion. The female hosts were the firm regulators of tact and etiquette: they wanted the guests to shine but they could set the tone of the discussions and insist on clarity of language. Their art was the creation and maintenance of civilised conversation.

In the salons, Hume was introduced to the critics, writers, scientists, artists and philosophers who powered the French Enlightenment, the philosophes. They included the "cultural correspondent for Europe", Friedrich Grimm, and the editors of that vast compendium, the Encyclopédie, the pioneering mathematician Jean d'Alembert and the multi-talented Denis Diderot. Diderot had recognised Hume as a fellow Enlightenment spirit - a cosmopolitan. "I flatter myself that I am, like you, citizen of the great city of the world," Diderot wrote to Hume. Hume also became close friends with the passionate atheist Baron d'Holbach, a major financial supporter of and a contributor to the Encyclopédie. All four men would be crucial in Hume's quarrel with Rousseau.

One salon hostess was a vital link in bringing Rousseau and Hume together: the beautiful, clever and moralistic Madame de Boufflers, in whose dazzling salon, with its four huge mirrors, the young Mozart once performed. The intimate tone of the letters between Hume and Mme de Boufflers indicates that he, at least, became infatuated. A spell apart had Hume writing to her: "Alas! Why am I not near you so that I could see you for half an hour a day." She flattered him that she "admired his genius" and that he made her "disgusted with the bulk of the people I have to live with", ending one note, "I love you with all my heart". Sadly, Hume might have misread the silken manners of her court.

When the ambassador, Lord Hertford, was replaced, Hume's sojourn in paradise ended too. Britain beckoned. Mme de Boufflers asked him to assist the persecuted Rousseau in securing asylum in England. How could Le Bon David possibly say no?

Saviour and exile finally met in Paris in December 1765. There had, until then, been only a short epistolatory relationship between them - marked by mutual effusions of love and admiration. Here is Rousseau on Hume: "Your great views, your astonishing impartiality, your genius, would lift you far above the rest of mankind, if you were less attached to them by the goodness of your heart." After their early encounters in the French capital, Hume penned an unreserved panegyric to a clerical friend in Scotland comparing Rousseau to Socrates and, like a starry-eyed lover, seeing beauty in his adored one's blemishes: "I find him mild, and gentle and modest and good humoured ... M. Rousseau is of small stature; and would rather be ugly, had he not the finest physiognomy in the world, I mean, the most expressive countenance. His modesty seems not to be good manners but ignorance of his own excellence."

In press coverage of what the Monthly Review called the "quarrel between these two celebrated geniuses" support for Hume was far from universal. While Rousseau was denounced for lack of gratitude, the Monthly Review was not alone in advocating "compassion towards an unfortunate man, whose peculiar temper and constitution of mind must, we fear, render him unhappy in every situation". Letter writers, under cover of pseudonyms such as "A Bystander", also took up the cudgels for Rousseau: one recurring theme was the lack of hospitality and respect accorded the exile, which shamed the British nation. There was poetical support in the St James's Chronicle:

Rousseau, be firm! Though malice, like Voltaire,
And superstitious pride, like D'Alembert
Though mad presumption Walpole's form assume,
And base-born treachery appear like Hume,
Yet droop not thou ...

This even-handed treatment was not what Hume had expected, and not the version he gave Mme de Boufflers, writing that there had been "a great deal of raillery on the incident, thrown out in the public papers, but all against that unhappy man". A cartoon depicting Rousseau as a Savage Man, a Yahoo, caught in the woods was more to Hume's taste. He described it to her with relish. "I am represented as a farmer, who caresses him and offers him some oats to eat, which he refuses in a rage; Voltaire and D'Alembert are whipping him up behind; and Horace Walpole making him horns of papier maché. The idea is not altogether absurd."

So, in less than a year, the relationship between Hume and Rousseau had gone from love to mockery by way of fear and loathing.

In hindsight, it seems unlikely that they were ever going to get along, personally or intellectually. Hume was a combination of reason, doubt and scepticism. Rousseau was a creature of feeling, alienation, imagination and certainty. While Hume's outlook was unadventurous and temperate, Rousseau was by instinct rebellious; Hume was an optimist, Rousseau a pessimist; Hume gregarious, Rousseau a loner. Hume was disposed to compromise, Rousseau to confrontation. In style, Rousseau revelled in paradox; Hume revered clarity. Rousseau's language was pyrotechnical and emotional, Hume's straightforward and dispassionate. JYT Greig wrote in his 1931 biography of Hume, "The annals of literature seldom furnish us with two contemporary writers of the first rank, both called philosophers, who cancel one another out with almost mathematical precision."

While they may be described now as thinkers in "the Age of Enlightenment", how far "Enlightenment" covers a common national experience or meaning is a matter of vigorous dispute. A particular reading of French history tends to shape the general idea of "the Enlightenment" as, broadly, the French philosophes' belief that the application of critical reason to received traditions and structures would bring human advancement. The dominating Enlightenment narrative becomes a small and easily identifiable group of brilliant people, a central activity, the Encyclopédie; the sweetness of the salons balanced by the risk of imprisonment, the focus on reason, and the whole enterprise terminating in the guillotine.

But neither Hume nor Rousseau fitted easily into that narrative and its intellectual consensus. Rousseau, in particular, inveighed against so-called "civilisation", taking aim at the Enlightenment's proud boast of progress (that there had been progress in the human condition, and that with the systematic application of rationality and information, improvements could be speeded up). "Nature has made everything in the best way possible; but we want to do better still, and we spoil everything," he wrote. In his emphasis, not just on reason but on feeling, on sensibilité, he would gain a posthumous reputation as the father of the Romantics.

But Hume, too, is a problematic Enlightenment figure. He used reason to demonstrate the limits of reason and he injected his empiricism with a destructive revolutionary force. Taking empiricism to its logical conclusion, he showed how, if we rely on experience, then we can have no complete confidence in the existence of the external world; we can have no confidence in the laws of nature that we take for granted, such as gravity, and we must drastically rethink our notions of induction, necessity and personal identity. Nor could ethics have a rational foundation. Logic was an inappropriate tool for dissecting morality, like taking a carving knife to water. Reason was a slave to the passions.

A letter of Hume's to Hugh Blair exposes what lay masked by the outpourings of love: "[Living in his Staffordshire solitude, Rousseau] will be unhappy in that situation, as he has indeed been always in all situations. He will be entirely without occupation, without company, and almost without amusement of any kind. He has read very little during the course of his life, and has now totally renounced all reading: He has seen very little, and has no manner of curiosity to see or remark; He has reflected, properly speaking, and studied very little; and has not indeed much knowledge: he has only felt, during the whole course of his life; and in this respect, his sensibility rises to a pitch beyond what I have seen any example of: but it still gives him a more acute feeling of pain than of pleasure. He is like a man ... stripped not only of his clothes, but of his skin."

In fact, sensibility apart, all this was false. Rousseau was widely read and never without fulfilling occupations, including music and botany. In the English countryside, he was introduced to the collector and botanist, the Duchess of Portland, and they went on blissful expeditions in the Peak District together. And, of course, Rousseau was working on The Confessions. It was Hume's creative life that was over.

Behind Rousseau's back, Hume conducted an obsessive investigation into Rousseau's finances. He asked various French contacts to make inquiries on his behalf - though concealing from each friend that he had also asked the others. Mme de Boufflers was put out to learn that Hume had set both her and D'Holbach on the same errand. "To what purpose?" were these investigations, she demanded of Hume: "You will not become his denunciator, after having been his protector ..." Yes he would. There's no question of Hume's wanting the information to help Rousseau. He himself makes plain that Rousseau's character was at stake: was he a fraud professing to poverty?

He denigrated Rousseau in a letter to D'Alembert in such foul terms that D'Alembert destroyed the letters and replied, with others, urgently counselling the man of moderation to remain moderate. Rousseau, according to Hume, was exposed as "surely the blackest and most atrocious villain, beyond comparison, that now exists in the world".

But there was no plot by Hume, though Rousseau was not entirely wrong when he accused Hume of being a traitor. A satirical letter purporting to be from the King of Prussia, acidly mocking the beleaguered Swiss, was a central plank in Rousseau's construction of a conspiracy. The letter promised Rousseau sanctuary, holding out a lacerating incentive: "If you want new misfortunes, I am a king and can make you as miserable as you can wish."

· David Edmonds and John Eidinow are co-authors of Rousseau's Dog: Two Great Thinkers At War In The Age of Enlightenment, published by Faber & Faber, price £15.99

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

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