A Philosopher in Love
A Philosopher in Love
By ROBERT ZARETSKY
Houston
TODAY is the 300th birthday of David Hume, the most important philosopher ever to write in English, according to The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The conferences being held on Hume this year in Austria, the Czech Republic, Russia, Finland and Brazil suggest that the encyclopedia’s claim is perhaps too modest.
Panelists will cite Hume’s seismic impact on epistemology, political theory, economics, historiography, aesthetics and religion, as well as his deep skepticism of the powers of reason. But chances are they won’t have much to say about Hume the man.
It’s not surprising; Hume was most concerned with the nature of knowledge, morality, causality — not with fashioning a philosophy for everyday life. And yet 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 always will be the slave to our passions. Predictably, it happened in Paris.
In 1761, Hippolyte de Saujon, the estranged wife of the Comte de Boufflers and celebrated mistress of the Prince de Conti, sent a fan letter to Hume. His best-selling “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.
And so he did, two years later, when he was posted to the British Embassy in Paris. 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.”
Yet she was also merciless. Men, she wrote to Hume, have “servile souls”; they “like to be mistreated; they are avid for severity, all the while indifferent to kindness.” Hume seemed different, but she warned him: “If I have been mistaken, my affection and all that supports it will soon be destroyed.”
While visiting Paris, Gilbert Elliot, a Scottish friend of Hume’s, became alarmed by Hume’s preoccupation with the comtesse and feared that his heart would be destroyed by her domineering character. 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, and focused her formidable energy on doing so. 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.
The “chief triumph of art and philosophy,” he wrote years before meeting Boufflers, is that it “refines the temper” and “points out to us those dispositions which we should endeavor to attain, by a constant bent of mind and by repeated habit.”
Those lines sound as if they came from a philosopher whose life reflects his convictions and intends to offer us a model for our own lives. Scholars of the urbane and portly Hume typically see him as an unlikely candidate to place alongside, say, 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.”
Robert Zaretsky, a professor of history at the University of Houston, is a co-author of “The Philosophers’ Quarrel: Hume, Rousseau and the Limits of Human Understanding.”
恋爱中的哲学家
2011年5月6日是大卫·休谟诞辰300年纪念日。据《斯坦福哲学百科全书》，休谟是用英语写作的最重要的哲学家。今年，奥地利、捷克共和国、俄罗斯、芬兰和巴西等地举行了各种讨论会，说明这家百科全书所作的论断可能过于保守。
与会人士将引述休谟对认识论、政治理论、经济学、史学、美学与宗教等产生的巨大影响，以及他对理性力量深深的怀疑。但是，他们并不会对休谟本人多加评论。
这一点并不让人感到意外；休谟最为关心的是知识、伦理以及因果关系的本质，而不是创造日常生活理念。不过，与其作品一样，休谟的个人生活本身也可以给出关于如何生活方面的见解。这里，我们要描述休谟生活中的一个插曲，它反映了休谟本人提出的最富挑衅性而且最容易被被人误解的论断：理性现在是，而且永远是，激情的奴隶。可以预见，这段生活插曲发生在巴黎。
1761年，与贝福楼（Boufflers）伯爵已经分居的夫人、孔蒂王子有名的情人希波莱特·德·桑乔恩（Hippolyte de Saujon ）给休谟写了一封表示表示崇拜的信件。她写道，休谟的畅销书《英格兰历史》“给灵魂以启发，让心灵充满人性及慈爱。” 这本书一定出自于“一位非凡的、超越人间激情的人之手。”
长得圆墩墩的休谟先生，长期过着单身汉的生活。接到来信，他感到一阵慌乱。他从爱丁堡写信给夫人，表达自己的感激之情。“余老朽于书籍与学习研究之间，”他写道，“鲜尝......生活之愉悦。”不过，他表示乐意见到夫人。
两年之后，休谟在巴黎的英国大使馆任职，如愿以偿地见到了贝福娄夫人。很快，两人成为亲密的朋友，经常相互拜访并书信往来。不久，休谟就坦诚自己对贝福娄夫人的依恋和对孔蒂王子的嫉妒。贝福娄夫人对他给予鼓励，尽管无人知道达到什么样的程度：“假如将我们之间的深厚友情添加在我的其它幸福来源当中......我无法想象自己还会继续抱怨命运。”
然而，贝福娄夫人也一样是无情无义的。在给休谟的信中，她写道，男人具有“奴性的灵魂”；他们“喜欢被虐待；渴望严厉，却对善良熟视无睹。”休谟似乎与众不同，但她警告说：“如果我一直受到错爱，那么我的爱和所有支撑爱的一切将很快消失殆尽。”
在访问巴黎期间，休谟的苏格兰朋友吉尔伯特·艾略特对休谟沉溺于与伯爵夫人情爱而感到吃惊，担心他那颗善良的心毁于伯爵夫人为所欲为的性格。离开巴黎后，艾略特写信给休谟，警告说：“我看到您现在就站在悬崖的边上... 我们心灵的活力太有限了，除了奉献于被我们成为我们国家以外，无法追求更为广阔的东西了。”
看到自己的朋友正处于被情感摧毁的危险当中，艾略特也许听到了一种休谟自己哲学理念的回响。在《人性的契约》中，作者休谟提出：“理性本身永远不会成为任何意志行为的动机。”例如，理性并不产生欲望。然而欲望可以（并且应该）“为理性所引导。”
正如艾略特所料，很快他的朋友的幸福就破灭了。伯爵去世后，伯爵夫人没有了约束，她要求嫁给孔蒂王子，在此上花费了巨大的精力。伤心的休谟成了伯爵夫人柏拉图式的顾问与知己。
然而，他为自己开脱罪责，充满尊严。贝福娄夫人本人外所有人知道，王子不会跟她结婚的，这时休谟劝她理智。
实际上，休谟对贝福娄所为就像艾略特对他所为一样。他提醒贝福娄，理智绝不会产生或创造欲望，同样理智却真的是激情的奴隶。但是，这种奴隶却是非常有用的，可以帮助我们理解并引导我们心中彼此矛盾的激情。
在遇见贝福娄很多年以前，休谟写道：“艺术与哲学的主要成就”就是修饰脾性，并向我们指出应该努力获得的气质，途径就是不断的心灵爱好和重复之习惯。
这些话听上去好像出自一位其生活反应自己的信念并为我们自己的生活提供榜样的哲学家之口。文雅和庄严的学者一般不会将休谟和探讨“生活哲学”的苏格拉底相提并论。因此，在与贝福娄夫人交往中休谟证明他个人与自己的哲学一样崇高，这一点是值得注意。
直到生命最后一息，休谟还与贝福娄夫人保持通信联系。事实上，就在他撒手西去之际，他才得到孔蒂王子去世的消息。用凭生最伟大的爱，休谟依然拿起笔，表达怜悯之情。
信的结尾，他道别了：“看到死亡一步步逼近，我没有忧虑或悔恨，向您致敬，带着无边的爱和问候，最后一次。”
罗伯特·扎里茨基为休斯顿大学历史教授，与别人合著《哲学家的争吵：休谟、卢梭以及人类理解力的局限》。
By ROBERT ZARETSKY
Houston
TODAY is the 300th birthday of David Hume, the most important philosopher ever to write in English, according to The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The conferences being held on Hume this year in Austria, the Czech Republic, Russia, Finland and Brazil suggest that the encyclopedia’s claim is perhaps too modest.
Panelists will cite Hume’s seismic impact on epistemology, political theory, economics, historiography, aesthetics and religion, as well as his deep skepticism of the powers of reason. But chances are they won’t have much to say about Hume the man.
It’s not surprising; Hume was most concerned with the nature of knowledge, morality, causality — not with fashioning a philosophy for everyday life. And yet 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 always will be the slave to our passions. Predictably, it happened in Paris.
In 1761, Hippolyte de Saujon, the estranged wife of the Comte de Boufflers and celebrated mistress of the Prince de Conti, sent a fan letter to Hume. His best-selling “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.
And so he did, two years later, when he was posted to the British Embassy in Paris. 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.”
Yet she was also merciless. Men, she wrote to Hume, have “servile souls”; they “like to be mistreated; they are avid for severity, all the while indifferent to kindness.” Hume seemed different, but she warned him: “If I have been mistaken, my affection and all that supports it will soon be destroyed.”
While visiting Paris, Gilbert Elliot, a Scottish friend of Hume’s, became alarmed by Hume’s preoccupation with the comtesse and feared that his heart would be destroyed by her domineering character. 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, and focused her formidable energy on doing so. 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.
The “chief triumph of art and philosophy,” he wrote years before meeting Boufflers, is that it “refines the temper” and “points out to us those dispositions which we should endeavor to attain, by a constant bent of mind and by repeated habit.”
Those lines sound as if they came from a philosopher whose life reflects his convictions and intends to offer us a model for our own lives. Scholars of the urbane and portly Hume typically see him as an unlikely candidate to place alongside, say, 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.”
Robert Zaretsky, a professor of history at the University of Houston, is a co-author of “The Philosophers’ Quarrel: Hume, Rousseau and the Limits of Human Understanding.”
恋爱中的哲学家
2011年5月6日是大卫·休谟诞辰300年纪念日。据《斯坦福哲学百科全书》，休谟是用英语写作的最重要的哲学家。今年，奥地利、捷克共和国、俄罗斯、芬兰和巴西等地举行了各种讨论会，说明这家百科全书所作的论断可能过于保守。
与会人士将引述休谟对认识论、政治理论、经济学、史学、美学与宗教等产生的巨大影响，以及他对理性力量深深的怀疑。但是，他们并不会对休谟本人多加评论。
这一点并不让人感到意外；休谟最为关心的是知识、伦理以及因果关系的本质，而不是创造日常生活理念。不过，与其作品一样，休谟的个人生活本身也可以给出关于如何生活方面的见解。这里，我们要描述休谟生活中的一个插曲，它反映了休谟本人提出的最富挑衅性而且最容易被被人误解的论断：理性现在是，而且永远是，激情的奴隶。可以预见，这段生活插曲发生在巴黎。
1761年，与贝福楼（Boufflers）伯爵已经分居的夫人、孔蒂王子有名的情人希波莱特·德·桑乔恩（Hippolyte de Saujon ）给休谟写了一封表示表示崇拜的信件。她写道，休谟的畅销书《英格兰历史》“给灵魂以启发，让心灵充满人性及慈爱。” 这本书一定出自于“一位非凡的、超越人间激情的人之手。”
长得圆墩墩的休谟先生，长期过着单身汉的生活。接到来信，他感到一阵慌乱。他从爱丁堡写信给夫人，表达自己的感激之情。“余老朽于书籍与学习研究之间，”他写道，“鲜尝......生活之愉悦。”不过，他表示乐意见到夫人。
两年之后，休谟在巴黎的英国大使馆任职，如愿以偿地见到了贝福娄夫人。很快，两人成为亲密的朋友，经常相互拜访并书信往来。不久，休谟就坦诚自己对贝福娄夫人的依恋和对孔蒂王子的嫉妒。贝福娄夫人对他给予鼓励，尽管无人知道达到什么样的程度：“假如将我们之间的深厚友情添加在我的其它幸福来源当中......我无法想象自己还会继续抱怨命运。”
然而，贝福娄夫人也一样是无情无义的。在给休谟的信中，她写道，男人具有“奴性的灵魂”；他们“喜欢被虐待；渴望严厉，却对善良熟视无睹。”休谟似乎与众不同，但她警告说：“如果我一直受到错爱，那么我的爱和所有支撑爱的一切将很快消失殆尽。”
在访问巴黎期间，休谟的苏格兰朋友吉尔伯特·艾略特对休谟沉溺于与伯爵夫人情爱而感到吃惊，担心他那颗善良的心毁于伯爵夫人为所欲为的性格。离开巴黎后，艾略特写信给休谟，警告说：“我看到您现在就站在悬崖的边上... 我们心灵的活力太有限了，除了奉献于被我们成为我们国家以外，无法追求更为广阔的东西了。”
看到自己的朋友正处于被情感摧毁的危险当中，艾略特也许听到了一种休谟自己哲学理念的回响。在《人性的契约》中，作者休谟提出：“理性本身永远不会成为任何意志行为的动机。”例如，理性并不产生欲望。然而欲望可以（并且应该）“为理性所引导。”
正如艾略特所料，很快他的朋友的幸福就破灭了。伯爵去世后，伯爵夫人没有了约束，她要求嫁给孔蒂王子，在此上花费了巨大的精力。伤心的休谟成了伯爵夫人柏拉图式的顾问与知己。
然而，他为自己开脱罪责，充满尊严。贝福娄夫人本人外所有人知道，王子不会跟她结婚的，这时休谟劝她理智。
实际上，休谟对贝福娄所为就像艾略特对他所为一样。他提醒贝福娄，理智绝不会产生或创造欲望，同样理智却真的是激情的奴隶。但是，这种奴隶却是非常有用的，可以帮助我们理解并引导我们心中彼此矛盾的激情。
在遇见贝福娄很多年以前，休谟写道：“艺术与哲学的主要成就”就是修饰脾性，并向我们指出应该努力获得的气质，途径就是不断的心灵爱好和重复之习惯。
这些话听上去好像出自一位其生活反应自己的信念并为我们自己的生活提供榜样的哲学家之口。文雅和庄严的学者一般不会将休谟和探讨“生活哲学”的苏格拉底相提并论。因此，在与贝福娄夫人交往中休谟证明他个人与自己的哲学一样崇高，这一点是值得注意。
直到生命最后一息，休谟还与贝福娄夫人保持通信联系。事实上，就在他撒手西去之际，他才得到孔蒂王子去世的消息。用凭生最伟大的爱，休谟依然拿起笔，表达怜悯之情。
信的结尾，他道别了：“看到死亡一步步逼近，我没有忧虑或悔恨，向您致敬，带着无边的爱和问候，最后一次。”
罗伯特·扎里茨基为休斯顿大学历史教授，与别人合著《哲学家的争吵：休谟、卢梭以及人类理解力的局限》。
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