Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them - David Hume
When I was studying, inter alia, Metaphysics and Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh many years ago, local boy made good David Hume was a name never far any philosophy professor or tutor's lips.
Aeon wrote movingly of Hume's life:
"While Hume was lying aged 65 on his deathbed at the end of a happy, successful and (for the times) long life, he told his doctor: ‘I am dying as fast as my enemies, if I have any, could wish, and as easily and cheerfully as my best friends could desire.’ Three days before he died, on 25 August 1776, probably of abdominal cancer, his doctor could still report that he was ‘quite free from anxiety, impatience, or low spirits, and passes his time very well with the assistance of amusing books’."
Indeed, while first thought of primarily as historian, Hume's philosophical standing has grown to the highest level. A few years ago, thousands of academic philosophers were asked which non-living philosopher they most identified with. Hume came a clear first, ahead of Aristotle, Kant and Wittgenstein.
According to Big Think, David Hume was one of the most genial men of his day and was well loved, despite courting scandal for the frankness of his philosophy and his irreligiosity. Hume's work critiquing the traditional arguments for God, his "problem of induction," and his metaethics are still considered some of the most brilliant and devastating pieces of philosophy of all time.
Aeon concludes that all who stand for the secular, reasonable way of life Hume himself stood for ought to avoid hysterical condemnations of religion and superstition as well as overly optimistic praise for the power of science and rationality. We should instead be "modest in our philosophical pretensions, advocating human sympathy as much, if not more, than human rationality. Most of all, we should never allow our pursuit of learning and knowledge to get in the way of the softening pleasures of food, drink, company and play. Hume modelled a way of life that was gentle, reasonable, amiable: all the things public life now so rarely is".
As well as a revolutionary philosopher, Hume was a historian, economist, librarian and essayist. His insistence on allowing his other interests to inform his writing saw him take philosophy out of the purely theoretical realm and place it within the practical. Such a wealth of knowledge and experience saw Hume not only offer guidance on how to reason and behave morally but also on how to live a flourishing life. Hume addressed such questions as: What does it mean to be rational? How ought we live? Which philosophies should we adopt and which should we reject?
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