Le bon David: David Hume as litterateur

James Harris refers several times to the idea of Hume as "le bon David." He and E.C. Mossner both paint him as being a "man of letters" as much or more than a philosopher, so let's just use the French there.

Two questions.

First, just how much was Hume "le bon," in dealings with Rousseau, James Beattie and others, and how much is this a legend?

Second, was he always that good as a litterateur? That's both in terms of his writing style and how much he, at least in materials not for public consumption (Burn this!) had his own sharp elbows at times.

Let's jump in.

First, Hume is without a doubt one of the most readable philosophers past or present. It's not just that he's easy to understand, overall, on most more technical stuff. Or that, even for his era, he's not that "technical" of a philosopher.

Especially as shown in things like his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, he writes well. He's readable.

On the other hand, if one looks at things like some of his essays, at times he seems to be a "trimmer." As in, a writer of puff pieces. Oh, they have a certain amount of fluff style, or the 1700s England equivalent. But, they're fairly superficial.

Another place where the "litterateur" is fluff without a lot of substance? Slavery and related issues. Back to that again, yes.

Second, some of Hume’s alleged “anti-slavery” comments actually come off as stuff similar to what Stephen Douglas said about slavery’s potential in the High Plains and the West — simply utilitarian claims about where (or in Hume’s case, for how much longer as well as where) slavery would prosper. Douglas otherwise had no moral problems with slavery and Hume, to me, at best shows moral diffidence.

Plus, when it comes to the repudiated "Treatise" (and he DID repudiate, contra Harris, and I'll have a separate piece on just that), Hume had a thin skin. No other way to put it.

To undercut Harris’ (and Hume’s own) claim that “le bon David” never replied to critics?

Back to his 1777 Advertisement:

“Yet several writers, who have honoured the Author's Philosophy with answers, have taken care to direct all their batteries against that juvenile work, which the Author never acknowledged, and have affected to triumph in any advantages, which, they imagined, they had obtained over it: A practice very contrary to all rules of candour and fair-dealing, and a strong instance of those polemical artifices, which a bigotted zeal thinks itself authorised to employ.”

Methinks he doth protest WAY too much.