David Hume's Philosophical Romance.

John Conley, S.J., The Suspicion of Virtue: Women Philosophers in Neoclassical France (Ithaca & London: Cornel University Press, 2002).

Introduction.

I will focus in this essay on the philosophical exchanges between David Hume and his French lover Madame La Comtesse de Boufflers.

In order to clarify the philosophical and romantic dialogue between these fascinating people and to suggest the importance of the differences and affinities -- on intellectual matters -- between them, I will first provide biographical information concerning Mr. Hume.

There is little (or much less) information available concerning Madame de Boufflers.

I then offer a brief comment on the Humean philosophy and why that philosophy is still important, often in ways not seen by people who have a stereotypical view of Hume's skepticism and radical empiricism/anti-empiricism.

Some of the persons criticizing my philosophical opinions in Internet debates invoked Hume and Wittgenstein without having a very good idea of what either of those thinkers believed or why they believed it.

Hume's philosophy takes to their logical conclusions the premises of classical empiricism and materialism.

I suggest a careful examination of Hume's trajectory and destination before you adopt his popular philosophy in today's scientific climate. Hume has been criticized recently, unfairly, as a founder of contemporary racism, for example, and a "lousy empirical scientists." Andrew Valls, ed., "A Lousy Empirical Scientist: Reconsidering Hume's Racism," in Race and Racism in Modern Philosophy (New York: Cornell, 2005), pp. 127-150.

The parallels between Hume's and Bradley's personal lives are astonishing and might make for a Tom Stoppard-like stage adaptation or a great short novel.

These parallels cannot be coincidental to the ultimate developments in the philosophers' lives or to the movements of their thoughts.

Biography is always important and never irrelevant to the "challenge" of understanding a person's ideas and actions.

I believe that the "best" philosophers in the British tradition are David Hume (realist, materialist) and F.H. Bradley (anti-realist, idealist).

Most English and American philosophers would agree with the first name, David Hume, but very few would accept my choice of F.H. Bradley as one of the two greatest philosophers in the English language.

It is important to alert readers to the controversial nature of my choice.

Bradley's defense of idealism may be even more powerful than Berkeley's similar theory. For an updating of philosophical idealism please see W.J. Mander's recent writings on the history of British idealism and contemporary idealist ethics. ("G.E. Moore's Critique of Idealism.")

There is much that we do not know about the relationship between Hume and his French lover. These people -- especially Mme de Boufflers -- did not want us to know the details of their inner lives. Even in death this man and woman deserve some respect and privacy.

The last letter written by Hume in his own hand was addressed to his countess. I am sure that this is significant.

Scholars interested in Hume's ideas have neglected their correspondence as "irrelevant" to Hume's philosophy because it is merely a biographical detail. After all, this is just a French woman -- a mistress -- how much could she have understood of Hume's genius?

Not very much, surely. There is no entry for Mme de Boufflers in Chambers' Biographical Dictionary.

What cultural assumptions and a priori determinations are getting in the way of scholars' ability to see the reality and importance of this woman's relationship with Hume? ("Master and Commander.")

The exchanges between Hume and Mme de Boufflers are the most significant of Hume's life, both personally and philosophically. They are more important than Hume's differences with Rousseau which have been the subject of much scholarly analysis:

"The fact is," Ben Ami-Scharfstein writes, "that no type of explanation, mathematical, physical, logical, philosophical, or psychological is quite self-sufficient." The Philosophers: Their Lives and the Nature of Their Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 52, pp. 59-79.

Professor Ami-Scharfstein argues for the "connectedness" of biographical and psychological methods in understanding philosophies (or philosophers) without succumbing to the ad hominem fallacy.

The ideas of Bradley and the direction implied in all forms of holistic thinking (Absolute) are very relevant to Scharfstein's detection of a unity (or pattern) in the lives and works of great philosophers, including Hume. This idea of "unity" is crucial to my response to David Hume's philosophy.

There is no doubt in my mind that Mme de Boufflers was an intellectual as well as a skilled politician and diplomat. She was in control of Hume, arranging for his life to unfold in accordance with her wishes and convenience which is something (for the most part) that Hume never realized.

Mme de Boufflers was in the same league with Du Barry, D'Espinay, Duffrand and a few of the other women that moved between worlds, largely controlling French society, while exerting their influence throughout the empire.

Several of these women -- including Mme de Boufflers -- were also scholars, as I say, fluent in several languages, well-read, cultured, politically astute, enjoying many lovers.

Hume's immense stupidity about women, incidentally, is in keeping with the majority of great philosophers:

The members of one sex, men, "are distinguished by their force and maturity, the other [women] by their delicacy and softness." A Treatise of Human Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958), p. 402 (L.A. Selby-Brigge, editor).

If you say so, David.

How different are the views of women expressed by Hume's contemporary and a great man of the world Lord Chesterfield:

"You seem to think that from Eve downwards, [women] have done a great deal of mischief. As for that lady, I give her up to you: but since her time, history will inform you, that men have done much more mischief in the world than women; and so, to say the truth, I would not advise you to trust either, more than is absolutely necessary. ... Judge of individuals from your own knowledge of them, and not from their sex, profession, or denomination."

Letters of Philip Dormer, Lord Chesterfield, to His Son 1737-1763 (London: W.W. Gibbins, 1890), p. 106.

Mme de Boufflers agreed with Lord Chesterfield concerning the respective merits of men and women.

Sexual manners in the eighteenth century were far more free than in Victorian times. The Memoirs of Casanova make that point crystal clear.

The rituals of courtship and the game of seduction was more subtle in the salons of the eighteenth century than they would be later with the arrival of the middle class at the center of power and culture which followed upon the final success of the industrial revolution.

I believe that it was one of Thackery's characters (or was it a Disraeli character?) who says -- "a man whose grandfather was a farmer might become prime minister." Horrors.

Some day a woman whose father was a chemist will attend Cambridge University to become a barrister in order to be elected Prime Minister by the British people in their unpredictable ways. David Hume would be astonished and horrified perhaps -- except, of course, if the "Iron Lady" were a Tory! -- which she was.

For a concise summary of Hume's philosophy, see Mathew Stewart, The Truth About Everything: An Irreverent History of Philosophy (New York: Prometheus Books, 1997), pp. 209-217 ("Hume: A Man for All Senses") and, more conservatively, Roger Scruton, A Short History of Modern Philosophy: From Descartes to Wittgenstein (New York: Routledge, 1985), pp. 120-135. ("Hume's philosophy ... begins from a theory of meaning.")

For those who like to impress the impressionable I suggest a brilliant Continentalist twist on Hume in Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), translation by Mark Lester with Charles Stivale. Finally, a bit more demanding is Barry Stroud, "Hume: Action, Reason and Passion," in Ted Honderich, ed., Philosophy Through its Past (London: Pelican, 1984), p. 250.

Historians interested in the various "unfinished" revolutions of modernity, political, technological, cultural and theological are directed to E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848 (New York: Signet, 1962), pp. 349-362. ("Rarely has revolution been more universally predicted, though rarely for the right countries or the right dates.")

Mme de Boufflers was more socially adept and sophisticated than David Hume, as I say, a female Lord Chestefield. She was also much more powerful than the Scottish philosopher, who found law (his first course of study and prospective profession) "distasteful." Mme de Boufflers would have made a great minister of state or distinguished attorney. These professions would only become available to women in later centuries.

A fruitful comparison of the lives of these powerful and brilliant French women, whose sexuality was their currency, with their Venetian counterparts -- mistresses of intrigue and diplomacy, courtesans and intelligence agents as well as patrons of the arts posing for nudes as figures from mythology while transmitting ideas across various levels of society -- might be pursued by way of the life and adventures of Rousseau. Rousseau knew such women (in every sense) in Paris and Venice:

"Even gentlewomen were as free as the air, and their love still freer. Moreover, the prestige enjoyed by courtesans and concubines was still a respected tradition. They combined wit and the most exquisite grace with a strange blending of volumptuousness and childish candor and ingenuousness. These are the qualities that beguile even the grave and austere secretary of France."

Madeleine B. Ellis, Rousseau's Venetian Journey: An Essay Upon Art and Beauty in Les Confessions (Baltimore: John Hopkins, 1964), p. 129.

The Spanish "majas," like the Duchess of Alba, with their pet artists (Francisco Goya) provide one useful analogy. As for Mme de Boufflers' machinations and elevation of feminine wiles to an art form:

"Is there not an intimation ... that Mme de Boufflers, before leaving England, had been in the secret of Lord Hertford's invitation? [to Hume to serve as secretary in Paris] If so, it may not be unreasonable to conjecture that she had some part in the original suggestion of Hume's name or, at least, in heartily seconding it."

Again,

"Her complete knowledge of the situation and her consummate diplomacy are evident throughout. In short, she had triumphed and, for the moment, was quite willing to retire into the background: David Hume was to be hers. How much of all this strategy the philosopher himself recognised is not determinable -- perhaps rather little."

Ernest Campbell Mossner, The Life of David Hume (London & Texas: University of Texas, 1954), p. 437.

Mme de Boufflers was well aware that Hume was one of the greatest intellects of the century. Hume "amused" her. She was enlightened by him, charmed by his lack of courtly smoothness as a woman courted by the most dashing men in France and mistress to one of the most powerful political figures in the world -- Prince de Conti -- she also juggled lovers with dexterity and ideas with equal ease.

Mme de Boufflers found that Hume was her favorite "geek" (or the eighteenth century equivalent).

Mysteriously, Mme de Boufflers also found herself falling in love with Hume. In terms of sophistication or guile, diplomacy or political skill -- Hume was a child compared to Mme de Boufflers. Although Mme de Boufflers referred to Hume as her "teacher" the instruction was mutual.

There is one woman who matters in Hume's life. It is Mme de Boufflers. It happens that the same woman may be Hume's most perceptive partner in dialogue, critic, and collaborator, a fellow philosopher. Maybe that is why she was so important to Hume.

Mme de Boufflers anticipated some of the most perceptive criticisms of Hume's philosophy and intellectual trends developing years after their deaths, notably the criticisms of the Romantic idealists. I like to imagine a dialogue between Hume and Mary Wollstonecraft on the subject of the moral sentiments and rights of women. ("William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft.")

Much of what Mme de Boufflers said concerning the importance of feelings to the self and identity was insightful and echoed by philosophers in later centuries who were sympathetic to Hume's skepticism.

Mme de Boufflers should be regarded as an important philosopher in addition to everything else that she was. As the benefactress of Rousseau -- the French philosopher also regarded Mme de Boufflers as "brilliant," a rare accolade by Rousseau for a woman -- she merits a place in history.

To dismiss the insights and philosophical intelligence of such a person is idiotic. This idiocy has been routine in Hume scholarship for centuries. A.J. Ayer barely mentions Mme. de Boufflers, the same is true for Anthony Quinton's very readable essay. Hume (London & New York: Routledge, 1999). Several standard histories of philosophy focusing on Hume fail to mention Mme de Boufflers.

I suspect that she knew and accepted that this would be the verdict of history.

Which of these two persons -- Hume or Mme de Boufflers -- do you believe would have more interesting things to say concerning human nature or politics in the real world?

Only one of them today is regarded as an important political thinker, philosopher, or intellectual of any kind. Only one of these two persons has achieved lasting fame as a writer. (Some scholars suggest that Mme de Boufflers wrote books under pseudonyms.)

Only one of these two persons is thought of as a significant figure when we examine the ideas of the eighteenth century that realized the hopes for emancipation from superstition of what Michel Foucault called the "Classical Age."

The triumph of Newtonian science that was to usher in a new era turned out to bring only a bloody revolution as well as a highly doubtful "Enlightenment."

We are still living under the shadow of these thinkers whose names and works were, mostly, unknown to the lawyers and judges I once knew or to most people these days.

Perhaps efforts will be made to plagiarize this essay probably on the assumption that no Latino male could have written this work. ("'Brideshead Revisited': A Movie Review" and "What is it like to be plagiarized?")

Can you explain the neglect of one partner in this dialectic without reference to the fact that one of these persons is a woman and the other is a man?

I can not understand this neglect except as an example of sexism.

My deeper reason for pursuing this topic, therefore, is that it illustrates some feminist criticisms of mainstream history of philosophy. These now familiar criticisms are not dissimilar to what I say for different reasons of New Jersey and contemporary American intellectual life.

Who counts as a philosopher? How do we make determinations of virtue or merit? What are the consequences of these, often culturally and otherwise irrationally biased determinations as to intellectual "importance" and "seriousness"? How often are these decisions subconscious? Why do we fail to see that evaluations of merit are also historical judgments and philosophical conclusions which, at least in the past, have been tainted by sexism and/or racism and other inappropriate factors unrelated to merit? How many wonderful philosophers have been lost to history because of such biases and persistent institutional sexism or racism? Who is to say that philosophy can only be communicated in books containing formal arguments? Conversations, novels, plays, movies -- all may be works of philosophy. ("Nihilists in Disneyworld" and "Carlos Fuentes and Multiculturalism.")

I write this paragraph after spending a day -- one of hundreds or thousands -- battling computer hackers, alterations, defacements, vandalisms of my writings -- with a sense of sadness and iron-like determination to defend my work which is (really myself) from these attempts to destroy both.

No better experience is possible to appreciate the situation of intellectually-minded women during the century that concerns me in this essay. Perhaps, even today, in many places in the world writers must struggle to think and speak freely. How many women during the past four centuries secretly wished to say: "I am a person, like you, with thoughts, opinions, needs, hopes, and the passion to speak to the world"? ("Master and Commander" and "The Taming of Somebody I Don't Know Who.")

Genuine philosophical achievement and insight was simply not recognized when it originated with a person who happened to wear skirts or bear children. Despite the fact that I do not wear skirts nor have I borne children this injustice grates on my nerves. I have only helped to raise one young woman by mastering minor homemaking skills to a sufficient degree that I have learned to ponder the obstacles to women's intellectual lives. ("'The Stepford Wives': A Movie Review.")

I have to scrub my bathrooms and get the laundry done later today, for example, in order to attend my daughter's vocal concert this afternoon. It is unlikely that Hume worried about such things. His lover certainly knew enough to "arrange" for such matters to be taken care of without the men in her life noticing these trivial details in their daily lives. ("'Holy Smoke': A Movie Review" and "'The French Lieutenant's Woman': A Movie Review.")

Mme de Boufflers' criticisms of Hume's skepticism are insightful and powerful. They have been repeated by others often without recognition of their previous articulation by a mere woman. This is not an isolated instance of dismissals (or trivializing) of a woman's philosophical insights and scholarly contributions.

Our sense of what is the Western philosophical tradition and of who merits recognition is still distorted by sexism. This is both an historical and philosophical injustice. This is not a criticism or denial of the genius of men like Hume. It is an injustice resulting from denigration of women's humanity (dehumanization) that continues to be experienced by many women (and others deemed to be "like women") that can no longer be tolerated. Mary Warnock, "Introduction," in Women Philosophers (London: J.M. Dent, 1996), pp. xxxiii-xxxv. ("Carlos Fuentes and Multiculturalism" then "Cornel West on Universality" and "Dehumanization.")

We have an inaccurate idea of philosophical progress. I am sure that women have played a much larger role in making such progress possible, and there is such progress, except that -- as in every other way -- women were forced to act, indirectly, from behind the scenes.

This mandatory subtlety and women's creative imagination of "possibilities" may also be evidenced in the episode involving Hume and his French Countess.

I begin by reviewing Hume's life. Mr. Hume was sure that he would be remembered, if at all, only as an historian. Mme de Boufflers suggested that Hume's philosophical importance would be even greater than his significance as an historian. She assured Hume that he would, indeed, be remembered.

Would you say that posterity has decided this controversy between philosopher and countess? Who was right? (See their first exchange of letters as compared with their final letters quoted by Mossner.)

After the biographical discussion I turn to one prominent theme in Hume's philosophy that is still very controversial.

Although this issue is connected to every other doctrine in Hume's system -- for present purposes and in light of the relationship with Mme. de Boufflers -- analysis of this issue may be isolated.

I will focus here on Hume's famous doubts concerning the reality of the self.

Each doctrine in Hume's system is connected to all others. If criticisms of Hume's skepticism concerning identity or the reality of the self are valid implied difficulties arise as to the fact/value problem, issues of causation, and the problem of induction.

David Hume's History.

David Hume was born April 26, 1711 in Edinburgh, son of Joseph Home of Ninewells in Berwickshire, and Katherine Falconer, daughter of a great lawyer who became "Lord President of the Court of Sessions," Scotland's supreme civil court. Hume's "dad" was a judge, according to some accounts; according to others, Hume's father was a "member of the landed gentry, but not well to do." (H.D. Aiken should be contrasted with Mossner.)

Father died in 1713, leaving Hume in the care of his mother with some siblings. A common experience in the lives of many philosophers is a fatherless childhood. Hume -- he changed the name from "Home" because of the inability of the English to pronounce the name correctly without this assistance -- was tutored at home as a boy. Hume quickly became tutor to his tutors.

At the age of twelve, February 27, 1723, Hume enrolled at Edinburgh University. Upper crust boys at the time regarded it as infra dig to actually take a degree at any university. They were above that sort of vulgar need to qualify for employment. Hume followed suit and left university without a diploma. Hume's studies were focused on the "new philosophy" of the period, i.e., science, as well as ancient philosophy and history, logic, mathematics, ethics, classics. See the discussion in Alasdair MacIntyre, "Introduction," in Hume's Ethical Writings (New York: McMillan, 1965), pp. 9-17, then Ernest C. Mossner, "Introduction" in David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (New York & London: Penguin Classics, 1985), pp. 7-29. Mossner's classic biography of Hume is quoted above.

The circumstances surrounding Hume's breakdown are somewhat mysterious. There was a young woman of modest origins who was "with child" shortly before Hume's departure for the European continent, but whether Hume was responsible for this situation is unclear. There is no doubt that Hume's youthful depression was severe and life-threatening. This is also not an unusual development in the lives of philosophers -- both great and not-so-great -- usually at the point of entry into the second decade of life, then again in early middle age.

No, I don't think Hume "knocked-up" the young woman in question. I have certainly never done such a thing, except as prescribed by God and man. See H.D. Aiken, "Introduction," in David Hume, Moral and Political Philosophy (New York: Hafner Publishing, 1948), pp. ix-li (I seem to recall that Aiken's exchanges with Santayana are revealing) then Stephen Toulmin, Reason in Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), pp. 144-163. (What is "moral reasoning"?)

Hume's fascinating autobiographical letter (1734) to a London physician and notorious quack, Dr. John Arbuthnot, is a masterpiece of irony.

There are many theories concerning Hume's mysterious weight increase. My view is that Hume began to eat a great deal more than he had before gaining the weight. This was probably in order to reward or distract himself from his "metaphysical despair."

In the spirit of Mr. Hume I must conclude that this opinion can only be based on empirical observation of persons with a tendency to corpulence that is "constantly conjoined" with their increased eating of fattening foods. Naturally, this is only a "postulate" because the problem of induction leaves us without certainty concerning empirical generalizations applicable to future events.

Hume's breakdown came after nearly eight years of intense personal study. The acid-like skepticism of his mind was applied to the platitudes of his age. Hume was unimpressed by "authority," meaning pontificating lawyers like his father or schoolmasters?

Freudians take a bow. Hume's adoption of the new experimental method that might lead to "indisputable" truth was certainly a rejection of paternal authority. Descartes sought the same goal by different intellectual means. Both philosophers were only partly successful in establishing their intellectual independence.

Accepting Newton's challenge in the Optiks Hume would apply the methods of science to "extract from nature "her secrets."

What if nature will not share those secrets? Shall we, as Bacon suggests, "torture them out of her"?

Among philosophers experiencing profound psychological turmoil all of the following and more may be listed: Plato (probably), Augustine, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Hume, Kant (gives a new meaning to the word "repressed"), Berkeley, Rousseau, Voltaire, Wollstonecraft, Coleridge, Mill, Bradley, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Russell, Santayana, Wittgenstein, Sartre, Foucault, James, Peirce, Weil, Althusser, Derrida.

Suicide attempts may be a rite of passage for great philosophers. Keep in mind this idea of control and mastery of nature. I am sure that Mme de Boufflers helped Hume to get over that hump, as it were, and offered him a way of "living" his philosophy.

We do not "extract" secrets from nature or society much less from women. We develop our best theories to try to understand what is going on and why things are happening, often with mixed success at best, based on observation, testing, trial and error. Some things and all women -- like Mme de Boufflers -- must remain mysterious as well as dangerous. ("That's sexism!")

C.S. Peirce pronounced his name "percy" -- this is according to Santayana -- and seriously considered writing a book about women for the benefit of young men entering Harvard University during the nineteenth century.

This is like a deaf person writing of the glories of Mozart's symphonies.

None of the great philosophers may be described as highly successful with the ladies with the possible exception of Bertrand Russell and Rousseau.

Hume's first visit to France took place at about this time, 1734-35. Paris seduced him. Hume was dazzled by the beauty of the city that discovered him -- that is, by the high degree of civilization in conversation, the poetry and subtlety of French women.

Ideas are an aspect of social interaction among French people in a way that may be impossible to communicate in the Anglo-American world.

Philosophy, ideas, beauty, politics in France are comparable to, say, sports for Americans. At dinner in suburban New Jersey, one comments on the Yankee's pitching problems. In France, one chats about the latest biography of Diderot.

I will not comment on which culture displays greater wisdom by these choices concerning polite conversation.

In Manhattan both topics are discussed easily even as one plans to fornicate while engaging in political debate over weekend get-togethers in Amagansett, Long Island.

Running low on funds Hume scrambled for a job as tutor to a young nobleman who turned out to be insane. This experience prepared Hume for his assistance of M. Rousseau whose bizarre behavior towards everyone finally drove even the mild-mannered Hume away as well as alienating Rousseau's patroness Mme de Boufflers.

Hume suggested a career in politics for the young lunatic departing for France a year or so later. This was after writing several essays while ostensibly working as a tutor. I will pass over in tactful silence Hume's bizarre military experiences with the truly demented General St. Clair 1746-1748.

With the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1763 the Seven Years War ended. The new British Ambassador to France Lord Hertford appointed David Hume to be his personal secretary, very likely as a result of the diplomacy and pressure exerted by Mme de Boufflers, who wished to "meet" the Scottish philosopher.

I should not dwell just yet on the relationship between these two strange individuals. I fear that both might well be described as "abnormal" persons by Melissa Harris-Perry or Rachel Maddow.

I will only pause to note the ways in which Mme de Boufflers controlled many aspects of Hume's life -- especially Hume's reactions to her -- that are visible from the outset. They merit careful attention.

Mme de Boufflers displays feminine wiles and artistry in this introductory letter, for example, comparable to Da Vinci's genius in painting the Mona Lisa. Study this charming, flattering and "artlessly-artful" letter to Mr. Hume dated March 13, 1763:

"For a long time, Sir, I have struggled with conflicting sentiments. The admiration which your sublime work has awakened in me and the esteem with which it has inspired me for your person, your talents, and your virtue, have frequently aroused the desire of writing to you, that I might express those sentiments with which I am so deeply smitten. Considering, however, that I am unknown to you, that my approbation will seem pointless to you, and that reserve and even privacy are more suitable to my sex, I am timid of being accused of presumption and of allowing myself to be known to my own disadvantage by a man whose good opinion I shall always regard as the most flattering and the most precious of blessings." (Mossner, pp. 425-426.)

After a fistful of asterisks we arrive at the good stuff. Clearly, this is a dangerous woman. Get this move:

"Thus, when my reason tells me I ought to remain silent, my enthusiasm prevents me from following its authority."

She can barely refrain from using the word "passion" opting for the milder "enthusiasm."

Has the good philosopher really pondered the importance of the passions?

Hume insisted that no conflict between reason and the passions is possible. Reason is and can only be the "slave of the passions," according to Hume.

Being only a "little woman," one of the most beautiful women in the world and writing eloquently in one of several languages mastered by this "simple person" -- after having cut a deal for the philosopher's presence in her city at her convenience -- she merely wishes to ask for Mr. Hume's "instruction."

Is reason really blind? Is there not wisdom in emotion? All of Hume's philosophy is based on his dichotomous psychology, the division between facts or events from reason and values which leads to Hume's skepticism about knowledge and ethical "uncertainties."

Is it really impossible that these categories -- fact and value, reason and passion -- overlap?

Wittgenstein's journey is from a Humean position in the Tractatus to Bouffler's more subtle view in the Philosophical Investigations.

"Though a woman and of no advanced age, and despite the dissipated life one leads in this country, I have always loved reading."

Mme de Boufflers has gotten it accross that she's a babe. And not an idiot:

" ... and there are few good books in any language or of any kind that I have not read, either in the original or in translation. And I can assure you, Sir, with unquestionable sincerity, that I have found none which, in my judgment, unites so many perfections as yours. ... "

Pages of this are delivered with an elegance worthy of the best English writers in what was a foreign language for this amazing woman.

The theme of their association is announced immediately. Diffidence, simplicity and elegance by this polished intellectual diplomat, combined with cautions to Hume, suggested by her greater experience of the world of seventeenth century European society.

For such a woman men are a profession or a way of rising in the world. Mme de Boufflers' passions were highly reasonable. There were no other options for her and other well-educated women. An American television show focusing on sex workers in suburbia advertises with the slogan: "It is a business doing pleasure with you."

Mme de Boufflers decides to add Hume to her collection (and she does!) because of her interest in "disputation." However, she did not hesitate to try to land a marriage with the Prince de Conti -- even after "amorous" relations with the Prince had ended -- because it would have made her the most powerful woman in France. This "union" with the Prince de Conti would make her one of the most influential persons in the world she knew and sought to rule.

Hume, Rousseau, her collection of artists and intellectuals were merely a hobby. Inconveniently, Mme de Boufflers fell in love with her "noble" British philosopher. Notice this very intelligent assessment of Hume's genuine merits after the frothy "you're-so-strong" stuff is out of the way:

"The clearness, the majesty, the touching simplicity of your style delight me by your divine impartiality? I would that I had, on this occasion, your own eloquence with which to express my thought! In truth, I believed that I had before my eyes the work of some celestial being, free from human passions, who, for the sake of mankind, has deigned to write the history of these latter times."

Mme de Boufflers would discover Hume's passions and present them to the philosopher, an argumentum ad demonstrandum.

In this passage there is a more than a hint of irony. The realms of fact and value would blend in a woman's person. There would be little doubt of the reality of Hume's ... "self" when Mme de Boufflers was in the room. (Scharfstein, pp. 189-197.)

Hume's "French Lady" (his term aimed at concealing her identity in letters) became an embodied "fact" with immense "value" in his scholarly life.

The philosophical French countess was more of a Cartesian than she allowed Hume to see, initially, admiring nonetheless Hume's forthright manner and clear-eyed appreciation of "reality."

One senses, even in their initial exchange, the attractiveness for Mme de Boufflers of Hume's sharp judgment concerning philosophy:

"Generally speaking," Hume says, "errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous."

To this observation Bertrand Russell responds in the twentieth century:

"He has no right to say this. 'Dangerous' is a causal word, and a skeptic as to causation cannot know that anything is dangerous."

Russell shrewdly concludes:

"It was inevitable that such a self-refutation of rationality should be followed by a great outburst of irrational faith. The quarrel between Hume and Rousseau is symbolic: Rousseau was mad, but influential, Hume was sane but had no followers."

A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1945), pp. 672-673.

Russell has been described as insane, but popular with many lesser figures.

Concerning the occasional ridiculousness of philosophy I recommend both Ray Monk, Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude 1872-1921 (New York: Free Press, 1996) and Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (New York: Free Press, 1990), as a corrective, I also suggest a study of James F. Peterman, Philosophy as Therapy: An Interpretation and Defense of Wittgenstein's Later Philosophical Project (New York: SUNY, 1992), pp. 39-52.

Wittgenstein was described as "my crazy German" by Bertrand Russell. Russell asked G.E. Moore: "Do you like me?" Moore replied thoughtfully: "No." Both men agreed, however, that they disliked Wittgenstein far more than they disliked one another. They then debated whether the statement: "there is a lion in this room" could be established to be true or false exclusively on the basis of empirical verification. The matter was unresolved after Wittgenstein's entry into the discussion. See Terry Eagleton's excellent script for the film "Wittgenstein." ("A Philosophical Investigation of Ludwig Wittgenstein.")

Mme de Boufflers favored clear-eyed assessments of situations at all times. Her survival depended on this clarity and sharpness. The revolution that hovered on the horizon and threatened (eventually destroying) the world that Mme de Boufflers had known was less of a surprise to her than to many others.

Stupidity has never been an option for powerful women.

Hume's observations of empirical reality did not reveal the meaning of his own experiences in going to France. Hume was unaware of what had taken place to make this appointment possible. A careful examination of Hume's telescope would not help with this problem. Indeed, a clear "empirical" effort at understanding would also fail to disclose the source of this powerful attraction or the curious allure of this physically small and slender woman.

What was the source of Mme de Boufflers' mysterious energy? Is it possible to be clear-eyed about empirical reality while missing the moral "meaning" of events? Will a mere "factual" understanding of an event or person's life tell us the truth or meaning, goodness or evil of that life? Is any description of a human event adequate that does not, at the same time and equally, interpret that event, morally, as a purposeful action? I doubt it. ("Mind and Machine.")

Mme de Boufflers was not "an association of ideas" and, despite Hume's best efforts, there was no "constant conjunction" of their natures. According to Hume's theory, therefore, Mme de Boufflers might be dismissed as "lacking in cognitive content."

"Experience," for some reason, suggested otherwise to Mr. Hume.

To speak of "Hume's Guillotine" under these circumstances may be indelicate. Mme de Boufflers survived the Terror living long after Hume had "bought the farm" as those uncouth Americans say.

Mme de Boufflers was a part of Hume's thoughts for the rest of his life. She had no rivals in Hume's heart. Despite her liasons and marriages she permitted no other woman to get close to Hume.

When the philosopher contemplated marriage with a surrogate for her younger self Mme de Boufflers became very upset. She responded infrequently and coldly to his letters until Hume (on his own, of course) thought better of marrying anyone. This may be an early example of behaviorist conditioning.

For purposes of comparison, see Stephen Gaukroger, Descartes: An Intellectual Autobiography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995) and Margaret Gullan-Whur, Within Reason: A Life of Spinoza (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998).

Hume's brief "My Own Life" written months before his death in 1776 is tactful and omits any awkward reference to a married woman. This was protective of Mme de Boufflers' good name. As with most letters and dialogues from the period there is much conveyed between the lines of their explicit communications.

Indirectness was a requirement of the formal constraints and decorum that bounded aristocratic and privileged lives at the time.

Lord Chesterfield's candor, wit, as well as malice -- I approve of all three in society and letter-writing! -- are rare and valuable perspectives on a vanished world.

Hume appreciated that he could not rival the Prince de Conti as marriage material. He also knew that Mme de Boufflers needed power and ceremony along with a number of lovers -- lovers whose "minds" (obviously) did not attract her.

Hume, tactfully, offered his "friendship" and assistance in Mme de Boufflers' campaign to "get" the Prince that she eventually "got."

I am sure that Hume paid an ultimate and final emotional price for this painful "gentlemanly" gesture. Hume chose to love a free woman.

John Bailey made a similar decision by marrying Iris Murdoch. I think that both men will be regarded as very wise by posterity. Love can only be kept by being given away.

Hume's abandonment of philosophy in his later years, his concern with history (memory and the past), cannot be unrelated to these events. Philosophy is part of the joy of life. For Hume, much of his joy or "bliss" in life remained in France, with "her," while David Hume made his slow journey home to what he hoped would be a dignified obscurity and death.

Hume's final letter for Mme de Boufflers is a heart-breaking example of British self-possession and restraint that is illuminated by Hume's unspoken realization that Mme de Boufflers was also a prisoner of conventions and codes that neither of them had created.

A woman in her time and place could not lead the sort of life that Mme de Boufflers had been born to lead in any way other than the path she followed.

Hume could not ask her to give up her public life, for this was her "identity." Accordingly, Hume accepted the modest place that Mme de Boufflers assigned to him in her life:

"Tho' I am certainly within a few Weeks, Dear Madam, and perhaps within a few days, of my own Death, I could not forebear being struck with the Death of the Prince de Conti, so great a Loss in every particular. My Reflection carryed me immediately to your Situation, in this Melancholy incident. What a Difference to you in your whole plan of Life!"

Read that last sentence again. Underline it. Hume fully understood how much this woman loved him and also her mixed feelings for the Prince de Conti. Notice the words "... carryed me immediately to your Situation ..." and the capitalized "Melancholy."

Hume also appreciated that Mme de Boufflers must have been pained at the loss of a companion of many years to whom she owed her social position and wealth. Hume's expression of concern and sympathy is genuine. Her welfare is what moves him, never jealousy or possessiveness, even as his own life is ending.

"Pray, write me some particulars: but in such terms that you need not care, in case of Decease, into whose hands your Letter may fall."

This was no minor worry at the time.

"My distemper is a Diarrhoea, or Disorder in my Bowels, which has been gradually undermining me these two Years; but, within these six months has been visibly hastening me to my End. I see Death approach gradually, without any Anxiety or Regret."

Think again of the words he uses: "What a Difference to you in your whole plan of life!"

"I salute you, with great Affection and Regard, for the last time." (Mossner, p. 602.)

Think of an eighteenth century gentleman taking a slow bow upon being introduced to a great lady. The note of salutation as farewell is a stroke of genius. The gesture reaches back to courtly romances.

Now consider this passage from Hume's autobiographical essay "attending" to his studied effort to arrange everything neatly for future biographers, putting on the spiritual equivalent of a clean pair of underpants, removing any possible source of embarrassment or guilt -- for others.

Mme de Boufflers is not to feel responsible for their shared tragedy. She is the intended recipient of these words. Her happiness is what matters. Hume is putting on a brave front. Life has been great. He has been happy.

Historians of philosophy miss the undertones in Hume's beautiful and spare prose exhibiting a lack of acquaintance with the splendors of English literature in this period. More than in most eras the eighteenth century's literary artists were concerned with euphony, that is, the sound of language on the page, words as music providing their echoes and resonance -- Tristam Shandy and Hume's interest in that novel must be considered. I urge philosophers to study Hume's essay: "Of the Standard of Taste." ("Metaphor is Mystery.")

"I have suffered very little pain from my Disorder; and what is more strange, have notwithstanding the great decline of my person, never suffered a Moment's Abatement of my Spirits: Insomuch, that were I to name the Period of my Life which I should most choose to pass over again I might be tempted to point to this later Period."

Do you believe that this is true in anyone's life?

Hume is saying than while he was not the Prince de Conti --

" -- My Company was not unacceptable to the young and careless, as well as to the Studious and Literary: And as I took a Particular Pleasure in the Company of modest women, I had no Reason to be displeased with the Reception I met with from them. ... " (Mossner, p. 615.)

Hume was claiming the status of a kind of ladies' man. Mme de Boufflers need not worry about him. Master of irony until the end.

David Hume died August 25, 1776 at about 4:00 P.M. The burial took place on the 29th. A large crowd gathered to see the coffin carried out of Hume's premises. One of the observers is reported by Hume's biographer to have shouted: "He was an atheist!"

To which a companion answered: "No matter, he was an honest man." (Mossner, p. 603.)

Mme de Boufflers died in 1800, after many epistolary friendships with distinguished thinkers -- almost all of her friendships were with men -- including Mozart and Walpole. No other David Hume appeared in her life. This final "value judgment" of Hume's life was clearly "factual."

Hume was indeed an honest and very loving man.

Hume's Doubts Concerning the Reality of the Self in Time.

All philosophy reflects history, consciously, and (more interestingly) unconsciously.

The eighteenth century is such a fascinating period that the man who best articulates its conscious self-image and aspirations must be a source of continuing scholarly attention. This is especially true in contrast with those -- like Rousseau -- who embody the subconscious contradictions and fears of the same age.

Rousseau anticipates and helps to create the Romantic age and its discontents with the much celebrated reason "adored" by the thinkers of the Enlightenment. Rousseau's influence on both Marx and Freud (as well as Kant) is important to subsequent events. Yes, there are Newton and Hume; but there are also Rousseau and the Marquis de Sade. There is the Declarations of the Rights of Man and also the Terror. There are Parliament and Bedlam, side by side, and often each institution resembles the other.

Think of the contrast today between John Rawls and Michel Foucault.

Kant is supremely fascinating because he is Hume and Rousseau as both the foremost example of Enlightenment "Reason" and the first philosopher of Romantic aesthetics. At the age of twelve I decided that this was the greatest paragraph of English prose in the world's best novel:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way -- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2001), p. 1.

This famous paragraph contains my definition of the word "revolutionary." A revolutionary is a person who lives the contradictions of his or her era by seeking to resolve them through moving towards greater justice. Mary Wollstonecraft's letters from France were signed: "Yours in Revolution." Any intellectual woman at the time of the French "upheaval" (including an aristocrat) was a revolutionary. Perhaps this is still true. ("William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft.")

A year before Hume's death a young woman was born in a country parsonage in England whose Sense and Sensibility (1811) might serve as a title for a dual biography of Hume and Mme de Boufflers. The difficulty is to determine whether the philosopher or French countess -- notwithstanding contrary appearances -- is the "more loving partner."

I think the "more loving one" (to refer to W.H. Auden's wonderful poem) is David Hume.

Hume's cool rationality and celebration of reason, despite his defense of the moral sentiments, seems like bluster. The effort to persuade himself that "all is understandable in the light of reason" is visible and tenuous. Reason is the bandage on his broken psyche. Hume's courage is admirable if unconvincing today.

Mme de Boufflers' good political and worldly sense, her civilized smile in response to Hume's doubts about the self -- doubts expressed after their years of shared memories and love -- contrasts with Mr. Hume's buttoned-up and more private "sensibility." The ambiguity in their gender roles (another forbidden aspect of their relationship) is a criticism of Hume's atomistic and analytical approach.

Hume played the "feminine" role; Madame de Boufflers played the more "masculine" role in their relationship.

Before turning to the further correspondence of Hume and Mme de Boufflers let us set the philosophical stage:

"It might be asked how it is that Hume is so confident that 'necessary connections' between events cannot be observed? It is here that he introduces the philosophical consideration upon which many of his conclusions rest. This is the thought that if two things or events A and B exist at separate times, then they are separable in thought. And that means that the existence of one can be conceived without supposing the existence of the other; in which case any assertion to the effect that the one is always accompanied by the other must be a contingent and not a necessary truth. This principle -- that things which are temporarily distinct can also be only contingently connected -- occurs again and again in Hume's philosophy. If it should be doubted, Hume would reply as follows: at any moment it is possible that my experience should come to an end. Yet I might retain complete knowledge of it until that end. How then can my experience point to any necessary trajectory beyond the point of cessation? It would seem to follow that all relations between separate times are contingent. If all knowledge is based on experience, the same contingent relationship between times must pertain to the things that are known through experience, since experience occurs in time."

Roger Scruton, "Hume," in A Short History of Modern Philosophy, at p. 125.

This is the thinking of a genius whose mind is shattered into a million pieces and who then stitches the pieces of that mind together, haphazardly, being obsessively aware of the contingency of this patchwork self.

Hume sees the same "stitching together of facts" in all of empirical reality viewed as knowledge moving the "Anglo-American Mind" far along on one of the twin paths on which that Mind will travel for the next two centuries at least -- towards an analytical, atomistic, naturalistic, practical, and skeptical destination. This path leads to wonderful and not-so-wonderful developments.

The second path followed by the Anglo-American "Mind" (yes, there is such a thing) is towards creative play, Romanticism, imaginative celebration, ideals, values, global empires and trips to the moon.

Hume's "experience embodied in thought" will live on well beyond the point of his cessation.

Notice that a mind pursuing a divided path, travelling in two directions, will eventually split apart: Who were the philosophers of the Holocaust? Is the phenomenon of "death camps" limited to twentieth century Germany? Must a view of humans as mere "animals" be put in place before the atrocity of mass murder (or slavery and torture) becomes possible? How is Hume's well-meaning system connected to Bentham, then Mill and Skinner? Or Dr. Mengele? Why were the psychiatrists at the Soviet Gulags "behaviorists"? What was Hume's opinion on the subject of slavery? Why did he hold this opinion? Again, Andrew Walls, Race and Racism in Modern Philosophy, p. 127. ("Behaviorism is Evil.")

What if two events -- say, meeting a woman and loving her -- occur at different points in time but are not separable in thought or feeling? What if both of those moments are with you always?

F.H. Bradley would commiserate with Mr. Hume by suggesting that the faculty of emotional judgment unites those separate moments -- for the experiencing subject -- and also, objectively, within a network of meanings and causal relations that alone explains them as a matter of necessity called the Absolute. ("Donald Davidson's Anomalous Monism.")

Fundamental "unity" in life is your identity or self. "Unity" implies the presence of others who are part of your identity for good and ill. I know the reality of a perception and its external cause, perhaps, through its effects on me. (Berkeley and Hume by way of Roderick Chisholm and Brand Blanshard.)

The distance from this empiricist observation to phenomenology is very slight. Bradley's distinction between analytical, synthetic and ideal judgment is crucial to understanding intersubjectivity as well as identity. However, Bradley -- until recently -- has been neglected by philosophers in Britain and America. Today, Bradley should be read by students of phenomenology and hermeneutics. Philip Ferreira, Bradley and the Structure of Scientific Knowledge (New York: SUNY, 1999), pp. 51-71. (Bradley says: "In a single word continuity of content is taken to show identity of element.")

Compare Maria Dimova-Cookson, T.H. Green's Moral and Political Philosophy: A Phenomenological Perspective (New York & London: Palgrave, 2001), p. 17 (one of the best definitions of phenomenology that I have seen) with Thomas R. Flynn, Sartre and Marxist Existentialism (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1984), pp. 3-7 ("A Phenomenology of Freedom").

Hume's much misunderstood suggestion that beauty or judgments of taste are "in the mind" whereas the object judged is "in the world" transported to the level of ethical evaluations is based on a failure to perceive that we are compelled to some conclusions concerning matters of judgment.

This was an important insight that Mme de Boufflers wished to communicate to Hume.

We are "compelled" to judgments on the basis of our natures, for one thing, but also in terms of the logic of the particular "game" (Wittgenstein) that we must play within the social context of aesthetic or ethical evaluations.

A woman's sense of connectedness to her child (or world) underlies her inability to accept a brutal atomism and reductivism as Mary Wollstonecraft insisted. It was simply unacceptable (or absurd) for eighteenth-century thinkers to accept that mother/child symbolism could be more significant to our biological and even physical reality than Newton's "clockwork" universe.

Just as there is a logic of human association yielding a natural law of social institutions and ethics of human interaction so there seems to be a kind of "intelligence" in aesthetic experience concerned with feelings conveying cognitive content. This insight would be essential to Kant's response to Hume. Terry Eagleton, "The Kantian Imaginary," in The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), pp. 70-102 and Paul Guyer, "The Standard of Taste and the 'Most Ardent Desire of Society,'" in Values of Beauty: Historical Essays in Aesthetics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 37-77. ("Guerrilla Aesthetics and the Lobotomizing of the American Mind" then "Richard Rorty's Ethical Skepticism.")

Hume's lover along with Mary Wollstonecraft anticipated crucial developments in nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy, but neither woman has been credited with these insights for some strange reason.

I wonder whether "transgressions of gender roles" (as we say nowadays) has something to do with history's dismissals of these "feminine minds"? What is mind? Is mind "gendered"? Is there a logic to the emotions? Are our "natures" within or outside of us, or both inside and outside of the self? Are we not always both "subjects" and "objects"? The later Wittgenstein may be brought into a dialogue with Hume. ("Is clarity enough?" and "Judith Butler and Gender Theory.")

I will quote from Bradley's Appearance and Reality (New York: MacMillan, 1897), pp. 51-52, pp. 545-546, and then from David Hume's works before turning to Hume's "extraordinary lady":

"We found that succession required both diversity and unity. These could not intelligibly be combined, and their union was mere junction, with oscillation of emphasis from one aspect to the other. And so, psychically also, the timeless unity is a piece of duration, not experienced as successive. Assuredly everything psychical is an event, [mental experience,] and it really contains a lapse; but so far as you do not use, or notice, that lapse, it is not there for you and for the purpose in hand. In other words, there is a permanent in the perception of change, [identity,] which goes right through the succession and holds it together. The permanent can do this, on the one hand, because it occupies duration and is, in its essence, divisible indefinitely. On the other hand, it is one and unchanging, so far as it is regarded or felt, and is used, from that aspect. [Dual aspects?] And the special concrete identities, which thus change, and again do not change, are the key to the particular successions that are perceived. Presence is not absolute timelessness; it is any piece of duration, so far as that is considered from or felt in an identical aspect. [Now.] And this mere relative absence of lapse" -- in an absolute sense there is no absence of lapse in eternity -- "has been perverted into the absolute timeless monstrosity which we have ventured to condemn."

Here comes the good stuff:

"... We are forced to assert that A is both continuous and discrete, both successive and present. And our practice of taking it, now as one in a certain respect, and now again as many, in another respect, shows only how we practice. ... "

"Now" is and always must be a "construction" of freedom, a choice in time, a hermeneutic achievement. The experience of "now" implies freedom. The only resolution for the problem of relations that guarantees the validity of our partial perspectives and makes them more than "relative" -- Bradley's answer to Hume -- is found in the Absolute:

"Truth [identity] is one aspect of experience, and is therefore made imperfect and limited by what it fails to include. So far as it is absolute, it does however give the general type and character of all that can possibly be true or real. And the universe in this general character is known completely. [Absolute knowledge is God.] ... the universe does not exist, and it cannot possibly exist, as truth or knowledge, in such a way as not to be included in the truth we call Absolute."

Your identity or self is real because at any single instant all other instants of your life that is shared with others are implied or contained within it. ("Is it rational to believe in God?")

Moreover, the instant, now, contains the same shared moment of every other life that is and must be "entangled" with your own. "Now" and "here" is where we all meet. There is no other way that your life makes sense or that even the denial of sense is or can be coherent.

Your French countess suffers, so you suffer; your pain is "connected" to her absence and her shared history with you. Your language, Mr. Hume, is your history and the history of your civilization. All of these things must be present to you, eternally, in your "self" as "perceptions." This "presentness" of culture and inherited civilization is "transfigured" into the metaphor of "magic" at Hogwarts Academy in the wonderful Harry Potter books.

John Lennon captures the insight in a phrase: "Come together over me." ("Is it rational to believe in God?")

Daniel Dennett defines persons as biological machinery with a point of view. Unfortunately, Professor Dennett fails to ponder the need for and importance of that "point of view" or intentionality:

On what, exactly, do we require a point of view? What is implied by the notion of a point of view? A viewer? Something external to the viewer that is "seen"? Is the viewer an object of observation? What is "seeing"? Is "seeing" possible without being seen? How do you "see" something/anything "as" a work of art? Is it not necessary for the work of art also to "see" you? Arthur Danto, "Philosophy as/and/of Literature," in The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), pp. 135-161. ("'Inception': A Movie Review.")

There are other containers of history: the garments you wear, David, the cells and particles that make up your material being, your shared evolution with all life on the planet as well as the histories of other persons -- persons near and far from you.

This includes persons like me writing this essay about you.

This idealist philosophical observation coincides with the revelations of quantum physics and twenty-first century science, but also with theological insights at the dawn of a new millennium -- including process theology and liberation theology notably in the fusions of Eastern thought with Catholic theology in the writings of Thomas Merton and in the works of liberation theology where community is freedom:

" ... the quantum world view stresses [the] dynamic relationship of all that is. It tells us that our world comes about through a mutually creative dialogue [dialectic] between mind and body (inner and outer, subject and object), between the individual and his personal and material context, and between human culture and the natural world. It gives us a view of the human self that is free and responsible, responsive to its environment, essentially related and naturally committed, and at every moment creative."

Danah Zohar, "The Quantum World View," in The Quantum Self: Human Nature and Consciousness Defined By the New Physics (New York: William Morrow, 1990), pp. 236-237. (" ... the existence of an imminent God ... would not preclude the existence of a transcendent God as well.")

Please compare the foregoing work with Christopher Norris, "Bell, Bohm and the EPR Debate," in Quantum Theory and the Flight From Realism: Philosophical Responses to Quantum Mechanics (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 82-85. (" ... the ground rules of classical bivalent logic which may need revising so as to admit paradoxical conclusions like the wave-particle dualism or the impossibility of assigning precise simultaneous values of particle location and momentum.")

For Americans every Supreme Court decision contains the history of the nation's Constitutional law. It follows that each decision also contains and moves beyond our history or identity at any one moment as a people whose freedom is a kind of self-interpretation or "hermeneutics" of freedom. See http://www.lulu.com/JuanG (Ricoeur's "Hermeneutics of Freedom.")

The homeless man on the subway train who "smells funny" is connected to all of us because he is us from the perspective of the Absolute. ("Drawing Room Comedy: A Philosophical Essay in the Form of a Film Script.")

Far from dissolving your identity in an abstraction this new thinking makes that identity crystal clear because it necessitates the unique identity of every other person existing as a network of relations in which we are and must be now and always.

Think of a name for the totality of relations where we must live. ("Pieta.")

Keep these points in mind when pondering Mme de Boufflers' comments. Let us first allow Mr. Hume his say concerning the reality of the self:

"For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception. When my perceptions are remov'd for any time, as by sound sleep; so long am I insensible of myself, and truly be said not to exist."

A Treatise of Human Nature, p. 252.

Hume's error, again, is reductivism and atomism: Who is "having" the perceptions? Do perceptions simply float in the philosophical ether? What holds the perceptions together as a unity of feeling and memory? If you say that the self dissolves because nothing holds perceptions together then who or what is dissolving? How can you know even that much? How can any single perception exist without implying a whole network of symbols and meanings, including other people, that makes even that one perception possible at any single moment as belonging "to" someone? Furthermore, that someone must him- or herself exist within a structure of meanings that makes the perceiving agent (and perceiving at all) possible, like language, culture, history. The perceiver must also belong to someone and some place. "Point of view?" The mystery of consciousness is plurality.

A student approached Morris Raphael Cohen and said: "I question whether I exist."

Professor Cohen responded: "Who is asking the question?" (Please see the brilliant British t.v. series, "Life on Mars" and ask yourself: "What holds Sam together?")

This Kantian-Hegelian move that restores the public world of others is the response of philosophers, whose experience of breakdown and collapse is as intense as Hume's but whose solutions are better than billiards ("snookers").

My solution is love.

There must be an experiencing agent in me because at the center of myself I discover passions and phenomena that serve as the preconditions for all doubts about my self, even for all sufferings, unifying the discordant elements of the self that Hume called: "... a republic or commonwealth." (A Treatise of Human Nature, p. 261.)

I suspect that the ruler of Hume's mental "republic" was a French countess. At the center of what is individual is the social. Intentionality. And if this is granted the issue becomes: What is "social" or common to persons that is found in language or Being? (See again: "Is it rational to believe in God?" and "Is this atheism's moment?")

Like Dostoevsky, I say: "I love, therefore I am." If you answer that you suffer, therefore you are. We have merely used different words for the same experience and emotion.

Loving and suffering are two sides of the same coin. Next we turn to Mme de Boufflers.

"When you enter the room, the Graces wait upon you ..."

Mme de Boufflers, like most women in her position, was a paradox. Her rivals in society acknowledged obvious intellectual gifts and great charm. Men were captivated by her beauty and sexual allure. These qualities in Mme de Boufflers were felt to be greater than they would have seemed from an "objective point of view" whatever that is.

Women -- especially Mme de Boufflers' so-called "rivals" -- were not impressed by her physical beauty and (probably) would not have admitted being impressed whatever they really felt about her beauty. (See the long quotation from the sly and sinister Mme Du Deffand, pp. 456-457, in Mossner's biography.)

Mme de Boufflers, somehow, contrived for her effects to be greater than her talents would have allowed. This alone argues against Hume's doubts about the reality of the self by defining this woman's life-long fascination for the philosopher as well as her mysterious allure for others.

If there is no self, Mr. Hume, then why was there such agreement about what you two "beings" were "really" like?

Hume's genius was no artifice. Genius is more than cleverness. Besides, the British philosopher's genius was unmixed with cynicism or malice. Goodness and genius (when combined) are irresistable. Attraction to mind and morals in one man was especially true for this woman of the world for whom most people were just the opposite -- stupid and selfish.

David Hume was certainly a great scholar and thinker, but Hume was no man of the world. Mme de Boufflers had sensitivity and psychological insight, calculation and hunger for power or wealth. In this one sense, craving for power, Boufflers was different from any woman that I have loved. Political passion or will to power was her ruling ambition.

Learning and thought were, at the same time and equally, "adornments" essential to a civilized life for the great Salonnier. As they say in California Mme de Boufflers kept Hume "grounded." Hume's doubts about the reality of the self in his metaphysics are undermined or contradicted, surprisingly, by some of his own writings in moral philosophy, psychology, and epistemology. See John Passmore, "Hume," in Bryan Magee, ed., The Great Philosophers: An Introduction to Western Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 146-167 and Mary Whiton Calkins, "Hume's Doctrine of the Self," in The Persistent Problems of Philosophy: An Introduction to Philosophy Through the Study of Modern Systems (New York: McMillan Co., 1917), pp. 179-190. Compare John Perry, "The Importance of Being Identical," in A.O. Rorty, ed., The Identities of Persons (Berkeley: University of California, 1969), p. 67 with Roger Scruton, "Emotions and Practical Knowledge," in Explaining Emotions (Berkeley: University of California, 1980), p. 519.

Professor Calkins builds on Bradley's analysis to offer a systematic critique of Hume's skepticism concerning the self while being unaware (apparently) of the letters of Hume and Boufflers illustrating her critique.

Let us be clear about the issue: Hume defines the self as: 1) "consciousness"; that is 2) fundamental to its "ideas"; and 3) identical or permanent in the flux of ideas. Phenomenologists would later add "enduring in time." Hume offers a two-pronged attack on this concept of the self, an attack which has been influential for naturalistic and behaviorist psychologies ever since. Hume argues that "ideas" exist independently of identity or self. There is no need "for a self in which ideas inhere." (Treatise, Bk. I, pt. IV, ch. 5.)

Hume also says, however, that I am not conscious of myself as "perceiving" rather than, or in addition to, my awareness of particular perceptions. Notice that this assumes the validity of Hume's epistemology. For Hume, certain knowledge is only of ideas. Ideas are a priori because they provide no new information about empirical reality; whereas sense data is always uncertain and subjective because it is a posteriori.

I am not conscious of myself, Hume insists, apart from my "bundle of perceptions" at any time. If there were a self that has perceptions over time then I would be conscious of it. This is pre-Freud. Hume is assuming and reacting against a Cartesian understanding of the "I" as the "self." Being unable to locate such an "I" by means of sense data or perceptions Hume can only conclude that the self does not exist. However, this is a logical error and a failure of imagination:

"It is evident from these paragraphs that Hume himself admits a 'principle of connection' binding perceptions together; and he certainly, therefore, is not entitled to argue, from the independence of perceptions, that we must not infer a self to exist."

Again:

"... I may be said to have an emotional consciousness of myself; and emotions, it will be remembered, are included in Hume's class of 'impressions of reflection.' To this an advocate of Hume might answer: Hume's special point is that a 'self' is supposed to have permanence, and that there can be no impression of permanence. But precisely this last assertion is incorrect; Hume could not make it save for the inadequacy, already pointed out, in his impression theory of consciousness. Either we are not even conscious of permanence at all, do not know what is meant by the word (but not even Hume asserts this); or we have an idea of it without having an impression of it (which is quite contrary to Hume's teaching); or we do have an impression of it. Whichever statement of the case be true, Hume is clearly wrong when he teaches that to know one must have an impression; that to know the self one must know it as permanent; that one has no impression of permanence; and, therefore, finally, that one does not know any self." (Calkins, pp. 184-185.)

Boufflers answers in Cartesian terms that the concepts of ideas or impressions cannot make sense without a subject that "has" ideas or impressions.

We do not fall in love with another's fleeting "impressions" but with that other person as a center of emotion and perception, intelligence and empathy unfolding in time. Perceptions imply and demand a perceiver. Hume may be right that a self without impressions is never experienced. This fails to establish that there is no self which experiences or perceives.

Kant begins his destruction of Hume's epistemology with the questions: What are the preconditions for the possibility of human experience? A "transcendental ego" perhaps? What do we call a fact? What is the precondition for any perception? And why are some things facts and others mere values? How can facts and values exist independently? How can they not be unified? ("John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism.")

Hegel would observe that much depends on which point in time is at issue in determining our answers to these questions when the subject matter of analysis is not static (a perception), but dynamic (a perceiving agent constructing fleeting and transitory perceptions into a "unity" or narrative). Observe this exchange between Boufflers and Hume:

"You are my [teacher] of philosophy and ethics; and I have often told you that, if I have ideas a little more just and a little more elevated on these subjects than most people, I am obliged to you for having developed them."

Boufflers to Hume, perhaps July 6, 1764, Mossner [p. 461, pp. 460-470.] and compare the Durants' volume X. Two good sources for the "scoop" on this relationship, which everybody gossiped about that I seem to remember, are Walpole's letters and anything by the later historian and critic Sainte-Beuve for the feel of the time.

Mme de Boufflers realizes that her personality is changing and moving towards Hume's way of seeing the world also that she is changing Hume to an equal extent. There is a continuity or identity that is shared -- a relationship -- in which each is redefined by (and redefining) the other:

"If there is any resemblance in our actual occupations, it is not the only one between us since there is even more in our resolutions. You wish to break away from me; I do not know your motive but, at least, I do know the one that compels me to want to break away from you."

It was already too late for either of them to "break away" from the other because it would have meant breaking away from their shared selves or identities:

"It is not ungracious, and I shall not hesitate to tell it to you. It is that you have an uprightness and goodness of heart that I esteem, a genius that I admire, and a good humor that pleases me; you are a foreigner and, sooner or later, you will go away; your coming here only gave me a distaste for most of the people I have to live with. If this were the only drawback, I should find a remedy for books take the place of many things; but the worst of it is that I cannot be contented with simple esteem and cool admiration." ("Immanuel Kant and the Narrative of Freedom.")

"Every woman forgives adoration." (Oscar Wilde.)

Some women -- paradoxically, women who receive the false esteem and applause of the great world or society (Ms. Winslet?) -- need the rarest of all gems, genuine love and devotion, sometimes more than women who are not so lionized.

Women at the center stage and red carpet of life know best the difference between real love as opposed to what often passes for love that is known, prosaically, as false esteem.

"As soon as these sentiments are aroused in me, my sensibility is touched and my affections engaged, with the result that I suffer real sorrow when circumstances bring about separation from those who have merited such progress over my heart ..."

Forgetting each other is no longer really an option. She is in love with him, knows it, accepts it, and is telling him so:

"I look upon myself as a feeble shrub that has thrown out its roots too far and is thereby exposed to greater damage and risk."

Translation: "This is dangerous or potentially catastrophic, for me, and inconvenient for you -- and I don't care. Neither should you because this is what matters in life. Love is life."

"As a matter of fact, I am afraid that reflections and prudence [your philosophy, David,] are useless to me at present so far as you are concerned. But if you are working so fruitfully on your side, that may give me courage ..."

"You go ahead and try to control what you feel, I don't think that it will work because my perspective" -- that is, Mme de Boufflers' perspective -- "has already entered your soul."

Now here comes the French irony and feminine wiles:

"I am going to make haste to love you no longer so as not to feel ashamed to be the last to end this useful undertaking. But as I have not yet started it, I may be permitted for today to assure you that I love you with all my heart."

Translation: "I cannot stop loving you even if it is insane for both of us to feel this way."

Hume's telescope was indeed useless. Hume was frightened of the emotion. Most men are frightened of real love. Hume knew that she was not suggesting -- could not suggest -- marriage or an alteration in her life-style. Both were trapped in a social system that made them impossible lovers as inhabitants of different worlds loyal to rival powers.

They knew nevertheless that each was essential to identity and sanity for the other. Everything else -- including personal survival -- was secondary.

For Hume, this was an earth-shaking discovery. You can see him trembling as he writes back with very British caution and prudence:

"Common sense requires ... that I should keep at a distance from all attachments that can imply passion. But it must surely be the height of folly, to lay myself at the mercy of a person whose situation seems calculated to inspire doubt, [who has many lovers,] and who, being so little at her own disposal, could not be able, even if willing, to seek such remedies as might appease that tormenting sentiment. ... "

Here is Hume being the ladies' man to convince himself that, hey, two can play that game:

"My only comfort is that, wherever such a blessing might present itself, I could there fix my habitation."

No, you can't. She's got your number, David. You're screwed. She's got your testicles (for life) in one of those little "clutch" bags that women carry around wherever they go. Mme de Boufflers writes back to let Hume know that she has his gonads:

"But why do you appear to repent your attachment to me, when I evince one for you so true and so firmly established? I acknowledge that it will sometimes be hindered by absence and by duties which another and older attachment has imposed upon my gratitude."

Translation: "David, I can walk and chew gum at the same time. I can feel friendship and loyalty, other kinds of love for other people -- occasionally sex with someone else -- while still loving you":

"I kiss your hands," Hume has become the student, "my dear, my amiable friend, with the greatest devotion and most sincere affection. Among other obligations, which I owe you, without number, you have saved me from a total indifference towards everything in human life. I was falling very fast into that state of mind, and it is perhaps worse than even the inquietudes of the most unfortunate passion ... how much then is it inferior to the sweetness of your commerce and friendship!"

Mme de Boufflers is Hume's life. Love's absence is death.

One result of experiencing great pain is the impossibility of doubting that you are alive. This is not passion controlling reason; it is the reasonableness of passion, even irrational passions may be reasonably necessary to a full and healthy human life.

David Hume has discovered that a portion of his soul -- and yes, he really had one -- is French and Romantic.

O.K., here is the formal philosophical argument against Hume's views concerning the self that illustrates the lessons of Hume's life as revealed in Hume's philosophical romance with Mme de Boufflers:

"... in being conscious of perceptions one is also conscious of a self, it should now be observed that Hume, in spite of his denial of a self, constantly presupposes its existence. On every page of 'Treatise' and of 'Inquiry' alike, he alludes to 'mind or myself' as more than a mere bundle of perceptions, and attributes to it characters -- in particular, activity and continuousness [sic.] -- which cannot possibly belong to mere perceptions." (Calkins, pp. 186-187.)

Again:

"It has already been shown that [Hume] defines causality as 'transition' and 'inference' of the mind. But the occurrence of a transition implies the existence of a permanent being within which the transition occurs; fleeting perceptions can replace or succeed each other, but there can be no transition in them." (Ibid., emphasis added.)

Knowing that Mme de Boufflers' presence would remain with and define him for the rest of life, Hume opted (correctly) to love a woman who chose to love him.

Whatever the pain involved and however imperfect the sharing of their lives might be -- as a result of circumstances beyond their control -- the absence of love was sure to be much worse. Hume's "self" was essentially concerned with his love over a lifetime for a French countess. Loving Madame de Boufflers was the "essence" of Hume's identity.

I will give the final word to a contemporary scholar who provides reasons for concluding that this choice to love contra mundus was the wisest decision in the life of a great philosopher and French countess or for any of us at any time:

"We live by a kind of perpetual negation, as we annul one situation in projecting ourselves into another. This constant self-transcendence, one possible only to the linguistic animal, is known as history. Psychoanalytically speaking, however, it has the name of desire, which is one reason why desire is a plausible candidate for the meaning of life. Desire [eros] wells up where something is missing. It is a question of lack, hollowing out the present in order to shuttle us on some similarly scooped-out future. In one sense, death and desire are antagonists, since if we ceased to desire, history would grind to a halt. In another sense, however, desire, which for Freudians is the driving force of life, reflects its inner lack the death to which it will finally bring us. In this sense, too, life is an anticipation of death. It is only because we carry death in our bones that we are able to keep on living."

Terry Eagleton, The Meaning of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 160. ("The Allegory of the Cave.")