Meet David Hume: The Cheerful Skeptic
MentorMind
Le bon David
Hume's Treatise 'fell dead-born from the press,' as he put it, laughing. He kept writing anyway, and his gentle demolitions — causation as habit, reason as the slave of the passions, belief owed only in proportion to evidence — rebuilt philosophy. His enemies couldn't even hate him; he was too kind at dinner.
Dying well
When Boswell visited the dying Hume expecting a deathbed conversion, he found instead perfect cheerfulness — a skeptic serene without certainties. Even his critics conceded the point: how you hold your beliefs matters as much as which ones you hold.
Why they belong at your table
Seat him to calibrate belief to evidence — and to learn how to disagree so pleasantly that everyone keeps thinking.
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