Interesting story of two men who helped shape modern thought

As a Scot, we have been brought up with our history hidden by that of England and the UK. We have all heard about the Enlightenment but this book explores Hume and Smith’s friendship as well as their influence on each other’s work.

I enjoyed the story but found the regular mispronunciation of Scottish place names grated on the ears.

Otherwise, well written and well read.

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Interesting twin biography

The focus is largely on Hume, but that seems to be primarily because he wrote more letters to Smith / more survived than vice versa, and this is largely based on the evidence of their correspondence. The interconnections between the thinking of these two friends / thinkers - and the contemporary mainstream reaction to them - is well and convincingly laid out, in the process proving beyond doubt that Smith was a far more complex and nuanced thinker than the free market fundamentalists tend to make out.

Hardly a radically original thesis, in other words, but neatly done - and serves as a good introduction / background to both men.

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Intimate sympathy

The friendship between Adam Smith and David Hume is one of the great Platonic love stories in the history of philosophy. The book unearths an intimate array of correspondences that offers a compelling narrative that works on two levels: 1) The human sympathy between two human beings who happened to share a soul connection. 2) The literary connection between two great iconoclastic Enlightenment thinkers.

There is very much to be learned from these inestimable writers, not least on matters of fact and speculation, but also on how to maintain a friendship across periods of despair and turbulence. On the level of facts, the time period of Scottish Enlightenment, with its own list of characters and places, is appropriately framed as the intellectual backdrop to the human drama. More impressively, the book animates the protagonists' intimate human struggles and passions with a vivacity that only an archival exposé of private letters can muster.

My only criticism is a minor one: the author lets his own anticlericalism and irreligiosity, which he accurately pinpoints in Hume, take the centre stage, which obfuscates some of the finer points of distinction, drama and controversy that would have made for equally compelling storytelling.

But I cannot fault the book much for this focus, since as a narrative lodestar, or a leitmotif, the heresies and infidelities of the happy & plump philosopher are a juicy and logical choice. That said, the modern amplification of Hume's notoriety into a type of hero worship by latter day atheists is certainly a curious phenomenon that is not without its own shortcomings.

Overall, philosophical biographies are a niche market that is not exactly saturated with quality. This book is exceptional in that it combines good scholarship with easy exposition in a way that can be enjoyed by all readers. I rarely cry when reading (good) philosophy, except out of desperation, but here I cried from sympathy with the human struggles of Scotland's best sons.

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3 people found this helpful