Spirits for the Age: Hume, Rousseau and the quarrel concerning the progress of the arts and sciences

Abstract

Long before David Hume (1711-1776) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712- 1778) personally met each other, with disastrous consequences for both, in late 1765-early 1766, they had developed quite different views regarding one of the most important questions present throughout different contexts in 18th century Europe, viz. the question concerning the progress of the arts and sciences. Indeed, the question was as broad as it was important for it had to do with the very foundations of modernity, and more particularly with the establishment of entrepreneurial values, a matter both Hume and Rousseau treated under the heading of ‘commerce’. My aim, thus, is to (i) reconstruct both Hume’s and Rousseau’s arguments concerning the relationship between commerce, progress in the arts and sciences and morality, in order to (ii) propose an interpretation of their falling-out, in the sense that, according to their own arguments concerning such matters, the differences between them were too profound in order for them to be able to establish an amicable relationship. These two points lead me then to (iii) discuss their questions under the light of our contemporary world, which is the aim of a philosophy paper such as this. In other words, the aim of this article is to argue that the differences between Hume and Rousseau can be seen as latent already at the beginning of their carreers, in the sense that it all had to do precisely with the dynamics that modernity was supposed to take: according to Hume, a liberal-progressist direction, whereas according to Rousseau such a direction would entail nothing but a moral breakdown.

Key words: progress, sciences, morals, commerce, Hume, Rousseau.