The Great Infidel: A Life of David Hume

by Roderick Graham

Using original sources, some for the first time, we witness Hume's disappointment with the reception of his Treatise of Human Nature - 'it fell dead-born from the press' - although it is now seen as a pivotal work in European thinking, and follow his adventures during a farcical invasion of France. His Essays and History at last brought him the fame he had sought, but also caused the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland to attempt to excommunicate him. The accusation that Hume was an atheist is disproved while, more light-heartedly, his time as a diplomat shows him at the heart of the gossip of pre-Revolutionary Paris, where he was Le Bon David. Back in Edinburgh, James Boswell nicknamed him 'The Great Infidel' yet, like everyone else, sought invitations to Hume's well-stocked table and wine cellar. Hume never married, although he was always a favourite with the ladies for whist and conversation, and he was involved in a preposterous courtship in Turin. He also had a lengthy intellectual involvement with a married aristocrat who was already another man's mistress.The Great Infidel gives a rounded picture of the man, the century in which he lived, his thought, and, above all, his humanity.

Genres: Philosophy, History

448 pages, Hardcover

First published September 28, 2005

About the author

Edinburgh-born Roderick Graham was educated at the Royal High School of Edinburgh and the University of Edinburgh before serving with the Royal Army Education Corps as staff officer for education at the East Africa Command.

On leaving the army, he went on to pursue a long and varied career in television and radio as a writer, freelance director and producer. He produced the double Emmy award-winner Elizabeth R in 1971, and from 1974 to 1977 he was the producer of fifty-four episodes of the long-running BBC police series Z Cars. He was appointed head of drama at BBC TV Scotland and produced and directed A Scots Quair, Boswell for the Defence and Sutherland’s Law among many others. He eventually returned to freelance directing and worked on the well-known TV series Juliet Bravo, One by One and All Creatures Great and Small. He also wrote and directed two series of children’s archaeology for BBC TV, seven radio plays and one four-part radio biography of Sidney Smith.

Roderick Graham has also taught writing and directing at Napier and Leeds Metropolitan Universities, Edinburgh College of Art and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. He is the author of the critically acclaimed John Knox: Democrat (Hale, 2001) and The Great Infidel: A Life of David Hume (Tuckwell Press, 2004, paperback edition by Birlinn, 2005). In 2007 Birlinn published An Accidental Tragedy: The Life of Mary, Queen of Scots. In this readable and insightful biography, Roderick Graham challenges many of the traditionally held perceptions of the Scottish queen, and examines her roles as a woman, a politician and a monarch.

Roderick Graham now lives in Edinburgh.

Reviews

[Ethan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fairly detailed biography of Hume. At some points it's perhaps a little too detailed for my tastes. The quotes from letters to and from almost everyone Hume ever met - and maybe some he didn't meet - sometimes get a bit tiresome. However, readers will get a good sense of the man and his time and place. Like most people these days, I'm interested in Hume as a philosopher. This biography didn't go into Hume's philosophy as I maybe would have liked, but this isn't a major fault, since the book is a biography of a philosopher (and historian) rather than a philosophical biography. There is some discussion of Hume's philosophical works, but from a philosophical perspective this discussion isn't very detailed and tends to gloss over matters of scholarly controversy. For instance, Graham seems to think Hume wasn't really an atheist, but there is a legitimate scholarly dispute about what Hume's view really was (deism, agnosticism, atheism, etc.). Graham's focus is more on how Hume's ideas fit into his life than it is on the ideas themselves and their influence on Western philosophy. But again, you should read Hume and Hume scholarship if that's what really interests you, so this isn't a major complaint. I really enjoyed reading about Hume's time in Paris in the 1760's, his row with Rousseau, and how he managed not to be bitter even though he was despised by so many. My favorite anecdote: Hume fell into a bog and passersby refused to help him unless he converted. I loved the last few chapters dealing with the calm and good-natured way that Hume faced his final illness and impending death. I've always had an affinity for Hume's philosophical views and temperament. Reading this biography was like getting to know an old friend better.

[Eric Chapelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book! I've met the author in a pub in Edinburgh Scotland in May of 2014. I got his signed copy! I'm doing a composition on works done by David Hume for baritone voice and music ensemble. I felt I needed to do some research about this extraordinary individual, and this book was a tremendous help. You can hear an excerpt of the composition in progress at
https://soundcloud.com/eric-chapelle/...

My composition "Hume's Thoughts in Flight" for baritone voice and music ensemble was finally performed on May 4, 2017, at Spencer Reichman's Master Graduate Recital at Loyola University in New Orleans. It's about 25 minutes long in six parts. Here is a video clip of the performance of a segment of Part 5. The words are from David Hume's "A Treatise of Human Nature" of Part 1.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGqFf...

[Gavin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gossipy. Says at the start that he isn’t aiming at Hume’s thought or worldview – just his personality, context, happenstance – but since Hume spent a big chunk of his adult life alone thinking, this is quixotic, and Graham predictably does have to go into the Treatise and Essays and Dialogues (and to be frank he does so badly, uncritically).

This is filled instead with all the bad reviews Hume got, and the clubs he got into, and the middlebrows that quarrelled with him rather than his eternal legacies, i.e. judgment under uncertainty, reason’s motivational inertia, cognitive naturalism, the frailty of natural theology, the kernel of so much modern philosophy.

The bit on Rousseau as incredible drama queen is good – here is JJ’s reaction to Hume looking at him:

where, great God! did this good man borrow those eyes he fixes so sternly and unaccountably on his friends! My trouble increased even to a degree of fainting; and had I not been relieved by an effusion of tears, I’d been suffocated… in a transport, which I still remember with delight, I sprang on his neck, embraced him eagerly while almost choked with sobbing...

Graham is super-fond of the C18th’s loud intellectual tribalism, but it’s not enough.