Gazze, whist e verità. David Hume e le immagini della filosofia

There cannot be three passions “more nearly resembling each other” than philosophy, hunting, and gaming, asserts Hume in the Treatise. Their origin is pleasure and they all give pleasure from the same principles: the exercise of the mind, utility or importance and success. This scandalous assertion is strictly connected with Hume’s discussion of the philosophical tradition. Once more he entitles himself to the glorious name of inventor for “the use he makes” of traditional metaphors. The assertion is also connected with Hume’s own life: hunter, gamester and (sceptical) philosopher. Hume fires at magpies, as a boy; he plays whist, when he’s grown up; he loves truth, always. His fame as a whist player will accompany him in the afterlife. Smith remembers that, even in his last days, he continued to “divert” himself, “as usual”, with an evening “party at his favourite game of whist”; Reverend Horne blames Hume for this same reason and Smith for remembering it; and the poet Thomson lightly laments: Hume, “who till his dying day / Continued still his fav’rite game to play; / Tho’ many a curious fact his page supplies, / To this important point a place denies”. Philosophy, Humean images of philosophy, philosophical tradition and life: the essay is an essay in history of Humean philosophy and biography.