The Infidel and the Professor

The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought - Dennis C. Rasmussen

This title of this readable intellectual history is a bit off the mark, as it implies both giants of Enlightenment thought are treated equally. In fact, we get a better feeling for David Hume as a thinker and friend than Adam Smith. Smith’s side of the friendship is obscure because of the loss of his letters to Hume.

But Smith, after Hume died, proved himself to be a stand-up friend by writing praise of the skeptic Hume which roused religious people to anger, frustration, indignation, and sarcasm. Samuel Johnson attacked Smith as well. Smith asserted the truth of his statement that Hume died cheerfully. Johnson said, “You lied” to which Smith called Johnson “a son of a bitch.” In 1780, Smith said in an interview of Johnson:

‘I have seen that creature,’ said he, ‘bolt up in the midst of a mixed company; and, without any previous notice, fall upon his knees behind a chair, repeat the Lord’s Prayer, and then resume his seat at table. — He has played this freak over and over, perhaps five or six times in the course of an evening. It is not hypocrisy, but madness.’

Besides providing curious gossip, Rasmussen judiciously and concisely explains the influence that Hume had on Smith, especially in terms of ideas on the benefits of commerce and free trade, both of which were viewed with doubt and anxiety in Europe up to the 19^th century. One scholar points out that it is a wonder than Hume is not the poster boy for unfettered capitalism that Smith became since Hume was much more sanguine than Smith about income inequality, merchant chicanery, and the downsides to personal happiness and social virtue due to the relentless pursuit of wealth and fame.

There are some cameo appearances of Rousseau, Burke, Gibbon, Franklin and that dynamic duo Boswell and Johnson, who were both shocked at Hume’s views on religion. The epilogue, which includes Smith's letter to Mr. Strathan, is supremely touching and revealing in terms of what the genial and cheerful Hume meant to Smith and to all who knew him.

This book contributed to my knowledge about both thinkers without being excessively academic.