WORKING ON MY HUME LECTURE
This is like visiting an old friend. The pages of my original copy of the Treatise are yellowed and soft and weathered, and covered with underlinings and marginal notations dating back more than sixty years. It seems somehow an appropriate way to spend time in quarantine. The memories soften the hard edges of the hyper-modern zoom format in which I must deliver them.
That's a great getting isn't it, coming back to an old text and feeling that nostalgic familiarity coupled with a new outlook and appreciation.
ReplyDeleteEnjoying your lectures extensively.
Keep safe.
I have the theory that in old age we come back to our youth. As young adults we adapt to what is in fashion and what impresses others in order to get jobs, mate, obtain social status, etc. That is not an entirely conscious process: how conscious it is depends on the individual.
ReplyDeleteHowever, as we get old, those things stop mattering. We have a mate or have passed the age in which having or not having one matters, we've retired and even if we haven't, we're obviously not going to advance professionally, we already have a circle of good friends who accept us and so there's no more need to win friends and influence people and thus, consciously or unconsciously, we rediscover many of our tastes and even adapt many of the personality traits of our youth. In that light, going back to Hume makes a lot of sense, because from what you said, Hume was a thinker who caught your attention during your teenage years.
I underline and comment a lot in books as well. Often when I re-read them, I find myself wondering why I underlined this and didn't underline that. The benefits of re-reading a great book never seem to disappear. The more I read Hume, the smarter he gets. One reaction I get every time I open the Treatise is wonder--My God, he was only in his 20s when he wrote this!
ReplyDeletehey doctor Robert I hope you are doing well
ReplyDeleteDoctor aren't you going to finish the second half of the critique of pure reason ?
thank you so much