Hume's meek philosophy among the Milanese

Abstract

The article looks closely at the interpretation of Hume’s ideas and character in the Parisian letters of Alessandro Verri to his brother Pietro. Alessandro interprets Hume’s philosophy as a mitigated (“meek”) acceptable version of the militant scepticism he encounters among the philosophes. As he is in dispute with Beccaria (and partly with Pietro), he sees Hume’s dispute with Rousseau as a perfect parallel, where Alessandro plays the British modest philosopher against the French boastful enthusiasts. He also offers his version about the French Holbachian attitude towards Hume’s style of thought in religious matters. By a series of Humean vignettes the essay reconsiders Hume’s approach to religion, his topic of the “vicious religionist” and his supposed and famous denial of ever having met an atheist. It also tells us something about the ways in which Hume’s philosophy is apt to be appropriated by “cutting off its noble parts”: by philosophers and historians of philosophy today as well as by Alessandro Verri yesterday