A Philosopher Treats Anxiety

It would seem to be a strange place to look, but Prof. Aaron Zubia has chosen to consult with eighteenth century philosopher David Hume, the father of modern empiricism, to glean some insights into treating anxiety.

As you might guess, Hume was not a licensed professional. He was his own test case. When he felt himself overcome by anxiety and depression he tried to see what would work, what would relieve him of his funk.

Being a philosopher, and not a professor, Hume spent much of his time alone with his thoughts. It nearly made him mad. 

He wrote this in his Treatise of Human Nature:

I am first affrighted and confounded with that forlorn solitude, in which I am placed in my philosophy, and fancy myself some strange uncouth monster, who not being able to mingle and unite in society, has been expelled all human commerce, and left utterly abandoned and disconsolate.

Philosophy detaches you from society and leaves you feeling vulnerable, like the wildebeest who detaches from the herd and feels like prey.

Hume tried to solve the problem by relearning how to socialize. We agree thoroughly with is approach, even though his forays into the world of sociability seemed to alienate him from philosophy:

I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours’ amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.

His socializing did not help him to study more eternal metaphysical questions. Zubia explains:

Hume’s moral and political solution to his distress was therapeutic, requiring not a deep dive into higher eternal questions, but a focus on the present: specifically, finding a way to balance the passions to achieve tranquility and keep anxiety at bay in the present moment. 

Socializing effectively requires good manners. It requires politeness. Surely, we agree.

The private focus on finding peace of mind and the public focus on politeness—combined with an agreement to “live and let live”—served, for Hume, as a winning formula for a peaceful, prosperous, and happy society.

Yet, Zubia suggests that Hume’s treatment fell short because he did not practice piety. One does not quite understand why this appeal to a higher power would have cured what ailed him, especially when he had a significant problem making a living.

As you may know, Hume solved his money problems by writing a best selling series of books chronicling the history of Great Britain. Such an endeavor had nothing to do with piety. And yet, Zubia considers piety an important adjunct of sociability.

But Hume disregards a virtue that should accompany sociability: piety. 

Yet, Zubia trots out a tired philosophical trope, and explains that Hume would have felt better about dying if he had found God. 

Hume was unsympathetic to religion:

Hume, however, did not make duty to God an aspect of virtue. In fact, he thought “religious principles” throughout history resembled “sick men’s dreams” or “the playsome whimsies of monkies in human shape.”

Zubia finds fault with Hume for not debating moral and spiritual issues with his pastor friends, though one might well counter that Hume would not have been very sociable if he had labeled them monkeys in human shape.

But his connections, though filled with good cheer and good humor, remained superficial. For example, he avoided conversations about controversial moral and spiritual questions with his Presbyterian pastor-friends to prevent passionate disagreement. One can see the prudence in preferring discussions of literature and travel at the dinner table to maintain camaraderie among those who disagree. 

Zubia concludes:

But beyond the dinner table, in his life and writings, Hume neither explored nor exhibited the kind of piety that, by helping him come to terms with a greater providential order, and the unchosen obligations that derive from that order, finally would have made him feel at home in the world.

And yet, piety is not designed to make one feel at home in the world. And yet, for Hume the issue seems to have been the conflict between idealism and experience.

We can make an exception here. What Hume lacked, in socializing, was the sense of belonging to a community or a congregation. One might conflate piety with belonging to a group, but one suspects that the next step in socializing would have been to join a group. 

Obviously, Hume’s disrespect for religion would have made that more difficult, but most ministers would probably have welcomed him, along with his skepticism.

But, there is another issue here.

Those who know Hume’s writings will recall that in his first treatise, he debunked idealism in favor of experience. He asked the simple question-- what comes first, experience or ideas? In more prosaic terms, can we understand the idea of redness without having ever seen a red object? I will mention in passing that Hume is doing epistemology here.

In other terms when a detective comes upon a crime scene does he begin with a theory, an idea, and search out clues that prove his narrative? Or does he collect evidence first, later to try to formulate a theory. And then, the question arises-- if he does not have a theory in hand, how does he know what evidence to collect.

It's called getting in touch with reality.

Oxford biologist Peter Medawar asked this question in his book, Pluto’s Cave and The Art of the Soluble. If he had asked Hume how to select evidence, the philosopher would have recommended that he begin with anything that is out of place, disjointed, that does not look like it belongs. 

Empirical science begins by collecting data. It moves on to a hypothesis, and tests the validity of the hypothesis through experimentation. As happens in the French language, the word for experience is the same as the word for experiment.

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