Debate
Hume and Rousseau: The Quarrel of 1766
1766 · Was the break between Hume and Rousseau a clash of temperaments and misunderstandings – or also a conflict between two ideas of the self, of sincerity and of living among others?
In January 1766 David Hume brought Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose books had been condemned in Paris and Geneva in 1762, from Paris to England, helped him settle at Wootton in Staffordshire and sought a pension for him from George III. Within months Rousseau became convinced, wrongly, that Hume had lured him into a trap: in letters of 23 June and 10 July 1766 he accused his benefactor of having brought him to England “apparently to procure me an asylum, but in fact to bring me to dishonour”. Hume answered with a documented account, published in Paris in October 1766 as Exposé succinct and in London in November as A Concise and Genuine Account, and the quarrel became a public affair across Europe. It still raises the question of what two philosophers of human nature failed to understand about each other.
Positions
Rousseau: kindness as a mask
In his long letter of 10 July 1766 Rousseau explained why Hume’s help now looked to him like a façade: Hume had stayed silent when a mocking letter in the name of the King of Prussia, written by his friend Horace Walpole, appeared in London newspapers; he kept company with people Rousseau regarded as enemies; and his looks, even words cried out in his sleep on their first night after leaving Paris – “Je tiens J. J. Rousseau” (“I have you, Rousseau”) – now seemed sinister. Already on 23 June Rousseau had refused to profit any longer from good offices that Hume had used “as a mask”: “you live and converse with the world; I with myself in solitude.”
Held by
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau1712–1778
Hume: the record of a friendship
Hume’s account tells the story as he saw it and prints the letters with his notes. Hume had accompanied Rousseau to England and, through General Conway, obtained a pension that the King granted on condition of secrecy; when Rousseau hesitated, Hume asked for the condition to be removed. Walpole, he wrote, had kept that “piece of pleasantry” from him until he had left Paris. To the evidence of words spoken in sleep Hume replied that Rousseau, not knowing whether Hume was awake or asleep, could hardly be certain that he himself had been awake. Hume published, he explained, because Rousseau was writing memoirs that might judge him after his death, when no one could answer for him.
Held by
- David Hume1711–1776
A clash of ideas?
David Edmonds and John Eidinow (Rousseau’s Dog, 2006) tell the story largely as one of characters and of a public that took sides. Robert Zaretsky and John T. Scott (The Philosophers’ Quarrel, 2009) argue that it cannot be reduced to temperament: Rousseau trusted the inner certainty of the heart, while Hume – for whom reason serves the passions – still asked that claims answer to facts and testimony, and neither could accept the other’s account of understanding and self-understanding. Christopher Bertram (Stanford Encyclopedia) holds that Rousseau was wrongly convinced of a plot.
Read more
- David Hume: A Concise and Genuine Account of the Dispute between Mr. Hume and Mr. Rousseau (London, 1766; Internet Archive)
- Four letters of David Hume to Horace Walpole on Hume’s philosophical dispute with Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Friends of the National Libraries)
- Robert A. Segal: review of R. Zaretsky and J. T. Scott, The Philosophers’ Quarrel (Times Higher Education, 2009)
- Jean Jacques Rousseau (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
As of 10/2026. Summaries for orientation – the sources give the full arguments. · How Agora is made