"Many philosophers have consumed their time, destroyed their health, and neglected their fortune, in the search for truths that they regarded as important and useful to the world; although their over-all conduct showed that they weren’t endowed with any share of public spirit and had no concern for the interests of mankind. We have here something that seems to be a contradiction: These philosophers •would lose all enthusiasm for their studies if they became convinced that their discoveries wouldn’t matter to mankind; and yet they •haven’t the least interest in the welfare of mankind!"[*1]
This is I think largely incorrect. It's probably true that philosophers tend to not share in the "interests of mankind" if we're talking about what people find interesting. A great deal of people find the following interesting: live entertainment, traveling, nightlife, watching sports, playing golf, hiking, camping, shopping, and so on. I would guess that most philosophers would rather stay inside and read philosophy books. So sure, philosophers will generally have "little concern for the interests of mankind" if philosophers simply do not share those interests.
But given the context, Hume is talking about welfare and not hobbies. Though it is worth pointing out that what people generally find interesting is not necessarily what they should find interesting, and so insofar as philosophers do not share in the general interests of people, that's hardly an indictment against philosophers. (Philosophers who stay away from social media, trashy TV shows, playing golf, watching dumb movies, playing video games, etc., are not missing out on anything, and if anything their lack of interest in these things says something good about their character. Not to be judgy about it – we all have our vices.)
But saying philosophers "haven’t the least interest in the welfare of mankind" is incredibly incorrect. How many billionaires and millionaires are there who hoard their wealth and deliberately keep more than they need to selfishly maximize their own power over others? If we are to accuse anyone of failing to have the welfare of humans in mind, we should accuse the rich of this. How many businesses fail to raise salaries after scoring record profits? Certainly, there is massive, unchecked, rampant greed in this world, but philosophers carry so little of that guilt, if any. Hume said it himself—philosophers forsake money in the pursuit of truth. And yet we are somehow to think less of philosophers for this? So, are we all to care about money more than truth? Is that the noble way?
Hume might be thinking of the fact that philosophers spend all their time and focus on reading and writing, instead of helping people, and that this is a selfish thing to do. But helping people in what way? By becoming a doctor? But what if a certain person was cursed with 'philosopher brain', which means facing an unyielding barrage of philosophical questions that pop into the mind, making it impossible for him or her to pursue any kind of work lest he or she be a useless, permanently distracted worker? And what if this person was not blessed by the constitution for medical work? I do not have the mental health, or talents, or determination, or morbid curiosity needed to become a good doctor or nurse. I am squeamish. Am I to blame for this? If a genie appeared to me and gave me healing powers, and instead of going out and using them I stayed inside, then you could accuse me of failing to care about others. But whether I have the talents to heal, or to become a good doctor – that's not up to me.
Besides, how noble is it to become a doctor? We know rates of depression are high among healthcare workers. They are overworked, face harassment from co-workers and patients, and must withstand very high stress, literal life-or-death situations, on a regular basis.
If I knew all of this, and I further knew that I do not have the wherewithal to withstand the stress and pressure of being a healthcare worker, and I further knew of my own internal existential struggles and how they likely would be worsened by being around the sick and dying, and I knew of my own disinterest of learning about how the human body works, and I still pursued medical school because I "didn't want to be selfish" or I "wanted to help people", I would be fairly accused of being incredibly imprudent. Inevitably, my healthcare career would be very short, assuming I somehow made it past medical school or nursing school. There would be nothing noble at all about me or something like me trying to become something they never could.
There is another way in which being a doctor could be less noble than we tend to think. Imagine two doctors, the happy doctor and the not-so-happy doctor. The first doctor has wanted to be a doctor since they were little. It's been their lifelong dream. Even as a teenager they began reading all about human anatomy and medicine. By the time they started their pre-med classes in college, they found their classes easy, and their affinity for medical science grew. They felt they were exactly in the right program. They go on to complete a successful residency program and become a well-respected doctor, taking pride in their practice. They are happy and at peace with themselves and treat their patients with warmth and kindness. They pull their nurses aside and talk to them with concern and ask them if they need a break. They pay attention, absorb the world around them, fit into it, and are on top of things. They have a deep understanding of what they are doing and why.
Then you have the not-so-happy doctor. This person goes into medical school purely out of pressure from their parents, and out of financial pressure in general. They struggle in their classes. They force themselves through and become a doctor, but they wonder what could have been. Their head isn't in the game – they are terse with patients and do the minimum to get through the day. It's too exhausting to try hard at something you don't care about. They are distracted and feel out of place. Their misery infects their worldview and they become cynical. Surrounded by death and misery, they come to see humans as nothing more than walking bags of flesh produced by a chaotic, uncaring universe.
We do not need more doctors. We need more good doctors. Repeat for any profession.
So what does it mean to help people? Trying to become something you aren't meant to be helps no one. Some people say following your passion is silly; instead, you should follow what's practical, or helpful to others, and let your passion come later. While this will apply to some people, it won't for others. Specifically, it won't apply to those people who already have a passion and forsake it only to end up distracted and regretful.
What's funny is that some people will say that the inner feelings of the doctor don't matter, as long as the doctor is saving lives. Likewise, we should pursue the work that will help others the most regardless of how we feel. (Or, we should somehow get over ourselves and choose to feel differently about things, enough to enable ourselves to be of use to others.) But whenever I extol the virtues of consequentialism, folks try to shut that down with typical objections, and yet those same folks may just be the ones who say that the consequences of the doctor's work is what matters, not his or her inner worldview. And yet clearly, the not-so-happy doctor is failing to flourish. Besides, consequentialism, as it always does, applies: not only does the suffering of the not-so-happy doctor result from him "doing the right thing" and pursuing a noble profession, but so does the suffering of his patients and colleagues, who are worse off, as his disposition makes him more liable to make mistakes, and more liable to fail to do the right thing when the time comes.
Anecdotally, philosophers in my experience deeply care about the feelings of others, and about the welfare of people. If they had the power to help, they would. We only have so many hours in the day, and we only have one body, one mind, and one life. Naturally, we will move in that direction that is most urgent to us, and for some of us, we are paralyzed by philosophical questions. Working through them is, for us, a matter of life and death.
If only the not-so-happy doctor had some philosophy under his belt, then he might have learned that persons are loci of value, producers of intrinsic value-states, which means that humans are not only valuable, but objectively so, and therefore a fully rational person need not arrive at a cynical, pessimistic view of human nature.[*2] The genuine truthseeker attends to the real value of persons, and their understanding generates their love for humanity. A love produced by faith is shy and unsure, but a love in concert with understanding is proud, affirmed by reason. The good doctor isn't just good, he is correct.
*1 - https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/hume1739book2.pdf (Jonathan Bennett version; accessed 25 Oct 2024); from David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book II, "Curiosity, or the love of truth"
*2 - Cf. Joshua Rasmussen, Who Are You, Really (2023), pgs. 127-142.
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