Philosophers and coffee, a romance

(Reproduced from Facebook note)

David Hume

Hume's career was sidelined and sabotaged by the religionist elite in the academy due to his atheism and scepticism, and due to his effective attack on Rene Descartes' philosophy of the unreliability of the senses and of the material sciences for gaining knowledge. However, he still wrote some of the greatest works of philosophy, and was also an excellent and well respected writer about history and politics in England.

Hume was also a fan of backgammon and coffee, and frequented coffee houses where he gave impromptu tutorials with students and the general public. His interest in coffee culture was far reaching. In 1752 he wrote his political discourses, in which he expressed:

 An author is little to be valued, who tells us nothing but what we can learn from every coffee-house conversation.

However, Hume frequented coffee houses, as had his father before him - Henry Home (the original spelling of Hume's name, which he changed because the English had trouble pronouncing it). Hume had a friendship with the French Romantic writer and philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau, and their meetings in Parisienne coffee houses is a matter of historical note.

In his History of England, Hume mentions King Charles' capitulating response to a petition from coffee sellers and coffee houses, in exchange for fealty:

The law, which settled the excise, enacted, that licences for retailing liquors might be refused to such as could not find security for payment of the duties. But coffee was not a liquor subjected to excise; and even this power of refusing licences was very limited, and could not reasonably be extended beyond the intention of the act. The king, therefore, observing the people to be much dissatisfied, yielded to a petition of the coffee-men, who promised for the future to restrain all seditious discourse in their houses; and the proclamation was recalled. 

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Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)


Rousseau, with whom Hume had a fast friendship and then a falling out, also developed a friendship with French writer Bernadin de St Pierre. In his memoirs St Pierre recalls the following of a meeting with Rousseau:

As I accompanied him back across the Tuilleries, we perceived a smell of coffee. "There," said he," is a perfume, of which I am very fond. When the other lodgers in the house where I live burn their coffee, my neighbours shut their doors to keep out the smell, but I open mine." " Then you are fond of coffee," said I. "Yes," said he," ices and coffee are almost the only luxuries for which I have a taste." I had brought with me from the isle of Bourbon a bale of coffee, and had made up several parcels for presents to my friends. (, NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.No. XXXVI.NEW SERIES, No. XI.JULY 1822. p4, <http://www.jstor.org/stable/25109134?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents>) 

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(François Marie Arouet de) Voltaire (1694-1778)

In his "All About Coffee" William Ukers says of a famous Parisienne coffee house:

Because of its location, the Café de Procope became the gathering place of many noted French actors, authors, dramatists, and musicians of the eighteenth century. It was a veritable literary salon. Voltaire was a constant patron; and until the close of the historic café, after an existence of more than two centuries, his marble table and chair were among the precious relics of the coffee house. His favorite drink is said to have been a mixture of coffee and chocolate. Rousseau, author and philosopher; Beaumarchais, dramatist and financier; Diderot, the encyclopedist; Ste.-Foix, the abbé of Voisenon; de Belloy, author of the Siege of Callais; Lemierre, author of Artaxerce; Crébillon; Piron; La Chaussée; Fontenelle; Condorcet; and a host of lesser lights in the French arts, were habitués of François Procope's modest coffee saloon near the Comédie Française.

Voltaire

And Voltaire is rumoured to have consumed 40-50 cups of coffee a day. Some physicians of his day described coffee as a "slow poison", and Ukers notes that:

Fontenelle and Voltaire have both been quoted as authors of the famous reply to the remark that coffee was a slow poison: "I think it must be, for I've been drinking it for eighty-five years and am not dead yet."

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Sartre

Jean-Paul SartreThe Marxist existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre conducted philosophical discussions at the Café de Flore. Called "coffee/cafe philos", they were the forerunner to and inspiration for Trotskyist Marc Sautet's "cafés-philos".