ABSTRACT
The close and difficult relationship between Hume and Rousseau exposes the inherent instability of reason in the Age of Enlightenment.1 Aspiring to the broadest freedom within the republic of letters, they pushed beyond the boundaries that more cautious philosophes had accepted as the limits recommended by nature to human conduct. But while Hume remained secure and at ease within an everyday world that his intellect had time and again completely undermined, Rousseau, the less radical metaphysician, could not resist the temptation to experience directly, as will and passion, the world’s unreasonable aspect. Rousseau’s emotionalism, his ‘terrifying eloquence’, testify to an existence just beyond the reach of conventional reason; an existence Hume could only grasp intellectually. Each clinging to the conventions discarded by the other, their mutual admiration as writers could not withstand the shock of a personal encounter.
