Hume's Fork

is the name of a fun book by Ron Cooper.  

Legare Hume is the surname of the  central character and he hails from a place called Hume's Fork in South Carolina--the community was founded by some distant--and dubious--relatives of his back in the day.  

Hume is an assistant prof. of philosophy at a backwater college in Florida & he is having notable marital difficulties--a fairly common affliction among philosophers.  (Socrates's difficulties with Xanthippe are well known.   More recently, Louis Althusser "accidentally" strangled his wife while giving her a neck massage--even so, he's doing serious time.  I could cite others, but I'm sure y'all have heard of this sort of thing)   

Any way, Hume is slated to go to a conference of the American Philosophical Association in South Carolina not too far from where his family lives even though proximity to his family is the last thing that he wants.   By some stroke of luck, he has managed to get a paper accepted at the Conference.  If he attends the Conference and successfully defends the paper, it is likely that he will get tenure.  Even though he has never set the world of academic philosophy on fire--far from it--nevertheless, his college's expectations of their liberal arts faculty tend to be on the low side.  But he is not sure he is even going to the Conference and not sure if he even *wants* tenure.  On the day he must decide on departure, he has a fight with his wife that results with her beaning him on the forehead with a well-thrown dinner plate.  He decides to go.  

He calls his colleague, Grossman, to come and pick him up.  Now unlike Hume, Grossman is almost supernaturally brilliant (he may be high functioning autism spectrum)  He is also a professor of logic and philosophy of language.  Grossman publishes in very prestigious journals and is highly regarded among philosophers.  He could have had his pick of any college in the country, but due to Grossman's difficulty with ordinary conversation, he misunderstands what a recruiter said to him and he winds up accepting a position at this particular backwater college.  

Well, stuff happens and Hume and Grossman have to stay with Hume's family in order to attend the conference.  

Professional wrestling, much angst over critiques of Anselm's ontological proof of the existence of God, critiques of the critiques of Anselm's proof, drug-dealing & other crimes, a prof with Tourette's syndrome, a love story, the solution to the mind-body problem, the non-solution of the mind-body problem, synesthesia,...in short, everything a body could possibly want.   There's even some family drama. 

I urge y'all to read this book.  If you feel like it. 

R. 

P.S.  As an unrecovered philosophy major, I should like to point out the significance of Legare's surname, Hume.  David Hume was an 18th century British philosopher.   When Bishop Berkley "proved" that there was no such thing as "matter," Hume responded by "proving" there is no such thing as "mind."   This gave rise to the oft-quoted expression, "No matter, never mind."  

P.P.S. As an unrecovered philosophy major, shamefully, I did not know this, but "Hume's Fork" is also an allusion to David Hume's distinction between relations among things that are purely ideas and relationships among things that are actual existents.   

 

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