According to Plato, as well as Epictetus and the Stoic philosophers, reason should be the master of the mind and the guide to our actions and reactions to events of the world.  If we coolly detach ourselves from our emotions and passions and examine each action with our gift of reason, we will surely make the best decisions.

The Enlightenment philosopher David Hume saw it otherwise, stating in 1739 that "reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them."  To Hume, our emotions have already made our decisions for us, and reason is the tool we use to justify those decisions.

Thomas Jefferson sought to reconcile these two opposing points of view, suggesting that reason and passion are and ought to be like two independent co-rulers of our minds and our actions.  Not surprisingly, the architect of the bicameral Congress also saw the mind as divided by reason and by emotion.

So who's right?

I'm with Hume, as his point of  view most closely aligns with my direct observations of my own mind. When I want to purchase some object, my "research," such as it is, goes into finding justifications and supporting information on why I should buy that thing.  Little attention is paid to the contradictory evidence I come across on why that purchase might not be such a good idea.  When I desire a romantic relationship with someone, I see only their better attributes and its only after the inevitable breakup that I realize that I failed to recognize all those clear warning signs telling me that it wasn't going to work out.

If we're honest with ourselves, we'd see the same is true for most of us in most situations.  We flip a coin to decide between two options.  When the coin flip doesn't go the way we wanted, we decide, "well, best two out of three," and then "best three out of five," and so on until we finally get the result we wanted.

But Hume also said some other things that give me pause as to taking him at his word.  "I  am apt to suspect the negroes and in general all the other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites," he wrote in 1753.  "There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white . . . Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction between these breeds of men."

Notwithstanding his apparent confusion between races, breeds, kinds and species, Hume's comment is deplorable.  This is the argument of today's white nationalists and alt-right.  This is textbook racism - holding one race superior to another.  If a philosopher or professor were to say this today, out loud where others could hear, he or she would be immediately expelled from the faculty, their books would disappear from reading lists and the curricula of the other professors, and they'd become a pariah (that, and possibly get an appointment in the Trump White House).

I can't condemn Hume's comments about race strongly enough, although I do wonder how much actual contact the Scottish philosopher had with non-white peoples back in 1753, and how much of his opinion was based on literature and what he had heard from others about non-whites.  

But since what he said went well beyond mere political incorrectness, should we discard his other opinions as well?  Should we conclude that reason isn't the slave of the passions, since the man who declared they were was clearly a racist?  Or does our reaction merely illustrate his point, that is, show us how our view of "reason" is in fact affected by our emotional reactions?     

And if we discount Hume and write him out of the textbooks and philosophical literature, what do we do with the commentary and writings of others that are based on his works?  Does the whole house of cards need to come down?

Also, Jefferson famously owned slaves and sexually abused some of them, so there's that to consider.

Epictetus was once a slave himself, so we'll give him a pass (although he's still wrong).