Hume is a good guy. I looked him up on Wikipedia (I hope y'all don't mind like a certain somebody would) and come up with this:
I still feel this is true in a way (bordering on it anyhow). Our "rational" sense of things is determined by how our minds works; dispassionate thought isolated from a survey of the wider world has led at times to strange beliefs. Rational thought is nevertheless the best tool we have to interpret observation, and the best possible.Hume's most famous sentence occurs at Treatise, II, III, iii, Of the influencing motives of the will: "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."
Following up that thread, the "passions" Hume mentions are not separate from everything else. They have an explainable origin and are dependent on reality (of course, the absurd has its origins here as a result of the mind's ability to adapt itself to many worldviews, including nonsensical ones).
"Of the Standard of Taste," one of his lesser known works, states this on the matter:
Natural morality doesn't arise from reason in men (although I tend to think it can be better explained through rationality, and that it may even be improved through reasoning).This great unanimity [amongst men about morals] is usually ascribed to the influence of plain reason; which, in all these cases, maintains similar sentiments in all men, and prevents those controversies, to which the abstract sciences are so much exposed. So far as the unanimity is real, this account may be admitted as satisfactory: But we must also allow that some part of the seeming harmony in morals may be accounted for from the very nature of language.
Hume seems to get into some deep water with the second major claim here (I'm passing over "controversies, to which the astract sciences are so much exposed," as gibberish) that language is one of the causes of morals. As best I make out from the rest of the passage, he seems to be saying that things that are generally accepted tend to receive uncritical praise in the common language.
I need to look into that some more.