David Hume’s Political Philosophy: A Theory of Commercial Modernization

Abstract

While David Hume explicitly elaborated on the development of a modern commercial society in the Political Discourses and the History of England, it is more difficult to discern whether Hume had a specific time period or societal transformation in mind when he laid out his political philosophy in A Treatise of Human Nature. In the Treatise, Hume unambiguously states that he did not believe in the existence of a pre-social stage of human development— he considered such elaborations mere philosophical fiction.1 The lack of an abrupt demarcation between the pre-social and the social in Hume's thought makes his political philosophy incongruent with an original contract or a first social formation. In this sense, Hume's social theory might be considered a foundational theory for all human coexistence2 and the Treatise would thus read as an ahistorical text. However, it is plausible that Hume was instead providing a discussion of a particular historical transformation—that of commercial modernization—by emphasizing the construction of a new set of social institutions and ignoring or downplaying the social forms that came before. This paper challenges the ahistorical interpretations and suggests that Hume was indeed providing a philosophical elaboration of the