Hume and the Contexts of Politics

Abstract

Hume and the Contexts of Politics RICHARD H. DEES HUME'S POLITICALTHOUGHT has been variously characterized as archetypically conservative, as contractarian, as utilitarian, and as an elaborate apology for the eighteenth-century ruling classes.' In examining Hume's politics, commentators have--with good reason--focused on Hume's account of justice in the Treatise,and they have seen his account ofjustified rebellion as a mere appendage ." But in doing so, they have ignored some crucial elements of Hume's thought: history and context. The contextual elements of Hume's thought are hidden to those who fail to look at what Hume doesand not just at what he sayswhen he makes judgments in politics. Hume, unlike most philosophers, is sensitive to history and to particular political contexts. He was in fact better known as a historian than as a philosopher until the twentieth century, and his History of England is his grandest and, in some ways, his most impressive work.s Hume fancies himself ' For Hume's alleged conservatism, see Sheldon Wolin, "Hume and Conservatism," American Political Scie~e Review 48 (*954): 999- io i 6; for his alleged contractarianism, see David Gauthier, "David Hume, Contractarian," Phi2osophicalReuiew 88 (1979): 3-38; for his alleged utilitarianism, see with some qualification, Frederick Whelan, Order and Ar~ce in Hun~% PoliLkal Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985); and for his alleged elitism, see Alasdair Maclntyre, After Virtue, second edition (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, t984), chapter i6, and Whose.Justice? Which Rationali~? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), chapters 15-,6. 9 See David Hume, Treatiseof Human Nature, second edition, edited by I.. A. Selby-Bigge and revised by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 477-5ol and 534-67, respectively. Future references will be in the text, designated by T, followed by the page number. s Several recent works have put the H/story to good use. See, most notably, Duncan Forbes, Hume's PhilosophicalPolitics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, a975); David Miller, Philosophy and Ideology in Hume's Political Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 198 ,); Donald Livingston, ltume's Philosophyof Common Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, *984); Nicholas Phillipson , Hume, Historians on Historians (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, ,989); and Whelan, Order and Artifice. [219] 290 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 30:2 APRIL 1992 an empirical scientist of sorts, and history provides the "experimental" evidence for a philosophy of politics, much as his observations of his own mental states provides experiments for his philosophy of mind in the Treatise.4 Understanding his historical works is, then, essential to understanding his philosophy . By attending to the historical works, we will see that Hume's political thought is more dependent on his judgments about particular situations than on his general pronouncements about abstract possibilities. In politics, then, Hume is a contextualist. To say that Hume is a contextualist is to say that context plays a central role in his political theory. Of course, context plays some role in any sensible political theory. No one--not even Plato--thinks that one political system is best in all circumstances.5 But most theories of political justification place context in a secondary role, either by using the particulars of the circumstances only to rule out certain options as "impractical" or by using them only to fill in the variables of a universal equation. On the first view, capitalism may be ruled out for, say, fourteenth-century England, because trade routes could not have been protected effectively, and so a commercial economy was impossible . The first view is also that, say, of Americans who think that capitalism and liberal democracy are the correct systems for every country unless dire circumstances make them impossible. On the second view, we find general principles and then apply the particulars of the circumstances just as we fill in the variables of an algebraic equation , but the principles themselves are universal, awaiting only the "numbers" to determine the "correct answer" of the right political system. A utilitarian view fits this second model: even though it allows a significant place for the features of the circumstances that affect the happiness of the people in the society, those features only...