Hume's Progressive View of Human Nature

Abstract

In the introduction to the Treatise, Hume maintains that scientific advance will come only through an accurate and comprehensive conception of human nature. He praises philosophers in England, who have begun to put the of on a new footing and declares his intention to build upon their work (T xvii).1 How much of the science of man that Hume goes on to develop is a recapitulation of the work of the other British philosophers and how much is new? When is Hume borrowing the insights of those who came before and when is he innovating? It is difficult to answer these questions, and not just because the rules of attribution in the eighteenth century were looser than in ours. For at times the verve with which Hume writes can lead one to think that he is in the grip of a new discovery, when he is in fact recounting the ideas of a predecessor. And at other times Hume puts others' ideas to work in a manner that they themselves never considered or would have actively opposed. There can be no doubt, however, that Hume does put forth new ideas, and some of them, I think, must be counted real advances on what came before. In this paper I will elucidate one such advance—the development of what I will call a progressive view of human nature. This view will stand out clearly when we place Hume's Treatise account of the virtue of justice against the backdrop of a dispute on the origin of human sociability between Shaftesbury, Mandeville, and Hutcheson, three of the five late philosophers in England. For while a number of the pieces of Hume's account appear in the work of his