The early reception of Hume’s theory of justice

Abstract

This chapter describes the earliest responses to Hume’s account of justice, and gives particular attention to the responses of Henry Home (Lord Kames), Adam Smith, and Thomas Reid. Their obvious differences notwithstanding, these three philosophers share the belief that something important is missing from Hume’s account: the fact that we ordinarily take the demands of justice to be strict and unconditional. The chapter describes the different ways in which Kames, Smith, and Reid seek to capture this aspect of the obligations of justice. While none of them makes appeal to principles of religion in the course of the argument against Hume, the influence of Joseph Butler can be discerned in each of their critiques. This gives reason to doubt that Francis Hutcheson is ‘the father of the Scottish Enlightenment’, or that at this time Scottish philosophy can be clearly differentiated and distinguished from English. It also calls into question whether Smith as a moral philosopher has more in common with Hume than with any other philosopher of the period.