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David Hume argued that Individual Liberty emerged slowly out of the “violent system of government” which had earlier prevailed in Europe (1778)
“It is not with forms of government,” Hume warns, “as with other artificial contrivances; where an old engine may be rejected, if we can discover another more accurate and commodious, or where trials may safely be made, even though the success be doubtful” (ESY 512).
Hume developed his political thought most explicitly in political essays of the 1740s and 1750s, and in his multivolume History of England (1754–1762). Discussions of justice and allegiance to government, however, appeared first in Book 3 of A Treatise of Human Nature , and then again in revised form in An Enquiry concerning the Principles of ...
Another notable feature of his political essays in the Essays is Hume’s strong support for representative government as opposed to direct democracy. Hume was critical of the tumultuousness of ‘democracy without a representative’, like that which had existed in the ancient republic of Rome.
Jun 5, 2012 · The task he set for his political theory was to explain why both were philosophically misconceived, empirically untenable, and, in their extreme forms, politically dangerous. The politics of religion. One part of humanity, Hume notes, has a tendency to ‘weakness, fear, [and] melancholy, together with ignorance’.
- Knud Haakonssen
- 1996
This chapter examines Hume's account of political allegiance. It argues that just as Hume's discussion of justice is intended primarily to refute those rationalists who believe ‘that there are eternal fitnesses and unfitnesses of things, which are the same to every rational being that considers them’, so his account of political allegiance ...
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A permanent online resource for Hume scholars and students, including reliable texts of almost everything written by David Hume, and links to secondary material on the web.
