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This chapter examines Hume's account of political allegiance. It argues that just as Hume's discussion of justice is intended primarily to refute.
- Human Nature and Causation
- Morality
- Politics
Hume begins from our “perceptions,” the basic elements of human experience. These divide into “Impressions,” which “comprehend all our sensations, passions and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul”; and “Ideas,” which are “the faint images of these [impressions] in thinking and reasoning.” Ideas are built up out of impressions,...
Much moral philosophy aims at explaining what behavior is moral, and why we ought to be moral. Hume, by contrast, assumes from the outset that human beings have a functional capacity to make moral judgments and use moral ideas such as virtue, vice, duty, obligation, and blame in a way that makes sense. Moreover, he observes, we are motivated to act...
Hume discussed both current and fundamental political and economic matters in various essays he wrote from the 1740s onward. Notable among these are essays on liberty, political parties, the question of whether politics can be reduced to a science, and on money, credit, and taxes. The economic essays argue against mercantilism, and the political es...
Hence there is some incompatibility between Hume's contention that characteristics of men are virtues if they are useful, and his contention that we are caused to feel we owe allegiance to governments by factors other than utility.
Oct 29, 2004 · Hume thinks it unnecessary to prove that allegiance to government is the product of convention and not mere nature, since governments are obviously social creations. But he does need to explain the creation of governments and how they solve the problem he describes.
Hume denies that people actually consent to the rule of their governors. Nonetheless, there are Humean reasons to think that, if general consent were given to the rule of a particular person, then that would prove an especially salient way to establish authority.
This paper reveals connections between Hume's virtue ethics and his political philosophy by investigating two specific ques tions. First, is allegiance to government, as Hume understands it, a virtue of character like other virtues that Hume recognizes (such as justice and fidelity to promises)? Second, can Hume ac
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Hume became more of a prophet for limited government as he grew older, but even in his late works he saw it as the governors’ task not merely to declare and protect rights which pre-existed their own right to govern, but ‘to point out the decrees of equity, to punish transgressors, to correct fraud and violence, and to oblige men, however ...
