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Jun 8, 2022 · This chapter engages with both David Miller’s early work on the political thought of David Hume and his recent work on the methodology of political theory. It explores Hume’s treatment of the allocation, justification, and genesis of political authority.
Hume sees all governments as the result of a struggle between authority and liberty, with the best of them achieving a balance between the two by implementing systems of “general laws.” Hume’s cautious approach to social change may fairly be called conservative.
- 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...
Aug 23, 2022 · Hume developed his political thought most explicitly in political essays of the 1740s and 1750s, and in his multivolume History of England (1754–1762).
Feb 26, 2001 · Hume’s greatest achievement in the philosophy of religion is the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, which is generally regarded as one of the most important and influential contributions to this area of philosophy.
Apr 17, 2007 · To have a political obligation, then, is to have a moral duty to obey the law. Margaret Gilbert has recently challenged this moralized characterization of political obligation (Gilbert 2006; Gilbert 2013).
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In political theory, Hume has both theoretical discussions on the origins of government and more informal essays on popular political controversies of his day. In his theoretical discussions, he attacks two basic notions in eighteenth-century political philosophy: the social contract and the instinctive nature of justice regarding private property.
