David Hume’s Political Theory: Law, Commerce, and the Constitution of Government (review)

Most philosophers limit their study of David Hume’s political philosophy to A Treatise of Human Nature and An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals. There, Hume focuses on the foundations of justice and accounts for them in terms of the mutual coordination of our self-interested behaviour. Action in accordance with these artifices counts as virtuous only because we have an emotional resonance with the public good, and literally feel how we are each better off when we all respect basic property rights and fulfill our promises. In these works, Hume shows little interest in whether one scheme of rights is better than another; indeed, he seems to say that so long as promise-keeping and stability in possession is assured, any scheme is fine.

McArthur’s book demonstrates that this blinkered view of Hume’s project misses as much as it gets right, for Hume supplements his account of the foundations of justice with a much more detailed political theory in his Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary and his six-volume History of England. As the title of one essay puts it, ‘politics may be reduced to a science,’ by an examination of the regularities at work in different societies. McArthur focuses on Hume’s argument that there are causal linkages between a society’s being ‘civilized’ (as opposed to ‘barbarous’), its legal system, its commercial system, and its accomplishments in the arts and sciences. Hume’s empiricism means that he makes these kinds of causal claims only by a detailed investigation and comparison of particular societies, especially England, but also France, and ancient Greece and Rome. One of McArthur’s great accomplishments is bringing these disparate texts together and thus illuminating Hume’s conception of political life.

He shows that, for Hume, a society is civilized only to the extent that it has established the rule of law, where the ruler’s character is irrelevant to the functioning of the social order. And McArthur ably demonstrates that Hume means for this point to apply not only to the highest powers in society, but also to the lesser magistrates who implement the legislative order. With civilization, advances in commerce become possible, and with it the development of science and knowledge. Hume does not mean this to be a unidirectional process. Many accidents of history will accelerate or retard the mutual progress of civilization, commerce, and learning. But we can evaluate the success of different societies, depending on their place in this spectrum of development.

McArthur thus concludes that the traditional description of Hume as a conservative is misplaced. He is certainly willing to judge societies in light of universal standards that he sees as being grounded in human nature. But Hume is also skeptical about our capacity to predict the consequences of reform, and thus he thinks that radical innovations are usually imprudent. To this extent, he is what McArthur calls a ‘precautionary conservative.’

McArthur’s insightful book is a pleasure to read, and a real addition to the history of political thought. It has one shortcoming: it underplays Hume’s interest in how religion can interfere with political life. The History repeatedly points to the conflicts between the sacred and secular realms, and how the irrationality of religious passions leads people to disregard their self-interest and thus also justice itself. As is the case with Hume’s political philosophy, philosophers have tended to restrict their discussions of Hume’s philosophy of religion to his more overtly philosophical works – the dismantling of the design argument for the existence of God in the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion and the attack on miracles in the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. Perhaps McArthur can be tempted into writing a sequel to his book by extending his argument to incorporate Hume’s neglected but fascinating account of religion’s role in political life?