The Opinion of Mankind: Sociability and the Theory of the State from Hobbes to Smith by Paul Sagar (review)

Paul Sagar's The Opinion of Mankind serves as an excellent synthesis of the topics of sociability and sovereignty in the history of modern political thought. The main thrust of the book is to marshal David Hume's and Adam Smith's resources as first-rate philosophers on behalf of a first-rate political theory. According to Sagar, Hume's and Smith's rich accounts of human sociability, sentiment, and historical contingency provide the foundations for what Sagar calls "the state without sovereignty" (18, 103–38). By this, he means that neither Hume nor Smith treat sovereignty as an a priori condition for state formation. Instead, Hume and Smith acknowledge states as modern political entities that manage themselves independently of any overarching theory. In Hume's terms, the "empire of philosophy extends over a few" ("The Skeptic," 169). We are better off examining citizens' evolving sympathy with their respective governments' utility and authority, rather than seeking external normative justifications for legitimacy.

This call for epistemic modesty and a non-ideal approach to politics will not be new to readers of The Treatise or The Theory of Moral Sentiment. However, Sagar is instructive in framing Hume's and Smith's political philosophies as a strategy for circumventing Thomas Hobbes. Anglophone political philosophy has long looked to Hobbes as its standard-bearer for the concept of sovereignty. For Sagar, Hobbes's legacy mainly consists in forging "artificial solutions to deep natural problems," whereby state sovereignty functions as a kind of "method" with unified and predictable political solutions (38). The Hobbesian method, Sagar thinks, has governed too much of political thought, from Rousseau to Kant to Rawls.

Hume and Smith, though, do not fear the monster of Malmesbury. By treating Hobbes's state of nature as no more than an "idle fiction," Hume side-steps the more vexing problems contained in Hobbes's contract theory (T.3.2.2.16; SBN 494). For Sagar, Hume's biggest departure from Hobbes is his emphasis on sympathy. Perceiving pride as a virtue, Hume believes mankind holds an enormous capacity to self-regulate. Far from needing to be curtailed by the sword, human beings, exercising sympathy, tend toward stability. The Hobbist word "artifice" does reemerge in Book 3, part 2 of the Treatise, when Hume famously describes justice as being "artificial." Yet justice is not artificial because its definition is imposed by the sovereign. Rather, Hume turns to early groups of families and tribes which establish conventions for respecting each other's possessions. In time, men come to find these conventions pleasurable and, gradually, conventions extend beyond mere self-interest and support the sort of peaceful, cooperative society in which justice can function. As Sagar summarizes, "It was not the Leviathan that created justice as a sovereign decree … but justice that eventually created the Leviathan" (99).

This prompts Sagar to argue that Hume has no theory of sovereignty, nor does he ever search after one. Hume's idea of sympathy softens the brutish edges of Hobbesian pride, but without overstating the case for natural sociability, as Shaftsbury and Hutcheson do. In their attempts to refute Hobbes, both Shaftsbury and Hutcheson defend the "moral sense" and our innate human feeling for goodwill and order, which goes well beyond the order that Hume thinks we can develop in society.

Likewise, Sagar portrays Rousseau as another political theorist who fails to successfully work around Hobbes. Chapter 4 contends that, for all their differences regarding the natural condition, Rousseau cannot avoid agreeing with Hobbes when it comes to man's present, pitiless state. Rousseau tries to start from the premise of sociability and pity, but he acquiesces to Hobbes's structure, in which political representation is impossible and sovereignty is indivisible. Sagar thus reads Rousseau as many of his initial critics did: The Social Contract is "an exercise in full-blooded Hobbesian...