This book was written with three aims in mind. The first was to provide a reasonably concise account of Hume's social and political thought that might help students coming to it for the first time. The second aim was to say something about the relationship between philosophy and politics, with explicit attention to Hume, but implicit reference to a general issue. The third is to offer an integrated account of Hume's thought. The book accounts for the varying interpretation of the (...) conservative and liberalist traditions by arguing that the distinction between liberalism and conservatism had little application in mid-18th-century Britain. Hume's ideology contained elements that we should now identify as conservative and liberal respectively, and so by selective emphasis it is possible to make him seem a thoroughbred conservative or liberal according to choice. These two problems the relationship between Hume's philosophy and his politics, and the ideological character of his thought are pursued through the first and second parts of the book respectively. (shrink)

Hume's works in Colonial and early Revolutionary America -- Historiographical context for Hume's reception in eighteenth-century America -- Hume's earliest reception in Colonial America -- Hume's impact on the prelude to American independence -- Humean origins of the American Revolution -- Hume and Madison on faction -- Was Hume a liability in late eighteenth-century America? -- Explaining "Publius's" silent use of Hume -- The reception of Hume's politics in late eighteenth-century America.

Transhumanism at once embodies our most modern thinking and our biggest longstanding problems. Transhumanism aims to enhance human core capacities: health-span, lifespan, and cognition. The thesis answers the following ethical challenges arising from transhumanist aims. First, whether transhumanism can be an ethical endeavour if it relies on authoritarian intervention by governments and governing bodies to change, generate and enforce behaviour, or to influence and enforce the uptake of medical procedures. Second, the thesis answers the challenge that it is unethical deliberately (...) to encourage the uptake of and pursuit of medical transhumanism given the extent of accessibility and distributive issues that remain unresolved in existing medicine. Finally, the thesis addresses a particular mental health crisis that is often predicted for transhuman beings, namely loss of meaning from loss of death and vulnerability, resulting in widespread loss of social cohesion. The thesis argues that the right solution to the first two problems is a libertarian paternalist approach, viz. nudging, and that this approach will also neutralise the risk of widespread and inevitable boredom or alienation that might otherwise result from the widespread introduction of human enhancement if people are nudged to engage more and more reflectively in their enhancement choices. Additionally, lifestyle issues like obesity, heart disease, cancers, and inaccessibility of vaccines and birth control pose unresolved problems for existing general medicine, killing millions every year worldwide. As a result, another serious challenge for enhancement medicine, which I propose would be addressed by the nudge approach, is to justify its place in the professional domain of medicine. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article traces the reception of Hume's ‘Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth’ (1752) among a circle of Scottish Whigs supportive of the French Revolution. While the influence of Hume's essay on American Federalists like James Madison has long been a subject of debate, historians have overlooked the appeal that the plan held for Hume's intellectual heirs in Scotland. In the early 1790s, theorists such as John Millar, James Mackintosh, and Dugald Stewart believed European governments – above all France – (...) could progress in the direction of the ‘Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth’. Hume modelled his plan after The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656) by James Harrington. In so doing, he helped transmit a version of institutional republicanism to a generation of Scottish intellectuals searching for more explicit political reforms. Thinkers like Millar and Stewart interpreted Hume's essay as both a justification for idealist political ‘speculation’ and a ‘practicable’ plan for rebalancing political power in a large commercial state. (shrink)

David Hume’s position on religion is, broadly speaking, “politic”: instrumental and consequentialist. Religions should be tolerated or not according to their effects on political peace and order. Such theories of toleration are often rejected as immoral or unstable. The reading provided here responds by reading Hume’s position as one of radically indirect consequentialism. While religious policy should serve consequentialist ends, making direct reference to those ends merely gives free reign to religious-political bigotry and faction. Toleration, like Hume’s other “artificial virtues” (...) (justice, fidelity to promises, allegiance to government), is a universally useful response to our universal partiality—as established uniformity, however tempting, is not. This implies that toleration can progress through political learning, becoming broader and more constitutionally established over time. A sophisticated Humean approach thus shares the stability and normative attractiveness of respect- or rights-based arguments while responding more acutely and flexibly to problems the former often slights: antinomian religious extremism; underdefined political agency; and internationalized, politicized religious movements. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:154, DAVID HUME'S PRACTICAL ECONOMICS As Professor Eugene Rotwein emphasized in his introduction to David Hume: Writings on Economics (Madison, 1955), the philosopher made his observations on the eve of the industrial revolution in a period of accelerating change. Very often — as in the latter half of the seventeenth century — times of flux and turmoil call forth Utopian thinkers, who propose the creation of hierarchical, communal, authoritarian (...) societies, often patterned after a supposed golden 2 age. Hume emphatically rejected Utopian schemes of this kind. "All plans of government which suppose great reformation in the manners of mankind," he said, 3 "are plainly imaginary." He repeatedly warned as well that "projectors" and visionaries would disrupt the balance in government between liberty and authority. Thus he could speak of or make reference to "the visionary system or ravings of Plato" (in The Republic), the ultimate impracticality of More's Utopia and James Harrington's The Commonwealth of Oceana, and the absurdity of Robert Wallace's theories on 4 population and the paper money schemes of John Law. Even the Utopian republics of Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, the Scottish patriot whom Hume admired as "a man of undaunted courage and inflexible principles," were dismissed with the others on practical grounds. The key word we have extracted from Hume's economics is practicality. Much as Hume would have liked to have designed an empirical "science of man" — which, incidentally, would have permitted him to propose his own infallible scheme of political economy — he realized that his own attempts had fallen far short of his goal. Thus his nine essays devoted especially to economics: "Of Commerce," "Of Refinement 155. in the Arts," "Of Money," "Of Interest," "Of the Balance of Trade," "Of the Jealousy of Trade," "Of Taxes," "Of Public Credit," and "Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations," are cautious in approach and pragmatic in spirit. Most of these essays were specifically designed to challenge prevailing assumptions and Utopian grand schemes of one sort or another. In "Of Commerce," for example, Hume rejects the idea that a nation can achieve greatness as an agricultural utopia. In "Of Refinement in the Arts" he takes issue with certain religious thinkers who 7 denote luxury as evil. In "Of Money" he is critical of those who believe that an injection of money into O the economy will work long-term wonders, and in "Of Interest" he argues with those who reason that the 9 plenty of money leads to low interest rates. "Of the Balance of Trade" and "Of the Jealousy of Trade" are directed against the protectionist policies of the mercantilists, "Of Taxes" rejects the French physiocratic single tax on land, and "Of Public Credit" deplores the expedients of Lord Oxford's partisans to draw bills on posterity and imprudently 12 use public credit to create paper riches. Finally, he addressed his essay, "Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations" to a refutation of the doomsday thinking of 13 the Reverend Robert Wallace of Edinburgh. This is not to imply, however, that Hume's economic thought was merely negative, or that he believed governments could safely entrust their powers over the economy to an "invisible hand." Even Hume's advocacy of free trade (which his friend and pupil Adam Smith, of course, applied with less caution) left the government with room to maneuver. Hume was willing to employ both the market and authority in designs for human progress. In seeking his mix of "action, 156. consumption, liveliness and indolence," a contradictory, counter-poised economic actor, the individual, was not a simple pleasure maximizer, nor did the acquisition of wealth and luxury make him a villain. He was a person in whom the complex springs of action, the causes of labour, needed first one, now another counter-weight. Society benefited from both 14 free trade and from tariff. Hume believed that industrial development and the advancement of commerce were the springboards to progress and happiness. Less is less and more is more; Hume never got these simple verities mixed up. "The same age," he said, "which produces great philosophers and politicians, renowned generals and poets, usually abounds with skillful weavers, and ship-carpenters.... The spirit of the age... (shrink)

Článek má za cíl ukázat podobnosti mezi Humovou a Madisonovou politickou filozofií v oblasti politiky náboženské tolerance. Humův kritický postoj k církvím a k náboženství je dnes v interpretační literatuře velmi známý. Často se však zapomíná na důsledky, které z tohoto postoje plynou pro jeho politickou filozofii. Hume se totiž na mnoha místech svého rozsáhlého filozofického díla (kam je třeba řadit i jeho Dějiny Anglie a mnohé eseje) zamýšlel nad otázkou, jak řídit stát nábožensky roztříštěný do církví a sekt. Podobně (...) se i jeden z nejvýznamnějších otců zakladatelů, James Madison, obával názorově roztříštěné společnosti; přičemž co do důvodů i řešení tohoto problému je patrná podobnost mezi jeho a Humovými myšlenkami. Hume i Madison shodně považovali za zdroj lidské tendence ke stranictví lidskou přirozenost a řešení této stranickosti spatřovali jednak v ustavení státu na co nejširším území, a jednak v co největší míře tolerance rozličných názorů i v náboženských otázkách. Oba argumentovali tím, že se v dějinách prakticky ukázalo jako nejúčinnější právě zavedení co nejširší náboženské tolerance. Kromě toho Madison používá stejné metafory a výrazy ve stejném kontextu jako Hume. Humův vliv na Madisona v otázce náboženské tolerance tak nelze při interpretaci intelektuálních zdrojů Jamese Madisona dále přehlížet. (shrink)

Not uncommon for Russian translations of British philosophical classics is the problem of not conveying the notions of imagination and fancy properly. The purpose of this paper is to serve as a reminder of the fact that concepts of fancy and imagination began to grow apart as early as the first part of 18 th century, and it is necessary to treat them accordingly for the translation to be correct. Very soon, the notion of imagination and the distinction between imagination (...) and fancy began to be involved in the contemplation of political reality. Today it is the notion of political imagination that attracts researchers the most, providing a tool for explaining continuity and discontinuities in political process as well as left utopianism and conservative nostalgia. The awareness of the distinction between imagination and fancy could foster research activity in such fields as the history of ideas and intellectual history as well as studies in ideology and power. The distinction is examined on the basis of texts usually considered to be written by authors of conservative strand. It is an interesting fact, indeed, that it was conservatives who made the main contribution to the development of this distinction in English-language philosophy. Among them are Coleridge, who resolutely draw the line between fancy and imagination, and Burke with his appeal to the moral imagination. The kindred typology of imagination was proposed in 20 th century by such thinkers as Irving Babbitt, T.S. Eliot and Russell Kirk. The importance of Kirk lies partly in that fact that he began the discussion of the conservative attitude to imagination and tried to frame it as a coherent narrative. (shrink)

Republicanism may seem to be a nostalgic politics of place that is incapable of responding to the challenges of globalization.The burden of this essay is to demonstrate that this view is both right and wrong - right in regarding republicanism as a politics of place, butwrong in thinking that such a form of politics is irrelevant to an increasingly interconnected world. On the contrary, the republican concern for place provides the basis for the responsible, public-spirited action that cosmopolitan theorists need (...) to sustain their visions of global politics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The subject of this paper is the place of Hume in Nicholas Phillipson's account of the Scottish Enlightenment. I begin with Phillipson's reading of Hume as ‘civic moralist’. I then turn to his account of Hume the author of The History of England. And from there I proceed to the place of Hume in his intellectual biography of Adam Smith. I conclude with a brief description of Phillipson's understanding of Hume's place in the history of the Scottish Enlightenment as (...) it mutated in the late eighteenth century and came to an end in the early nineteenth. I show how just as Phillipson's Hume cannot be understood apart from the Scottish Enlightenment, so also Phillipson's Scottish Enlightenment cannot be understood without Hume. (shrink)

The key theoretical idea underlying this article is that an institutional equilibrium in the economic domain can be destroyed or transformed by rapid belief changes in the political domain. Events circa 1776, 1787, and 1860 in the United States are all examined in an attempt to understand the interaction between these economic and political transformations. More explicitly, the author views the economic domain as fundamentally three dimensional, characterized by the use of land, labor, and capital. In contrast to general economic (...) reasoning, he considers the equilibrium in this domain to be institutional, rather than the consequence of the interplay of economic forces. Threats, generated in the political domain, have consequences in the economic domain, and these in turn induce belief changes in the political domain. Such belief changes may bring about war, or constitutional disequilibrium, leading possibly to a new political economic stasis. (shrink)

The political system of Berne during the enlightenment era was dominated by landowning patricians who represented a “republican type of gentry.” These landowners promoted agriculture, traded in grain, wood, wine, invested in cottage industries, and also were involved in foreign military service. In the debates about republican political economy in the 1760s, there was a cleavage within the Bernese aristocracy. On one side, conservatives defended the mercenary service as part of existing political obligations, above all towards France. Against this, the (...) Economic Patriots combated corrupting influences from abroad and censured military service. Socio-moralistic principles, condensed in the term “civic virtue,” ranked higher in the patriots’ eyes than economic or political interests; in a virtuous and frugal republic, there should have been no place for mercenaries. The paper reconstructs these arguments over key decades in the eighteenth century. (shrink)