In this book, Buckle provides a historical perspective on the political philosophies of Locke and Hume, arguing that there are continuities in the development of seventeenth and eighteenth-century political theory which have often gone unrecognized. He begins with a detailed exposition of Grotius's and Pufendorf's modern natural law theory, focussing on their accounts of the nature of natural law, human sociability, the development of forms of property, and the question of slavery. He then shows that Locke's political theory takes up (...) and develops these basic themes of natural law. The author argues further that, rather than being a departure from this tradition, the moral sense theory of Hutcheson and Hume represents a not entirely successful attempt to underpin the natural law theory with an adequate moral psychology. (shrink)

This paper aims to show that the notion of moral progress makes sense in Hume’s philosophy. And even though Hume suggests that this question is not central, in showing why it is not the case, I will conclude that, in concentrating on the question of the progress of civilisation, Hume was expressing a view on moral progress. To support this claim, I will begin by defending the claim that the notion of moral progress itself is consistent within Hume’s philosophical principles. (...) In brief, I will suggest that according to Hume, there are at least four ways in which an agent's morality can be modified: by a change of belief, by a will to change his own moral characteristics, by the government setting up rewards and punishment and by the progress of civilisation. The key to the problem will be to distinguish between the natural principles which direct human nature and the social nature of human beings, the first one being immutable, and the second being malleable. Drawing this distinction will allow us to reconcile the highly problematic notions of uniformity and diversity within human nature. Then, in correlation with the distinction between moral maxims and moral behaviour, I will suggest that both are subjects to improvement, even though the room left for the latter is greater. After having argued that the notion of moral progress makes sense, I will try to understand the role it plays in the Humean conception of the progress of civilisation. This will lead me to conclude that its conditions and its different states of development are for Hume intrinsically related to the progress of the civilisation in general. Furthermore, moral progress is secondary and relative to the general improvement of society. The morals of the people has no active role in its progress, contrary to politics, economics, sciences and arts which are the main causes of the gradual progress of improvement. Therefore, against Montesquieu, Hume considers the progress of “manners” and “customs” (i.e. moral behaviour or the moral worth of behaviour) as a consequence of the progress of civilisation, and not as its cause. Hume’s principal aim is to underline the process of civilisation, and to show the means by which it spreads though all the spheres of society. (shrink)

This essay presents an interpretation of the juridical thought of Cicero, Hugo Grotius and Adam Smith. Focussing upon questions of property, capital accumulation and violence, the essay traces a tension within their writings between a social ethic of human fellowship and compassion, and, a theory of the utility of ‘unsocial’ commercial self-interest. This tension forms a key problem for the tradition of liberal international law. For Grotius and Smith one response to this tension is to attempt to reign in capitalist (...) markets by asserting a range of moral duties to individuals and to the nation-state. The importance of stressing such an interpretation is to reject the flattening-out of the liberal political and juridical tradition by contemporary neoliberal thought, and to reclaim a number of ways of thinking about the global economy and international law in which moral action and political intervention are understood as playing a necessary and essential role. (shrink)

Gender greatly impacts access to opportunities, potential, and success in corporate leadership roles. We begin with a general presentation of why such discussion is necessary for basic considerations of justice and fairness in gender equality and how the issues we raise must impact any ethical perspective on gender in the corporate workplace. We continue with a breakdown of the central categories affecting the success of women in corporate leadership roles. The first of these includes gender-influenced behavioral factors, such as the (...) requirements and expectations of gendered verbal and nonverbal communication styles as well as appearance. We move on to address the impact of family on corporate leadership opportunities and success, discussing the asymmetrical evaluation of an individual’s potential, authority, and competence based on gender stereotypes of familial obligations and expectations. Finally, we address how gender impacts access to networking and sponsorship opportunities and the long-term effects of systematic limitations on women’s inclusion in the upper echelons of corporate leadership. We conclude with a summary of the questions and issues raised by our discussion and direct individuals to consider how different ethical systems and moral requirements might influence their interpretations of gender and leadership in the corporate workplace. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XXI, Number 2, November 1995, pp. 275-287 Virtue, Commerce, and Self-Love R. G. FREY Can economic activity be virtuous? Can the pursuit of commerce and profits be moral? Both Hume and Adam Smith are agreed that Britain will live or die as a trading nation, and trade requires the harvesting or production of goods with which to trade. This in turn requires that people be motivated (...) to harvest or to produce these goods, and neither Hume nor Smith give any evidence of believing that people are motivated by a general love of mankind, an extensive sympathy, or a broadly-encompassing benevolence to produce them. Indeed, quite the opposite appears to be the case: both writers think the pursuit of luxury, wealth, and the general riches of life have much more to do with the harvesting and production of goods for trade than does any widespread, general concern for the well-being of others. And this fact leads straightforwardly to the question I want to consider, namely, whether this kind of what I shall call economic motivation is compatible with moral motivation.1 In Smith, our question can be seen as leading to what is sometimes called the "Adam Smith problem" (which on another occasion I should want to argue is a pseudo-problem). The Theory of Moral Sentiments gives an account of moral motivation in which sympathy and/or benevolence plays an integral role, whereas in The Wealth of Nations self-love is very much to the fore. No remark in Smith is better-known than his statement of this latter position: R. G. Frey is at the Department of Philosophy, Bowling Green State University, 305 Shatzel Hall, Bowling Green OH 43403-0222 USA. e-mail: [email protected] 276 R. G. Frey It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.2 Now it has sometimes been suggested that the way to solve this problem is to keep economics and ethics separate, to try to confine economic activity to a domain about which, in essence, we do not ask ethical questions. But to most of us this clearly will not do; the whole point is that we do want to ask ethical questions about economic activity. That is, in pursuing their trades, it must be possible for the butcher, brewer, and baker to be acting morally; otherwise, commerce and virtue will be incompatible, and in enjoining us to take up and to pursue the former vigorously Hume and Smith would be advocating immorality. Again, neither writer gives any evidence of taking himself to be advocating any such thing. It must be possible, then, for motivation by selflove to be moral, if a vibrant, prosperous nation is to result from and to propagate further commerce and trade. If the cost of morality is penury and a life of dreadful unhappiness, then while such a life may recommend itself to one consumed with the monkish virtues, it is far from clear that it would recommend itself to the rest of us. I am interested here in Hume and in one possible way of construing his remarks on self-love in An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals.3 But first a few words on Mandeville are necessary, since it is he who sets the terms of the debate over the compatibility of moral and economic motivation. In The Fable of the Bees,4 Mandeville praises vice (or the pursuit of selfinterest ) in the cause of national prosperity and castigates virtue as threatening to undermine prosperity. Employing an egoistic account of man's passions and motivation, he argues that individual pursuit of self-interest or vice produces public benefits. Pride, avarice, and the pursuit of enjoyment, luxury, and the fine things of life create economic activity, jobs, and economic and social opportunities, and these in turn benefit society. His point is that growth of (i) mutually beneficial economic activity, (ii) increases in general... (shrink)

This article develops a line of theorising the relationship between peace, war and commerce and does so via conceptualising global juridical relations as a site of contestation over questions of economic and social justice. By sketching aspects of a historical interaction between capitalist accumulation, natural rights and state hegemony, the article offers a critical account of the limits of liberal international law, and attempts to recover some ground for thinking about the emancipatory potential of international law more generally.

The dissertation concerns F. A. Hayek’s critique of legislation. The purpose of the investigation is to clarify and assess that critique. I argue that there is in Hayek’s work a critique of legislation that is distinct from his well-known critique of social planning. Further that the main claim of this critique is what I refer to as Hayek’s legislation tenet, namely that legislation that aims to achieve specific aggregate results in complex orders of society will decrease the welfare level. The (...) legislation tenet gains support; from the welfare claim – according to which there is a positive correlation between the utilization of knowledge and the welfare level in society; from the dispersal of knowledge thesis – according to which the total knowledge of society is dispersed and not available to any one agency; and from the cultural evolution thesis – according to which evolutionary rules are more favorable to the utilization of knowledge in social cooperation than are legislative rules. More specifically, I argue that these form two lines of argument in support of the legislation tenet. One line of argument is based on the conjunction of the welfare claim and the dispersal of knowledge thesis. I argue that this line of argument is true. The other line of argument is based on the conjunction of the welfare claim and the cultural evolution thesis. I argue that this line of argument is false, mainly because the empirical work of political scientist Elinor Ostrom refutes it. Because the two lines of argument support the legislation tenet independently of each other, I argue that Hayek’s critique of legislation is true. In this dissertation, I further develop a legislative policy tool as based on the welfare claim and Hayek’s conception of coercion. I also consider Hayek’s idea that rules and law are instrumental in forging rational individual action and rational social orders, and turn to review this idea in light of the work of experimental economist Vernon Smith and economic historian Avner Greif. I find that Smith and Greif support this idea of Hayek’s, and I conjecture that it contributes to our understanding of Adam Smith’s notion of the invisible hand: It is rules – not an invisible hand – that prompt subjects to align individual and aggregate rationality in social interaction. Finally, I argue that Hayek’s critique is essentially utilitarian, as it is concerned with the negative welfare consequences of certain forms of legislation. And although it may appear that the dispersal of knowledge thesis will undermine the possibility of carrying out the utilitarian calculus, due to the lack of knowledge of the consequences of one’s actions – and therefore undermine the legislation tenet itself – I argue that the distinction between utilitarianism conceived as a method of deliberation and utilitarianism conceived as a criterion of correctness may be used to save Hayek’s critique from this objection. (shrink)

The conservative, mainly Anglo-Saxon, critique of “social engineering” in Enlightenment thinking, which goes back to Edmund Burke and David Hume, among others, has recently resurfaced in the works of Michael Oakeshott, Roger Scruton, and Friedrich Hayek. This article focuses on their conservative critiques and more specifically on two common issues: the unintended negative consequences of political planning, and the institutions in civil society that act as a positive counterpart to this form of engineering.

El presente artículo trata algunas cuestiones teóricas e históricas respecto de la regulación del acceso a los medios de comunicación. En primer lugar, se hace un recorrido de las doctrinas liberales de los siglos XVI y XVII que inspiraron la igual desconfianza que refleja la Constitución de Estados Unidos respecto de los poderes públicos y privados en relación con el control de los medios de comunicación y de la opinión pública; en segundo lugar, se hace una revisión de la supervivencia (...) de tales doctrinas liberales en la en la interpretación de la Suprema Corte de la Primera Enmienda, relativa a la libertad de expresión y de prensa y, en tercer lugar, analiza la aplicación de dicha doctrina en los principios que han regido la administración de concesiones de radio y televisión por parte de la Comisión Federal de Comunicaciones. (shrink)