David Hume wrote prolifically and influentially on economics and was an enthusiast for the modern commercial era of manufacturing and global trade. As a vocal critic of the Church, and possibly a nonbeliever, Hume positioned commerce at the vanguard of secularism. I here argue that Hume broached ideas that gesture toward those offered by Max Weber in his famous Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-5). Hume discerned a strong correlation between economic flourishing and Protestantism, and he pointed to (...) a “spirit of the age” that was built on modern commerce and fueled by religious tolerance. The Roman Catholic Church, by contrast, came under considerable attack by Hume, for fostering intolerance and draining and diverting funds. Hume recognized several of the dispositions that later appealed to Weber: an increased work ethic and tendency to frugality, enterprise, and investment in Protestant regions. A neo-Weberian literature now points to additional factors, the spread of literacy and the fostering of a network of trust among strangers, both of which Hume noted. Insofar as modern commerce both feeds upon and fosters more liberties and representative government, Hume also linked these with the advent and spread of Protestantism. My aim is not to suggest that these arguments have merit—there is good reason to question each and every assertion under the historical microscope—but rather to highlight the broader religious and cultural context in which Hume’s economics was broached. (shrink)

Robert Nozick addresses the idea of egalitarian redistribution in an argument standardly considered original: the “Wilt Chamberlain Argument”. However, this argument is found in David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, first published in 1751. Placing this argument within a Humean and Hayekian, rather than a Lockean or Kantian, perspective radically changes its import for issues of economic justice. Rather than vindicating the radical individualism of Nozick and other libertarians, applied to our circumstances using Hume's conventionalist and evolutionary (...) account of justice, Hume's Wilt Chamberlain argument vindicates moderate redistribution constrained by the rule of general laws and the goal of fostering innovation and industriousness. (shrink)

«Greek Love is a modern invention», asserts the classical scholar. David Hume can claim the title of inventor. In his 1751 Dialogue on morals he used the phrase to account for the relationship between a university boy and a man of merit. How did Hume come to this expression? Pederasty was a traditional sceptical topic against a universal standard for morals. What did Hume think of this practice and its origin? When he accounts for pederasty and homosocial arrangements by negative (...) epithets, is Hume seriously condemning them or he is «only» and prudentially following the common use? The Article tries to give a first answer to these questions by examining Hume's writings and their sources, and the views of the modern authors. The Article delineates the eighteenth-century debate, without projecting on it our views, and maintains that, like some ancient philosophers according to Sextus Empricus, and possibly like Smith, Hume would have declared practice in itself «indifferent». (shrink)