Groups versus individuals in Hume's political economy

Monist, The, April, 2007 by Margaret Schabas

(5.) For Searle these are a species of "social facts" that result from collective intentionality (this produces any form of cooperative behavior, such as orchestral playing or group sports). Institutional facts, like money, draw on systems of representation (language), law (property), and power relations. They are also self-referential; that is, money ceases to be money if everyone thinks a currency is no longer legal tender. (See Searle 1995, ch. 2).

(6.) Alexander Rosenberg engages these issues in one of his earlier works (see Rosenberg 1976).

(7.) See Griswold 1999, 130. Robert Heilbroner claims that "the whole objective" of one part of Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments is to describe how "the pressures of social judgment, finally internalized within the breast ... give rise to that epitome of socialized humanity, the prudent individual" (Heilbroner 1982, 429).

(8.) In Book Three of the Treatise, Hume writes, "a century is scarce sufficient to establish any new government, or remove all scruples in the minds of the subjects concerning it" (Hume 2000, 356). In his essay, "Of Civil Liberty," he remarks "that the world is still too young to fix many general truths in politics" and that "trade was never esteemed an affair of state till the last century" (Hume 1985, 87-88).

Margaret Schabas

The University of British Columbia