Groups versus individuals in Hume's political economy

Monist, The, April, 2007 by Margaret Schabas

Hence we arrive at what Paul Russell has identified as the "involuntary nature of moral character" (Russell 1995, ch. 9). As he argues, "for Hume, the basic fact of the matter is that moral character is very largely determined and conditioned by factors that are quite independent of the agent, and any effort to change or alter our moral character in fundamental respects is difficult and rarely achieved. The crucial point remains, however, that when such a change is brought about by the person herself, it can still be attributed to facts that, eventually, lie beyond her." (Russell 1995, 130). We are much more governed and determined by our social setting than by any traits that are specific or unique to the individual.

Hume, and Smith for that matter, are far less in the utilitarian camp than has often been supposed. True, the telos of humanity is the spread of happiness, undergirded by a more peaceful world, but insofar as happiness increases in tandem with virtue, there is reason to see Hume and Smith as leaning much more toward Kant than Bentham. Smith's impartial spectator with whom we have a nightly dialogue, connects us immediately to a more universal schema of virtue. There is in Smith at least a nascent version of moral realism. Hume is more evasive about the ultimate foundations of moral behavior and judgment. Virtue is never entirely its own reward, but it fortunately inculcates happiness and thus tends to resonate more fully and consistently with that "pre-established harmony" which allows any knowledge to be generated. The pursuit of knowledge, for example, brings honesty, and this in turn promotes political stability. The pursuit of wealth, for example, fosters probity and punctuality, which in turn promote trade and commerce, and thus prosperity, civility, and international peace. And so the pieces fit together, undergirded by the gradual and perhaps glacial progress of humankind. I see little room here, at least in the attempts to analyze human practices and pursuits, for the role of individual deliberation or action. Hume's efforts to forge political economy or the moral sciences more generally direct him to locate the nomothetic patterns in the social institutions. As he remarked in his essay on politics as a science, "I ... should be sorry to think that human affairs admit of no greater stability, than what they receive from the casual humours and characters of particular men." (1985, 15)

REFERENCES

Ainslie, Donald C., 1995. "The Problems of the National Self in Hume's Theory of Justice," Hume Studies, 21, 289-314.

Baier, Annette C., 1991. A Progress of Sentiments: Reflections on Hume's Treatise, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Barfoot, Michael, 1991. "Hume and the Culture of Science in the Early Eighteenth Century," in M. A. Stewart, ed., Studies in the Philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Berry, Christopher, 2003. "Sociality and Socialisation," in Alexander Broadie, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.