Hume: Social and Political Philosophy

Is Hume a liberal or a conservative? Hume scholars are divided over this question. This paper rejects the widespread reading of Hume as a conservative and argues that Hume is a liberal, even though his version of liberalism is fundamentally different from Lockean liberalism. Hume differs from Locke in that he attempts to justify a liberal political order without appealing to natural rights or a social contract. Instead, his liberalism is deeply rooted in his empiricist epistemology and in his sentimentalist (...) ethics. Because the starting point of Hume’s political theory is his analysis of the nature of human beings as they actually are, he ends up with a liberal theory that is less idealizing than Lockean liberalism. He thus defends what I call a non-ideal liberalism. The paper also argues that Hume’s non-ideal liberalism does not rule out political ideals altogether. Such ideals, however, must be derived in such a way that they do not violate his empiricist principles. (shrink)

Handout for a Conference in Honor of Don Garrett at NYU. Hume is famous for his critique of attempts to make robust use of terms like “power” or “faculty” in a philosophical or scientific context. But Hume’s philosophy is itself structured around the attribution to human beings of a variety of basic faculties or mental powers – such as reason or the understanding, the imagination, and the various powers involved in Hume’s account of impressions of sensation and reflection. Indeed, this (...) is so true that, Hume “never hesitates to infer from the fact that the mind regularly does something of a particular recognizable kind that it has a power to do it and a faculty by which it does.” (Garrett 2015, 81) In this way, Hume continues to treat mental faculties as forming something very close to the explanatory bedrock of his new “science of man”. In this talk, I consider whether Hume is entitled to this – or whether it points to a fundamental instability in his philosophy. (shrink)

Este texto enfoca as percepções de Hume sobre os eventos políticos e político-econômicos de seu tempo. Ancorado na análise de J. G. A. Pocock, o artigo explora os modos pelos quais o pensamento político humeano pode ter sido influenciado pelo assim chamado “republicanismo britânico do século XVIII”, dado o contexto de difuso mal-estar com uma intrusão sem precedentes do poder econômico sobre a política. A despeito das muitas contribuições que a história social e a história do pensamento político já fizeram (...) sobre esse tema e o respectivo período, a interpretação da perspectiva de Hume ainda deixa alguma perplexidade, à qual o artigo busca se endereçar. (shrink)

The new two volume edition of Hume’s Essays, Moral, Political and Literary, edited by Tom Beauchamp and Mark Box, is the first critical edition.[3] What primarily distinguishes a critical edition is that it collates the copy-text with all other editions and provides a complete record of variations in the texts. Beauchamp and Box provide readers with detailed, informative notes and annotations that describe the variations and revisions that have been made to the Essays published within Hume’s lifetime. They also provide (...) a table that catalogues the contents of the various editions from 1741 to 1771 and several helpful appendixes relating to their publication. The final text of the essays has been carefully edited and annotated. The second volume contains the editors’ extensive annotations, which are both informed and illuminating. All the editorial work has been done with enormous attention to detail and precision.... (shrink)

본 논문은 흄이 제시하고 있는 시민사회론을 검토함으로써 흄의 정치철학에 대한 이해도를 높이는 것을 목표로 한다. 필자는 본 논문에서 흄이 야만국가에서 시민국가로의 이행에 필수적인 조건으로 제시하는 “도덕적 의무”의 부과에 있어서 “반성”이 중요한 역할을 수행하고 있음을 보일 것이다. 그리고 더 나아가, 흄의 정치철학의 성격을 규정하는데 있어서, 리빙스턴과 스튜어트간의 논쟁을 살펴볼 것이다. 필자는 흄의 정치철학을 프랑스 혁명 이후에 새롭게 대두된 개념인 “철학적 보수주의”로 해석할 것인가, 아니면 “온건한 자유주의”로 해석할 것인가 하는 이들의 논쟁 자체가 생산적이지 못함을 지적할 것이다. 필자가 보기에 오히려 우리가 주목해야할 점은 (...) 흄의 정치 철학에서 반성이 핵심적인 역할을 하고 있으며, 이를 흄이 제시하고 있는 시민사회론에서 확인할 수 있다는 점이다. 이는 흄의 정치철학을 이해하는데 있어서 중요한 시사점을 가진다. 그 이유는 지금까지 많은 학자들에 의해 흄이 “습관과 관습”을 중시한 “반이성주의자”로 이해되어 왔는데, 사실 흄은 정치 철학에서 실천 이성으로서의 이성의 반성적 작용을 강조하고 있다는 점에서, 흄의 입장이 “반이성주의”로 귀결될 수 없다는 것이 본 논문에서 명확히 밝혀질 것이기 때문이다. (shrink)

John Rawls shows a deep influence of David Hume’s thought, mainly at his Theory of Justice, though also at the rest of his works. This influence is well-known in the field of political philosophy, much less in the field of moral philosophy. Rawls reads Hume’s thought with a sceptic and naturalistic key, attributing him what he calls a “nature fideism”. Besides this, attributes to Hume an ethical and political position linked with the classical utilitarianism. Nevertheless, his skeptical epistemology will move (...) away, paradoxically, to Hume from the utilitarian positions. Hume’s ethics and politics will finish, according to Rawls, showing a purely descriptive character and a lack of normative purposes. Hume does not have in the strict sense a theory of practical reason. This article examines and puts in question this interpretation of Hume proposed by John Rawls. The philosophy of Hume is not aporetically skeptical, articulates the moral roles of reason and the passions; and finally, is not only connected with utilitarianism; his defense of the role of utility frees to his theory of some of the main contradictions of classical utilitarianism. Besides this, the theory of the “judicious spectator” can be considered a form of a theory of practical rationality. (shrink)

John Rawls ha manifestado en diversas ocasiones que su justicia como equidad es una teoría contractualista inspirada en la obra de J. Locke, J. J. Rousseau e I. Kant. Sin embargo, en el desarrollo de su visión sobre la justicia es posible encontrar huellas de otros filósofos como es el caso de la obra David Hume. En este artículo, se estudia la inserción de tres conceptos del naturalismo del filósofo escoces en la deontología moral que sustenta la justicia como equidad: (...) las “circunstancias de la justica”, el “sentido de la justicia” y el “deber natural de justicia”. (shrink)

The Fable of the bees and the Treatise of human nature were written to define and dissect the essential components of a 'civil society'. How have early readings of the Fable skewed our understanding of the work and its author? To what extent did Mandeville's celebrated work influence that of Hume? In this pioneering book, Mikko Tolonen extends current research at the intersection of philosophy and book history by analysing the two parts of the Fable in relation to the development (...) of the Treatise. Focussing on the key themes of selfishness, pride, justice and politeness, Tolonen traces the evolution of Mandeville's thinking on human nature and the origins of political society to explore the relationship between his Fable and Hume's Treatise. Through a close examination of the publishing history of the Fable and F. B. Kaye's seminal edition, Tolonen uncovers hitherto overlooked differences between Parts I and II to open up new approaches in Mandeville scholarship. As the question of social responsibility dominates the political agenda, the legacy of these key Enlightenment philosophers is as pertinent today as it was to our predecessors. (shrink)

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)

The author discusses the third of the 3 books which make up Hume's 'A Treatise of Human Nature' - ' Of Morals'. 'Of Morals' is also divided into three parts, the second part of which is the subject of this book. In it Hume attempts to give an empiricist theory of justice.

This book stresses the importance of returning to David Hume's political thought, focusing on his ideas about the origin of government and political obedience, and his vision of the ideals of liberty, property, political stability, and moderation, all of which represent a precious source of inspiration for the development of political conservatism. Spartaco Pupo outlines the principle, counter-revolutionary features that characterise Hume's conservatism: political realism; mistrust of sudden and violent innovations; scepticism toward abstractions; opposition to rationalist arrogance; respect for custom (...) and institutional continuity; the need for the preservation of stability; rejection of ideological rhetoric, sectarianism, and dogmatism; constant denial of intellectual subsidies; and the defence of the national interest. In so doing, Pupo argues that Hume's 'sceptical' and 'secular' version of conservatism - the first to appear on the political scene of modernity - differs significantly from the Anglo-American conservatism that was to arise a few decades after his death, in the wake of Edmund Burke's writings. (shrink)

In considering the lodestars of American neoconservative thought-among them Irving Kristol, Gertrude Himmelfarb, James Q. Wilson, and Francis Fukuyama-Antti Lepistö makes a compelling case for the centrality of their conception of "the common man" in accounting for the enduring power and influence of their thought. Lepistö locates the roots of this conception in the eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment. Subsequently, the neoconservatives weaponized the ideas of Adam Smith, Thomas Reid, and David Hume to denounce postwar liberal elites, educational authorities, and social reformers-ultimately (...) giving rise to a defining force in American politics: the "common sense" of "the common man.". (shrink)

Taking the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume as its subject, this book breaks new ground in focusing its lens on a little-studied aspect of Hume's thinking: his understanding of money. George Caffentzis makes both an intervention in the field of monetary philosophy and into Marxian conceptions of the relation between philosophy and capitalist development. He vividly charts the ways in which Hume's philosophy directly informed the project of 'civilizing' the people of the Scottish Highlands and pacifying the English proletariat in (...) response to the revolts of both groups at the heart of the empire. Built on careful historical and philosophical detective work, Civilizing Money offers a stimulating and radical political reading of the ways in which Hume's fundamental philosophical claims performed concrete political functions. (shrink)

El primer objetivo del presente artículo es reconstruir el concepto de obligación política en Hume a partir de lo expuesto en el _Tratado de la naturaleza humana_ y en algunos de sus ensayos políticos. Hume es crítico del contractualismo y su idea del consentimiento como fundamento de la legitimidad de la autoridad, proponiendo en su lugar lo que llama “aquiescencia precaria”. El segundo objetivo es analizar el alcance del escepticismo humeano respecto de la obligación política y verificar si se extiende (...) a la obligación de cumplir las reglas de justicia. Para ello analizaremos la figura del _sensible knave_ introducida en la Investigación de los principios de la moral, y la respuesta que Hume le da a quienes se resisten a cumplir las reglas. Concluiremos que el escepticismo humeano que se ve reflejado en su comprensión de la obligación política, afecta también a su respuesta a los potenciales infractores de las reglas, sin embargo, más que un fallo en el argumento de Hume sería una ventaja para pensar la política más allá de los dogmatismos. (shrink)

In this article I propose a new interpretation of David Hume’s position on social contract theory. First, and acknowledging Hume’s critical stance on contractualism, I reject the reasons usually adduced to explain his position: empiricist methodology and utilitarianism. Instead, I argue that to fully understand Hume’s position on contractualism, one must take into account both a psychological methodology and a normative outlook. Second, I highlight Hume’s constructive proposals on the origin and foundation of government and justice, as well as the (...) philosophical approach that he suggested when discussing politics, i.e., mediating between parties. As I argue in this article, these latter aspects of Hume’s political philosophy, often disregarded when examining his reasons against contractualism, are nevertheless essential to understand his views on social contract theory. (shrink)

Hume is an avowed critic of contractarianism. He opposes the idea that a legitimate government is based on an ‘original contract’ or on the consent of those who are governed. Most scholars assume, though, that his criticisms apply only to a limited range of contractarian theories, namely to theories according to which actual contractors reach an actual agreement. Theories on which the agreement in question is understood in hypothetical or counterfactual terms, however, are oftentimes seen as being compatible with Hume’s (...) views. Against such interpretations, this paper shows that Hume rejects all contractarian theories, including hypothetical ones. It argues, first, that Hume employs a so far unacknowledged empiricist debunking strategy against contractarianism; if successful, this strategy undermines all variants of contractarianism. Second, it shows that the Humean conception of the state of nature (a topic that has received virtually no scholarly attention) is incompatible with hypothetical contractarianism. Finally, it argues that Hume rejects contractarianism in part because he anticipates a line of criticism which nowadays is often leveled against so-called ideal theory. On Hume’s view, the agreements reached by highly idealized contractors are of little relevance to the non-ideal individuals in the actual world. (shrink)

Pragmatic genealogies seek to explain ideas by regarding them, primarily, not as answers to philosophical questions, but as practical solutions to practical problems. Here I argue that pragmatic genealogies can inform the formation of philosophical canons. But the rationale for resorting to genealogy in this connection is not the familiar one that genealogy renders the concepts of the present intelligible by relating them to the concerns of the past—the claim is rather the reverse one, that genealogy renders the concepts of (...) the past intelligible by relating them to the concerns of the present: past thinkers can be made to speak to us by revealing how their ideas tie in with our concerns, in the sense of helping us to remedy practical problems we still face in some form. (shrink)

This paper examines Hume’s theory of republicanism from the perspective of the history of ancient and modern thought. Hume criticized ancient republicanism for its implicit assumption of institutional slavery, and sought the possibility of a republican constitution based on the freedom and equality of citizens. Despite the title “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth,” its content was a concrete theory and discussed the British society as it existed in the 18th century. His conclusion was the realistic proposal of a highly democratic (...) federal republic, which not only became the origin of the U.S. Constitution through James Madison, but also serves as a valuable source of enlightenment and inspiration for our time, when the challenges and problems of party politics and mass democracy have become extremely serious. (shrink)

This inquiry critically assesses previous research utilizing a game theory framework to understand Hume’s account of convention as the tangible expression of justice for the purpose of regulating possessions. In so doing, this research offers an alternative understanding of Humean convention that first clearly lays out the rules and main assumptions of the game, as presented in A Treatise of Human Nature, and then proceeds to analyze the implied optimal strategy and outcome. Rejecting commonly held views considering Humean convention in (...) terms of the Nash equilibrium and pure contractarianism, this research offers a novel middle approach—a “Third Way” between self-interest and sympathy, between cooperation versus non-cooperation, and ultimately between contractarianism versus utilitarianism. This “Third Way”conceives of Hume’s account of convention as a cooperative game with binding threats that necessarily always rests on the Pareto optimal strategy, and seeks a resulting Pareto optimal outcome. (shrink)

Hume’s account of the scope of justice, many think, is implausibly narrow, apply- ing almost exclusively to respect for property rights. Such a view would indeed be highly objectionable because it would leave out of the scope of justice altogether requirements to keep our promises, obey the law, and refrain from threats and violence (among many others). I argue that Hume’s theory of justice, properly understood, avoids this objection. And seeing how is instructive because once we understand his account correctly, (...) we can appreciate its resources for offering attractive explanations of why a number of diverse phenomena fall within the scope of justice. Overcoming this challenge is a major step- ping stone on the way to seeing Hume’s theory of justice as a genuine competitor with the other dominant theories of justice in the philosophical literature. (shrink)

Facing censorship and being confined to the fringes of the political debate of his time, Thomas Hobbes turned his attention to translating Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey from Greek into English. Many have not considered enough the usefulness of these translations. In this book, Andrea Catanzaro analyses the political value of Hobbes' translations of Homer's works and exposes the existence of a link between the translations and the previous works of the Malmesbury philosopher. In doing so, he asks: * What (...) new information concerning Hobbes' political and philosophical thought can be rendered from mere translation? * What new offerings can a man in his eighties at the time offer, having widely explained his political ideas in numerous famous essays and treatises? * What new elements can be deduced in a text that was well-known in England and where there were better versions than the ones produced by Hobbes? Andrea Catanzaro's commentary and theoretical interpretation offers an incentive to study Hobbes lesser known works in the wider development of Western political philosophy and the history of political thought. s commentary and theoretical interpretation offers an incentive to study Hobbes lesser known works in the wider development of Western political philosophy and the history of political thought. (shrink)

Intended for scholars in the fields of political theory, and the history of political thought, this two-volume examines David Hume's Political Thought and that of his contemporaries, including Smith, Blackstone, Burke and Robertson. This book is unified by its temporal focus on the middle and later decades of the eighteenth century and hence on what is usually taken to be the core period of the Enlightenment, a somewhat problematic term. Covering topics such as property, contract and resistance theory, religious establishments, (...) the law of nations, the balance of power, demography, and the role of unintended consequences in social life, Frederick G. Whelan convincingly conveys the diversity--and creativity--of the intellectual engagements of even a limited set of Enlightenment thinkers in contrast to dismissive attitudes, in some quarters, toward the Enlightenment and its supposed unitary project. Political Thought of Hume and his Contemporaries: Enlightenment Projects Vol. 1 contains six in-depth studies of issues in eighteenth-century political thought, with an emphasis on topics in normative theory such as property rights, the social contract, resistance to oppressive government, and religious liberty. The central figure is David Hume, with substantial attention to Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, and others in the period. The introduction situates the studies in the Enlightenment and considers interpretations of that movement. (shrink)

This volume on Hume's politics brings together essays that have been formative of the scholarly and more general debate about Hume's political thought. The articles span a wide range of view-points such as: the possibilities of seeing in Hume both the conservative and the liberal; Hume's sophisticated analysis of party-politics and of commerce and politics; his ideas of the international order and his fundamental theory of justice in relation to law, property and government.

Authority and the Liberal Tradition critically describes the historical foundations of modern liberalism, implicitly analyzing the status and effectiveness of American democracy. Heineman examines contemporary liberal ideology, which he argues undermines the normative basis of social stability that was an important element in the classical liberal tradition. He shows how American government has become hostage to ideology, to the advocacy of interest-group politics.

Lays out an account of the origins and development of liberal political and economic theoryIncludes case studies that cover thinkers and ideas from the English Civil War through to liberalism's first encounters with socialism Provides comparative analysis of distinct intellectual traditions including English natural rights theory, the Scottish Enlightenment, Victorian-era utilitarianism and classical political economyIntegrates history of economic thinking into broader milieu of modern political, moral and natural philosophyExamines secondary literature and research from a range of disciplinary areas including political (...) theory, modern intellectual history, economic thought and modern British history and philosophyThis book re-examines the philosophical roots of classical liberal political economy, as well as addressing the relationship between the empire and liberalism. It proposes an interpretive model based upon the interconnection between distinct theories of natural rights and the harmony of interests. It takes a fresh look at classical liberalism by exploring economic arguments in thinkers like Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Paine, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, who are not typically viewed as economic thinkers, and by highlighting the importance of Bernard Mandeville and Adam Smith in the development of interest-based liberalism. It also re-examines lesser-known economic tracts by thinkers such as John Locke, David Hume and John Stuart Mill in light of their more well-known political writings. With classical liberal assumptions still prominent in contemporary debates about economic justice, it is vital for every democratic citizen to understand the complex origins and development of the ideas that did so much to shape our world today. (shrink)

In the human sciences of eighteenth century Europe, systematic comparison played a crucial part, generally as a method but also occasionally as a target of criticism. Particularly in the domains of political and social thought, comparison was conceptualized and practiced in sharply contested forms: philosophical, social-scientific, and rhetorical. While some of the meanings now carried by the concept of comparison in the human sciences coincide with what was understood by it in the eighteenth century, others do not. This paper discusses (...) such competing concepts and practices of comparison in Locke, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Hume, and Herder, who contested the very notion of the commensurability of human regimes and societies. Comparison turned out to be a profoundly ambiguous and controversial concept, holding in suspension a number of disparate intentions and methods. Writers could use comparative studies to accentuate differences, establish similarities, or reveal ranges of variation within the same category. Comparisons and contrasts became crucial weapons in all major eighteenth century disagreements dividing Europeans among themselves, as well as in theories of where they stood in relation to the rest of the world. (shrink)

The most arresting aspect of the Scottish Enlightenment is its conception of commercial society as a distinct and distinctive social formation. Christopher Berry explains why Enlightenment thinkers considered commercial society to be wealthier and freer than earlier forms, and charts the contemporary debates and tensions between Enlightenment thinkers that this idea raised. The book analyses the full range of literature on the subject, from key works like Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations', David Hume's 'Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects' and (...) Adam Ferguson's 'Essay on the History of Civil Society' to lesser-known works such as Robert Wallace's 'Dissertation on Numbers of Mankind'. (shrink)

O filósofo escocês David Hume é comumente lembrado, por aqueles que não estão familiarizados com sua obra, como o autor que iluminou Immanuel Kant e como uma figura de grande importância no empirismo. Mas estamos preocupados neste texto é com uma outra parte dos seus engenhos. Pretendemos ver neste autor algo que era comum em parte de seus contemporâneos, a saber, preocupações com o cenário em que se incluía com seus compatriotas, com o rumo que a sociedade estava levando, com (...) a influência das artes na vida dos indivíduos e com um melhor caminho para a felicidade individual e geral. É neste sentido que a polidez ganha um espaço importante na obra do escocês. Para Hume, no momento que um indivíduo tiver sido educado o suficiente para ser polido, tendo cultivado em si o gosto por artes, filosofias, literaturas e poesias, terá paixões adequadas para cada situação, será capaz de ter conversas adoráveis sobre os mais diversos e eruditos temas, terá amizades mais duradouras e agradáveis, não irá deixar que qualquer frivolidade da vida comum o abale, terá o juízo fortalecido a ponto de não ser abatido pelas paixões mais violentas, e, tendo todas essas qualidades de caráter, não poderá deixar de ser justo e virtuoso uns para com os outros. Dito isso, o presente texto pretende elucidar como o que Hume defende como polidez seria capaz de educar o homem por meio do cultivo das letras, da poesia, da escrita, da arte e da conversação, elevando-o no âmbito intelectual e no do convívio. (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)

Political theory contains two views of social care for people with intellectual disabilities. The favor view treats disability services as an undeserved gratuity, while the entitlement view sees them as a deserved right. This paper argues that David Hume is one philosophical source of the favor view; he bases political membership on a threshold level of mental capacity and shuts out anyone who falls below. Hume’s account, which excludes people with intellectual disabilities from justice owing to their lack of power, (...) but includes them in charity, is morally deficient. The shortcomings of Hume’s theory underscore the necessity of having a view of justice which ensures that people with intellectual disabilities are not marginalized. In defending the entitlement view, I integrate philosophical analysis and concrete examples of policy issues. (shrink)

Preface The status of sovereignty as a highly ambiguous concept is well established. Pointing out or deploring, the ambiguity of the idea has itself become a recurring motif in the literature on sovereignty. As the legal theorist and international lawyer Alf Ross put it, “there is hardly any domain in which the obscurity and confusion is as great as here.” 1 The concept of sovereignty is often seen as a downright obstacle to fruitful conceptual analysis, carried over from its proper (...) setting in history to “plague and befog contemporary thought.” 2 . . . So contested is the concept that, rather than pursuing the contestation, many political theorists think we should give up so protean a notion. Granting that the debate on the relevance of sovereignty frustratingly oscillates between claims that it will either continue to exist or that it is about to disappear, forgetting it altogether, and thereby escaping this seemingly endless argument, can easily appear as the most urgent task for political theory . The following argument makes a case that the “urgent task” is not the abandonment of the concept of sovereignty, but an understanding of its essential philosophical nature as an integrated and evolving expression of practical reason. Sovereignty is neither ambiguous nor obscure once its fundamental presuppositions are laid bare and its many philosophical and historical manifestations shown to be the product, in actuality, of a single, dialectally dynamic but integrated set of metaphysical elements. This is the first of three arguments describing the evolution of international law as a manifestation of practical reason through an application of philosophical method to the source , locus , and scope of the concept of sovereignty. It moves from a dialectic balance favoring utility to a balance dominated by legal right to a dialectic of duty to humanity and nature. All three arguments are meant to be a contribution to the new field of International Legal Philosophy as defined by Phillip Allott. 4 This field combines a sensitivity to legal practice with an effort to understand the underlying philosophical determinants of empirical choice and behavior. One purpose of international legal philosophy is to “remove” from the minds of those who study the law what Diderot defined as “the sophism of the ephemeral,” and what Allott calls “the disempowering idea that what xii Preface happens to exist now is inevitable and permanent.” 5 A core imperative is to “reunderstand what it is to be a thinking being” 6 and to rediscover the dialectic between the private and the public as it determines, and is redetermined by, legal practice. This requires a “revolution in the human mind” 7 so that we may transcend the current dependence on positivist methods and empirical fact as an end-in-itself, and try to understand the underlying and more constant and essential ideas and inherent dialectics that constitute the substructure or “metaphysics” of international law. I will approach this “revolution” with the use of R. G. Collingwood’s philosophical method 8 and the philosophy of David Hume, applied to international law as an expression of practical reason. The goal of philosophical method is the construction of a comprehensive policy argument (CPA) for a public policy or legal issue. In addition to the conventional use of empirical models and their logic of investigation in the study of policy and law, CPA requires that an underlying philosophical logic of concepts be deciphered to identify the ideas within the issue, and their definition, overlap, and systematic interdependence. Philosophical method is a means with which to interpret and understand competing systematic and complete conceptual logics, existing at the core of an issue and pertinent to policy change. Philosophical method is therefore not meant to be a replacement for the empirical investigation of a policy or legal issue, or the use of scientific method in social studies. Rather, it is a complimentary and prerequisite method that seeks to transcend the limitations of positivism and present a more complete understanding of the philosophical presuppositions of positivist ideas like power, interest, or strategic rationality. Philosophical method is meant to be used with the facts of the policy or legal issue to match an illuminating logic of concepts with a pertinent logic of investigation . Within the CPA, the use of philosophical method and the metaphysics of a policy or legal issue is assumed to be critical to the full understanding of the overlapping concepts, dialectics, and scale of forms that determine, and are determined by, the empirical context of the policy or legal topic. Specifically, instead of utilizing bits and pieces of various theoretical arguments to address narrowly focused empirical questions, as positivism prescribes, I will address the evolution of international law as practical reason in three phases. Each will be approached through a single integrated logic of philosophical concepts from a particular philosopher (i.e., David Hume, G. W. F. Hegel, Immanuel Kant). This philosophically holistic approach to the law is based on the assumption that only through the use of a single integrated argument in legal analysis can sovereignty, or any concept, be understood as a truly systematic and logical whole. A complete philosophical paradigm has a dialectic integrity and systematic logic that can more adequately describe the evolving essence of a concept like sovereignty. This approach also has the advantage of generating a number of distinct holistic descriptions of the law through the application of different philosophical systems, one at a time, to its factual structure. 9 Positivism does not seek Preface xiii holism, and rejects the idea that “theory” has such a characteristic. The essential or comprehensive substructure of any idea is therefore ignored in a method that recommends the observation of empirical problems through the use of whatever hodgepodge of theoretical elements is seen fit to frame its superstructure. This failure to deal with metaphysics has retarded both an essential understanding of international law as a species of legal system, and any holistic and dialectical conceptualization of its inherent concepts, like sovereignty. A second positivist convention expects modern theorists to create new theory rather than to refine and apply that of existing philosophy. This predisposition is driven by the positivist goal of discovery that ignores refinement as a possible purpose of philosophical analysis. Collingwood argues that philosophy must take that set of ideas already known and utilize existing systematic philosophical arguments to refine them so that they evolve closer to their essence as concepts. Considering this imperative, the idea of sovereignty can be assumed to have had valid usage for hundreds of years, over which time, the concept has evolved to mean different things, each a refinement of the definition that preceded it. Transcending positivism means that the scholar’s search is not for “new” material, but to decipher the metaphysical essence of a concept as it has been made manifest over time and context. These manifestations are rooted, and refined from, the known terms of that concept’s inherent idea(s). Rather than depending exclusively on positivism and its conventions, my work utilizes, in addition to Collingwood, the intact philosophical systems of Hume, Hegel, and Kant to trace the refinement of international law as a product of human practical reason. These paradigms, or integrated systems of logical concepts, will be applied to legal practice individually, so that each CPA can be deciphered separately. This provides a set of integrated and logically intact paradigms for the evolutionary stages of practical reason in international law. Because each argument is applied systematically, a deeper understanding of the source, locus, and scope in the development of law in general, and international law in particular, is possible where it is not with the application of various disconnected components of many theories. Each CPA based on Hume, Hegel, or Kant can then be used to describe a distinct context that its logic of concepts best illuminates; specifically, the (1) genesis, (2) contemporary dilemmas, and (3) future of the international legal system. By widening the perspective of international lawyers and policymakers, they can more easily perceive the dialectic of ideas that has created, and is refined by, the legal practice in which they participate. We also move toward Allott’s goal of “human self-perfecting.” 10 And, in addition, by providing a more complete knowledge of the origins of legal practice and its evolution, we illuminate the practical possibilities for what we might “choose to be” 11 in the future. To achieve this, the essential metaphysical elements of state sovereignty and its inherent evolutionary scale of forms will be deciphered and described. This will transform what appears to be a multitude of definitions and xiv Preface practical realizations of the concept of sovereignty into a set of interdependent manifestations of a single substructure, made of a single set of dialectic elements. The interpretation of international law through practical reason sorts and integrates a diverse and discordant literature and defines state sovereignty as a single concept evolving on a scale of forms that allows it to exhibit diverse character traits, all arising from different combinations of common and essential metaphysical elements. This approach, compared to positivist methods and legal realism, allows one to transcend current agreement that sovereignty is, at best, a narrowly focused set of empirical characteristics or, at worst, “organized hypocrisy.” 12 This method also encourages the scholar and practitioner to understand the predispositions and pitfalls of the concept of sovereignty, as well as its potential future paths, more effectively. The use of philosophical method to create policy paradigms out of preexisting philosophical systems and apply these to international law will be called Philosophical-Policy & Legal Design . This approach allows the use of preexisting and complete philosophical arguments that provide an adequate logic of concepts to chart the evolution of the idea of sovereignty along its scale of forms. An examination of the source of practical reason in human social convention with the employment of a philosophical-policy drawn from Hume’s logic of concepts about human nature will demonstrate this new approach. Why Hume? Because, up to now, without an adequate substructure we have arguments, like Brunne é’ s and Troope’s, 13 that may correctly identify international law as an “interactional” system, but cannot present any argument as to why it is, where this empirical reality comes from, or what its implications are for the future. Comparatively, Hume provides a logic of philosophical concepts that answers these concerns. First, he fulfills the requirements for a fuller understanding of the origin and evolution of law from social convention and the dependence of social convention on the human imperative for society. Second, he offers a more adequate delineation of the overlapping concepts of the law in terms of the ideas and institutions that deal with norms and justice (e.g., principle, process, practice, rule, power, interest). Third, he provides a fundamental understanding of the essential dialectics at the core of a conceptualization of the law with both unconscious and conscious human participation (i.e., passion. (shrink)

This is a fascinating collection of Hume's texts and essays by experts on Hume. It introduces students and general readers to a panorama of his moral and political philosophy in a readable and informative way. The collection consists of the following sections: Introduction by Andrew Valls, Index of Names, "Texts," and "Essays." The texts include the entirety of An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, and selected essays from "Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary." This is followed by four "interpretive essays" (...) by Mark G. Spencer, Elizabeth S. Radcliffe, Frederick G. Whelan, and finally Peter Vanderschraaf and Andrew Valls. (shrink)