Abstract
David Hume’s theory of social and political order as represented in Russell Hardin’s dual coordination theory seems to conflict with the idea of political liberty as defined in Benjamin Constant’s concept of the ‘liberty of the ancients’. In this chapter, I argue that the apparent tension vanishes once the role of moral approbation in Humes’s theory of the conventional foundation of social and political order is adequately taken into account.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
Note that both kinds of liberty apply to individuals. The liberty of the ancients is ‘collective’ in the sense that it focuses on participatory rights in forming the collective body and its guiding rules. But these rights are still individual rights. The liberty of the ancients is about what individuals can do, albeit what they can do as part of the body politic.
- 5.
Arguably, Constant’s distinction is much more suited to accentuate this problem than its modern counterpart. As Berlin notes, the threat of unjust coercion in the name of liberty is not essentially tied to positive conceptions of liberty (1969, 134). Coercion may conceivably be justified in similar ways by reference to the ideal of negative liberty. In contrast, the liberty of the moderns as defined by Constant is conceptually inconsistent with the violation of liberal rights.
- 6.
Many thinkers outside the liberal tradition thought that, once the world was civilized, we can control the determinants of our life only collectively and they held variants of the liberty of the ancients, therefore, to be the only achievable forms of liberty within a mature human society. See, for example Rousseau’s concept of ‘liberté civile’ (Contrat Social 1.8, see Rousseau 1987, 159) or Marx’ ‘menschliche Emanzipation’ (1974).
- 7.
If, as many argue, a PD can represent Hobbes’ state of nature, it is a state of order, albeit a ‘natural order’ as explicated here.
- 8.
This property of a strategy profile can be understood as an enhancement of a property introduced by Davis Lewis to characterize the stability of a convention . A ‘coordination equilibrium’ according to Lewis (1969, 14) is a strategy profile such that no deviation from the profile is advantageous to any of the players involved, if all others stick to the given. Thus, in a coordination equilibrium no actor has an interest in any other actor deviating from the common scheme, so long as no other does. The distinguishing feature of the simple coordination problem in Fig. 2 is stronger: every isolated deviation from the common scheme by one actor is strictly disadvantageous to every actor involved. Thus every actor has an interest that no singular actor deviates. A profile with this property could be called ‘strict coordination equilibrium’.
- 9.
Michael Tomasello argues that this is what decisively discriminates human beings from non-human primates. See, for example, Tomasello (2009, 32 f. 62 ff ).
- 10.
- 11.
See FN 8.
- 12.
A prominent example put forward by Hardin is the electoral system in the USA. See Hardin (2014, 83 f ).
- 13.
- 14.
It may, for example, be immoral if the rule represents a ‘strict’ coordination equilibrium and no other can be expected to act according to the rule. This, of course contradicts Kant’s claim that the categorical imperative (as given in the first definition, see Kant 2002, 37) has unconditional obligating force.
- 15.
I take it that these two claims about the explanatory and justificatory force of consent are the essence of the anti-contractarian argument of the dual coordination theory. See also the related short discussion in section ‘Rules as Reasons for Action’.
- 16.
For a more thorough discussion of moral approbation in the context of artificial virtues, see Lahno (1995, chap. 8).
- 17.
According to Hume’s analysis common sense morality tends to be deontological rather than consequentialist. Kant may well have been inspired by this piece of moral psychology. But, of course, no normative or meta-ethical conclusion can be drawn from this purely descriptive account.
- 18.
The connection of this psychological claim to Leon Festinger’s Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957) is obvious.
- 19.
See Salter (2015) for a more comprehensive related argument.
References
Berlin, Isaiah. 1969. Four Essays on Liberty. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Binmore, Ken. 2005. Natural Justice. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
Constant, Benjamin. 1819. The Liberty of Ancients Compared with That of Moderns. Online Library of Liberty, Liberty Fund. http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/2251. Retrieved 4 Sept 2015.
de Jasay, Anthony. 2010. Ordered Anarchy and Contractarianism. Philosophy 85: 399–403.
Ferguson, Adam. 1995 [1767]. An Essay on Civil Society, ed. Fania Oz-Salzberger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Festinger, Leon. 1957. Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Hardin, Russell. 1988. Morality Within the Limits of Reason. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press.
———. 1989. Political Obligation. In The Good Polity: Normative Analysis of the State, ed. Alan Hamlin and Philip Pettit, 103–119. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
———. 1995. One for All. The Logic of Group Conflict. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
———. 1999. Liberalism. Constitutionalism, and Democracy. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2004. Indeterminacy and Society. Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press.
———. 2007. David Hume: Moral and Political Theorist. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2014. Social Yes; Contract No, In Lahno & Brennan 2013/2014, 79–93. RMM 5. http://www.rmm-journal.de/downloads/Article_Hardin.pdf. Retrieved 16 May 15.
Hume, David. 1975. Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge, 3rd ed., with text revised and notes by P.H. Nidditch. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
———. 1978. A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge, 2nd ed., with text revised and notes by P.H. Nidditch. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Kant, Immanuel. 2002. Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. and ed. Alan W. Wood. New Haven/London: Yale University Press.
Lahno, Bernd. 1995. Versprechen. Überlegungen zu einer künstlichen Tugend. München: OIdenbourg.
Lahno, Bernd, and Geoffrey Brennan eds. 2013/14. Can the Social Contract Be Signed by an Invisible Hand? Special Topic of RMM, Vol 4/5 2013/14. http://www.rmm-journal.de/htdocs/st03.html. Retrieved 10 Aug 15.
Lewis, David. 1969. Convention. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Marx, Karl. 1974. Zur Judenfrage. In Marx Engels Werke (MEW) 1, 347–377. Berlin: Dietz. English in: Selected Essays (trans: Stenning, H.J.). London/New York 1926: Leonard Parsons, 40–97.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1987. The Basic Political Writings. Trans. and eds. A.C. Donald, P. Gay. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett.
Salter, John. 2015. Hume Without Spontaneous Order. In Lahno & Brennan 2013/2014, 26–38. RMM 6. http://www.rmm-journal.de/downloads/Article_Salter.pdf. Retrieved 16 May 15.
Sugden, Robert. 2009. Can an Humean be a Contractarian. In Perspectives in Moral Science, eds. Michael Baurmann, Bernd Lahno, 11–23. Frankfurt: Frankfurt School Verlag. Also RMM 0. http://www.rmm-journal.de/downloads/002_sugden.pdf. Retrieved 10 Aug 15.
Tomasello, Michael. 2009. Why We Cooperate. Cambridge MA/London: MIT Press.
Vanberg, Viktor, and James M. Buchanan. 1988. Rational Choice and Moral Order. Analyse und Kritik 10: 138–160.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lahno, B. (2018). The Freedom of the Ancients from a Humean Perspective. In: Christiano, T., Creppell, I., Knight, J. (eds) Morality, Governance, and Social Institutions. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61070-2_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61070-2_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-61069-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-61070-2
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)