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Can Hume Answer Cromwell?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Extract
In the first written volume of David Hume's History of England, Hume describes Oliver Cromwell in this uncomplimentary way:
The strokes of his character are as open and strongly marked, as the schemes of his conduct were, during the time, dark and unpenetrable. His extensive capacity enabled him to form the most enlarged projects: His enterprising genius was not dismayed with the boldest and most dangerous. Carried, by his natural temper, to magnanimity, to grandeur, and to an imperious and domineering policy: he knew, when necessary, to employ the most profound dissimulation, the most oblique and refined artiface, the semblance of the greatest moderation and simplicity. A friend to justice, tho’ his public conduct was one continued violation of it; devoted to religion, tho’ he perpetually employed it as the instrument of his ambition; his crimes derived from the prospect of sovereign power, a temptation, which is, in general, irresistible to human nature.
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References
* A previous version of this paper was read at the 1979 meeting of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology in Norfolk, VA. O. Harvey Green (Tulane) and especially Marcia Baron (UNC) made helpful comments. Comments were made by colleagues Malcolm Acock, T.K. Hearn, James Rachels, and Eugene Sapadin. The original version was greatly encouraged by Alasdair Macintyre and his N.E.H. seminar on the history of ethics. I am also indebted to the National Endowment for the Humanities for support in attending the seminar, and to John Mackie for comments.
1 Hume, David A History of England, Volume VI: The Reigns of James I and Charles I, (also called ‘A History of Great Britain’ in some editions) (Baltimore, Md.: Penguin Books 1970; Penguin edition edited by Duncan Forbes) 579.Google Scholar See also pages 571-574 for what Hume thinks of Cromwell.
2 Hume, David A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to introduce the experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects, ed. Selby-Bigge, L.A. (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1968) Ill, 497.Google Scholar Subsequent references to the Treatise will be given in the text.
3 For good discussion of this point, see Cottle, Charles ‘Justice as Artificial Virtue in Hume's Treatise,’ Journal of the History of Ideas, 40 (1979) 462-4.Google Scholar
4 Ardal, Pall S. Passion and Value in Hume's Treatise (Edinburgh: Edinburgh U.P. 1966) 174-5.Google Scholar See also p. 180.
5 See especially, Urmson, J.O. ‘Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean,’ American Philosophical Quarterly 10 (1973).Google Scholar
6 See Woozley, A.D. ‘Hume on Justice,’ Philosophical Studies 33 (1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7 The points in the following paragraph are indebted to Cottle's ‘Justice as Artificial Virtue in Hume.’
8 Treatise of Human Nature, 531.
9 Ibid., 477.
10 Antony Flew thinks he should have advocated more often. See his ‘Three Questions of Justice in the Treatise,’ Philosophical Quarterly 26 (1976); it is also made by Sibley, Mulford in his Political Ideas and Ideologies: A History of Political Thought (New York 1970).Google Scholar
11 Treatise of Human Nature, Ill, ii, Section V, ‘Of the obligation of promises.’
12 Ibid., 574-5.
13 Quite a lot of confusion has been caused on the ‘is’ -‘ought’ question by not understanding that ‘obligation’ in the eighteenth century frequently meant ‘cause.’ See Sapadin, Eugene ‘Hume's Law, Hume's Way,’ David Hume: Bicentenary Papers (Edinburgh: Edinburgh U.P. 1977).Google Scholar
14 Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (Selby-Bigge, ed., Oxford U.P. 1976), 231. Hume gives this list of virtues: Justice, fidelity, honour, allegiance, chastity, humanity, generosity, charity, affability, lenity, mercy and moderation.
15 This point is due to Marcia Baron.
16 ibid., 207.
17 Ibid., 238-239. See also Treatise, 570-3. Chastity and modesty he calls ‘female virtues’ (THN, 570). When a woman loses her fidelity, she ‘becomes cheap and vulgar, loses her rank, and is exposed to every insult….’
18 Treatise, 477.
19 Ibid., 587 and 590.
20 Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, 270.
21 Treatise, 295-6, 574, 439.
22 This explanation was given by Macintyre in his NEH Seminar of 1978.
23 Op. cit., 282.
24 Ibid., 283.
25 Hume, David ‘The Sceptic’ in Of the Standard of Taste and Other Essays, ed. Lenz, J. (Bobbs Merrill 1965) 128-9.Google Scholar
26 Treatise, 415.
27 Ibid., 479.
28 Hume, David ‘Of History,’ in Of the Standard of Taste and Other Essays, ed. Lenz, J. (Bobbs Merrill 1965).Google Scholar
29 Forbes, Duncan Hume's Philosophical Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1975) Ch. 3,Google Scholar ‘Political Obligation for “moderate men”,’ and Pall Ardal, ‘Some Implications of the Virtue of Reasonableness in Hume's Treatise,’ in Livingston, D. & King, J. eds., Hume: A Re-evaluation (Bronx, N.Y.: Fordham U.P. 1976).Google Scholar
30 ‘Of History,’ op. cit.
31 ‘Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion,’ in Of the Standard of Taste and Other Essays, ed. Lenz, J. (Bobbs Merrill 1965).Google Scholar
32 Ardal, Pall Passion and Value in Hume's ‘Treatise’, Ch. 5.Google Scholar
33 Kydd, Rachael Reason and Conduct in Hume's ‘Treatise’ (New York: Russell 1964), Ch. 5;Google Scholar Hearn, Thomas K. ‘General Rules and the Moral Sentiments in Hume's Treatise,’ The Review of Metaphysics, 30 (1976-7).Google Scholar
34 Ardal, Passion and Value in Hume's ‘Treatise,’ 103.Google Scholar
35 Mercer, Phillip Sympathy and Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1972) 65.Google Scholar
36 Rachael Kydd, 175-6.
37 The account of Aristotle's analysis of virtues (as dispositions to act and feel) is defended by Urmson, op. cit.
38 For example, by John Lenz, in his introduction to Of the Standard of Taste and Other Essays (op. cit.)
39 Treatise, Appendix, 628.
40 The notion that all virtues are corrective has been recently advanced by Mrs. Foot in her ‘Virtues and Vices,’ in her Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: U. of California Press 1978.)
41 ‘Of History,’ 91.
42 See Feiring, Norman ‘Irresistible Compassion: An Aspect of Eighteenth Century Sympathy and Humanitarianism,’ Journal of the History of Ideas, 37 (1976).Google Scholar