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The Praises of Modernity: Hume and Machiavelli on Founders, Factions, and Faiths
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 April 2019
Abstract
Machiavelli's influence on David Hume's political thought is a subject of growing scholarly attention. I analyze Hume's “Of Parties in General” to show that the introduction to this essay is a critical appropriation of Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy. I argue that Hume's appropriation of Machiavelli provides a meaningful frame to an essay in which Hume will consciously build upon one of Machiavelli's most controversial teachings, that good political founding is hampered by the effects of Christianity on political thinking. My analysis contributes to our understanding of Machiavelli's influence on Hume by showing Machiavelli's imprint much beyond where it is usually the subject of debate, in Hume's political science.
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- Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2019
Footnotes
The author would like to thank John Scott, Shalini Satkunanandan, Robert Taylor, and three anonymous referees for their criticism and support. An earlier version of the article was presented at the UC Davis Political Theory Workshop and at the 2016 annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association.
References
1 The following shorthand will be used for works cited in this article: references to Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy (DL) are from Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), using book, chapter, and paragraph number. References to Hume's Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (E) are from Hume, David, Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Miller, Eugene F (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1985)Google Scholar, using page number; references to the Treatise of Human Nature (THN) are from Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Norton, David Fate and Norton, Mary J. (Oxford: Clarendon, 2007)Google Scholar, using book, section, chapter, paragraph number, and page number from the Selby-Bigge and Nidditch edition; references to the Natural History of Religion (NHR) are from Hume, David, A Dissertation on the Passions: The Natural History of Religion, critical ed., ed. Beauchamp, Tom L. (Oxford: Clarendon, 2007)Google Scholar, using section and paragraph number; references to the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (EHU) are from Hume, David, An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, ed. Beauchamp, Tom L. (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000)Google Scholar, using section and paragraph number; and references to the Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (EPM) are from Hume, David, An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. Beauchamp, Tom L., Norton, David Fate, and Stewart, M. A. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998)Google Scholar, using section and paragraph number.
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12 Whelan, Hume and Machiavelli, esp. chap. 2.
13 Merrill, Hume and the Politics of Enlightenment, 136.
14 Istvan Hont, “Hume's Knaves and the Shadow of Machiavellianism” (conference paper, Brighton, May 28–29, 2010).
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22 Forbes, Hume's Philosophical Politics, 219; Harris, Hume: An Intellectual Biography, 169.
23 Trenchard, John and Gordon, Thomas, Cato's Letters, or, Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious, and Other Important Subjects, ed. Hamowy, Ronald (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1995), 1:120Google Scholar (letter no. 16).
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25 The Craftsman, no. 674 (June 9, 1739), in Gunn, Factions No More, 104, emphasis in original.
26 Goldsmith, “Faction Detected,” 9. Hume probably read this work at some point, as he asks for the book in a letter (The Letters of David Hume, ed. J. Y. T. Greig [Oxford: Clarendon, 1932], 1:55). Exactly when this reading might have occurred is uncertain, as the estimated dating of the letter relies on this request.
27 Gunn, Factions No More, 146, emphasis in original.
28 On the significance of Bolingbroke to Hume's party essays, see Forbes, Hume's Philosophical Politics, esp. chap. 6, though cf. Goldsmith, “Faction Detected,” 17.
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33 Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters, 1:121 (letter no. 16).
34 Dissertation upon Parties, Letter XII, Craftsman, no. 436 (November 9, 1734), in Political Writings, 118.
35 London Journal, no. 552 (February 28, 1730), in Kramnick, Bolingbroke and His Circle, 164.
36 Polybius describes a natural cycle of six regimes, alternating between the good and the bad, which both Sparta and Rome counteracted by mixing elements of the three good (see Histories 6.3–10). As is his wont, Machiavelli never cites Polybius, but adheres so closely to the Polybian story that his innovations are made clear (see Mansfield, Harvey C., Machiavelli's New Modes and Orders [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001], 32–41Google Scholar). One notable innovation is the addition of the problem of foreign adversaries, which would prevent any republic from completing the cycle, thus leading to the conclusion that the “better ordered republic is simply the one that conquers its neighbor revolving in the cycle” (Mansfield, Machiavelli's New Modes and Orders, 38). Though the need to become an acquisitive republic is at the core of Machiavelli's advice to involve the people in public things, this martial purpose is underemphasized in the republican face of Machiavelli (see Sullivan, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and the Formation of a Liberal Republicanism, 38–43).
37 Pocock, “Machiavelli, Harrington, and English Political Ideologies”; Raab, English Face of Machiavelli, 190–95; Wootton, David, “The Republican Tradition: From Commonwealth to Common Sense,” in Republicanism, Liberty, and Commercial Society, ed. Wootton, David (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 14Google Scholar.
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42 Ibid., 99–100.
43 Dissertation upon Parties, Letter XII, Craftsman, no. 436 (November 9, 1734), in Political Writings, 111.
44 Hume denounces Bolingbroke's “Machiavellian moralists” and talk of corruption (Forbes, Hume's Philosophical Politics, 225), and provides “an elaborate response to the political science of the classical republicans” (Moore, James, “Hume's Political Science and the Classical Republican Tradition,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 10, no. 4 [1977]: 810CrossRefGoogle Scholar). He rejects the Harringtonian singular focus on property (E 47–48, 515), and though he adopts the oft-cited Machiavellian dictum to return to first principles (E 516), he is cautious about its application to England, since he thought the constitution was neither “matchless” (E 30) nor ancient (as was shown throughout the History of England).
45 The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath (London: Longman, 1860), 3:301
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47 Paterson, Timothy H., “On the Role of Christianity in the Political Philosophy of Francis Bacon,” Polity 19, no. 3 (1987): 439–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rahe, Republics Ancient and Modern, 2:113; White, Howard B., Peace among the Willows: The Political Philosophy of Francis Bacon (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968), 45–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Bacon's admiration of Machiavelli, see Rahe, Republics Ancient and Modern, 2:31–37, and Raab, English Face of Machiavelli, 74.
48 Works of Francis Bacon, 3:430, 4:450.
49 For a third Baconian ranking, and one which reflects the judgments found in the Advancement of Learning, see Novum Organum 1.129 (Works, 4:113–15).
50 Why Hume decides to veil his engagement with the Discourses (which he considered a work of “great judgment and genius” [E 634]) in this instance while explicitly engaging with Machiavelli elsewhere is a perplexing question I do not intend to answer conclusively. As will become clear, my interpretation offers the suggestion that Hume may be wary given his task of displacing one popular Machiavellian teaching with a revised version of one of Machiavelli's most controversial opinions regarding Christianity.
51 Machiavelli, Niccolo, The Prince, trans. Mansfield, Harvey C. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
52 Machiavelli's other examples of religion show its limitations; the example of Scipio forcing the people to swear an oath “with naked steel in hand” suggests that religion may have to be armed to be useful (DL 1.11.1).
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56 See, for example, Lefort, Claude, Machiavelli in the Making, trans. Smith, Michael B. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2012), 234–49Google Scholar; McCormick, John P., “Subdue the Senate: Machiavelli's ‘Way of Freedom’ or Path to Tyranny?,” Political Theory 40, no. 6 (2012): 714–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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58 See Danford, “Getting Our Bearings,” on the different grounds of Humean and Machiavellian empiricism.
59 Hume's refutation of Bolingbroke's constitutional analysis is a prime example of Hume's science of politics as found in the Essays. This science is predicated on the notion that experience and observation would reveal that laws have consequences “almost as general and certain” as the natural sciences (E 16), and would thus be a science primarily of use to the designer of political institutions (Merrill, Hume and the Politics of Enlightenment, 135), displacing the well-established advice of the classical republican tradition (Moore, “Hume's Political Science”).
60 Though less founded on a science of politics, Walpole's rationalizers offered similar-sounding arguments in the London Journal. See Gunn, Factions No More, 113–18.
61 Harris, Hume: An Intellectual Biography, 169–70.
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63 An extensive and valuable account of Christianity as a union between theism and philosophy is provided by Livingston, Donald W., Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium: Hume's Pathology of Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. chap. 5.
64 Ibid., 111.
65 Ibid., 117.
66 Livingston, Hume's Philosophy of Common Life, 313.
67 Merrill, Hume and the Politics of Enlightenment, 146.
68 Ibid. Hume's lifelong defense of having a state church should thus be understood as an attempt to deal with the specific problem of priestly ambition, only one of the many problems resulting from modern religion. On church establishment in Hume's thought, see Whelan, Frederick G., “Church Establishments, Liberty and Competition in Religion,” Polity 23, no. 2 (1990): 155–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jordan, Will R., “Religion in the Public Square: A Reconsideration of David Hume and Religious Establishment,” Review of Politics 64, no. 4 (2002): 687–713CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Susato, Ryu, “Taming ‘the Tyranny of Priests’: Hume's Advocacy of Religious Establishments,” Journal of the History of Ideas 73, no. 2 (2012): 273–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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70 Kramnick, Bolingbroke and His Circle, 165.
71 Raab, English Face of Machiavelli, 190.
72 Moore, “Hume's Political Science,” 825; Forbes, Hume's Philosophical Politics, 229.