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Hume as Moralist: a Social Historian's Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Nicholas Phillipson
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In this paper I want to discuss David Hume's views about morals, politics and citizenship and the role of philosophers and philosophizing in modern civil society - what I shall call his theory of civic morality. This is a subject which has been neglected by philosophers, presumably because it is of limited philosophical interest. But it is of considerable interest to the historian who wants to understand Hume's development as a philosopher, to locate his thought within a specific, Scottish context and to arrive at some understanding of his surprisingly close and cordial relations with the literary and social world of enlightened Edinburgh. These are large claims and I cannot hope to substantiate them fully in a short paper. My purpose is first, to show that, historically speaking, Hume's preoccupation with civic morality was of central rather than peripheral interest to him as a philosopher and that it helps to explain his otherwise rather puzzling decision to give up philosophizing systematically in the manner of Hobbes and Locke, in favour of polite essay-writing in the manner of Addison and Steele. My second purpose is to suggest that Hume's interest in civic morality, his neo-Addisonian (or perhaps I should say, neo-Ciceronian) mode of philosophizing about it and the nature of his understanding of politics, citizenship and philosophizing in a modern age was, unlike his thought about religion, responsive to and consonant with some of the most important ideological preoccupations of his Scottish contemporaries. It was, I suspect, a shared interest which helped to contain some of the anxieties Hume's notorious religious scepticism caused his contemporaries. Without it, he could not possibly have emerged as one of the leaders of Edinburgh's intellectual life in the age of the Scottish Enlightenment.

Type
Research Article
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 12 , March 1978 , pp. 140 - 161
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1978

References

NOTES

1 I am grateful to David Fate Norton, Harry Bracken, Charles Robertson and Richard Teichgraeber for comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

2 See, in particular, Bond, Donald F.'s introduction to his edition of the Spectator (Oxford, 1965) 1, xiii–cix Google Scholar, and Gay, Peter ‘The Spectator as Actor: Addison in Perspective’ Encounter, xxix, no. 6, 12 1967, pp. 27–32.Google Scholar

3 ‘I am a Feilow of a very odd Frame of Mind’ Spectator no. 167. ‘Cast of Mind’ is used in the same sense in Spectator, no. 225. See also Spectator, no. 634. Mrs. Hutchinson had used the expression ‘Frame of Spirit’ in a roughly analogous sense in 1665. OED Frame.

4 See my ‘Culture and Society in the 18th Century Province: the case of Edinburgh and the Scottish Enlightenment’ in The University in Society, ed. Stone, L. (Princeton, 1974), ii, pp. 407–48.Google Scholar

5 Ibid.

6 I shall develop this point at length in my forthcoming study of the Scottish Enlightenment The Pursuit of Virtue. See also Pocock, J. G. A., Politics Language and Time (New York, 1971), ch. 3.Google Scholar

7 Mossner, E. C., ‘Philosophy and Biography: the Case of David Hume’, Philosophical Review, 59 (1950).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Boswell in Extremes 1776–1778, ed. Weiss, C. M. and Pottle, F. A. (New York, 1970), p. 11.Google Scholar

9 The Letters of David Hume, ed. Greig, J. Y. T. (Oxford, 1952), 1, p. 10.Google Scholar

10 Peter Gay was the first scholar to point out the central importance of Cicero to the thought of the Enlightenment. See his The Enlightenment: an Interpretation. The Rise of Modern Paganism (London, 1966), esp. pp. 105–9.Google Scholar

11 Mossner, E. C. The Life of David Hume (Edinburgh, 1954), p. 121.Google Scholar

12 Wolin, Sheldon, Hobbes and the Epic Tradition of Political Theory (Los Angeles, 1970).Google Scholar

13 ‘Upon the whole, I desire to take my Catalogue of Virtues from Cicero's Offices, not from the Whole Duty of Man. I had indeed, the former Book in my Eye in all my Reasonings.’ Letters of David Hume, i, p. 34 Google Scholar. See also Letters, i, p. 16.Google Scholar

14 A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Bigge, L. A. Selby (Oxford, 1967), p. 269.Google Scholar

15 Treatise, p. 218 Google Scholar. See also Noxon, J., Hume's Philosophical Development (Oxford, 1973), pp. 8–16.Google Scholar

16 Treatise, p. 269.Google Scholar

17 That is not to say, of course that Addison regarded society as the prime cure for philosophical scepticism. That important role was reserved for religion. But society certainly was a cure for lesser ailments. See, for example Spectator, nos. 93 and 222. Hume, in his characteristically unnerving manner, simply saw no reason why greater and more profound ailments should not be cured in the same way as more trivial ones.

18 Mossner, E. G., Life of David Hume, pp. 138–9.Google Scholar

19 The order in which the essays were originally published is as follows. Volume I. 1. Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion. 2. Of the Liberty of the Press. 3. Of Impudence and Modesty. 4. That Politicks may be Reduced to a Science. 5. Of the First Principles of Government. 6. Of Love and Marriage. 7. Of the Study of History. 8. Of the Independency of Parliament. 9. Whether the British Government Inclines more to Absolute Monarchy or to a Republick. 10. Of Parties in General, 11. Of the Parties of Great Britain. 12. Of Superstition and Enthusiasm. 13. Of Avarice. 14. Of the dignity of Human Nature. 15. Of Liberty and Despotism. Volume II. 1. Of Essay Writing. 2. Of Eloquence. 3. Of Moral Prejudices. 4. Of the Middle Station of Life. 5. Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences. 6. The Epicurean. 7. The Stoic. 8. The Platonist. 9. The Sceptic. 10. Of Polygamy and Divorces, 11. Of Simplicity and Refinement. 12. A Character of Sir Robert Walpole.

Hume continually regrouped and reorganized his essays later in life, omitting some, adding others. Jessop, T. E., A Bibliography of the Works of David Hume … (London, 1938), pp. 15–18.Google Scholar

20 The importance Hume attached to his argument is emphasized by Forbes, D., Hume's Philosophical Politics (Cambridge, 1975)Google Scholar, esp. Part I. My views on the ideological significance of Hume's position are slightly different from his.

21 This was a thoroughly Shaftesburian position to take. Anthony, , Earl of Shaftesbury. Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times. ed. Robertson, J. M. (Library of Liberal Arts), i, p. 74 Google Scholar. In this, as in so much else, Hume's implied critique of Addisonian morality takes the form of going back to the Shaftesburian sources in which it was founded.

22 ‘That Politics may be reduced to a Science’.

23 Fletcher deserves better treatment from historians than he has so far received. But see Pocock, J. G. A., Politics, Language and Time, ch. 4 and The Machiavellian Moment Florentine Political thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, 1975), pp. 426–31Google Scholar. See also my‘Culture and Society in the Eighteenth Century Province’.

24 The Political Works of Andrew Fletcher (London, 1737), pp. 445–6.Google Scholar

25 See, for example, Brooke, J. and Namier, L. B., The House of Commons 1754–1790 (London, 1964), i, pp. 169–70.Google Scholar

26 The unfruitful debate about Hume's supposed toryism has recently been fully and critically discussed by Forbes, D., Hume's Philosophical Politics, ch. 5–6.Google Scholar

27 ‘Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion’.

28 The Letters of David Hume, ii, p. 257.Google Scholar

29 ‘Of Essay Writing’. Hume withdrew this essay in the second and subsequent editions of his essays.

30 ‘Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences’ and ‘Of the Middle Station in Life’. This essay was also withdrawn after the first edition. Hume's general point was to be developed in the economic essays and in the History of England.

31 ‘Of the Middle Station in Life’. Norah Smith has pointed out the striking similarities between Hume's general treatment of the subject and Addison's. ‘Hume's Rejected Essays’. Forum for Modern Language Studies, 8 (1972), pp. 354–71.Google Scholar

32 ‘Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences’.

33 Ibid.

34 ‘Of Essay Writing’.

35 For an interesting though rather different discussion of these essays, see David Hume: Writings on Economics ed. Rotwein, E. (Edinburgh, 1955), pp. xcv–xcix.Google Scholar

36 See particularly ‘Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences’ and ‘Of Eloquence’ for Hume's most conspicuous hints on this subject. As Sheldon Wolin points out, Cicero saw clearly the value of friendship as an instrument of political strategy as well as of private virtue. Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought (London, 1961), pp. 86–7.Google Scholar

37 Noxon, J., Hume's Philosophical Development, pp. 18–19.Google Scholar

38 Humes Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals ed. Bigge, L.A. Selby (Oxford 1902), pp. 283–4.Google Scholar

39 Ibid. 281.

40 See my ‘James Beattie and the Defence of Common Sense’ in Festschrift für Rainer Gruenter, ed. Fabian, B. (Heidelberg, 1978) pp. 145–54.Google Scholar

41 See my ‘Towards a Definition of the Scottish Enlightenment’ in City and Society, ed. Williams, D. and Fritz, P. (Toronto, 1973,) pp. 125–47.Google Scholar