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Hume, Bentham, and the Social Contract

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

Jonathan Wolff
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Type
Discussion
Information
Utilitas , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , May 1993 , pp. 87 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 Bentham, Jeremy, Comment on the Commentaries and A Fragment on Government ed. Burns, J. H. and Hart, H. L. A., London, 1977, (The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham), Ch. 1, § 36, p. 439.Google Scholar

2 For discussion of Hume, see Brownsey, P. F., ‘Hume and the Social Contract’, Philosophical Quarterly, xxviii (1978), 132–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Hume, David, ‘Of the Original Contract’, in his Essays Moral Political and Literary, ed. Miller, E. F., Indianapolis, 1985, pp. 465–87.Google Scholar

4 It is certainly far from obvious that all the arguments are consistent. Hume does not seem to have decided whether contract theory fails in principle (as the argument I discuss in this paper seems to suggest) or only in practice. The following passage indicates the latter: ‘My intention here is not to exclude the consent of the people from being one just foundation of government where it has place. It is surely the best and most sacred of any. I only pretend, that it has seldom had place in any degree, and never almost in its full extent.’ ‘Of the Original Contract’, p. 474.Google Scholar

5 Hume, , ‘Of the Original Contract’, pp. 479–81Google Scholar; Bentham, , Comment/Fragment (CW), p. 444.Google Scholar

6 For example, Brownsey, , ‘Hume and the Social Contract’, p. 144.Google Scholar

7 Long, Douglas G., ‘“Utility” and the “Utility Principle”: Hume, Smith, Bentham, Mill’, Utilitas, ii (1990), 24.Google Scholar

8 Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Selby-Bigge, L. A., 2nd Ed., Oxford, 1978, Bk. III, Pt. ii, §. 2, esp. p. 489.Google Scholar

9 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice, Oxford, 1972, pp. 32–3.Google Scholar

10 Hume, , Treatise, Bk. III, Pt. ii, § 7, pp. 536–7.Google Scholar

11 Bentham, , Comment/Fragment (CW), ‘Preface’, p. 393.Google Scholar

12 Bentham, Jeremy, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. Burns, J. H. and Hart, H. L. A., London, 1970 (The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham), Ch. 1, § 11, p. 13.Google Scholar

13 Thanks to Tim Crane and Jerry Valberg for helpful discussions on this topic.