Abstract
Hume’s dissatisfaction with modern political philosophy led him to the study of history as a mirror to “the constant and universal principles of human nature” (EHU 83). This study of history, while it led him to insist that there was an enduring human nature across time, also led him to appreciate the unique accomplishments (and problems) in political practice of modern Europe of his time1 and to see the political arrangements of ancient regimes as almost unbelievable distortions of human nature. For Hume, ancient political institutions are peculiar, violent, immoderate, and generally undesirable, while modern practice is gentle and moderate and fosters happiness and human flourishing. How can Hume reach this conclusion about the superiority of modern to ancient times? How are we to understand his turn to history as a mirror of nature when it comes to studying human nature?
We have finally reached the age of commerce, an age which must necessarily replace that of war, as the age of war was bound to precede it. War and commerce are only two different means to achieve the same end, that of possessing what is desired … War then comes before commerce. The former is all savage impulse, the later civilized calculation.
—Benjamin Constant, The Spirit of Conquest and Usurpation, Pt. I, Chap. 2.
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Notes
Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, p. 18, calls this “fundamentally the classical view.” This also appears to be the orthodox Christian view, as stated by Herbert Butterfield, Christianity and History (New York: Schribners, 1950), pp. 9–25.
Aristotle, The Poetics, translated by Theodore Buckley (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1992), pp. 17–18 (Chap. IX).
Pierre Manent, The City of Man, translated by Marc A. LePain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 31, “The Christian and Greek ideas of virtue overlap a good deal. For both the philosophers and the Christians, virtue is the subjection of passions to reason, of the soul’s lower to its higher parts, an ordering and an order wrought by the soul.”
See also Robert S. Hill, “David Hume” in History of Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), p. 518.
See also Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, translated by Harvey Mansfield (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 2.4.17 (p. 588).
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1982), Book I, Chapter 2, notices “the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another” one “of those original principles in human nature.”
Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985) pp. 181ff. (4.1).
Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution, translated by Alan S. Kahan, eds. Francois Furet and Francoise Melonio (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), Book 1, Chapter 3 for an elaboration of this point.
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© 2016 Scott Yenor
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Yenor, S. (2016). Humanity and Commerce. In: David Hume’s Humanity. Recovering Political Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137539595_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137539595_6
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