Opinion and Reform in Hume's Political Philosophy

Opinion and Reform in Hume's Political Philosophy PDF Author: John B. Stewart
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 140086285X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
"The picture of Hume clinging timidly to a raft of custom and artifice, because, poor skeptic, he has no alternative, is wrong," writes John Stewart. "Hume was confident that by experience and reflection philosophers can achieve true principles." In this revisionary work Stewart surveys all of David Hume's major writings to reveal him as a liberal moral and political philosopher. Against the background of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century history and thought, Hume emerges as a proponent not of conservatism but of reform. Stewart first presents the dilemma over morals in the modern natural-law school, then examines the new approach to moral and political philosophy adopted by Hume's precursors Shaftesbury, Mandeville, Hutcheson, and Butler. Illuminating Hume's explanation of the standards and rules that should govern private and public life, the author challenges interpretations of Hume's philosophy as conservative by demonstrating that he did not dismiss reason as a key factor determining right and wrong in moral and political contexts. Stewart goes on to show that Hume viewed private property, the market, contracts, and the rule of law as essential to genuine civilized society, and explores Hume's criticism of contemporary British beliefs concerning government, religion, commerce, international relations, and social structure. Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Opinion and Reform in Hume's Political Philosophy

Opinion and Reform in Hume's Political Philosophy PDF Author: John B. Stewart
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 140086285X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book Here

Book Description
"The picture of Hume clinging timidly to a raft of custom and artifice, because, poor skeptic, he has no alternative, is wrong," writes John Stewart. "Hume was confident that by experience and reflection philosophers can achieve true principles." In this revisionary work Stewart surveys all of David Hume's major writings to reveal him as a liberal moral and political philosopher. Against the background of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century history and thought, Hume emerges as a proponent not of conservatism but of reform. Stewart first presents the dilemma over morals in the modern natural-law school, then examines the new approach to moral and political philosophy adopted by Hume's precursors Shaftesbury, Mandeville, Hutcheson, and Butler. Illuminating Hume's explanation of the standards and rules that should govern private and public life, the author challenges interpretations of Hume's philosophy as conservative by demonstrating that he did not dismiss reason as a key factor determining right and wrong in moral and political contexts. Stewart goes on to show that Hume viewed private property, the market, contracts, and the rule of law as essential to genuine civilized society, and explores Hume's criticism of contemporary British beliefs concerning government, religion, commerce, international relations, and social structure. Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

David Hume's Political Theory

David Hume's Political Theory PDF Author: Neil McArthur
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 0802093353
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
David Hume's Political Theory brings together Hume's diverse writings on law and government, collected and examined with a view to revealing the philosopher's coherent and persuasive theory of politics.

Hume's Sceptical Enlightenment

Hume's Sceptical Enlightenment PDF Author: Ryu Susato
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748699813
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
Demonstrates the uniqueness of Hume as an Enlightenment thinker, illustrating how his 'spirit of scepticism' often leads him into seemingly paradoxical positions. This book will be of interest to Hume scholars, intellectual historians of 17th- to 19th-century Europe and those interested in the Enlightenment more widely.

Of the Original Contract

Of the Original Contract PDF Author: David Hume
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
ISBN: 1465501428
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 29

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Book Description
As no party, in the present age, can well support itself without a philosophical or speculative system of principles annexed to its political or practical one, we accordingly find, that each of the factions into which this nation is divided has reared up a fabric of the former kind, in order to protect and cover that scheme of actions which it pursues. The people being commonly very rude builders, especially in this speculative way, and more especially still when actuated by party-zeal, it is natural to imagine that their workmanship must be a little unshapely, and discover evident marks of that violence and hurry in which it was raised. The one party, by tracing up government to the Deity, endeavoured to render it so sacred and inviolate, that it must be little less than sacrilege, however, tyrannical it may become, to touch or invade it in the smallest article. The other party, by founding government altogether on the consent of the people, suppose that there is a kind of original contract, by which the subjects have tacitly reserved the power of resisting their sovereign, whenever they find themselves aggrieved by that authority, with which they have, for certain purposes, voluntarily intrusted him. These are the speculative principles of the two parties, and these, too, are the practical consequences deduced from them.

The Political Thought of David Hume

The Political Thought of David Hume PDF Author: Aaron Alexander Zubia
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
ISBN: 0268207798
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
Aaron Alexander Zubia argues that the Epicurean roots of David Hume’s philosophy gave rise to liberalism’s unrelenting grip on the modern political imagination. Eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume has had an outsized impact on the political thinkers who came after him, from the nineteenth-century British Utilitarians to modern American social contract theorists. In this thorough and thoughtful new work, Aaron Alexander Zubia examines the forces that shaped Hume’s thinking within the broad context of intellectual history, with particular focus on the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus and the skeptical tradition. Zubia argues that through Hume’s influence, Epicureanism—which elevates utility over moral truth—became the foundation of liberal political philosophy, which continues to dominate and limit political discourse today.

An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals

An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals PDF Author: David Hume
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
ISBN: 1613107668
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
DISPUTES with men, pertinaciously obstinate in their principles, are, of all others, the most irksome; except, perhaps, those with persons, entirely disingenuous, who really do not believe the opinions they defend, but engage in the controversy, from affectation, from a spirit of opposition, or from a desire of showing wit and ingenuity, superior to the rest of mankind. The same blind adherence to their own arguments is to be expected in both; the same contempt of their antagonists; and the same passionate vehemence, in inforcing sophistry and falsehood. And as reasoning is not the source, whence either disputant derives his tenets; it is in vain to expect, that any logic, which speaks not to the affections, will ever engage him to embrace sounder principles. Those who have denied the reality of moral distinctions, may be ranked among the disingenuous disputants; nor is it conceivable, that any human creature could ever seriously believe, that all characters and actions were alike entitled to the affection and regard of everyone. The difference, which nature has placed between one man and another, is so wide, and this difference is still so much farther widened, by education, example, and habit, that, where the opposite extremes come at once under our apprehension, there is no scepticism so scrupulous, and scarce any assurance so determined, as absolutely to deny all distinction between them. Let a man's insensibility be ever so great, he must often be touched with the images of Right and Wrong; and let his prejudices be ever so obstinate, he must observe, that others are susceptible of like impressions. The only way, therefore, of converting an antagonist of this kind, is to leave him to himself. For, finding that nobody keeps up the controversy with him, it is probable he will, at last, of himself, from mere weariness, come over to the side of common sense and reason.

A Philosophical View of Reform

A Philosophical View of Reform PDF Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Great Britain
Languages : en
Pages : 124

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Book Description


Hume: Political Essays

Hume: Political Essays PDF Author: David Hume
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521466394
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
A fully annotated edition of Hume's most important political essays.

David Hume's Political Economy

David Hume's Political Economy PDF Author: Margaret Schabas
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134362501
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
This collection of twelve new essays by distinguished scholars in the fields of history and the philosophy of economics is one of the first book-length studies of Hume‘s political economy.

Philosophy and Ideology in Hume's Political Thought

Philosophy and Ideology in Hume's Political Thought PDF Author: David Miller
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This book was written with three aims in mind. The first was to provide a reasonably concise account of Hume's social and political thought that might help students coming to it for the first time. The second aim was to say something about the relationship between philosophy and politics, with explicit attention to Hume, but implicit reference to a general issue. The third is to offer an integrated account of Hume's thought. The book accounts for the varying interpretation of the conservative and liberalist traditions by arguing that the distinction between liberalism and conservatism had little application in mid-18th-century Britain. Hume's ideology contained elements that we should now identify as conservative and liberal respectively, and so by selective emphasis it is possible to make him seem a thoroughbred conservative or liberal according to choice. These two problems the relationship between Hume's philosophy and his politics, and the ideological character of his thought are pursued through the first and second parts of the book respectively.