David Hume's Political Theory

David Hume's Political Theory PDF Author: Neil McArthur
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442638648
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
David Hume (1711-1776) is perhaps best known for his treatises on problems of epistemology, skepticism, and causation. A less familiar side of his intellectual output is his work on legal and political theory. 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. Through close textual analysis, Neil McArthur suggests that the key to Hume's political theory lies in its distinction between barbarous and civilized government. Throughout the study, the author explores Hume's argument that a society's progress from barbarism to civilization depends on the legal and political system by which it is governed. Ultimately, McArthur demonstrates that the skepticism apparent in much of Hume's work does not necessarily tie him to a strict conservative ideology; rather, Hume's political theory is seen to emphasize many liberal virtues as well. Based on a new conception of Hume's political philosophy, this is a groundbreaking work and a welcome addition to the existing literature.

David Hume's Political Theory

David Hume's Political Theory PDF Author: Neil McArthur
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442638648
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Get Book Here

Book Description
David Hume (1711-1776) is perhaps best known for his treatises on problems of epistemology, skepticism, and causation. A less familiar side of his intellectual output is his work on legal and political theory. 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. Through close textual analysis, Neil McArthur suggests that the key to Hume's political theory lies in its distinction between barbarous and civilized government. Throughout the study, the author explores Hume's argument that a society's progress from barbarism to civilization depends on the legal and political system by which it is governed. Ultimately, McArthur demonstrates that the skepticism apparent in much of Hume's work does not necessarily tie him to a strict conservative ideology; rather, Hume's political theory is seen to emphasize many liberal virtues as well. Based on a new conception of Hume's political philosophy, this is a groundbreaking work and a welcome addition to the existing literature.

Hume's Politics

Hume's Politics PDF Author: Andrew Sabl
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691168172
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
Hume's Politics provides a comprehensive examination of David Hume's political theory, and is the first book to focus on Hume's monumental History of England as the key to his distinctly political ideas. Andrew Sabl argues that conventions of authority are the main building blocks of Humean politics, and explores how the History addresses political change and disequilibrium through a dynamic treatment of coordination problems. Dynamic coordination, as employed in Hume's work, explains how conventions of political authority arise, change, adapt to new social and economic conditions, improve or decay, and die. Sabl shows how Humean constitutional conservatism need not hinder--and may in fact facilitate--change and improvement in economic, social, and cultural life. He also identifies how Humean liberalism can offer a systematic alternative to neo-Kantian approaches to politics and liberal theory. At once scholarly and accessibly written, Hume's Politics builds bridges between political theory and political science. It treats issues of concern to both fields, including the prehistory of political coordination, the obstacles that must be overcome in order for citizens to see themselves as sharing common political interests, the close and counterintuitive relationship between governmental authority and civic allegiance, the strategic ethics of political crisis and constitutional change, and the ways in which the biases and injustices endemic to executive power can be corrected by legislative contestation and debate.

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.

Conservatism

Conservatism PDF Author: Jerry Z. Muller
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691037110
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 476

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Book Description
History Professor Jerry Muller locates the origins of modern conservatism within the Enlightenment and distinguishes conservatism from orthodoxy. Reviewing important specimens of analysis from the mid18th century through our own day, Muller demonstrates that characteristic features of conservative argument recur over time and across national borders.

Hume and Machiavelli

Hume and Machiavelli PDF Author: Frederick G. Whelan
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 9780739106310
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
Although there are myriad references to Machiavelli's work within Hume's writing, a deeper connection between the two has never been fully explored. Whelan uncovers extensive Machiavellian dimensions throughout Hume's work, illustrating numerous parallels in both theorists' treatment of such issues as human nature, historical method, and political ethics. While at first such a comparison may be startling, Whelan argues convincingly that Hume's writing, commonly regarded as moderate and amiable, is indeed a locus of realist liberal political theory.

Moral and Political Philosophy

Moral and Political Philosophy PDF Author: David Hume
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439119937
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 635

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Book Description
A Collection of essays from famous Scottish philosopher David Hume, one of the most prominent figures of the Scottish Enlightenment and a close friend of Adam Smith. Hume's contributions to economics are found mostly in his Political Discourses (1752), which were later incorporated into his Essays (1758).

Political Thought of Hume and His Contemporaries

Political Thought of Hume and His Contemporaries PDF Author: Frederick G. Whelan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781032925974
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Intended for scholars in the fields of political theory, and the history of political thought, this two-volume examines David Hume's Political Thought (1711-1776) and that of his contemporaries, including Smith, Blackstone, Burke and Robertson. Political Thought of Hume and his Contemporaries: Enlightenment Projects Vol. 2 cont

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.

Hume and the Politics of Enlightenment

Hume and the Politics of Enlightenment PDF Author: Thomas W. Merrill
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107108705
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
This work explores Hume's Socratic turn to moral and political philosophy as a response to the crisis of radical questioning.

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.