Skepticism in Hume’s Politics and Histories

Hume Studies, 1985

International Conference on “Disbelief. From the Renaissance to Romanticism” - Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest), 2017

My paper is dedicated to one of the best known “disbelievers” in modern history and culture, David Hume, whose disbelief is shown ad the foundation of his political doctrine, which until today has remained little investigated and slightly known than his moral thinking. The political implications of disbelief, in the thought of Hume, give rise to a form of skepticism strongly based on the “common sense” and empirical and realistic observation of the things. It is an unorthodox skepticism, unruly towards the intellectual and political fashions of the eighteenth century, characterized by theoretical contractualism. Hume’s disbelief in social and political sphere is a strong reaction to those literatures and currents of thought which, from Hobbes onward, dominate a large part of European culture and pretend to elevate the reason to supreme arbiter in human affairs. Hume’s skepticism is a response to what he calls “false philosophy”, that assumes considerable importance in political terms: it does not need to use the Holy Scriptures as a sort of manual of the statesman, but proceeds on the basis of a secular analysis of the experience and a contempt of that “a priori” so dear to the rationalist culture.

Hume Studies, 2016

Treatise 2.3.6, "Of the influence of the imagination on the passions," provides a magnified view into the relationship between motivation, morality, and politics in Hume's philosophy. Here, Hume analyzes a "noted passage" from the history of antiquity in which the citizens of fifth-century Athens deliberated over whether to burn the ships of their neighboring Grecians after winning a decisive naval victory against the Persians. Hume finds the passage notable precisely because of a failure of the imagination to exert an influence on the Athenians' passions during their deliberations, leading them to abstain from further military action. This paper discusses how Hume's analysis of this event reveals new connections between his passional, moral, and political theories in the Treatise.

Świat Idei i Polityki, 2019

In this paper I would like to present an interpretation of David Hume’s political theory. Therefore, a method of investigation can be recognized as hermeneutical one. Main threads which I would like to emphasize are: concept of stability, distribution of power, role of an opinion in political dimension and a conservative attitude toward a change. I claim that important lesson for political science can be taken from his theory. Generally speaking, this lesson consists in refusing the so-called political regime fetishism and focusing on the relevant issues of social stability. These issues are strictly determined by the opinions, hence the proper subject-matter of political science is identified with them. As one of the conclusions I propose a thesis that politics is, and ought only to be slave of opinions, what is an allusion to a famous sentence from A Treatise of Human Nature that the reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.

International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2010

Sképsis: Revista de Filosofia,, 2023

Recasting Hume and Early Modern Philosophy is a collection of essays that are all concerned with major figures and topics in the early modern philosophy. Most of the essays are concerned, more specifically, with the philosophy of David Hume (1711-1776). The sixteen essays included in this collection are divided into five parts. These parts are arranged under the headings of: (1) Metaphysics and Epistemology; (2) Free Will and Moral Luck; (3) Ethics, Virtue and Optimism; (4) Skepticism, Religion and Atheism; and (5) Irreligion and the Unity of Hume’s Thought. A particularly important theme running through many of these essays is the subject of Hume’s irreligious aims and intentions. The fifth and final part of the collection is devoted to an articulation and defence of this specific understanding of Hume’s philosophical thought. Precis of Recasting Hume and Early Modern Philosophy. Book Symposium: Paul Russell, Recasting Hume and Early Modern Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021). Sképsis: Revista de Filosofia, 14. 26: 71-73 . With replies to critics: Peter Fosl (pp. 77-95), Claude Gautier (pp. 96-111) , and Todd Ryan (pp.112-122).

Comparative and Continental Philosophy

2013

Our goal in this paper is first to give a broad outline of some of Hume’s major positions to do with justice, sympathy, the common point of view, social contract theory, convention and private property that continue to resonate in contemporary political philosophy. We follow this section with an account of Hume’s influence on contemporary philosophy in the conservative, classical liberal, utilitarian, and Rawlsian traditions. We end with some reflections on how contemporary political philosophers would benefit from a more explicit consideration of Hume.

Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660-1700, 2015

In his History of England, David Hume declares himself to be a post-1688 political thinker, writing that the "revolution forms a new epoch in our constitution; and was probably attended with consequences more advantageous to the people, than barely freeing them from an exceptionable administration" (History 6: 531). Hume is clear, then, that the revolution is not merely a change in government but an event that stands as a definitive interpretation of the constitution. He writes that by "deciding many important questions in favour of liberty, and still more, by that great precedent of deposing one king, and establishing a new family, it gave such an ascendant to popular principles, as has put the nature of the constitution beyond all controversy" (History 6: 531). The idea that controversy about the constitution is at an end, while perhaps an intentional form of wishful thinking, indicates that, for Hume, to do political philosophy, or even to discuss politics, after 1688 is fundamentally different than it was before this signal event. Both the mode of discussion, which will (or should) no longer be that of controversy or heated, factional debate; and the content of that discussion, which will (or should) no longer concern the nature of the constitution, will change; and this change both signals and produces a new kind of political stability. Indeed, by declaring that after 1688 controversial discussions about the constitution are no longer valid, Hume secures the constitution from debate, shrouds it in silence, while the discussions of polite society, no longer controversial or fractious, address other, less volatile, topics. The post-1688 character of Hume's thought manifests itself, then, in this general claim that the constitution is now beyond controversy. In a much more specific way, Hume develops a theory concerning the right of resistance to sovereign power that makes