David Hume: Moral and Political Philosophy
- LAST REVIEWED: 25 October 2017
- LAST MODIFIED: 25 October 2017
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195396577-0057
- LAST REVIEWED: 25 October 2017
- LAST MODIFIED: 25 October 2017
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195396577-0057
Introduction
David Hume made a number of significant contributions to moral philosophy, and his ideas and arguments remain central to the subject, both in the classroom and in academic research. For some time Hume was pigeonholed either as a proto-utilitarian or as a precursor to mid-20th-century ethical noncognitivism, but since the late 20th century there has been developed a much-richer and more historically sensitive approach to his moral writings. This article indicates the main lines of inquiry that this approach has pursued. There has also been a surge of interest in Hume’s political philosophy. Hume is no longer dismissed as a “conservative” apologist for the status quo. This article gives a survey of the range of interpretations that have been offered since the 1970s.
General Overviews
There are now a number of reliable introductory overviews of Hume’s main contributions to ethics and political philosophy. Baillie 2000 is the only reliable book-length treatment at an introductory level. Harris 2010 provides an overview of some of the principal interpretative issues. Cohon 2010 and Fieser 2006 are freely available online. Baier 2013 is both an elegant survey of the principal themes of Hume’s moral philosophy and an indication of the extent of Hume’s influence on later writers. Haakonssen 2009 is a much-improved version of the chapter with the same title in the first (1993) edition of The Cambridge Companion to Hume; Dees 2008 is an equally useful guide to the main themes of Hume’s political philosophy. Hume Studies is published twice yearly and contains scholarly articles on all aspects of Hume’s philosophy, book reviews, and a very useful comprehensive annual survey of all publications on Hume and his philosophy. All but the most recent issues of the journal are available to all online.
Baier, Annette. “Hume’s Place in the History of Ethics.” In The Oxford Handbook of the History of Ethics. Edited by Roger Crisp, 399–420. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
A brief yet comprehensive account of the main themes of Hume’s moral philosophy that is both sensitive to the nuances of the texts and alive to the significance of Hume’s ideas for the present day.
Baillie, James. Hume on Morality. Routledge Philosophy Guidebooks. London: Routledge, 2000.
Part of the useful Routledge Philosophy Guidebook series, aimed at undergraduates. Introduces the relevant elements of Hume’s epistemology and metaphysics and theory of the passions, followed by extensive discussions of Hume’s critique of moral rationalism, his account of the virtues, and his theory of moral judgment.
Cohon, Rachel. “Hume’s Moral Philosophy.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edited by Edward N. Zalta. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010.
A sophisticated and comprehensive overview, which also argues for a particular reading of Hume’s moral philosophy. Includes a useful bibliography.
Dees, Richard H. “‘One of the Finest and Most Subtile Inventions’: Hume on Government.” In A Companion to Hume. Edited by Elizabeth S. Radcliffe, 388–405. Blackwell Companions to Philosophy 40. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008.
An elegant and lucid synthesis of some of Hume’s main ideas in his political philosophy. Succeeds well in placing those ideas in their historical context.
Fieser, James. “David Hume (1711–1776): Moral Theory.” In The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edited by James Fieser and Bradley Dowden, 2006.
A clear if unambitious summary of Hume’s moral philosophy; has an interesting final section describing early responses to Hume.
Haakonssen, Knud. “The Structure of Hume’s Political Theory.” In The Cambridge Companion to Hume. 2d ed. Edited by David Fate Norton and Jacqueline Anne Taylor, 341–380. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
DOI: 10.1017/CCOL9780521859868
A rich and suggestive summary of Hume’s political theory that pays attention to historical context and to Hume’s relations with earlier figures in the history of political thought. Provides a helpful synopsis of major trends in interpretation.
Harris, James. “Hume.” In Routledge Companion to Ethics. Edited by John Skorupski. London: Routledge, 2010.
An overview intended to bring out some of the main interpretative cruxes in modern work on Hume’s moral philosophy.
Published by the Hume Society, this journal features both articles and book reviews. Volumes 1–36 are currently freely available online.
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- Abduction and Explanatory Reasoning
- Ability
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- Abstract Objects
- Action
- Addams, Jane
- Adorno, Theodor
- Aesthetic Hedonism
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- Aesthetics, History of
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- Alexander, Samuel
- Analytic/Synthetic Distinction
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- Anscombe, G. E. M.
- Anthropic Principle, The
- Anti-Natalism
- Applied Ethics
- Aquinas, Thomas
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- Art and Knowledge
- Art and Morality
- Artifacts
- Assertion
- Astell, Mary
- Atheism
- Augustine
- Aurelius, Marcus
- Austin, J. L.
- Autonomy
- Bacon, Francis
- Bayesianism
- Beauty
- Belief
- Bergson, Henri
- Berkeley, George
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- British Idealism
- Buber, Martin
- Buddhist Philosophy
- Burge, Tyler
- Business Ethics
- Camus, Albert
- Canterbury, Anselm of
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- Causation
- Cavendish, Margaret
- Certainty
- Chemistry, Philosophy of
- Childhood, Philosophy of
- Chinese Philosophy
- Cognitive Ability
- Cognitive Phenomenology
- Cognitive Science, Philosophy of
- Coherentism
- Color
- Communitarianism
- Computational Science
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- Computer Simulations
- Comte, Auguste
- Concepts
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- Contextualism
- Contrastivism
- Cook Wilson, John
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- Culture and Cognition
- Daoism and Philosophy
- Davidson, Donald
- de Beauvoir, Simone
- de Montaigne, Michel
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- Deleuze, Gilles
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- Depiction
- Derrida, Jacques
- Descartes, René
- Descartes, René: Sensory Representations
- Descriptions
- Dewey, John
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- Doing and Allowing
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- Dutch Book Arguments
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- Emotion
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- Epicurus
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- Epistemic Justification
- Epistemic Philosophy of Logic
- Epistemology
- Epistemology and Active Externalism
- Epistemology, Bayesian
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- Evidential Support Relation In Epistemology, The
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- Evolutionary Debunking Arguments in Ethics
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- Externalism and Internalism in the Philosophy of Mind
- Faith, Conceptions of
- Fatalism
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- Feminist Philosophy
- Feyerabend, Paul
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- Fiction
- Fictionalism
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- Film, Philosophy of
- Foot, Philippa
- Foreknowledge
- Forgiveness
- Formal Epistemology
- Foucault, Michel
- Free Will
- Frege, Gottlob
- Gadamer, Hans-Georg
- Generics
- Geometry, Epistemology of
- God and Possible Worlds
- God, Arguments for the Existence of
- God, The Existence and Attributes of
- Grice, Paul
- Habermas, Jürgen
- Hart, H. L. A.
- Heaven and Hell
- Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich: Aesthetics
- Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich: Metaphysics
- Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich: Philosophy of History
- Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich: Philosophy of Politics
- Heidegger, Martin: Early Works
- Hermeneutics
- Higher Education, Philosophy of
- History, Philosophy of
- Hobbes, Thomas
- Horkheimer, Max
- Human Rights
- Hume, David: Aesthetics
- Hume, David: Moral and Political Philosophy
- Husserl, Edmund
- Idealizations in Science
- Identity in Physics
- Images
- Imagination
- Imagination and Belief
- Immanuel Kant: Political and Legal Philosophy
- Impossible Worlds
- Incommensurability in Science
- Indian Philosophy
- Indispensability of Mathematics
- Inductive Reasoning
- Infinitism
- Instruments in Science
- Intellectual Humility
- Intentionality, Collective
- Intuitions
- James, William
- Japanese Philosophy
- Kant and the Laws of Nature
- Kant, Immanuel: Aesthetics and Teleology
- Kant, Immanuel: Ethics
- Kant, Immanuel: Theoretical Philosophy
- Kierkegaard, Søren
- Knowledge
- Knowledge-first Epistemology
- Knowledge-How
- Kristeva, Julia
- Kuhn, Thomas S.
- Lacan, Jacques
- Lakatos, Imre
- Langer, Susanne
- Language of Thought
- Language, Philosophy of
- Latin American Philosophy
- Laws of Nature
- Legal Epistemology
- Legal Philosophy
- Legal Positivism
- Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm
- Levinas, Emmanuel
- Lewis, C. I.
- Liberty
- Literature, Philosophy of
- Locke, John
- Locke, John: Identity, Persons, and Personal Identity
- Logic
- Lottery and Preface Paradoxes, The
- Lucretius
- Machiavelli, Niccolò
- Martin Heidegger: Later Works
- Martin Heidegger: Middle Works
- Marx, Karl
- Material Constitution
- Mathematical Explanation
- Mathematical Pluralism
- Mathematical Structuralism
- Mathematics, Ontology of
- Mathematics, Philosophy of
- Mathematics, Visual Thinking in
- McDowell, John
- McTaggart, John
- Meaning of Life, The
- Mechanisms in Science
- Medically Assisted Dying
- Medicine, Contemporary Philosophy of
- Medieval Logic
- Medieval Philosophy
- Memory
- Mental Causation
- Mereology
- Merleau-Ponty, Maurice
- Meta-epistemological Skepticism
- Metaepistemology
- Metaethics
- Metametaphysics
- Metaphilosophy
- Metaphor
- Metaphysical Grounding
- Metaphysics, Contemporary
- Metaphysics, Feminist
- Midgley, Mary
- Mill, John Stuart
- Mind, Metaphysics of
- Modal Epistemology
- Modality
- Models and Theories in Science
- Modularity
- Montesquieu
- Moore, G. E.
- Moral Contractualism
- Moral Naturalism and Nonnaturalism
- Moral Responsibility
- Multiculturalism
- Murdoch, Iris
- Music, Analytic Philosophy of
- Nationalism
- Natural Kinds
- Naturalism in the Philosophy of Mathematics
- Naïve Realism
- Neo-Confucianism
- Neuroscience, Philosophy of
- Nietzsche, Friedrich
- Nonexistent Objects
- Normative Ethics
- Normative Foundations, Philosophy of Law:
- Normativity and Social Explanation
- Objectivity
- Occasionalism
- Olfaction
- Ontological Dependence
- Ontology of Art
- Ordinary Objects
- Other Minds
- Pacifism
- Pain
- Panpsychism
- Paradoxes
- Particularism in Ethics
- Pascal, Blaise
- Paternalism
- Patriotism
- Peirce, Charles Sanders
- Perception, Cognition, Action
- Perception, The Problem of
- Perfectionism
- Persistence
- Personal Identity
- Phenomenal Concepts
- Phenomenal Conservatism
- Phenomenology
- Philosophy for Children
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- Physicalism
- Physicalism and Metaphysical Naturalism
- Physics, Experiments in
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- Plotinus
- Political Epistemology
- Political Obligation
- Political Philosophy
- Popper, Karl
- Pornography and Objectification, Analytic Approaches to
- Practical Knowledge
- Practical Moral Skepticism
- Practical Reason
- Pragmatics
- Pragmatism
- Probabilistic Representations of Belief
- Probability, Interpretations of
- Problem of Divine Hiddenness, The
- Problem of Evil, The
- Propositions
- Psychology, Philosophy of
- Punishment
- Pyrrhonism
- Qualia
- Quietism
- Quine, W. V. O.
- Race
- Racist Jokes
- Rationalism
- Rationality
- Rawls, John: Moral and Political Philosophy
- Realism and Anti-Realism
- Realization
- Reasons in Epistemology
- Reductionism in Biology
- Reference, Theory of
- Reid, Thomas
- Relativism
- Reliabilism
- Religion, Philosophy of
- Religious Belief, Epistemology of
- Religious Experience
- Religious Pluralism
- Ricoeur, Paul
- Rights
- Risk, Philosophy of
- Rorty, Richard
- Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
- Rule-Following
- Russell, Bertrand
- Ryle, Gilbert
- Sartre, Jean-Paul
- Schopenhauer, Arthur
- Science and Religion
- Science, Theoretical Virtues in
- Scientific Explanation
- Scientific Progress
- Scientific Realism
- Scientific Representation
- Scientific Revolutions
- Scotus, Duns
- Self-Knowledge
- Sellars, Wilfrid
- Semantic Externalism
- Semantic Minimalism
- Semiotics
- Seneca
- Senses, The
- Sensitivity Principle in Epistemology
- Shepherd, Mary
- Singular Thought
- Situated Cognition
- Situationism and Virtue Theory
- Skepticism, Contemporary
- Skepticism, History of
- Slurs, Pejoratives, and Hate Speech
- Smith, Adam: Moral and Political Philosophy
- Social Aspects of Scientific Knowledge
- Social Epistemology
- Social Identity
- Sounds and Auditory Perception
- Space and Time
- Speech Acts
- Spinoza, Baruch
- Stebbing, Susan
- Strawson, P. F.
- Structural Realism
- Suicide
- Supererogation
- Supervenience
- Tarski, Alfred
- Technology, Philosophy of
- Testimony, Epistemology of
- Theoretical Terms in Science
- Thomas Aquinas' Philosophy of Religion
- Thought Experiments
- Time and Tense
- Time Travel
- Toleration
- Torture
- Transcendental Arguments
- Tropes
- Trust
- Truth
- Truth and the Aim of Belief
- Truthmaking
- Turing Test
- Two-Dimensional Semantics
- Understanding
- Uniqueness and Permissiveness in Epistemology
- Utilitarianism
- Vagueness
- Value of Knowledge
- Vienna Circle
- Virtue Epistemology
- Virtue Ethics
- Virtues, Epistemic
- Virtues, Intellectual
- Voluntarism, Doxastic
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- Weakness of Will
- Weil, Simone
- Well-Being
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- Wisdom
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- Wittgenstein, Ludwig: Later Works
- Wittgenstein, Ludwig: Middle Works
- Wollstonecraft, Mary