Hume and the Utility of Practical Governance - Essay Example

? Pragmatism Over Partisanship: Hume and the Utility of Practical Governance Department Pragmatism Over Partisanship: Hume and the Utility of Practical Governance David Hume’s criticism of the original contract is neither ideological nor rebellious radicalism. It is a link in an intellectual chain connecting him to the likes of Rousseau, Montesquieu and other philosophers of the Enlightenment. His view of man’s relationship and obligation to government parted from that of one such as Locke, who claimed that the citizen’s obedience to his government stems from a contractual agreement. Central to this concept is the implicit consent of the governed, whose accession to this arrangement is assumed to be voluntary. Hume disputed this notion, however, citing, as example, that there is nothing voluntary about an individual who is too poor to leave or seek subsistence anywhere but the nation of his birth. “We may as well assert, that a man, by remaining in a vessel, freely consents to the dominion of the master; though he was carried on board while asleep, and must leap into the ocean and perish, the moment he leaves her” (Graham 2011, p. 186). Hume’s essay “Of the Original Contract” argued that ideas about government by consent and the authority of the state must have context and a basis in historical fact to be practical. Hume decried the notion of original contract as put forth by the Whigs, whom he felt offered little concrete evidence and left too much to discretion and interpretation. In his view, it amounted to an invitation to revolt at the drop of the political hat. In other words, such theorizing might encourage citizens to rise up “whenever (the people) find themselves aggrieved by that authority, with which they have, for certain purposes, voluntarily entrusted (the sovereign)” (Forbes 1975, 93). Hume also argued that the governed cannot, in truth, be said to 2 have consented to their government when there is, in truth, no voluntary agreement among people who have no choice as to where they will live or by whom they will be ruled. Politician or pragmatist? So was Hume, as many have claimed, making a statement based on his own political predilection? In our own time, there is an irresistibly powerful inclination to ascribe “liberal” or “conservative” leanings and associations to individuals who operate on the remotest periphery of the political sphere. Thus, it should come as no surprise that writers and historians have for centuries sought to paint Hume with a Tory or Whig brush (depending on their ideological preferences, of course). In light of the evidence, and Hume’s writings, this is a mistaken perspective. The most revealing information concerning Hume’s position on the original contract, and other political theories, came from Hume himself. “Hume provided an important clue to the proper interpretation of his political writings by referring himself as a ‘philosopher.’ As he pointed out, a philosopher looks at political problems differently than a spokesman for a political party” (Miller 1961). Miller notes – properly – that those who have studied Hume’s beliefs should have concentrated on the “general principles which underly” the seemingly ambiguous statements Hume makes concerning government (Ibid). Miller makes a compelling argument, concluding that Hume cannot be considered partisan since he wrote as a political philosopher. In this light, Hume’s position concerning the original contract is one of pragmatism and expediency. His opinions are crafted so that they address the practical needs of government as he saw them in his day. 3 In his 1742 essay “Of Civil Liberty,” Hume is critical of both Tories and Whigs in regard to their treatment of the original contract. He is opposed to extremes, to the Tories’ “tracing up government to the Deity, (endeavoring) to render it…sacred and inviolate…, ” and the Whigs’ regard of government as absolutely deriving from the consent of the people (Hume 1875, pg. 1). When Hume renders his opinion on the subject near the end of his essay, conceding that government by consent is the best, in theory, though it must be mitigated by another form of government (Hume 1875, p. 20). Hume, therefore, is a proponent of moderation. Those who have criticized or tried to categorize him fail to take this into consideration. Hume has been compared to Hobbes, an apostle of the State and man’s place within it. For others, he is a guiding light behind the Founders of the American Republic, particularly James Madison, whose arguments in The Federalist Papers No. 10 are thought to have been influenced by Hume. (Madison drew on Hume’s claim that it is possible to establish a republic over a large expanse of land.) Hume was concerned with balance in government, which some have mistaken for equivocation, even cowardice. He was in agreement with the Whigs over representative government as much as concurred with the Tories over the need for obedience in times of trial. He claimed that disobedience, even revolt, against an immoral ruler was acceptable, while at the same time claiming that adherence to governmental authority is in the common interest and should be favored to the extent that it is at all possible. Seen in a different light, what Hume is saying is that there is responsibility on both sides of the equation but that there must be accountability on both sides, not just theory and high-minded phraseology. 4 Just as the ruler is expected to behave with patience and forbearance, the ruled must reciprocate with patience and resist rebelling at the first whiff of government acting counter to the wishes of the populace. In this way, it is possible to provide for the soundness of government and the happiness of those who are governed. Hume also argues that if there is such a thing as an original contract, it should not be seen as present in Democratic systems alone. It is also binding on those who live under political systems that made no pretense of Democratic ideals or representative government. Skeptic and historian Again, we see a manifestation of Hume’s distrust of metaphysics, of arguments that have no practical application and which cannot be measured or tested through experience (in this he was a true product of the Enlightenment). When he addressed the issue of political ideology, he spoke as a social “mechanic,” no mere theoretician espousing ethereal notions. What many modern critics have failed to grasp is that Hume equates “reason” with “philosophy,” a stance that assumes that “principles of philosophic reason are incompatible with human nature” (Livingston, 2009). He scoffed at the idea that philosophy is a journey of self-knowledge because of the temptation among philosophers, to inject their own viewpoints and belief systems. This, he felt, lay at the root of Whig philosophy, “which subscribed to the contract theory of government” (Ibid). And this underscored the essential weakness of the Whigs’ claims, which were rooted in the doctrine of pure reason and, as such, occupied no tangible space in the real world. Hume’s biographer, Ernest Campbell Mossner, concurred with what historian Douglass 5 Adair has claimed, that Hume’s ideas about the original contract represent a pragmatic compromise between conservative and liberal theory. Hume disparaged the idea of a social contract in the sense that anyone can conceive of such a scenario. What sets a theory apart is that which makes it real, which proves it to be relevant. All else is scurrilous, mere rhetoric. Hume said “critics…can reason more plausibly than cooks, (but) they still suffer the same fate as them” (Kant, Guyer and Matthews, 2000, p. 166). Immanuel Kant fully grasped Hume’s rationale, explaining that “it is the art or science of bringing under rules the reciprocal relation of the understanding and the imagination to each other in the given representation…and of determining it with regard to its conditions” (Ibid, p. 166). Misperceptions According to Eugene Miller, the original contract was not a problem for Hume as long as there is balance between the two sides. “In Hume’s view, the political problem par excellence is to reconcile liberty which is not licence with authority which is not oppression” (1961). Hume may have believed that constitutional government was ideal but he felt just as strongly that balance is necessary if conflict and unrest are to be avoided. “Liberty is the perfection of civil society, but still authority must be acknowledged essential to its very existence” (Essay on the Origin of Government, (Hume 1875, p. 116.) In his “Essay on the Origin of Government,” Hume thus posits an equivalent need for liberty and order. As such, it is essential that neither hold the upper hand but should instead work together toward the preservation of an effectively 6 pragmatic government (Becker 1994, p. 103). Observation over philosophy Hume as political scientist offered historical precedent to support his theory that liberty without restraint leads to unrestrained authority (Ibid). In his History of England, Hume traced the events of the 17th century leading to the development of the English constitution. The Civil War and subsequent upheavals that led to political reform was proof that “social and political institutions should be understood as developing in response to the exigencies of the human condition” (Ibid). This historic development was, for Hume, in keeping with his belief that balance can never be achieved by a government conceived of through the exercise of reason alone but by the trial and error of experience. It is a goal that is impacted by men of ambition and greed acting in their own best interests. Yet the processes of responsible government produces political balance, though not in always in a desirable or even admirable manner. Hume’s critique of the original contract was, in a larger sense, a criticism of the imposition of philosophy over utility. Having turned from the study of philosophy in favor of history, Hume based his skepticism of social obligation on historical observation and interpretation. For Hume, the discipline of history marginalized what he considered scientifically unsupported hypotheses such as Locke’s, which argued that the success of government was based on trust. “Theories with a rationalist basis – for example, those of natural law and the social contract – he viewed as consoling fictions without any historical grounding” (Becker year, p. 104). So it was with Hume’s view of the Whigs’ “speculative system of 7 politics,” which makes individuals “so much in love with a philosophical origin to government as to imagine all others monstrous and irregular” (Hume 1875, p. 130). This criticism is not the ideological venting of a conservative spleen but an objection to what he saw as pure theory. In “Of the Original Contract,” Hume insists that his intention is to find a middle way and motivate his readers to adopt moderate positions on the role of government. His mocking of the Whigs’ preachy, white-robed erudition was designed to point out what he considered unscientific and unhelpful. Hume attacks the validity of the social contract for lack of evidence in his essay, declaring “would these reasoners look abroad into the world, they would meet with nothing that, in the least, corresponds to their ideas, or can warrant so refined and philosophical a system” (Hume 1875, p. 446). He argued that there were many examples of foreign monarchs who treated their own citizens as chattel in the most inequitable and socially irresponsible arrangements imaginable. For Hume, the original contract was a theory without any supporting historical evidence. Conclusion Hume wrote “Of the Original Contract” at a time when centuries-old European ideas about government and the relationship between ruler and ruled were undergoing radical change. Writers and philosophers from Montesquieu to Paine were expounding on ideas such as the separation of powers and the rights of man based on arguments that could be traced to ancient Greece. The Enlightenment produced new standards in scientific study that called for a more rigorous application of experimentation. Hume’s insistence on procedural discipline, 8 which is the process of observation, experimentation and conclusion, in the social sciences was not necessarily a complete rejection of reason, which can be used to develop a hypothesis and argue in its favor but must have the support of factual evidence to give it form and credible applicability. This, and not the intellectual head-hunting of political partisanship, was the foundation for “Of the Original Contract.” The reactions of Whigs (and Tories) to Hume’s writings are instructive in that they show how virulent was the debate over the essence of government by consent. They also reflect the polarized political environment of the time in that so many responded so strongly to Hume on the basis of ideology, which, to him, was beside the point. As writers such as Douglass Bair and Eugene Miller have shown in recent years, Hume was very much the historian, not a Tory ideologue. “Of the Original Contract” was, as Hume insisted, an attempt to argue that political theories must have historical and social context as well as theoretical invention in order to be of practical use. Even in the Democratic laboratory of Classical Athens, which was probably the purest theoretically based example of representative government, only a small minority comprised solely of free male citizens had the right to vote and participate politically. (A far greater population of women, slaves and foreigners were completely disenfranchised.) This spoke directly to the need for mixed government, which Hume believed was necessary to temper an over-indulgence in theory. Hume’s arguments were compelling not only in his day, but remain pertinent and compelling in our time as well. The function of government and the rights of citizens are a matter of practicality as much as they are a subject for high-minded theoretical debate. 9 Reference List Becker, Marvin B., The Emergence of Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century. (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994). Forbes, Duncan. Hume’s Political Philosophies. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1975). Graham, Gordon, Theories of Ethics: An Introduction to Moral Philosophy With a Selection of Classic Readings. (New York: Routledge, 2011). Hume, David, Essays Moral, Political and Literary, ed., T.H. Green and T.H. Grose (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1875), I. Kant, Immanuel, Guyer, Paul, and Matthews, Eric. Critique of the Power of Judgment. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Livingston, Donald W. “David Hume and the Conservative Tradition.” The Intercollegiate Review. 44, 2. Fall 2009. Miller, Eugene, ‘David Hume Whig or Tory?’ New Individualist Review. http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=2136&chap 5294&layout=html&Itemid=27. 1961. (Accessed 29 July 2011). Read More