Copyright © 1996 R.J. Kilcullen
This week we read from the eighteenth century Scottish writer, David Hume. Hume rejects the 'social contract' account of the origins of government. The authority of government rests on a general sense of its usefulness; its authority lasts while it remains useful.
Various writers, then, were arguing that Christianity was reasonable or rational, or that it could and should be 'purified' to make it rational, or that it should be replaced by a more rational religious creed like Deism, or that if religion could not be made rational mankind would have to learn to live without religion. For an account of these movements of thought see Hazard, The European Mind 1680-1715 (B802.H38) and Stromberg, Religious Liberalism in 18th Century England (BR758.S85).
The emphasis on reason was part of the Christian tradition itself. For example, Augustine wrote:
We are guided in a twofold way, by authority and by reason... To those desiring to learn the great and hidden good it is authority which opens the door. And whoever enters by it and, leaving doubt behind, follows the precepts for a truly good life, and has been made receptive to teaching by them, will at length learn how pre-eminently possessed of reason those things are which he pursued before he saw their reason, and what that reason itself is...Also:
Authority demands of us faith, and prepares man for reason... although authority does not leave reason wholly out of sight, when the question of who may be believed is being consideredAugustine suggested that reason shows that in life we need a guide, and reason considers whom to accept as a guide; then we follow the guide with faith, and are led eventually to understand, perhaps only in the future life.
Revelation is God's telling someone something, for example in a vision or dream or in some message confirmed by miracle, or in a divinely-inspired writing (the bible); the other means of knowledge are reason and experience. Medieval writers had distinguished between reason and revelation. (See Gilson, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages.) Thomas Aquinas had written a Summa contra Gentiles (not to be confused with the more famous Summa theologiae), in which he used no argument based on revelation until the last of its four 'books'. Other medieval authors had also distinguished between what could be proved by reason and what could be known only by revelation. In the later middle ages various writers put forward arguments in favour of the credibility of the Christian revelation, based largely on the miracles which had accompanied it.
Protestants held that each individual can and should learn what is necessary from the bible alone, without deferring to the authority of the Church. Catholics argued that without the authority of the Church Protestants would not even know which books belong to the bible, or that the bible is divinely inspired. (See on 'the canon of scripture' in the introduction to week 6, above.) Catholic writers emphasised the difficulties of reasoning for oneself, and recommended acceptance of the authority of the Church. Protestant controversialists replied that individual Catholics had to use their own reason in deciding to trust the Church, and in deciding which of the competing bodies was the true Church.
Luther and Calvin had claimed that the Holy Spirit gives the individual Christian reading the bible a sufficient assurance that the words are inspired, but in the eighteenth century the stress was more on argument. (The claim to be conscious in oneself of the workings of the Holy Spirit was called 'enthusiasm', and regarded as highly suspect). Eighteenth century Christian writers argued that the Apostles could have had no motive for lying, since they had suffered and died for their faith; the miracle narratives in the New Testament (notably the account of Jesus' resurrection from the dead) are therefore credible, and prove that the New Testament conveys a revelation from God.
In the eighteenth century, therefore, there were (perhaps especially in England) controversialists who offered to prove that God exists, that Jesus was God, that the bible is reliable, that the chief Christian doctrines are to be found in the bible, and so on. (Apologetic is the term for argument designed to provide rational justification for belief.) Often these controversialists were arrogant and over-confident, and they claimed to be able to meet very high standards of proof - not merely to show that their theses were rather probable, but to prove them with mathematical and scientific certainty (in the age of Newton mathematics and science were in vogue).
Their efforts provoked critics. Various tenets of orthodox Christianity came under critical examination. First, Augustine's theology of original sin, predestination, the absolute gratuitousness of salvation (i.e. the impossibility of in any way earning it). There had always been Christians who were dissatisfied with these doctrines. In the seventeenth century attempts to work out new theories had been made among Catholics mainly by the Jesuits, and among Protestants by the Arminians (followers of the Dutch theologian Arminius). Augustinianism had been defended and reasserted among the Catholics by Dominicans (Thomists, i.e. followers of Thomas Aquinas) and Jansenists (followers of the Dutch Catholic theologian Jansen), among the Protestants by Calvinists. The objections against it were that it seemed to imply that human freewill is of no account, that it seemed to make God responsible for evil (in not ensuring that Adam did not sin), and that it seemed unfair (in that some are predestined to be saved, others not, for no intelligible reason). Pierre Bayle (himself a Calvinist) argued that the Augustinian answers to these objections were unconvincing. See his articles 'Manicheans', 'Paulicians', in his Historical and Critical Dictionary, (RefCT95.B335), pp. 144 ff and 166 ff.
Also criticised was the Christian doctrine of the Trinity: that the Father is God, that the Son (incarnate in Jesus Christ) is God, and the Holy Spirit is God; that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are distinct persons, so that the Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Holy Spirit; yet there is only one God. It was objected that this doctrine was illogical and not found in the bible.
David Hume seems to have taken it as proved, by his time, that Christianity is not rationally defensible. His essay On Miracles (in Essays, B1475) undermines a line of argument important to the Christian apologetic of the time. Apart from this essay, however, his writings on religion are mainly a critique of the natural religion (religion based on natural reasoning) that the deists had wanted to substitute for Christianity. But inasmuch as natural religion was, according to most of the Christian apologists, the foundation of reasonable religious belief (they differed from the deists in holding that revelation needed to be added to what reason could prove), Hume's attacks on the arguments for natural religion were also attacks on the standard arguments for Christianity.
In his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (published 1779, after his death) he refuted the argument most popular at the time in favour of God's existence - the 'argument from design', to the effect that the orderliness of the universe shows the existence of a designer.
In An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) section 10, he argues that no one can reasonably believe a report of a miracle.
A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle... is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined... There must... be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation.In section 11 he argues that 'natural religion' - philosophical belief in a god who rewards good deeds and punishes evil - can make no difference to morality or to the social order. In section 12, entitled, 'Of the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy', he argues that human reason cannot attain certainty. We cannot help using reason in everyday life, but cannot trust it in abstruse questions of religion and philosophy. Scepticism thus leads to 'the limitation of our inquiries to such subjects as are best adapted to the narrow capacity of human understanding'.
Hume's attack was not only against natural religion, i.e. religion as based on reason, but against the pretensions of reason generally. He also rejected a common eighteenth century doctrine that morality is based on reason: according to Hume it is based on sentiment or feeling, and reason cannot prove that moral sentiments are right. See Treatise of Human Nature, Book 3, part 1 (Raphael, British Moralists, (BJ601.R3), vol. 2, p. 8 ff). Hume's theory of morality and politics makes no reference to God or to Reason with a capital R.Reason of an everyday kind, practical reasoning about what causes what, does figure in his theory, but not reason as a kind of perception by which we can intuit moral qualities. His theory is based on emotion: on individuals' reactions to things done to them by others, and especially on their reactions to what they see taking place between other people between whom they are impartial. It is out of our feelings on such occasions that morality and just political institutions arise. Emotion was sometimes called passion. Hence Hume's famous remark that "Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions" [Treatise of Human Nature, II.iii.3]. This is, of course, a rejection of Plato's doctrine that reason should rule the emotions. What Hume's remark means is that the function of reason is to work out how to achieve the goals endorsed by our emotions, including our moral feelings.
In moral theory he rejects the selfish system:
I am sensible that, generally speaking, the representations of this quality [selfishness] have been carried much too far;... So far from thinking that men have no affection for anything beyond themselves, I am of opinion that, though it be rare to meet with one who loves a single person better than himself, yet it is as rare to meet with one in whom all the kind affections, taken together, do not overbalance all the selfish. (Treatise, pp. 486-7.)Nevertheless, selfishness, or the limitations of human generosity, together with the scarcity of objects of desire and the ease with which such things can be taken by one person from another, require the rules of justice, and government to enforce them. But Justice and government presuppose the possibility of impartial moral feelings.
Notice that property is not a natural right, but one which exists by convention.
Read p. 493 to p. 501 (end of section).
'And even every individual person': This is not plausible. Being just sometimes costs an individual something, perhaps a great deal, without any guarantee of eventual net benefit.
'Since, without justice, society must immediately dissolve': It will not dissolve just because of one act of injustice.
'Imitate my example': not many others may know of my action.
'Natural' and 'moral obligation': To be 'bound' to do something because it is in your interest, and to be morally bound to do it. 'Obligation' these days always means moral or legal obligation, never what Hume here calls 'natural' obligation. Hume had in mind the Latin derivation of the word; in Latin obligare means to tie or bind. By 'natural obligation' Hume means that we may be tied or bound to certain course of action by our interest - i.e. by the fact that our interests may be damaged in some way if we do not follow that course of action. We may also be tied or bound to the same course of action by moral sentiment; i.e., as well as realising that our interests will suffer if we do not do the thing, we also feel obliged to do it by moral sentiment.
'Sympathy': an important principle in the theories of Hume and Adam Smith. It means not merely feeling sorry for someone (which is its meaning now), but feeling with someone else, whatever the feeling: sharing their pleasure, anger, sorrow etc. Hume and Smith point out that we are not indifferent to the moral reaction of spectators to our action; if they disapprove, there is some echo of this disapproval in us. From this Smith explains the development of conscience: our conscience is the imagined reaction of an imaginary ideal spectator, well-informed and impartial; if such a person would disapprove of my action, then I feel moral uneasiness about it. The theory of sympathy makes it possible for Hume to explain how people can (to some extent) rely on one another to do the right thing even before government exists, and without any reference to punishment to be inflicted by God in the next life.
'Vice', 'virtue': Hume's conception of these is aesthetic (i.e., to do with sensation or feeling). Virtue is like beauty..
'Artifice of politicians': cf. the views of Callicles, Gorgias 483bc, and Thrasymachus, Republic 338e. The same idea had been popularised recently by Bernard de Mandeville; see Raphael, vol. 1, pp. 230-5.
Read section 5, p. 516 to p. 523 ('... no natural obligation.')
Notice, again, the distinction between natural (interested) obligation and moral obligation.
Read first paragraph of section 6, and section 7, p.535 to p. 539 (end of section).
It is the immediate, predominant, self-interest of the members of the government to compel people not to do acts of injustice really detrimental to their general long-term interests, and to organize cooperation. Thus government is beneficial to its subjects.
Note that according to Hume government is not needed to preserve justice in a small society before there are great possessions. At this stage justice is well enough enforced by public opinion and conscience. If one person treats another unjustly, the disgusted reaction of actual spectators, and its echo (by sympathy) in the mind of the perpetrator of the injustice, or his response to the imagination of how spectators would react, discourage injustice. In a larger and more possessory society this will not be enough. However, even in a more developed state, the behaviour of the magistrates and other government officials is still largely controlled by public opinion and conscience, by 'the opinion of right'. See 'Of the first principles of Government' in Hume's Essays.
Read section 8, p. 539 to p. 546 ('... particularly concerned.')
Compare p. 545 ('But 'tis not only...') with p. 498 ('We come now...') and p. 523 ('Afterwards...').
Compare Ockham's contention that 'on occasion' the ruler may be corrected or deposed, although he is regularly superior to his subjects.
Read from An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Raphael, vol. 2, Sections 576, 588.
In this matter Hume learnt from Joseph Butler (d. 1752). See Raphael, vol. 1, p. 332, sections 382-6, 388, 413-23.
Hume is in some ways close to Locke, but rejects the naturalness of property and the contract theory of the basis of government. Both Locke and Hume accept Hobbes's (also Marsilius') idea that the work of government is to secure peace, but they do not think that before government there would necessarily have been a war of every man against every man. But according to Hume the justice possible in the state of nature would have rested on convention, whereas for Locke it was a matter of natural law. In emphasising human convention, rather than natural law, as the basis of property Hume is close to Ockham.
See Kilcullen, 'Utilitarianism and Virtue', Ethics, 93 (1983), pp.451-66. Discusses theories, like Hume's, which argue that it is beneficial to follow rules consistently even in cases in which it would be more beneficial (in that case) to break the rule. Do such theories make sense?
2. Compare Hume's view of human nature with the views of Hobbes and J.S. Mill.
3. What is the difference between moral and natural obligation, and what is the nature of moral obligation?
4. What does Hume mean by convention? What is the difference between a convention and a promise?
5. What is Hume's account of the state of nature? Of the law of nature?
6. How does Hume think government arises? What does he think of Locke's theory that government rests upon consent?
7. What is his theory of property? Compare it with Locke's.
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