Figure - available from: Constitutional Political Economy
This content is subject to copyright. Terms and conditions apply.
The yellow area is convention without consent/compact
Source publication
David K. Lewis published his brilliant PhD dissertation in 1969, Convention; A Philosophical Study. With a lag, scholarship on David Hume has come to elaborate the similitude between Lewis and Hume on convention. Reading Hume along the lines of Lewis gives us a vocabulary with which we can better appreciate and articulate the innovativeness of Hume...
Citations
... But he had no doubt that there exist certain "laws of nature" that are "obvious and absolutely necessary" and "inseparable from the species" (Hume, 2000(Hume, [1740, p. 311); he believed these laws must be reflected to some extent in local moral sensibilities and positive laws for a social group to prosper-or to extend at all out of a primeval state (cf. Matson & Klein, 2022). ...
This chapter surveys some intellectual influences of religion--especially Protestantism--and early modern discourses in natural law on the formation of classical liberal thought. A brief historical account is given of the rise of the first mode of political thinking to be called "liberal" in English, followed by a sketch of classical liberal sensibilities and orientations. Theological influences on the classical liberal notion of equality are treated, followed by discussions of justice and liberty, in which the role of Grotian natural law features. A final section mentions the role of political economy. Major figures discussed include Grotius, Hobbes, Locke, Hutcheson, Smith, Hume, Burke, Constant, and Acton.
... Opinions, for Hume, effect-and to a real extent can be said to constitute-institutions. Rules of property, contract, and political authority are based upon conventions, which are not a matter of literal agreement but emergent opinion and shared interpretation (Matson and Klein 2022;Sabl 2012). Conventions establish patterns of normalcy in human action. ...
This paper interprets the interaction between Protestantism and commercial spirit in David Hume’s account of English development, mostly drawing from The History of England . Hume saw Protestant theology—especially the more enthusiastic strains of English Puritanism—as having fortuitously shifted the landscape of political and economic sensibilities in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by affecting believers’ political, social, and economic psychologies. Those shifting psychologies exhibited affinities with concurrent developments, especially the decline of feudalism, the rise of consumerism, and the creation of an independent middle class of merchants. The peculiar synergy between such changes and Protestant theological innovations led to the emergence of England, by the eighteenth century, as a polite and commercial people—a people for whom commerce became, Hume claimed, more honorable than in any other nation. Hume, like Max Weber, saw a distinctive Protestant spirit as having contributed to the modern commercial order.
... Opinions for Hume effect-and to a real extent can be said to constitute-institutions. Rules of property, contract, and political authority are based upon conventions, which are not a matter of literal agreement but emergent opinion and shared interpretation (Matson and Klein 2022;Sabl 2012). Conventions establish patterns of normalcy in human action. ...
... Those conventions are a natural emergence, as they stem from the focal awareness of the natural sovereignty that each of us has over mind and body. 57 The convention of property guides our interests in a constructive manner such that we contribute to the good of others, even as we focus on ourselves. Hume elucidates the mutually beneficial nature of domestic and international commerce with the goal of encouraging nations to cease their warlike tendencies and adopt free trade. ...
This paper discusses how in the British tradition, political economy, which partly emerged out of discourses in natural theology, ethics, and jurisprudence, casts some light on the content of our moral obligations. Drawing on Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith, I illustrate how commerce came to be depicted as a mode of cooperation-either literally with God or metaphorically with our fellow human beings-through which we serve the common good. That depiction energized the emerging authorization of commercial enterprises, helping to illustrate the virtue of the "bourgeois virtues," an understanding which contributed to what Deirdre McCloskey calls the Great Enrichment. The depiction continues to edify business as a calling and elaborate how freedom serves the good of humankind.
... His brilliant analysis of convention in Book III of the Treatise is rightly heralded as one of the founding texts in strategic analysis and game theory (Lewis 1969;Sugden 2005;Binmore 1998). That analysis, which lies at the heart of his understanding of institutions (see discussion in Matson and Klein 2021), proceeds mainly at the level of the individual. Hume saw merit in both individual-and group-level analysis; which method one ought to employ depends on the thing to be explained. ...
This is a review of Margaret Schabas and Carl Wennerlind, 'A Philosopher's Economist: Hume and the Rise of Capitalism' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020).
There has been debate over the coherence of Hutcheson’s writings. Hutcheson’s writings on ethics have been taken as inconsistent with his work on jurisprudence and economics. This article argues that Hutcheson’s works are coherent when situated in theological context. We find across Hutcheson’s works a belief that God has benevolently designed the natural order. Hutcheson’s later works outline the rules by which we make our efforts to serve the common good effective in practice. The article contributes to our appreciation of the relationship between theology and the idea of mutual benefits in the history of economic thought.
This paper elaborates the coherence of Hutcheson's ethics, jurisprudence, and political economy by analyzing his views on the role of self-love in God's plan for furthering the happiness of humankind. God's benevolent order is such that we serve the good of all even as we tend to our local parts. That concord is facilitated by institutions of property and exchange, which encourage individuals to steward their resources and, through the division of labor, yield increased material returns. Hutcheson's ideas illumine the soul of classical liberal political economy and its provenance in ideas of divine providence.
