Skepticism in Hume's Politics and Histories

• Peter Stanley Fosl ^[1]
  1. [1] Transylvania University

     Transylvania University

     Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: Araucaria: Revista Iberoamericana de Filosofía, Política, Humanidades y Relaciones Internacionales, ISSN 1575-6823, ISSN-e 2340-2199, Vol. 20, Nº 40, 2018 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Monográfico I: HUME. Monográfico II: La Integración Inter-Regional Euro Latino Americana a través de los Derechos Humanos), págs. 371-401
• Idioma: inglés
• DOI: 10.12795/araucaria.2018.i40.17
• Títulos paralelos:
  • El escepticismo en el pensamiento político e histórico de David Hume
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo (pdf)
• Resumen
  • español

    Este ensayo pretende demostrar que el pensamiento político e histórico de Hume se interpreta bien cuando se lo lee como escéptico, y de un escepticismo que hunde sus raíces en las tradiciones helenísticas tanto del pensamiento académico como del pirrónico. Despliega instrumentos escépticos que socavan tanto el racionalismo político como las ideologías políticas de base metafísica o teológica. (1) La de Hume es una política de la opinión (doxa) y (2) la apariencia (phainomena). Trabaja para oponerse a la facción y al entusiasmo y generar (3) suspensión (epochê), (4) balance (isosthenia), (5) tranquilidad (ataraxia), y (6) moderación (metriopatheia, moderatio). A causa de la defensa de Hume del uso de reglas generales producidas de forma reflexiva, pero que suspenden compromisos epistémicos o metafísicos, su pensamiento político no es intrínsecamente conservador. Mientras que valora la estabilidad y la paz, la política humeana acepta un orden político de confrontación abierta (zetesis), un orden que requiere de un mantenimiento continuo y de revisiones, pero que no pretende un progreso o fin último o definitivo.

  • English

    This essay argues that Hume’s political and historical thought is well read as skeptical and skeptical in a way that roots it deeply in the Hellenistic traditions of both Pyrrhonian and Academical thought. It deploys skeptical instruments to undermine political rationalism as well as theologically and metaphysically political ideologies. (1) Hume’s is politics of opinion (doxa) and (2) appearance (phainomena). It labors to oppose faction and enthusiasm and generate (3) suspension (epochê), (4) balance (isosthenia), (5) tranquility (ataraxia), and (6) moderation (metriopatheia, moderatio). Because Hume advocate the use of reflectively generated but epistemically and metaphysically suspensive general rules, his political thought is not intrinsically conservative. While it valorizes stability and peace, Humean politics accepts a contested and open-ended (zetesis) political order, one that requires continuous maintenance and revision but does not pretend to any ultimate or final progress or end.

• Referencias bibliográficas
  • Adair, Douglass (1956/57). “‘That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science’: David Hume, James Madison, and the Tenth Federalist,” Huntington...
  • Baxter, Donald M. (2008). Hume’s Difficulty: Time and Identity in the Treatise. London: Routledge.
  • Bongie, Laurence L. (2002). David Hume: Prophet of the Counter-Revolution, foreword by Donald W. Livingston. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. Originally...
  • Burke, Edmund (2009). Reflections on the Revolution in France. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Originally 1790.
  • Clark, Sam (2013). “Hume’s Uses of Dialogue,” Hume Studies 39.1: 61-76. Cumming, Robert Denoon (1969). Human Nature and History: A Study of...
  • Cumming, Robert Denoon (1969). Human Nature and History: A Study of the Development of Liberal Political Thought, 2 vols. Chicago: University...
  • Dees, Richard (2008). “‘One of the Finest and Most Subtile Inventions’: Hume on Government,” 388-405 in A Companion to Hume, Elizabeth Radcliffe...
  • Dees, Richard (2002). “Morality above Metaphysics: Friendship and Philo’s Stance in Dialogues XII,” Hume Studies 28: 131-47.
  • Deleuze, Gilles (1953). Empiricism and Subjectivity: An Essay on Hume’s Theory of Human Nature, trans. C. V. Boundas. New York: Columbia University...
  • Eichorn, Roger (2014). “How (Not) to Read Sextus Empiricus,” Ancient Philosophy 24: 121-49.
  • Forbes, Duncan (1978). “The European, or Cosmopolitan Dimension in Hume’s Science of Politics,” The British Journal for Eighteenth-Century...
  • Forbes, Duncan (1975). Hume’s Philosophical Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Forbes, Duncan (1954). “‘Scientific’ Whiggism: Adam Smith and John Millar,” Cambridge Journal 6.2:280-323.
  • Garrett, Don (2014). Hume. Milton Park and New York: Routledge.
  • Habermas, Jürgen (1985). The Theory of Communicative Action, 2 vols. (Reason and the Rationalization of Society; Handlungsrationalität und...
  • Harris, James A. (2015). David Hume: An Intellectual Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Harris, James A. (2007). Book review of Neil McArthur, David Hume’s Political Theory: Law, Commerce, and the Constitution, in Hume Studies...
  • Hayek, F. A. (1966). “The Legal and Political Philosophy of David Hume,” 335-60 in Hume: A Collection of Critical Essays, Vere Claiborne Chappell...
  • Herdt, Jennifer (1997). Religion and Faction in Hume’s Moral Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Hume, David (2007). A Treatise of Human Nature: A Critical Edition, David Fate Norton & Mary J. Norton (eds.), 2 vols. Oxford: The Clarendon...
  • Hume, David (2000). Enquiry concerning Human Understanding: A Critical Edition, T. L. Beauchamp (ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000. Originally,...
  • Hume, David (1998). Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, T. L. Beauchamp (ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. M.
  • Hume, David (1985). Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary (with an apparatus of variant readings from the 1889 edition by T. H. Green and...
  • Hume, David (1983). The History of England: From the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688, in six volumes. Indianapolis: Liberty...
  • Hume, David (1947). Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, ed. N. Kemp Smith. New York: Bobbs Merrill. Originally 1779. D.
  • Hume, David (1932). The Letters of David Hume, J. Y. T. Greig (ed.), 2 vols. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Paperback 2011. LT.
  • Hume, David (1889), Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, T. H. Green and T. H. Grose (eds.), New Edition. London: Longmans, Green, and...
  • Immerwahr, John (1994). “David Hume on Incompatible Religious Beliefs,” International Studies in Philosophy 14 (1984), 25-33. Also reprinted...
  • Immerwahr, John (1992). “Hume on Tranquilizing the Passions,” Hume Studies 18:2 (1992), 293-314.
  • Laursen, John Christian (2016). “Natura vs. Libertà: The Moral Life of the Ancient Skeptics: Living in Accordance with Nature and Freedom...
  • Laursen, John Christian (2011). “David Hume on Custom and Habit and Living with Skepticism” [“David Hume: sobre la costumbre, el hábito y...
  • Laursen, John Christian (2010). “Tame Skeptics at the Prussian Academy,” Libertinage et philosophie 12: 221-30.
  • Laursen, John Christian and Richard H. Popkin (1997). “Hume in the Prussian Academy: Jean Bernard Merian’s ‘On the Phenomenalism of David...
  • Letwin, Shirley Robin (1965). The Pursuit of Certainty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Reissued by the Liberty Fund (1998).
  • Livingston, Donald W. (1998), Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium: Hume’s Pathology of Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Livingston, Donald W. & Marie A. Martin (eds.) (1991). Hume as Philosopher of Society, Politics, and History, Library of the History of...
  • Livingston, Donald W. & James T. King (eds.) (1976). Hume: A Re-Evaluation. New York: Fordham University Press.
  • Livingston, Donald W (1984). Hume’s Philosophy of Common Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
  • Loeb, Louis (2005). Stability and Justification in Hume’s Treatise. Oxford: Oxford University Press; in the UK 2002.
  • Lom, Petr (2001). The Limits of Doubt: The Moral and Political Implications of Skepticism. Albany: The State University of New York Press.
  • Martin, Marie A. (1994). “Hume as a Classical Moralist,” International Philosophical Quarterly 24 (September): 323-34.
  • Mates, Benson (1996). The Skeptic Way: Sextus Empiricus’s Outlines of Pyrrhonism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • McArthur, Neil (2007). Hume’s Political Theory. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
  • McCormick, Miriam Schleifer (2013). “Hume’s Skeptical Politics,” Hume Studies 39.1: 77-102.
  • Merrill, Thomas W. (2015a). Hume and the Politics of Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Merrill, Thomas W. (2015b). “Hume’ Socratism,” The Review of Politics 77: 23-45.
  • Merrill, Thomas W. (2005). “The Rhetoric of Rebellion in Hume’s Constitutional Thought,” The Review of Politics, 67.2: 257-82.
  • Mill, John Stuart (1838). “Bentham,” in Essays on Ethics, Religion, and Society, 75-85 in vol.10 of the Collected Works of John Stuart Mill,...
  • Miller, David (1981). Philosophy and Ideology in Hume’s Political Thought. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  • Mossner, Ernst Campbell (1941). “Was Hume a Tory Historian?” Journal of the History of Ideas 2: 225-36. Reprinted in Livingston & Martin...
  • Mouffe, Chantal (2005). The Democratic Paradox. New York: Routledge.
  • Mouffe, Chantal (1993). The Return of the Political. New York: Verso, 1993.
  • Oakeshott, Michael (2010). Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, an expand ed edition. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
  • Oakeshott, Michael (1947). “Rationalism in Politics,” Cambridge Journal 1: 65-74.
  • Pocock, J. G. A. (1979). “Hume and the American Revolution: The Dying Thoughts of a North Briton,” 325-43 in McGill Hume Studies, David Fate...
  • Poole, Thomas (2015). Reason of State: Law, Prerogative and Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Resnick, David (1996). “David Hume: A Modern Conservative,” The European Legacy 1.1: 397-402.
  • Sabl, Andrew (2015). “David Hume: Skepticism in Politics?” 149-176 in Skepticism and Political Thought in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,...
  • Sabl, Andrew (2012). Hume’s Politics: Coordination and Crisis in the History of England. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Schmitt, Carl (1927). Der Begriff des Politischen. München and Leipzig: Duncker & Humbolt. Translated in The Concept of the Political:...
  • Sextus Empiricus (1976). Outlines of Pyrrhonism, in Sextus Empiricus, 1 of 4 vols. R. G. Bury (ed. and trans.), Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge:...
  • Sextus Empiricus (1968). Adversus Mathematicos IX-XI, R. G. Bury (trans.). Loeb Library III. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. M.
  • Spencer, Mark G. (2010). Hume and Eighteenth-Century America. Rochester: University of Rochester Press.
  • Stephen, Leslie (1949). History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 3rd edition, vol. 2. New York: Peter Smith.
  • Stourzh, Gerald (1970). Alexander Hamilton and the Idea of Republican Government. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
  • Susato, Ryu (2015). Hume’s Sceptical Enlightenment. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.
  • Werner, John M. (1972). “David Hume and America” The Journal of Philosophy 33.3: 439-56.
  • Whelan, Frederick G. (1985). Order and Artifice in Hume’s Political Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Wiley, James (2012). Theory and Practice in the Philosophy of David Hume. Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Wills, Gary (1981). Explaining America: The Federalists. New York: Doubleday. Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1972). On Certainty, G. E. M. Anscombe...
  • Wright (eds.). New York: Harper Torchbook. Wolin, Sheldon S. (1954). “Hume and Conservatism,” The American Political
  • Science Review 48.4: 999-1016. Reprinted in Livingston & King (1976), 239-56.
  • Wright, John (1983). The Sceptical Realism of David Hume. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  • Wulf, Steven J. (2000). “The Skeptical Life in Hume’s Political Thought,” Polity 33.1: 77-99.