300127 David Humes Moralphilosophie (Treaties, Teil III) (S) (WiSe 2024/2025)

Though Hume argued that a political reformer should consider that some people might possibly be knaves and will not be inclined just to live up to the hopes of the reformer, he still had a slightly more positive view of man than is attributed to Hobbes. He was not too much concerned with questions of security and the protection of men from each other, as the English civil war had long passed. In sharp contrast to Hobbes he also argued that one could dispense with the notion of a social contract authorizing some sovereign in charge of this task. Instead, he embraced a much broader notion of social order and tried to explain it in terms of a plurality of tacit or explicit social conventions, each serving different purposes. In this he came quite close to what later would be argued by sociologist. But when it came to understand the limited reach of morality, the effects of contagious enthusiasm or to understand what promises are and how they work, he seems to have been ahead even of most of our more contemporary attacks to understand social life. This should invite us to reread some of his output anew to see what else he had on offer. We will start with the third book of his Treatise and continue with a handful of his essays.

Bibliography

All of Hume´s texts are available in the philosophy section of our library.