The relation between David Humes Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals and the Political Discourses

Abstract

This thesis analyzes the relation between David Humes (1711-1776) Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (1751) and the Political Discourses (1752). In its three chapters, I argue that the relation between these works reflect a concern with the necessity of understanding the diversity of historical forms of social organization their economic, political and social institutions and practices, understood as part of the manners or spirit of the age and their consequences on moral practice. More precisely, this thesis provides an interpretation of the Enquiry as an open-ended work, that is, as a work that discovers the foundations of morality (i.e. what the moral sentiment is) through the study of historical moral practices, but that admits that different moral practices do not make this sentiment flourish equally; each societys economic, political and social practices and institutions shape its moral practice, the sentiment that predominates in its moral distinctions, and the personal qualities that are approved or disapproved of. In this sense, the preference for one or another historical moral practice or in terms of its present practical consequences, the decision to emulate a past moral practice or to defend ones present practice depends on the study of the practices and institutions that are part of the manners of each society, so that the moral philosopher can discover whether the moral sentiment can flourish or not under those circumstances. I argue that the Political Discourses provide the kind of historical approach to the relation between political, economic and social practices and institutions and the moral practices that the moral philosophy of the Enquiry calls for, discussing how that relation existed in agrarian (feudal and ancient) and modern commercial societies, thus answering in what historical circumstances the moral sentiment flourished. I conclude that the historical approach of the Enquiry and Political Discourses forms the basis for Humes defense of modern commercial societies against the critiques made by thinkers who wished to return to a classical form of moral, social, political and economic organization.