David Hume on history, development and happiness: interconnections

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore the interconnections between Hume’s thought as a philosopher, a historian and an economist, illustrated with respect to his thought on history, development and happiness. It is argued that differences in the interpretation of Hume have an epistemological origin, reflecting either a closed-system approach or some kind of open-system approach. These differences are explored in relation to Hume’s own epistemology, historiography, theory of economic development and theory of happiness. Patterns are identified in Hume’s thought which support a particular, open-system, interpretation of his contributions in each area in terms of interdependent processes.

Keywords:

• David Hume
• history
• economic development
• happiness

JEL CODES:

• B31
• B40
• O10

Acknowledgements

This paper has benefitted from comments following the presentation of an earlier version to the 2022 Annual ESHET Conference as the 2021 Honorary Member Lecture, from Margaret Schabas and from two anonymous referees.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The paper thus aims to consider David Hume in relation to the theme of the ESHET conference to which it was originally addressed: ‘Markets, Productivity and Happiness in a Historical Perspective’.

2 There are remarkable parallels between Hume’s approach and that of Keynes. Exploring the direct and indirect influences of Hume on Keynes is a major topic of enquiry in itself.

3 The evidence on Hume’s formal education is patchy, and in any case the College of Edinburgh which he attended from the age of ten was an outlier in Scotland in not making moral philosophy a compulsory subject. But we know that he read widely and engaged in debate on philosophical (among other) matters during the years before he left Scotland in 1734 at the age of 22 to work for a Bristol merchant. Harris (2015, ch. 1) provides a detailed account of this period.

4 Foucault’s archaeology is potentially problematic in its sequential formulation. Nevertheless by identifying epistemes Foucault helps us to characterise the more complex timeline of thought which we find in Hume.

5 See for example the multiple references to Hume’s price-specie-flow mechanism in Frenkel and Johnson (eds) (1976), a key text in the emerging international monetarist theory.

6 While Fogelin (2009) contrasts strong scepticism with weak scepticism, Matson (2019) expresses the difference in terms of ‘narrow’ and ‘broad’ reason, where Hume developed the latter in terms of the notion of probabilistic reason.

7 Hume, like Smith, emphasised the psychological aspects of epistemology, and the scope for the passions to supersede reason. But he was well aware of the ways in which capitalism could be shaped by socio-economic power structures, as in the application of reason on the part of particular interest groups such as the merchant class or the rentier class.

8 ‘[T]here seems ample evidence to suppose that Hume’s philosophy was animated by his interpretation of Newton’s substantive and methodological views’ (Rosenberg 1993, 64).

9 See Hodgson (2001) for an account of societal evolution which explicitly departs from the deterministic interpretation.

10 More generally, ‘the Scottish Enlightenment … considered the vulgar myths of English whig history in the light both of their sceptical Scottish detachment from the subject and of the insights of an embryonic social and political science’ (Kidd 1993, p.7). See further Forbes (1975a, 1975b).

11 The two authorities differ as to the strength of Hume’s interest in improvement. A key difference between the accounts provided by Harris (2015) and Schabas and Wennerlind (2020) is that Harris presents Hume’s career in terms of his multiple interests (thus limiting the relative attention paid to economics) while Schabas and Wennerlind focus on Hume’s interest in economics, persuasively identifying it as a consistent thread running through his career.

12 This is the normal resolution of the Adam Smith Problem, i.e., social behaviour and self-interest are generally complementary rather than conflicting.

13 See further Hume (1752c, 300–301), Berry (2008).

14 Hume’s views on happiness thus seem to anticipate Sen’s open-system theory of capabilities in relation to well-being and freedom, where freedom is understood as a capacity, or a means of development (Martins 2014, 404–405).