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Abstract
Despite mounting scholarship on the Rousseau–Smith connection, the possibility of overlap between the Humean and Rousseauian views of commercial society has not been explored. This is due to opposing views held by these two thinkers on this issue. However, Rousseau in the Confessions recorded a brief, but shrewd impressions on Hume’s Political Discourses, which he held before meeting Hume. In these comments, Rousseau, unlike his other French contemporaries, noted some republican aspects lurking in Hume’s political and economic essays. Moreover, after his two Discourses, Rousseau composed several other important works in which he revealed his more ‘mature’ economic arguments. Careful readings of these textual clues indicate that, in striking parallel with Hume, Rousseau conducts a thought experiment on the drastic change in the quantity of money and elaborates on the significance of industry and a certain type of luxury. Our purpose here is not to prove that Hume’s Political Discourses directly influenced Rousseau’s later writings, but to measure the extent to which Rousseau could share the Scot’s economic ideas by considering that the former may well have read the latter.
Acknowledgements
A part of this paper, in its early version, was read under the title of ‘Two Epicureans in the Age of Enlightenment: Hume and Rousseau on Luxury and Happiness’ at the 29th ECSSS (Eighteenth Scottish Studies Society) and the 47th ASECS (American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies) Joint Annual Meeting on March 2016. The outline of this paper was also presented at the Applied Economics Workshop in Keio University on May 2017. I appreciate the chairpersons and all the participants for useful comments at both events. I am also grateful to Professor Claire Pignol, and the three anonymous referees for their constructive suggestions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Hume observed that his new protégé ‘has now totally renounc’d all Reading’ and ‘study’d little’ in 1766 (Hume Citation1932, II: 29; Letter 314: To the Rev. Hugh Blair, 25 of March 1766).
2 Céline Spector, for example, estimates that along with Melon, ‘Mandeville also seems to be an obvious reference (Mandeville paraît une référence aussi évidente)’ (Spector Citation2003, p. 241, n.12); the editors of the Collected Works of Rousseau, Vol. 4, which includes the “Political Fragments,” argue that Hume “is at least possible,” but that Mandeville is also conceivable (Rousseau Citation1994, p. 233, n.22).
3 Hume read Rousseau’s New Heloise and Social Contract before their meeting (Hume Citation1932, II: 28; a letter to Hugh Blair).
4 If Rousseau were familiar with Hume’s Political Discourses, it would enables us to discern some affinity between them in their understanding of the possibility of a large republic. As for a further comparison between Rousseau’s Considerations on the Government of Poland and Hume’s ‘Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth,’ see Susato Citation2015, pp. 199–200.
5 Certainly, the image of the author of the Political Discourses as a Tory-republican might be evinced in the fact that Abbé Le Blanc translated and appended Bolingbroke’s critique of public credit (‘Some Reflections of the Present State of the Nation’) to his own French translation of Hume’s Political Discourses (Hume Citation1754, I: 335–429; Hont Citation2005, pp. 337–9; Hont Citation2008, pp. 269–70). However, Le Blanc’s aim was not to accentuate Hume’s republicanism. Rather, by showing that such pessimism was commonplace in Britain, the French translator attempts to present at a minimum Hume’s fury against public credit to French readers, who were generally favorable to this financial measure despite the fiasco of John Law’s ‘System’ in 1720 (Hont Citation2008, pp. 269–70; Charles Citation2008, pp. 191–2).
6 According to Paganelli (2007, pp. 17–18), Hume here praises the policy of France that encourages the alternative usage of precious metals not as specie but as jewelry and tableware in churches and at home, which effortlessly decreases the quantity of specie money.
7 Rousseau seems to be at one with Hume on this point by admitting that Sparta was a republic of demi-gods (Berry Citation1994, p. 148).
8 On the significance of this pamphlet for our understanding of Hume’s view of economic development, see Caffentzis Citation2001, pp. 310–5.
9 In this regard, however, Kapossy observes that ‘[f]or most Swiss and foreign commentators Geneva was not the flag bearer of Swiss military republicanism but rather its opposite, namely a highly unstable commercial republic which managed to maintain its independence only because of the vital role that it played in the French deficit-based system of public finance’ (Kapossy Citation2002: 232).
10 Because of many striking similarities between Cantillon’s Essay and several of Hume’s economic essays in the Political Discourses on the specie flow mechanism and the quantity theory of money, scholars of the history of economics have discussed whether both reached similar conclusions independently, or if Hume knew Cantillon’s work from reading the latter’s manuscript or Malachy Postlethwayt’s plagiarised English translation (Wennerlind Citation2008, pp. 120–3; Brewer Citation1992, pp. 185–6; Murphy Citation1986, pp. 270–1; Van Den Verg Citation2015, pp. 1– 15).
11 Rousseau’s economic analysis in the ‘Discourse on Political Economy’ appeared as part of his arguments on taxation, which were fully developed neither in the ‘Geneva Manuscript’ nor in the Social Contract (1762); they were intended for his planned but aborted Political Institutions (Les Institutions politiques).
12 Compare this sentence in one of the contemporary French translations with Rousseau’s original quoted in the next footnote: ‘Supposons que quatre parties de tout l’argent de la Grande-Bretagne fuissent anéanties dans une nuit, & qu’à cet égard la Nation fût réduite à la même condition qu’elle était sous les Regnes des Henris & des Edouards; quelle en seroit la conséquence? Le prix du travail &des denrées ne tomberait-il pas à proportion, & chaque chose ne seroit-elle pas à aussi bon marché qu’elle l’étoit de ce tems-là?’ (Hume 1755, I: 188).
13 ‘De sorte que si dans cette supposition tous ces tresors se trouvoient aneantis en une seule nuit sans que les denrées et autres marchandises eussent souffert aucune alteration cette perte ne seroit sensible à personne et à peine s’en appercevroit-on le lendemain.’
14 Obviously John Lock is not an exceptional referent for the conventional nature of money. The same claim is found in Book V of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (Paganelli Citation2009, p. 67).
15 Bindon’s English translation was based on the first edition of Melon’s Essai. Because of some additional chapters in the second edition, the chapter numbers on money and exchange became Chapters 12–19 after the second edition.
16 It is possible that Rousseau might have acquired some knowledge of Hume through Mirabeau, who criticises the Scot’s discussions of luxury in L’Ami des hommes (Susato Citation2015, pp. 118–19), but, as we saw in the previous sections, Rousseau’s evaluation of Hume in his Confessions reflects more than what Mirabeau covered in his book on Hume.
17 For more on the distinction between vanity and pride, see Kelly Citation1987, p. 98.
18 Hume assumes that in wartime a sovereign can easily ‘seize some part of [a nation’s] superfluous labour, and employ it in the public service, without giving him his wonted return’ (Hume1985 [1752], p. 262). Hume here seems to presume that economic activity would enable the nation more accustomed to the military services, while Rousseau did not go that far.
19 See also Rousseau’s defence of a luxury tax (rather than sumptuary laws) in the Considerations of Poland (Rousseau Citation1997c, p. 189; Rousseau Citation1959–1995, III: 965–6).
20 In a footnote to the Letter to M. d’Alembert on the Theatre, Rousseau mentions two famous, ancient and modern, historians and philosophers familiar to d’Alembert, and remarks that ‘the modern would be of his [d’Alembert’s] opinion, perhaps’ (Rousseau Citation2004 [1758], p. 261n.; Rousseau Citation1959–1995, V: 14). According to Rousseau himself, such entertainment as theatres would be nothing but a cause of moral corruption in a small agrarian country. The editors of the French Pléiade edition presume this unnamed modern to be Hume (Rousseau named the ancient as Tacitus) (Rousseau Citation1959–1995, V: 1312 n.7); though the editors of the English translation mention the Abbé Raynal as ‘[a]n alternative’ (396 n.11).
21 On a personal level, Rousseau believed that Hume was an accomplice of the conspiracy group against him until the end of his days (Rousseau Citation1990, pp. 91–2; Rousseau Citation1959–1995, I: 779–80).