made people distrustful of one another, and rendered society unstable. As does
Hobbes, Hume argues that we are all better off under a state, especially a state that
guarantees the protection of private property, but for Hume the very success of
such mutual advantage depends on a suspension of self-interest. This observation
leads to Hume’s famous rejection of the social contract and, by extension, his
rejection of the liberal tradition.
The social contract is a fiction: no political society was ever created by a contract.
More important than Hume’s historical observation is his discussion of the
implications for political legitimacy of holding the view that society was the result
of a contract. Political authority, or legitimacy, arises from the habit of obedience
to a power that initially is recognised as neither legitimate nor illegitimate, but as
simply ‘given’ – in legal language, such power would be termed de facto, as distinct
from de jure(Hume, 1963: 462). The implication of Hobbes’s argument was that
any monopolistic political power was preferable to none at all, such that this
distinction is invalid: whatever gets us out of the state of nature is ‘legitimate’.
Hume, in part, endorses Hobbes’s argument for state over anarchy, but because
Hume ties legitimacy to sentiment, and sentiment only develops gradually, the state
acquires legitimacy after the fact of its existence (Hume, 1963: 538). Crucially, the
degree to which it is legitimate depends on how effective it is in protecting
individuals’ interests and engendering moral sentiments conducive to social order.
While Hume rejects revolution as a leap into the unknown, the implication of his
argument is that repressive, authoritarian states will have limited success in building
their legitimacy.
Justice is a virtue operating in any society in which strangers come into contact
with one another. The rules of justice are the product of artifice and contrivance,
and are intended to protect private property. Crucially, the rules evolve over time
as people become habituated to them. We recognise that they serve our interests,
but our allegiance to them cannot be reduced to self-interest, for we respect them
even when it might be in our interest to break them. There develops an ‘intercourse
of sentiments’ – a ‘conversation’ between citizens out of which emerges a limited
benevolence detached from narrow self-interest (Hume, 1978: 602). Many critics
suspect that moral sentiments, or sympathy, are still egoistic, for what human beings
care about is that they will be held in esteem by others, and, therefore, doing the
right thing is pleasurable. Hume himself seems to suggest this: ‘every quality of the
mind, which is usefulor agreeableto the person himselfor to others, communicates
a pleasure to the spectator, engages his esteem, and is admitted under the honourable
denomination of virtue or merit’ (Hume, 1978: 277). However, pleasure is
compatible with sociability in a way that self-interest is not.Edmund Burke
If Hume was the first great conservative thinker, then Edmund Burke (1729–97)
must be the most famous. As with Hume, the philosophical starting point for
Burke’s conservatism is his rejection of abstractions, such as the natural rights
proclaimed by the French Revolutionaries in 1789. Abstractions become embodied
in theories, and theories become dogma, and a dogmatic approach will not permitChapter 9 Conservatism 199