After reading this article you will learn about the bio, life and views on David Hume on social contract.
Life of David Hume:
David Hume was born in 1711 and died in 1776. This year is famous in Western history. Adam Smiths. The American Declaration of Independence took place in 1776 and, finally, Bentham published his Fragment of Government in this year. Hume was an important part of the Enlightenment. 1748 was a memorable year for Hume.
David Hume published the third edition of Essay. He had a great friendship with Enlightenment thinker Montesquieu. Hume presented a copy of the third edition of Essay to Montesquieu and in return Montesquieu presented a copy of The Spirit of Law to Hume. This paved the way of friendship between the two great thinkers of the Enlightenment.
Hume has been regarded as an iconoclast in the philosophical world. He thought that religion made man bad individually and collectively. This is the opinion of Maxey. He thought that man was generally misguided by religion and, in fact, there is no reason in religion. Man is moved by sentiment and emotion and these are generally the products of religion.
Some critics say that David Hume was a turncoat on account of his apparent swing from Whigism to Toryism. But Maxey does accept this charge against Hume. He says, “The integrity of his fundamental political ideas was never, compromised”. David Hume was always under the influence of particular incidents and these forced him to change his opinion.
About him Plamenatz’s assessment is interesting:
“Hume’s would surely be a broom. Not that he liked to boast or threaten. He was the most polite as well as most ruthless of critics. He used his broom deftly and quietly, raising little dust, but he used it vigorously”.
David Hume’s View on Social Contract:
Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, the three great apostles of social contract have assiduously argued that the civil society or the body politic or the state was the product of contract. But Hume the great figure of Enlightenment and ardent believer in reason was against the contract theory. He was also historically-minded. In our analysis of contract theory we have shown that behind it there are no historical facts.
It is simply an imagination that at certain period of time men lived in an imaginary situation called the state of nature and the unpleasant or anarchical situation forced them to leave that situation. But Hume rejected the social contract root and branch.
He was of the view that a social contract might be the cause of state, but such a contract must, for all practical purposes, be historical and sociological.
He says, “no compact or agreement was expressly formed for general submission; an idea far beyond the comprehension of savages.”
About the origin of state David Hume said:
“Examination of the world today affords no support for the view that government rests on contract. On the contrary, everywhere we find princes who claim their subjects as their property and assert their independent right of sovereignty from conquest or succession and subjects acknowledge their subordination. Almost all the governments which exist at present or of which there remains any record in his story, have been founded originally either on usurpation or conquest or both, without any pretence of a fair consent or voluntary subjection of the people”.
So we find that in Hume’s judgment the state was not the product of social contract. He also did not accept the tacit consent. David Hume concludes that all the governments whose records are available in history were founded without any voluntary consent of the people.
“It is vain to say that all governments are or should be founded on popular consent, as much as the necessities of human affairs will admit I maintain that human affairs will never admit of this consent, seldom of the appearance of it. My intention here is not to exclude the consent of the people from being the one just foundation of government where it has place. It is surely the best and most sacred of any”.
So it is quite clear that Hume did not accept the social contract as the foundation of state. If so, what, according to him, is the real cause of the foundation? According to Hume, the social evolution is the real cause. He has explained the stages of social evolution and in a stage the state or human society has finally come into existence.
In the various stages of evolution human consent has very insignificant role to play. Stage by stage and step by step society has evolved and, naturally, the consent has nothing to play.
Human society is always in the condition of change or flux. In such a situation consent has no scope to play any constructive role. He has, however, admitted that consent might have a very insignificant contribution. In the opinion of Plamenatz according to Hume the state is merely a contrivance in the public interest. The more we accept it and less we tamper with it, the more useful it is likely to be.