Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: The Scottish Enlightenment in the history of ideas
- 1 Natural law in the seventeenth century
- 2 Natural law and moral realism: The civic humanist synthesis in Francis Hutcheson and George Turnbull
- 3 Between superstition and enthusiasm: David Hume's theory of justice, government, and politics
- 4 Adam Smith out of context: His theory of rights in Prussian perspective
- 5 John Millar and the science of a legislator
- 6 Thomas Reid's moral and political philosophy
- 7 Dugald Stewart and the science of a legislator
- 8 The science of a legislator in James Mackintosh's moral philosophy
- 9 James Mill and Scottish moral philosophy
- 10 From natural law to the rights of man: A European perspective on American debates
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Between superstition and enthusiasm: David Hume's theory of justice, government, and politics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: The Scottish Enlightenment in the history of ideas
- 1 Natural law in the seventeenth century
- 2 Natural law and moral realism: The civic humanist synthesis in Francis Hutcheson and George Turnbull
- 3 Between superstition and enthusiasm: David Hume's theory of justice, government, and politics
- 4 Adam Smith out of context: His theory of rights in Prussian perspective
- 5 John Millar and the science of a legislator
- 6 Thomas Reid's moral and political philosophy
- 7 Dugald Stewart and the science of a legislator
- 8 The science of a legislator in James Mackintosh's moral philosophy
- 9 James Mill and Scottish moral philosophy
- 10 From natural law to the rights of man: A European perspective on American debates
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
David Hume believed that most of the views about society and politics prevalent in his day had roots in one or another of ‘two species of false religion’: superstition and enthusiasm. Both were developments of conflicting theological doctrines that appealed to two different types of personalities. Both had come to be associated with opposing political interests. Both sprang from ignorance. And, although the two species had been universally present in society and in individuals in varying degrees throughout history, the peculiarity of modern post-Reformation Europe was the violent oscillation between them, as evidenced by the many wars of religion. Their more extreme adherents were also, not least, responsible for the plight of modern Britain, both North and South. One of the tasks of the philosophical historian, Hume believed, was to explain the preponderance at particular times of one or the other of these persuasions. The task he set for his political theory was to explain why both were philosophically misconceived, empirically untenable, and, in their extreme forms, politically dangerous.
The politics of religion
One part of humanity, Hume notes, has a tendency to ‘weakness, fear, [and] melancholy, together with ignorance’. In this state, the imagination conjures up forces operating under the surface, and the mind is prone to grasp methods of influencing such forces by ‘ceremonies, observances, mortifications, sacrifices, presents, or … any practice, however absurd or frivolous which either folly or knavery recommends to a blind and terrified credulity’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Natural Law and Moral PhilosophyFrom Grotius to the Scottish Enlightenment, pp. 100 - 128Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996