The relation of morality to political economy in Hume

Serap Ayşe Kayatekin

Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2014, vol. 38, issue 3, 605-622

Abstract: In his Treatise of Human Nature, Hume argues that reason does not motivate action but rather directs our judgement by informing us about their causes and effects. He distances, in his argument, passions from reason by claiming that passions are not ideas, do not represent anything, are self-contained and thus cannot be contradictory to truth or reason. Moral judgements, according to Hume, are passions and as such they cannot be contrary to reason. For Hume, morality does not consist of immutable principles to be discovered by reason; it is based on human passions, which, through repetition, human beings come to associate with certain moral characteristics. Following on this statement, I here explore the following point: to the extent economic behaviour is determined by passions such as greed, benevolence and pleasure, we cannot separate economic activity and morality. As an extension, morality and political economy are inextricably linked in Hume. This suggests that ethics, through the study of morality and political economy, and the study of economic behaviour and institutions are inseparable subjects. It is interesting to observe this in the work of Hume, a fundamental influence on Adam Smith, one of the most important precursors of modern economics. The paper underlines the importance of understanding the evolution of the history of economic thinking that led to modern-day economics and which, though claiming Hume via Smith as one of its progenitors, argues for a complete separation of ethics and economics. In particular, the separation of positive from normative economics becomes infeasible in light of Hume’s analysis, rendering problematic the claim of modern economics that Hume is the founding father.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/cje/bes072 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:cambje:v:38:y:2014:i:3:p:605-622.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Cambridge Journal of Economics is currently edited by Jacqui Lagrue

More articles in Cambridge Journal of Economics from Cambridge Political Economy Society Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().