Can a Humean be a Contractarian?

Robert Sugden

Rationality, Markets and Morals, 2009, vol. 0, issue 1

Abstract: In this paper I argue, contrary to Hartmut Kliemt, that it is possible to be both a Humean and, in James Buchanan's sense, a contractarian. Hume sees principles of justice and political allegiance not as actual or hypothetical products of explicit agreement, but as conventions that have emerged spontaneously. However, it is fundamental to Hume's analysis that conventions are mutually advantageous, and hence cognate with agreements. The core idea in Buchanan's contractarianism is that the proper role of government is to implement voluntary exchanges between individuals, not to define and maximise a unified conception of social welfare. Although real politics cannot be based entirely on unanimous agreement, the voluntary exchange approach provides a valuable structure for normative economics.

Keywords: Hume; Buchanan; contractarian; contractarianism; conventions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.rmm-journal.de/downloads/002_sugden.pdf (application/pdf)

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:rmm:journl:v:0:y:2009:i:1

Access Statistics for this article

Rationality, Markets and Morals is currently edited by Bernd Lahno

More articles in Rationality, Markets and Morals from Frankfurt School Verlag, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Friederike Pförtner ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).