Hume without Spontaneous Order

John Salter ()
Additional contact information
John Salter: University of Manchester

Rationality, Markets and Morals, 2015, vol. 6, issue 94

Abstract: The question whether it is possible to be both a Humean and a contractarian arises from the interpretation of Hume as a theorist of spontaneous order, a theory that is usually taken to be incompatible with contractarianism. I argue that this interpretation is unconvincing and anachronistic. The real reason why it is problematic to view Hume as a contractarian is not because he is proponent of spontaneous order, but because he is a virtue-ethicist. I argue that Hume adopted and elaborated on the natural law account of the origins of property as conventional, but provided a different and separate account of the obligation to respect property rights.

Keywords: Hume; convention; spontaneous order; contractarianism; natural law; property (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.rmm-journal.de/downloads/Article_Salter.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:6:y:2015:i:94

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 ).