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Hume's Criticism of Natural Rights: Taking Virtue Seriously
| Article
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16319 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1989 |
4,437 Words |
| Author
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Donald Livingston
Donald Livingston is professor of philosophy at Emory
University and author of David Hume and the Common Life
(University of Chicago Press). |
Today it appears to many that moral criticism is impossible without an appeal to rights. The moral question of abortion, for example, is reduced to the question of a right to life versus a right to choice. Animals are endowed with original rights, and a number of philosophers have recently even argued that trees, rivers, and mountains have rights. It appears that many have difficulty conceiving that there may be actions that are intrinsically wrong, but which violate no one's (or no thing's) "rights." The usurpation of other moral values by rights advocacy is a quirk of the twentieth century. But the modern philosophical theory of natural rights goes back at least to the seventeenth century. The work of Grotius and Puffendorf, and especially Locke's Two Treatises on Government, put forth claims that are seen as belonging to individuals in relation to civil society. These claims to life and property are treated as an inalienable possession that neither government nor custom should encroach upon without the consent of the individuals affected. However, it was not until the American Declaration of Independence that the philosophical theory of natural rights became a justification and practical guide for a major political act. It was as the Promethean bearer of natural rights that the American Revolution entered liberal mythology with the shot heard around the world.
In August 1776, the great Scottish philosopher David Hume lay dying in Edinburgh. On August 20, five days before Hume's death, Edinburgh's Caledonian Mercury published the entire text of the Declaration of Independence. We do not know if Hume read the Declaration, but it would not have surprised him. From the Stamp Act on he had been a supporter of the American cause. As early as 1768 he came out in favor of unconditional independence--something that scarcely any American had contemplated at that time--and consistently held to this position until his death. In 1775, writing to his friend Baron Mure, he refused to draft a petition to the king asking for strong measures against the Americans. Hume exclaimed: "I am an American in my principles and wish we would let them alone to govern or misgovern themselves as they think proper."
By being an "American" in his principles Hume did not mean, as would typically be inferred today, a defender of the American liberal notion of natural rights. For although he supported American independence, he rejected the philosophical theory that purportedly justified it. But so strong is the grip of liberal ideology that we may find it difficult to understand how Hume could support independence without supporting the doctrine of natural rights. It was this doctrine, invoked in the Declaration of Independence, that was used
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