Political Thought of Hume and His Contemporaries: Enlightenment Projects

ISBN-13: 9781138833333 / Angielski / Twarda / 2014

Frederick G. Whelan

Opis

This two-volume text examines David Hume's political thought (1711-1776) and that of his contemporaries, including Smith, Blackstone, Burke and Robertson. The book is unified by its temporal focus on the middle and later decades of the 18th century and hence on what is usually taken to be the core period of the Enlightenment, a somewhat problematic term. Covering topics such as property, contract and resistance theory, religious establishments, the law of nations, the balance of power, demography, and the role of unintended consequences in social life, Frederick G. Whelan convincingly conveys the diversity - and creativity - of the intellectual engagements of even a limited set of Enlightenment thinkers in contrast to dismissive attitudes, in some quarters, toward the Enlightenment and its supposed unitary project.

Spis treści

Selected Contents: Volume 1 1. Property as Artifice: Hume and Blackstone 2. Hume and Contractarianism 3. The Place of Contract in Burke’s Political Theory 4. Grotian Resistance Theory from Hume to Burke 5. Time, Revolution, and Prescriptive Right in Hume’s Theory of Government 6. Church Establishments, Liberty, and Competition in Religion 7. Vattel’s Doctrine of the State 8. Robertson, Hume, and the Balance of Power 9. Hume on the Laws of Nations, Chastity, and Double Standards 10. "Contrary Effects" and the Reverse Invisible Hand in Hume and Smith 11. Population and Ideology in the Enlightenment Conclusion Volume 2 1.Vattel’s Doctrine of the State 2. Robertson, Hume, and the Balance of Power 3. Hume on the Laws of Nations, Chastity, and Double Standards 4. " Contrary Effects" and the Reverse Invisible Hand in Hume and Smith 5. Population and Ideology in the Enlightenment 6. Explaining Imperial Decline in Eighteenth-Century Scottish Thought