When Bad Things Happen from Good People (and Vice-Versa): Hume's Political Ethics of Revolution

In the first Stuart volume of his History of England, David Hume provides ample evidence for his self-proclaimed "Whig principles" regarding "things" and "Tory prejudices" regarding "persons." Hume praises kings and royalists who obstructed laudable reforms and despises the revolutionary politicians who forced their adoption. The paper draws from this apparent paradox lessons for political theory and political ethics. Hume's complex judgments, it argues, follow from his view of political science as potentially progressive but constantly imperfect; his approach to what we would now call moral pluralism, which he saw as the basis of party politics; and his hope that history could lend vividness and motivating force to moral theory. Some general conclusions suggest themselves. Political actors ought to study, and rely on, the best political science available. Partisans in serious political disputes should acknowledge both the valid moral points of all sides and the need to choose sides. And history can be a source of ethical instruction as well as theoretical and factual knowledge.