Contrasting Views of Liberty in Hume and Rousseau (November 2024)

The introduction and diffusion of commerce as the predominant means of subsistence transforms every person into a merchant, to paraphrase Adam Smith. One implication is that commercial societies present changes and challenges to the pre-existing political and social structures.

The ancient system of direct political participation loses its appeal in favor of a more indirect form of political representation which frees individuals to dedicate themselves to the kind of activities they value the most. Benjamin Constant (1819) famously presented this distinction. But this new liberty has its benefits as well as its costs (for an analysis of this modern freedom in Rousseau and Rowls see Hurtado 2011).

David Hume ([1752] 1985) recognized that the introduction and diffusion of commerce bought about good government and good institutions:

These developments, though, have not been the product of a rational plan but rather of accidents of history. While it is true that in commercial societies people tend to have “government of Laws, not of Men” (94), this does not assure continuous security. The irrational passions that govern politics may lead to instabilities, so “authority must be acknowledged essential to its very existence” (41. For a complete analysis of the role of authority in Hume, see Harris 2018).

Similarly to Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau recognizes the importance of equality before of the law. But his reasoning differs. Commercial societies generate inequalities. The rich have the tendency to dominate the poor. To protect the liberty of the poor, it is indispensable that the state establishes equality before the law, so that the inequalities caused by commerce can dissipate, and so that everybody is equally dependent on the law. As individuals are citizens, when they follow the general will they follow nothing more than their own will, thus guaranteeing their own freedom:

For Rousseau, the other problematic aspect of commercial societies is related to the loss of independence that an individual faces. Commercial societies imply division of labor. Division of labor in turn implies that individuals are not able to provide for themselves, individuals become dependent on others, thus losing their freedom. Indeed:

This is why the law plays such an important role: it allows individuals to become free, as it frees them from being dependent on others.

The material dependence that Rousseau sees emerging in commercial societies has a counterpart in a psychological dependence. Both limit the freedom of an individual, who should instead aim at being independent and thus free. The psychological dependence is the result of envy and rivalry. Material inequalities cause envy so that an individual’s psychological wellbeing is now dependent on others.

For Rousseau this can be understood as a departure from the natural human condition. We become different creatures when we care too much about the opinion of others. This changes our motivations and how we interact with others, our feelings become inauthentic and pretend to be what we are not in order to get other people to like us.

With Emile,or On Education Rousseau seems to attempt to provide a solution to this dependence problem: education (Rousselière 2016). The education consists not only of how to become independent from the judgment of others, but also to reduce material dependence to a more natural dependence. Furthermore, education allows Emile to survive in a commercial society without becoming trapped in it. So, for example, choosing to be a carpenter would be better than becoming a writer, since a carpenter is better equipped to be materially independent from others (163-164).

For Rousseau’s Emile the role model to try to achieve as much independence as possible is Robinson Crouse:

What is striking, especially for the people who are familiar with Adam Smith’s work ([1759] 1982), is the isolation which Rousseau thinks is needed to develop an impartial judgment:

Hume also sees the dependence generated by commercial societies, but rather than seeing them as a cost, he sees them as a benefit. The material inequalities that commerce causes, rather than generating an unhealthy form of envy and rivalry, stimulate productivity, driving people out of sloth (“Of Refinement in the Arts”). The increased division of labor does indeed increase one’s dependence on others, but it also allows one to choose the profession one likes or sees more profitable. Hume praises the freedom he had to choose to become a writer, and thus “very opulent” and with a fulfilling life, exactly because he did not have to worry about doing the things that a carpenter does (Paganelli 2021). Interestingly enough, Hume tells us that “I was to become not only independent, but opulent” (p. xxxviii). His independence here is what Rousseau thinks of as dependence: Hume’s opulence depends on others, and it is his dependence on others that allows him to be independent.

According to Hume, even the psychological dependence that comes with commercial society has advantages. It makes people more social and more “refined”. The more luxury a society has, the more people want to get together and share their experiences. For Hume, this is not an environment that fosters envy or nasty self-love, or falsehood, but rather one that fosters friendships (even among men and women) and the most sociable and healthy aspects of human beings, including honesty and humanity.

In Hume’s view, Rousseau’s belief that the dependence in a commercial society leads to corruption is a mistake. Not only is there no necessary relationship between wealth and corruption, but the more wealth is diffused through society, the less dependent the poor are on specific individuals, freeing them from the tyranny they had long suffered. Commerce is thus the incubator of political and personal freedom for Hume, where individuals can fulfill themselves in their humanity.

So, in a sense, Hume and Rousseau share similar attitudes toward commercial societies, and in a sense they part from each other. They both see the need of a state that promotes equality before the law, and they both see the increase of dependence that commerce causes due to the increased specialization. Yet, they part as far as their understanding of the role of reason in the political realm and regarding whether this increased material and psychological dependence is overall beneficial or not. While Rousseau seems to focus more on the costs in terms of liberty associated with commerce, Hume seems to focus more on the benefits in terms of liberty associated with commerce.

Constant, Benjamin. 1819. "The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns." In.: Unknown.

Harris, James. 2018. 'Hume.' in Mark Garnett (ed.), Conservative Moments: reading conservative texts (Bloomsbury Academic: London and New York).

Hume, David. [1752] 1985. Essays, moral, political, and literary (Liberty Fund: Indianapolis).

Hurtado, Jimena. 2011. 'Liberty and Independence: Rousseau's Real Freedom Examined.' in Ragip Ege  and Herrade Igersheim (eds.), Freedom and Happiness in Economic Thought and Philosophy. (Routledge: London and New York).

Paganelli, Maria Pia. 2021. 'Adam Smith and Dying Peacefully.' in Erin A. Dolgoy, Kimberly Hurd Hale and Bruce Peabody (eds.), Political Theory of Death and Dying (Routledge).

Rousseau, Jean-Jaques. [1762] 1921. Emile, or Education (E.P. Dutton: New York).

Rousselière, Geneviève. 2016. 'Rousseau on Freedom in Commercial Society', American Journal of Political Science, 60: 352-63.

Smith, Adam. [1759] 1982. The theory of moral sentiments (Liberty Classics: Indianapolis).

Hume, the skeptical Enlightenment thinker, and Rousseau, the romantic critic of Enlightenment, had a famous falling out, rumors of which spread throughout Europe. The two were bound to clash. The sociable Hume and the solitary Rousseau had significantly different personalities. Their philosophies were also at variance. Hume was an urbane, cosmopolitan defender of civilization. Rousseau lambasted civilization as a corrupter of morals. Their respective conceptions of liberty produced competing ideas about good government and the meaning of progress.

In 1762, the Archbishop of Paris condemned Rousseau’s book Emile, which included the “Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar.” Rousseau fled Paris to avoid arrest. Writing to a mutual friend, the Comtesse de Boufflers, Hume wrote, “I am not in the least surprised that [‘The Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar’] gave offence. … The liberty of the press is not so secured in any country, scarce even in this, as not to render such an open attack of popular prejudices somewhat dangerous.”

Although in this passage, Hume seemed to bemoan insufficient liberty of the press, Hume was of two minds about the liberty of the press. Later in life, Hume regarded the liberty of the press as a necessary evil that, while beneficial, tended to rile up the public. But in his early essays Hume highly praised the liberty of the press for allowing “all the learning, wit, and genius of the nation” to “be employed on the side of freedom.” When referring to “freedom” here, Hume likely had two senses of the word in mind: first, free government, and second, personal liberty. The two typically appear in conjunction.

As he stated in his last essay, “Of the Origin of Government” (1777), free government is a mixed government, with divided powers, in which the power of the people is equal to or greater than the power of the monarch. A free government is epitomized by the rule of law, not men. A free government includes frequent elections and institutional restraints on magistrates.

The opposite of a free government is an arbitrary government. As Hume observed in “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences” (1742), an arbitrary government is “oppressive and debasing.” In an arbitrary, or as Hume sometimes described it, a “barbarous” monarchy, the monarch “governs the subjects with full authority, as if they were his own.” The monarch delegates his power to inferior magistrates who exercise discretionary judgment, thereby debasing the people by governing them unequally in accordance with no stable system of law. The people governed in such a manner “are slaves in the full and proper sense of the word.”

Personal liberty consists of the individual’s protection against unreasonable and excessive intrusion into one’s personal affairs. A free government protects personal liberty—the individual’s life and property—by enforcing contracts, ensuring fair trials, and prohibiting unlawful searches and seizures.

A free government secures citizens’ “lives and properties,” exempts citizens “from the dominion of another,” and protects “against the violence or tyranny of … fellow-citizens.” It does so, in part,  through the efforts of the popular part of the constitution, the House of Commons, “to maintain a watchful jealousy over the magistrates, to remove all discretionary powers, and to secure every one’s life and fortune by general and inflexible laws.” A person’s liberty is secured when “no action” is “deemed a crime but what the law has plainly determined to be such”; when “no crime” is “imputed to a man but from a legal proof before his judges”; and when “these judges” are “his fellow-subjects, who are obliged, by their own interest, to have a watchful eye over the encroachments and violence of the ministers.”

Liberty, as Hume memorably remarked, is “the perfection of civil society.” Preserving liberty, however, sometimes requires conflict. In fact, free government is characterized by party conflict. There is no way to get rid of it.

Hume located the causes of party conflict in the English Constitution and in human psychology. The monarchical part of the constitution gave rise first to the Cavaliers, then to the Tories. The republican part of the constitution gave rise first to the Roundheads, then to the Whigs. On the psychological level, the former hate and fear anarchy, while the latter hate and fear tyranny.

In his widely read History of England (1754-1762), Hume traced the ultimate victory of the defenders of liberty. The Glorious Revolution of 1688-89, according to Hume, established “a new epoch in the constitution … deciding many important questions in favour of liberty” and giving the “ascendant to popular principles.” As a result, Hume wrote, “we, in this island, have ever since enjoyed, if not the best system of government, at least the most entire system of liberty, that ever was known amongst mankind.”

Hume admitted that it was necessary, both in the English Civil Wars (1642-1651) and the Glorious Revolution, for the popular part of the constitution to oppose the arbitrary and unlawful exercise of monarchical power. According to Hume, even the “wise and moderate”—those averse to tumult and above petty partisan bickering—must admit that the Stuart kings before the Civil Wars were “possessed of so exorbitant a prerogative, that it was not sufficient for liberty to remain on the defensive … it was become necessary to carry on an offensive war, and to circumscribe, within more narrow, as well as more exact bounds, the authority of the sovereign.”

For Hume, the preservation of freedom demands “an eternal jealousy … against the sovereign … no discretionary powers must ever be entrusted to him, by which the property or personal liberty of any subject can be affected.” The need to stoke the fires of this jealousy, these popular passions, to preserve liberty is the reason that “in ancient times” liberty had “been accompanied with such circumstances of violence, convulsion, civil war, and disorder.”

The transition from the absolute monarchy of the Tudors and Stuarts to the limited monarchy of the post-Glorious Revolution settlement made individual life more tranquil and public life more turbulent. In Hume’s words, it rendered “the liberty and independence of individuals … much more full, entire, and secure” and the liberty of the public “more uncertain and precarious.” The reason for this, as Hume acknowledged, is that the preservation of free government demands that the interests of the Crown and the interests of the Commons contend with each other to strike a proper balance between liberty and authority. Although this process preserves an optimal degree of civil liberty, it produces party rage and public strife.

One of Hume’s primary aims was to make not only personal liberty, but also public liberty more tranquil and secure. Private life had become more tranquil with the progress of the arts and sciences. The “middling rank of men,” which Hume called the “best and firmest basis of public liberty,” enjoyed greater levels of commerce and conversation in polite society. And Hume thought public life could become more tranquil, too. Hume noted in “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences” and in “Of Civil Liberty” (1741), that commerce, the arts, and sciences all arose first in free governments. But free governments, at the time Hume was writing, seemed less likely to preserve modern gains in these fields.

Hume vehemently attacked the trend toward excessive freedom in private letters written in the late 1760s and early 1770s. But long before that, in his early essays, Hume had already provided evidence for the benefits of France’s civilized monarchy over Britain’s turbulent mixed government. In “Of Civil Liberty,” Hume had argued that France had learned the right lessons from free governments, combining excellence in the fine arts with burgeoning economic freedom fostered by the rule of law. Hume thought this modernized version of French civilized monarchy would prove more tranquil and, perhaps, more long-lasting than Britain’s mixed constitution, since the latter was threatened by increasing public debt and factionalism.

This argument is consistent with the science of politics Hume articulated not only in his Essays, but also in Book 3 of his Treatise of Human Nature (1740). There, Hume described the origins of law and government. And he contended that government is a means by which to protect the institutions that make a market economy possible, namely, property, trade, and commerce. The purpose of government is to foster free economic competition in society. As Hume stated in perhaps his most optimistic statement about civilizational progress, “industry, knowledge, and humanity, are linked together by an indissoluble chain, and are found, from experience as well as reason, to be peculiar to the more polished, and, what are commonly denominated, the more luxurious ages,” those ages, namely, in which government preserves and promotes commerce.

Rousseau, on the other hand, condemned the more luxurious modern age for fostering slavery, not freedom. Whereas Hume promoted an enlightened, scientific approach to government that fostered greater economic freedom and tranquility, Rousseau detested “our politicians,” who, obsessed with economics, “only speak of commerce and wealth.” For Rousseau, liberty, personal or public, is primarily political. It is anything but tranquil. It requires boldness, action, and vigilance.

The primary problem Rousseau addressed in his moral and political writings is the way that society changes the human person. According to Rousseau, the human constitution has been disfigured by generations of social development. Law, habit, and education have pulled us away from our natural, primitive—and for Rousseau, superior—condition.

Having distinguished between primitive and civilized man in his “Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality among Men,” Rousseau exclaimed: “How much you have changed from what you were!”  One cause of the change in man is the introduction of private property, which created a division between masters and slaves. Rousseau argued that the savage, who does not own any property, is neither master of nor slave of another man. The savage does not know “what servitude and domination are … what chains of dependence can there be among men who possess nothing?” Law itself, according to Rousseau, was created by the wealthy and powerful to retain their position in society.

The other cause of inequality—and dependence—is the fight for distinction, which transforms us from being interested in self-preservation to being interested in gaining social and economic advantage over others. After primitive man, who was “free and independent,” entered society, Rousseau explained, he became a slave to the opinions of other men by trying to appear distinct, uniquely meritorious, in their eyes. Competition and rivalry distorted our self-understanding. We became vain and inauthentic, seeking to please others.

One of the products of the “rage for distinction” was the development of the arts and sciences, which, as Rousseau surprisingly argued in the “Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts,” produced moral corruption. Rousseau thought that Athens illustrated what happens due to great achievement in the fine arts. Athens turned soft, weak, and corrupt. Its rival Sparta, on the other hand, remained rustic, noble, simple, and strong. It would have been better for the Athenians to turn away from their “prideful efforts” and remain in “that happy ignorance in which eternal wisdom had placed us.”

By becoming sociable, man became a slave, forced to live “at another’s discretion.” A free government, according to Rousseau, is one in which freedom—that is, humanity’s native independence—is restored. The purpose of the social contract, for Rousseau, is to return man to a condition of independence, in which he is his own master, setting the law for himself and for society.

But the people themselves must act to restore freedom, which Rousseau called “the most noble of man’s faculties.” The people must value freedom over tranquility. The people must desire freedom more than gain. The people must fear slavery more than poverty. This robust love of freedom requires emulation of ancient model republics, such as Sparta and Rome.

On the individual level, this means that citizens should “despise European voluptuousness” and, like “naked savages” regain the willingness to “brave hunger, fire, the sword, and death to preserve nothing but their independence.” It might seem hopeless to expect modern citizens addicted to tranquility and luxury to exhibit the strength, courage, and vigor of soul belonging to primitive man. But Rousseau supposed that a small, well-governed democracy might generate enough public spirit, enough love of the fatherland, to enable citizens to live freely in the modern world.

Rousseau argued that a legitimate government is a republic ruled by the general will. In such a republic, Rousseau wrote, “you have no masters other than those wise laws you have made, administered by upright magistrates of your choosing.” Freedom in this republic exists when there is “perfect independence with respect to all the others” and equal dependence of all on the state, which enforces the general will, the will of the people expressed in the framing of fundamental law.

Hume’s influential theory regarding the possibility of an extended commercial republic provided the framers of the American Constitution with the tools to craft a large federal republic. Rousseau, on the other hand, insisted that republics, like those of the ancient world, must be the right size, neither too small nor too big. They must be big enough that they can be self-sufficient, but not so big that they cannot be well-governed.

The difference between Hume and Rousseau on this point stems, in part, from Hume’s attempt to find the institutional means by which to prevent faction from tearing government apart. Rousseau, however, thought that independence required that individuals make laws for themselves. Rousseau thought that “the more the state grows, the more freedom diminishes,” because the individual makes up less of the sovereign power.

Free government, for Rousseau, is based on laws that are responsive to the general will. Free government, for Hume, protects life and property in a freely competitive market. For Rousseau, man is very much a political animal. For Hume, man is very much an economic animal. This is one reason why Hume thought efforts by the government to reduce material inequality were ultimately feckless and possibly unjust. The end of government, for Hume, is the protection of free exchange in civil society, not the attempt to establish a desirable end-state, for example, the redistribution of wealth according to some predetermined standard.

Rousseau, meanwhile, argued that government ought to be responsive to the general will. For this to happen, property ownership and wealth distribution must be relatively equal. If citizens are too poor, they might sell themselves. If citizens are too rich, they might attempt to buy others. For Rousseau, sumptuary laws and limits on wealth accumulation are necessary to preserve political independence.

Hume viewed progress as the result of free exchange of goods, services, and ideas in civil society. This produces advancement in the mechanical and liberal arts. Rousseau thought this kind of “progress” weakened man’s political muscles, making him morally lax, undisciplined, and dependent on representatives in parliament. Rousseau argued that a truly free republic calls for constant attentiveness to public affairs, because man is most free when he lives by his own law.

To prefer private wealth and tranquility over disciplined participation in public life is to renounce one’s freedom. And “to renounce one’s freedom,” according to Rousseau, “is to renounce one’s quality as a man.” Quoting Stanislaw Leszczynski, King of Poland, Rousseau declared: “I prefer dangerous freedom to quiet servitude.” Hume, meanwhile, sought to make freedom less dangerous.

In this essay, I will contrast two views on liberty found in the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume. These views are embedded in very different stories about the nature of liberty and its unfolding over the course of human history, giving rise to fundamentally different assessments of the roles played by exchange, markets, and commerce in bringing liberty to the modern world[1]  They lead to quite different conclusions about what needs to be done to realize and protect liberty in the present and future.[2]

 Chapter 1 of the Social Contract opens with the statement: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” (156) What does he mean by this paradoxical statement? To answer, we must go back to the conjectural history that Rousseau develops in the Second Discourse. He begins by noting that animals are “ingenious machines,” given senses by nature for self-preservation. Humans, too, are machines, but with a significant difference: “nature alone does everything in the operations of an animal, whereas man contributes as a free agent to his own operations.” (p. 52) Animals must obey what nature commands through the senses. Humans feel the impetus of nature but, unlike animals, can go along or resist. In the awareness of freedom lies the spirituality of the human soul and the faculty of self-perfection. To be a free individual for Rousseau is to be the author of one’s own actions. To be unfree means to be dependent upon the actions and judgements of others. Loss of freedom essentially means to be dependent on others for one’s material and emotional well-being.

The hypothetical evolution of human civilization that Rousseau describes in Part Two of the Second Discourse is the story of the fall from natural liberty that originally existed in the state of nature. From isolated independent individuals and small families living in primitive conditions to small bands of wandering families to wealthy societies with laws and government to protect property, new forms of social organization make humans more interconnected and productive, and, as a result, more dependent upon one another. Over time, they learn to act collectively together and to solve problems in innovative ways. They discover the advantages of the division of labor and invent a variety of technologies, such as language, metallurgy, and agriculture. For Rousseau, there is a steep cost to liberty on the road to civilization. As social progress binds humans closer together materially and emotionally, humans are stripped of that natural freedom found in nature. The expansion of the division of labor and the growth of markets, exchange, and commerce may free us from the material limitations of nature, but they also foster conditions that enslave us to the activities and evaluations of our fellows. We can no longer take care of ourselves physically, nor can we rely upon ourselves for a proper evaluation of who we are or what we value. In becoming social creatures, we leave nature behind and become shadows of our authentic selves. We become unfree and miserable individuals, living in a society of wealth and abundance.

What does Rousseau see as a way out of this world of dependency and unfreedom?[3] In the Social Contract, Rousseau sets out to solve this problem, taking “men as they are and laws as they might be.” (p. 156) He puts the problem succinctly: We must “Find a form of association that defends and protects with all common forces the person and goods of each associate, and, by means of which, each one, while uniting with all, nevertheless obeys only himself and remains as free as before” (p. 164) How is this done? By placing ourselves and all our powers under the direction of the “General Will,” and by receiving all others in the political community as indivisible parts of the whole. Living under this General Will protects us from all personal dependency on others, the hallmark of slavery. By participating in this social contract, humans replace their natural freedom as authors of their own actions with a civic freedom where they live under a collective will for the public good that they have authorized. In Book II, Chapter 3 of the Social Contract Rousseau explains the complexity of this process of realizing civic freedom through the General Will in a well-organized political community. How can citizens be assured that citizen deliberations on the public good (the General Will) always be right and tend toward practical utility? Two conditions must be met: the deliberating body of citizens must be “sufficiently informed” and there must be no communication among citizens in thinking about the public good. The General Will is realized not through the bargaining of self-interested citizens but through the impartial and careful reflection of all citizens. Through introspection citizens discover and become authors of the General Will. As in nature where a natural man is free because he follows his own will, citizens are free in society because they authorize and follow freely the General Will.[4] Of course, one still has a private will or a will as a member of a private association, but these wills come under the direction of the General Will of the community under the terms of the social contract.  If these two lesser wills conflict with public utility, the General Will can “force people to be free.”  (see Social Contract Part I Chapter 6: 167) This conclusion about forcing people to be free is meant to shock readers about the difficulties of being free individuals in society.

 Hume takes a different approach from Rousseau to the story of liberty unfolding in human history. In both the Treatise on Human Nature and An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, he rejects Rousseau’s starting point of humanity’s metaphysical status in the state of nature, with its sharp distinction between the free actions of human beings and the determined actions of other animals in nature. Hume presents what philosophers have characterized as a compatibilist theory of freedom where humans are part of the network of causation in nature, but nevertheless can act under certain circumstances with free will properly understood.[5] This philosophical starting point has important implications for the story of liberty that Hume tells in his Essays and A History of England.

In contrast to Rousseau’s hypothetical history of the fall from freedom in the state of nature, Hume views the actual history of humankind as a perpetual struggle between authority and liberty. Liberty must be sacrificed to bring order to society.  But this sacrifice “can never, and perhaps ought never, in any constitution, to be quite entire and uncontrollable.” A society is free not because it is under a General Will authorized by the will of each citizen as it was for Rousseau, but because it operates free of arbitrary coercion under known and settled laws. Free governments, Hume argues, are those that partition power among several members who “in the usual course of administration, must act by general and equal laws known to all members of society.” (Hume, 1987: 41)

According to Hume, this liberty under the law is the “perfection of civil society.” (Hume, 1987: 41) As seen through the lens of English history, the story of liberty is a complex one that rejects Machiavelli’s idea that there are cycles in history mapping out the rise and fall of republics based upon the virtue built into their institutions. Similarly, he discounts that there ever was an ancient constitution upon which civil and political liberty rested or the enlightenment idea that material and moral progress is inevitable. He agrees with other enlightenment thinkers that rule of law is part of the civilizing force of manners and morals working throughout Europe but does not believe that it is inevitable. Events can take place that threaten the stability of government and freedom under law. Under this understanding of a free society, Hume declares in Volume VI of the History of England that “it may justly be affirmed, without any danger of exaggeration, that we in this island, have ever since enjoyed, if not the best system of government, at least the most entire system of liberty, that ever was known amongst mankind.” (Hume, 1983 VI: 531; see also Livingston 1998: Chapter 10; Miller 1981: Chapter 7; McArthur 2007, Chapters 5 and 6)

 Integrated into his arguments about constitutional and legal development in England is a rethinking of the role played by commerce and individual self-interest in human affairs. Rejecting the ancient idea that commerce and self-interest necessarily make a free and martial people weaker by corrupting their morals, a notion that Rousseau accepted, Hume argues that the opposite is the case. According to “the common course of human affairs,” the greatness of a state and the happiness of a people are linked together through trade and manufacturing. By rousing men from their natural indolence, commerce and trade encourage individuals to desire more things and to work harder to improve their conditions and transform from the bottom up the social and economic foundations upon which rest a society’s prosperity. (see Hume 1987, “Of Commerce”) Other unintended consequences follow from the changes fostered by exchange and commerce throughout a society.  In volume III of A History of England (1983 III: 76), Hume uses this argument to explain the decline of the power of the landed aristocracy in the late middle ages and the rise of more regular forms of government and freedom under the law. Adam Smith would later capture the essence of Hume’s argument in chapter 4 of Book III of the Wealth of Nations: “commerce and manufactures gradually introduced order and good government, and with them, the liberty and security of individuals, among the inhabitants of the country, who had lived before almost in a continual state of war with their neighbours, and of servile dependency upon their superiors.” (Smith, 1981: 412) Far from intensifying bonds of dependency in human history as Rousseau claimed, Hume and Smith argue that commerce and manufacturing propel the story of liberty forward in the modern world.

For Rousseau, human history is a dialectical process where the expanding productive capacities of human society are accompanied by a loss of liberty for the individual. We are born free in nature but become unfree with the evolution of human civilization. As society grows wealthier, individuals grow more miserable and unfree. His story ends with an appeal to rethink the social order and establish new conditions for liberty under the rule of the General Will in the modern world. This is nothing short of a call for a revolution on how we think about liberty and how we act in the world. Unfortunately, the General Will is a slippery concept in actual operation. Is the General Will a metaphysical entity that can exist and act in the world through the actions of properly educated citizens, or is it just a great myth, a delusion born of misguided assumptions about the nature of liberty? Is the General Will a solution to the problems of liberty in modern society, or a new form of tyranny being imposed upon individuals by the state and society?

In contrast, Hume’s story about liberty stresses the importance of the evolution of human civilization out of primitive social and economic conditions, and not a state of nature per se. For Hume, humans are not free in nature. They are simply isolated, alone, and poor. History is the story of forging institutions, laws, and manners that restrict the arbitrary power of leaders and unleash the creative actions of private individuals through exchange, markets, and commerce. Where Rousseau’s story of liberty culminates in a new vision of liberty grounded in a General Will, Hume’s story is a cautionary tale about the need to protect the institutions, laws, and manners that have made modern liberty and human prosperity possible. He rejects the idea of a social contract underlying all government, replacing it with arguments about how government is grounded in public opinion through various mechanisms of consent in history. (See Hume, 1987: “Of the Original Contract”) His warnings about the dangers of commercial institutions, such as the public debt or an overregulated mercantile system are extensions of his concerns over abusive authority that threatens to enslave individuals in modern commercial states.[6] How do we know which institutional or economic developments expand our liberties and which threaten them? What is the metric by which we measure these dangers? Such are the intellectual and political challenges that Hume leaves us to face on our own today.

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Livingston, Donald W. 1998. Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium: Hume’s Pathology of Philosophy.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

McArthur, Neil. 2007. David Hume’s Political Thought. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Merrill, Kenneth P.  2010. A to Z of Hume’s Philosophy. Lanham: The Scarecrow Press:

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Smith, Adam. 1981. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Edited by R.H. Campbell and A.S. Skinner. Textual Editor W.D. Todd. Indianapolis: LibertyClassics.

Zaretsky, Robert and John T. Scott. 2009. The Philosopher’s Quarrel: Rousseau, Hume and the Limits of Human Understanding. New Haven: Yale University Press.

[1] Embedded in western political thought are several stories about liberty and how it unfolds in the course of human history that differ from those told by Rousseau and Hume. The civic republican story as found in the work of Niccolo Machiavelli and members of the Atlantic republican tradition chronicled by J.G.A. Pocock sees liberty in terms of a cyclical pattern of the rise and fall of peoples and nations. Wise and virtuous leaders build a nation’s institutions and laws. Liberty is gained through the great actions of peoples and leaders.  Liberty is lost through corruption brought on by weakness, negligence, and ill will. The ancient constitution story as articulated by late medieval and early modern writers opposed to modern state building in Europe is basically a conservative one that centers around the idea that certain institutions and laws inherited from an almost mythical past make freedom possible. The job of politics is to protect liberty by defending these institutions and laws from corruption and decline. A third story of liberty sees scientific, moral, and material progress as being the engine which drives liberty forward. For enlightenment thinkers from the Marquis de Condorcet to Karl Marx, material progress was seen as ushering in a new age of freedom, one unimaginable to earlier generations. Citizens make sure that the conditions that make progress possible are protected and expanded. Often this story is linked to an eschatological break with the past where political action ushers in a new age of prosperity and freedom for humankind.

[2] For a fascinating discussion of the interpersonal squabble between Rousseau and Adam Smith, see Zaretsky and Scott (2009) and Edmonds and Eidenow (2006).

[3] For a further discussion, see Shklar (1969).

[4] For a further discussion of Rousseau’s notion of the General Will see Riley (2001).

[5] Much of Hume’s argument about free will and necessity rests upon his innovative theories of moral responsibility, causation, and the operations of the human mind in A Treatise of Human Nature (2000) and his Enquiries (1975). For a discussion of Hume’s notion of free will and compatibilism see Penelhum (2000) Chapter 8 and Merrill (2000).

[6] See the economic essays in Part II of Hume’s Essays (1987).