Hume’s Science of Politics.

David Hume’s general way of studying politics is by means of an empirical and inductive method that seems consistent with his works on human knowledge and the passions. In the essay, ‘Of Civil Liberty’ for example, he says that political science is a branch of empirical inquiry, which by making observations of political life today and studying political history may yield general principles. These are in turn susceptible to refutation by further experience or other data. This empiricism leads him to doubt even that political science is now possible. The pool of relevant data is so small, he says, and humanity’s power of forming rational generalizations is so corrupted by passion and prejudice, that a science of politics may be something that we can hope to establish only in the future, if at all. In the same essay he writes, ‘I am apt to entertain a suspicion that the world is too young to fix many general truths in politics so that not only the art of reasoning is still imperfect in this science, as in all others, but we even want sufficient material on which we can reason.’ While this suspicion does not prevent him from venturing into political theory, his attitude toward it seems to exhibit the flexibility, originality, and tentativeness that is characteristic of his views on natural religion, science, morals, and other things. How strange it is, therefore, to turn to his essay, ‘That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science,’ in which all doubts about the extent of human knowledge seem to disappear. Here he claims to have discovered in politics certain, ‘causes and principles eternal and immutable.’ At another point he says that he has established, ‘an universal axiom in politics,’ and at a further one he describes a particular generalization as, ‘one of those eternal political truths, which no time nor accident can vary.’ Further, he stipulates that, ‘Effects will always correspond to causes,’ and then, when comparing two kinds of aristocracy, he says that ‘The different operations and tendencies of these species of government might be made apparent even a priori.’ The extravagance of the claims in this essay is inconsistent with his other writings, and the meaning of these claims is most confusing given the general bent of his theory of human knowledge. This paper attempts to explain Hume’s claims in this essay by reference to the context in which they were written and his rhetorical goals in composing the work. In short, Hume found it necessary to choose between being a good empiricist and a good citizen; and he chose the latter. This fact has consequences for how we should read his Essays and other popular works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]