Yesterday we looked at what John Locke had to say about private property Private Property as a Commodity (and a derivative at that) Part VI
David Hume understands us
       David Hume (1711 – 1776) has continued the tradition of Hobbes and Locke to derive our right to private property from the social contract. In his Treatise on Human Nature, Hume describes three different species of “goods.” They are “the internal satisfaction of our minds, the external advantages of our body, and the enjoyment of such possessions as we have acquired by our industry and good fortune” (Hume [1740], 487). The internal goods are perfectly secure, the external advantages of our bodies we can lose “but can be of no advantage to him who deprives us of them“ (Hume [1740], 487). The third, our personal possessions, can not only be taken from us, but others may profit from them. In addition to this instability, “…from their looseness and easy transitions from one person to another (my italics),” there is also scarcity of possessions, and therefore it is the duty of society to put them on the same footing as the other two.(Hume [1740], 487, 488).
       Hume has described man’s natural “affections” to desire other people’s goods, and then explains why society should protect the individual’s right to his private possessions. A few paragraphs later he states, “The remedy then, is not derived from nature, but from artifice; (Hume [1740], 489). By “artifice,” he means the social contract, or conventional law. In other words, Hume is saying that, in order to protect our own goods from theft, we must all agree not to steal from each other. Unlike previous philosophers he is not invoking some “natural Law” to justify this, but admits that it is an artificial concept, created by men and for men. (I am using the sexist terms of that period because that is what they meant in those days.)
       But notice, I italicized Hume’s phrase, “…from their looseness and easy transitions from one person to another.” Does this sound like he is justifying a right to private “real estate, land, “property? I do not think so. I believe that Hume’s discussion of the subject is more logical than Locke’s, but most of the modern philosophers defer to Locke, and slight Hume, when justifying their so-called “right to private property.” Why? Because what Hume does have to say about land, as property, will not justify any right of possession. In point of fact, Hume says that the relationship between men who use the land, and the land itself, is just that, a relationship based on use, not ownership. Both Locke and Hume were philosophers of Epistemology, as well as Political Economy, but Hume, more than Locke, has kept his political theory consistent with his theories of the mind. To explain the relationship of men to the land he says:
       “Since, therefore, we can feign a new relation, and even an absurd one, in order to compleat any union, it will easily be imagined, that if there be any relations, which depend on the mind, it will readily conjoin them to any preceding relation, and unite, by a new bond, such objects as have already been an union in the fancy….by modifying the general rule concerning the stability of possessions. And as property forms a relation betwixt a person and an object, it is natural to found it on some preceding relation, and as property is nothing but a constant possession, secured by the laws of society, it is natural to add it to the present posssession, which is a relation that resembles it…. But we may observe, that though the rule of this assignment of property to the present possessor be natural, and by that means useful, yet its utility extends not beyond the first formation of society “(Hume [1740], 505).
       However, while Hume does not logically justify any “right” to landed private property, he does accept that society has assumed it.
       As for justifying right by possession or conquest, Hume has a clever passage where he makes fun of ancient Greeks competing with each other for claim to a deserted town, first by racing to see who could get there first, and then by throwing spears at the wall to claim the territory. (Hume [1740], 506).
      Thursday: "Our Founding Fathers Thought John Locke Was Some Kind Of Genius."
My rants on racial identity began on July 9th
My rants on private property began on July 14th

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