Hume's Political Thought

In nearly two hundred years from his death in 1776 to 1950s, understood as a social contract theory spoiler and negative Toryism. But from the beginning of 1960s, with the effort of many scholars, the image that Hume's political philosophy is only good at destroying, but not well at building he^ been completely changed. Hume's critique and reconstruction for the western natural law theory, his "legitimacy" defense of the commercial society, his interpretation on the spontaneous social order theory, as well as his political philosophy with liberal factors, have got attention by many western academic scholars. At present, Hume as a world view, complicated, profound political theorist image has completely gotten the western academic recognition. In recent years, academic research renaissance on Hume's political thought in China also can be viewed as reflection of the study of western academic circles.In the reference and criticism of western academic research works, and studying a large number of Hume's philosophy, history, political, religious, ethical, and economic and other works, this paper is concerned with the relationship between Hume's political view and the view of human nature. The article is to prove that Hume understands human social and political problems is from the social individual "cooperation" and "interactive" perspective. The theory about composition and evolution of cooperation order provided Hume theory basis to various comments on history and contemporary politic problems. Hume is a famous commercial civilization defender; his cooperation order theory also explains the commerce society's relative advancement to the previous society, and provides the theoretical description for commercial society political governance as well as the human evolution and improvement of political order.In order to prove this view, this paper study Hume's cooperation order thought from "logic" and "history" dimensions. The former discussed Hume's thought about human cooperation structure as well as the internal process of progress and improvement of human cooperation. The latter discusses Hume's western modern politics civilization development theory and his involving in public debate that based on the theory of his cooperative order. The reason for doing is that, on the one hand, Hume is a "thorough empiricism" philosopher; on the other hand, he is a historian who writes six-volume History of England. He not only surveyed human nature and the composition of and the interactive cooperation process on abstract level, but also commented the political development process of western society based on this theory. Thus, the paper is divided into two articles for discuss in structure.The former part:"the logic analysis of the cooperation order", discusses the logic structure of Hume's cooperative order theory. It contains "the structure of cooperative order" and "the Evolution and improvement of cooperation". The former refers to what rules should be abided by in the good cooperation; the latter refers to how the cooperative develop and improve. Hume believes that justice rules and the government are the Fundamental rules of the cooperative order, and the government's self-interest and factional struggle is the basic obstacles for the implementation of cooperative order, so only the institutional government that built up in the balance of power can provide the effective safeguards for the just rule's implementation. The most ideal cooperative order is the "free order" that can ensure everyone's liberal right, but the realization of this "good" order is restricted by the interests and believes of the people. Good order can't be acquired by constructivism, and we should improve cooperation order according to the specific way of social historical conditions. This part is about the theory rather than the historical dimension, and we intend to reveal the internal logic of Hume's cooperative order theory.The next part:"The history of the cooperative order present", discusses the history formation of western cooperation order and the related argument. Hume thought that modern western political system had make great improvement and progress under the function of the commerce development, but only Britain had successfully set up a cooperative order of freedom through the 1688 revolution. In the western ideological circle at the time, classical republicanism, Christian thinkers, common law still can't understand this new political order; they made romantic beautification for classical republic, feudal system and Christian institution. In order to correct these mistakes theoretical knowledge, Hume discusses the British freedom cooperative order forming process, and reveals the various obstacles and conditions of the freedom order formation on one hand; on the other hand, Hume especially criticize classical republicanism and false religious which threaded the cooperative order. In Hume's these histories discus, we can not only know his understanding of evolution and formation of western society freedom cooperation order, but also understand the mutual demonstration of the "history" and "logic" of the cooperative order.From the point of view of political thought development, Hume replaces Hobbs's "power" by the "justice rules" for the center rules of social order. Thereby, he provides a theoretical description to the growth of civil society. His thought had a profound impact on the American constitutional through the Madison, and still will provide beneficial enlightenment for today's thinking about social cooperation problems.