A Study Of Hume's Justice Theory

Hume's Justice Theory is a very important part of Hume's ethics and key to its understanding. As is known to all, the status of Hume in Philosophic history is set up by his epistemology. Thus, Hume's epistemology becomes the research focus of Hume study. Peoples' interest manifested in the limited research on Hume's ethics is concentrated mainly on Humes general moral theory, few attention is being paid to Hume's justice theory. This thesis is trying to do a research on Hume's Justice Theory in the hope of fully understand Hume's ethics.The thesis is composed of Introduction, Main body and Conclusion. Introduction Part first has an analysis of the importance of Hume's Justice Theory in his ethics, then gives an introduction of the current research situation and the intention of my writing this thesis.The main body contains three sections. The first section is the analysis of theoretical basis of Hume's Justice Theory. It's based on his treatise of human nature and moral theory. Hume thinks that passion is the reflection of aesthesia. The essence of an passion is happiness or sadness. No matter direct passions or indirect passions would lose themselves if getting rid of happiness or sadness. On the impact of behaviors, passion is in the leading position while reason is auxiliary. Passions are determined by habits, imagination and influence of Time and Space, i.e. from familiarity to strangers, intimate to remote, near by to far away, etc. Thus human's passion is always leaning to themselves. Sympathy makes human's emotional communication become possible and sets up the condition of Morality's foundation.The second section is the analysis of logic and contents of Hume's Justice Theory. Hume thinks that human should form a society to survive. However, due to the self-leaning of human nature shortage of property and instability of its possession, the society is at the risk of falling apart at any time. Here rises Justice, that's to say, the main sense of Justice is to keep a society for human survival. This is what Hume understands the base of Justice. For human nature can only be guided but cannot move away, the stability of property is a possible and necessary measure for human society keeping and Justice is shown as three rules for property stability. Due to the self-leaning of human nature, enforcement and judgment of Justice can only rely on a special institution and personnel, which has fostered the establishment of Government. In the Hume's moral system, Justice is seen as a contrived morality different from natural morality.The third section is some comments on Hume's Justice Theory. The author thinks that Hume's Justice Theory has three characteristics: searching for an overall order, right orientation and being man-made. Those three characteristic shows the contemporary meaning of Hume's Justice Theory.In the end is the conclusion. It mentions the enlightening meaning of Hume's theory in Justice discussion. Hume's theory may not applicable to our reality but its thinking pattern of Justice is useful for reference.