Hume's 'Conventional Justice' for the Sake of society/Hume'un Toplum Icin 'Gelenekci Adaleti' (2008)

Giris Conventional justice is an adaptation of the individual virtue of justice. Hume explicates justice in terms of property. According to his view, the thought of making secure one's own property causes one to respect other's property and this gives birth to the individual virtue of justice. However, it is not clear why this individual virtue commands the respect for other people's property in a society. Let us consider two different situations which raise some problems when considering the general maxims of Hume's whole system. The first one is about paying money back to a seditious bigot and the other is the role of education in his system. Justice in terms of society According to Hume, a just person pays money back to the man he borrowed money from, even when that man is a seditious bigot who is, in fact, neither useful to the self nor society. Here Hume is aware of the insufficiency of his notion of natural sentiments and he tries to rectify this. The natural virtues of benevolence and prudence while effective in a small society are not enough by themselves to start the process of sympathy in a large society. Justice is a very significant virtue in most moral systems, yet with Hume, it should work within the bounds of the system of sympathy. Thus he utilizes artificial virtues. Before introducing artificial virtues Hume describes how natural virtues work in a small society without any obstacle. (THN, 3, 501) He claims such natural virtues as benevolence and prudence, are adequate to engender just acts regarding each other's property in primitive societies since people know and love each other. Hume believes that in small societies people are more sensitive towards an unjust act. These kinds of acts can be easily seen and would be punished. According to him, our passions are not enough to control us above our interests especially in large societies. (THN, 3, 495 496) Each person has the idea of interest and a natural passion of love to the interest. There is no way to control this love of interest except by changing the direction of the love itself. We can give up some of our interests for the sake of other greater interests of ours. Therefore, he shows how humans willingly choose self-control for greater interests. He says: Now this alteration must necessarily take place upon the least reflection; since 'tis evident, that the passion is much better sa tisfy'd by its restraint, than by its liberty, and that in preserving society, we make much greater advances in the acquiring possessions, than in the solitary and forlorn condition, which must follow upon violence and an universal licence. (THN, 3, 492) However there is always the alternative path of reaching power by not respecting the property of others. This is an attractive and sufficient probability for the seduction of a person by his liberty. Moreover, the stress here about virtues is from external societal effects not from human nature. Hume has an implicit supposition that the violation of the property of others will always be attacked by other members of society. However, if people have neither good nor bad character as Hume supposes, they would prefer to be silent in a situation where there is neither utility nor harm for them. Defining justice as a natural virtue or admitting the goodness of human beings would solve this problem. If we accept justice as a natural virtue or the innate goodness of human nature, it becomes easy to explain assisting people in need, whether it benefits one or not. This explanation is more consistent than Hume's reliance on prudence. Furthermore, if an unjust person has a position of power then even in a small community, it is possible for them to perform unjust acts with impunity. Hume counters such possibilities via his notion of the force of interested affection. Shaping justice with the size of society Hume claims that in a small society where people know and love each other, people rarely tend to do unjust acts. …