HKB
2 passages · search this phrase →
Often appears with: tyranny and conspiracy · thought experiment about abundance · public utility · property, inheritance, and title · property without scarcity · mourning and grief · justice as a virtue · hereditary monarchy · forms of government · fate, destiny, and necessity · cycle of regimes · counsel and advisers to rulers
Usually: argument (2) · sudden reversal of fortune (1) · censure (1) · detachment (1)
Hume claims justice derives solely from public utility and explains this by imagining an abundant world or perfect universal benevolence where property and promises would be unnecessary, making justice unattainable.
THAT Justice is useful to society, and consequently that PART of its merit, at least, must arise from that consideration, it would be a superfluous undertaking to prove. That public utility is the SOLE origin of justice, and that reflections on the beneficial consequences of this virtue are the SOLE foundation of its merit; this proposition, being more curious and important, will better deserve our examination and en…
He traces government’s rise from early societies choosing strongest leaders to forming justice through laws, then explains how hereditary rulers fall into luxury, producing tyranny, conspiracies, and shifts through popular license and back to monarchy.
since no precaution he may take can prevent it from sliding into its contrary, by reason of the close resemblance which, in this case, the virtue bears to the vice. These diversities in the form of Government spring up among men by chance. For in the beginning of the world, its inhabitants, being few in number, for a time lived scattered after the fashion of beasts; but afterwards, as they increased and multiplied, …