Abstract
Autore:
Mazzone Stefania
Titolo:
"Contratto, convenzione e la politica come scienza in David Hume"
The philosophy of David Hume cannot be defined according to that paradigm that considers English moral thought of the eighteenth century as part of the natural law tradition. He contested natural law theory and contractualism. and based interindividual rationality on utilitarian choices. Since they are abstracted from psyco-affective concrete conditions of individuals, these choices risk appearing necessary and universal. Beginning from anthropological considerations, Hume adresses the classic problem of political philosophy: the conditions of social order. If social order is spontaneous a paradox arises that needs, for its resolution, concepts such as convention. Spontaneous co-ordination must solve the free-rider problem: if a collective choice of order has been made, some might pay nothing, while receiving benefits.
Convention is a field of strategy; the overcoming of the teoretical border of the state of nature, for the practice of rational co-operation, to the realisation of individual aims respecting those rules that are founded, in Hume’s thought, ultimately on moral bases; where moral means what is considered moral by common consent. Rational actors interact in the perspective of reciprocity, within a context that, for Hume, defines itself while individual relations define themselves: environment is a third actor in an evolutive context. The key of "necessary" convention opens the door to politics conceived as a science. Politics values the possible outcomes, that are not predetermined, as the result of strategic rationality, in the sense of an overcoming of the necessity of the content of convention. Such a process could be a process of an evolution toward a society that is also liberated from the historical necessity of the emerging capitalistic society that Hume describes in terms of convention. Self-interest is, then, an empty box that the Scottish thinker fills with the meanings of his time declaring, at the same time, that he does not consider necessary any results or expectations.
