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Hume’s Deflationary Theory of Allegiance
Abstract
Hume’s Deflationary Theory of Allegiance
Hume’s account of allegiance or loyalty to political authority distinguishes it from justice in respect to property and from patriotism. Hume rejects two inflated accounts of allegiance: social contract and divine right. Allegiance has a deep point—the need to implement and decide rules of justice and provide for public goods. But the object or direction of allegiance has no deep grounding at all. The sources of authority are diverse and can come into conflict, and Hume rejects any philosophical or quasi-legal (as in social contract doctrine) resolution to such conflicts. Allegiance is given a more deflationary account than either justice respecting property or fidelity to promises, for allegiance is logically incomplete without an object of allegiance, and that object sometimes cannot be clearly determined by the relevant general principles. In their analyses, David Miller, John Day, and Rachel Cohon miss the deflationary intention of Hume’s theory.
Hume’s Deflationary Theory of Allegiance
Allegiance to a particular political authority must be distinguished from the virtue of justice and from patriotism as love of country. David Hume provides a theory of allegiance that successfully maintains these distinctions, for he conceives of allegiance as distinct from justice (in his sense of honesty regarding property—but also in a wider sense by implication), and he does not rank patriotism as a separate virtue at all—it seems to be treated as a kind of pride.[1] Hume considers allegiance highly contingent when taken as including a particular object, and seeks to deflate its pretensions, diminishing fanatical strife. Hume grounds the need for allegiance in the advantages gained from having magistrates whose interest lies in executing the laws of justice, deciding disputes regarding justice, and providing public goods. (T 3.2.7.6-8; SBN 537-8) But allegiance itself must always have an object or direction. And so Hume devotes an entire section of the Treatise (T 3.2.10; SBN 553-67) to “the objects of allegiance.” It is the ascertaining of the particular authority that cannot have any worthy grounding, though the point of allegiance in the abstract is indeed worthy, for it rests first on self-interest and then on sympathy and social interests. Actual, particular allegiance is usually virtuous, but misplaced allegiance is morally flawed, though in a sense virtuous because of its general motive, allegiance as “a separate sentiment of morality” (T 3.2.10.3; SBN 554).
The two leading inflated views rejected by Hume are the religious view that traces allegiance (including its object) to divinely ordained institutions and rulers and the philosophical view that grounds allegiance in a social contract, which, as Hume points out, must by its nature include a known particular authority as the object of allegiance: “’tis evident, that the same convention, which establishes government, will also determine the persons who are to govern, and will remove all doubt and ambiguity in this particular.” (T 3.2.10.2; SBN 554) Although Hume accepts that “the authority of the magistrate does at first stand upon the foundation of a promise of the subjects” which “ties them down to a particular person, and makes him the object of their allegiance,” (T 3.2.10.2; SBN 554) this grounding cannot last. Over time allegiance as a “separate sentiment of morality” arises. (T 3.2.10.3; SBN 554) Justice as respect for property, fidelity to promises, and allegiance are each artificial (contrived or conventional) virtues, invented in order to secure the advantages of social cooperation. Each is morally separate, backed by a grounding in advantage and interest, but through different routes. Justice (T 3.2.2.25; SBN 500 and T 3.2.6.11; SBN 533-4) and allegiance are each further inculcated as separate moral obligations by “education, and the artifice of politicians.” (T 3.2.8.7; SBN 546) Fidelity to promises facilitates cooperative endeavors among private persons by engendering mutual trust. Allegiance undergirds peace and order in the society as a whole. Both are advantageous, but neither works through the other. (T 3.2.8.6; SBN 544) Thus to base allegiance on promise is both to introduce a needless intermediate step and to misconstrue the separate moral sentiment of allegiance as a species of promise-keeping.
But unlike fidelity to promises, allegiance must take its object where it finds it, at least in the usual case: “We naturally suppose ourselves born to submission; and imagine, that such particular persons have a right to command, as we on our part are bound to obey.” (T 3.2.10.3; SBN 555) Long possession, present possession, conquest, succession, and positive laws are sources of authority (along with original contract, but only for an initial founding generation). Stability and shared allegiance are of greater importance than directly consulting social advantage to determine allegiance, for interminable disputes would result if we sought to use such a rational standard as interest, private or public. “’Tis interest which gives the general instinct; but ‘tis custom which gives the particular direction.” (T 3.2.10.4; SBN 556) Hume also rejects passive obedience, the residue of the grounding of allegiance in the divine will. Although we cannot expect to have stability if we constantly question allegiance in search of the most socially advantageous object of allegiance, we also cannot be obligated to submit to great tyranny and oppression. (T 3.2.9.3-4; SBN 551-2) But there can be no philosophical drawing of the line across which rebellion is justified, nor the kind of pseudo-legal line-drawing included in social contract doctrine.
Hume expresses his deflationary intent clearly in a crucial comparison of allegiance to possession of property . In both cases the underlying ground is advantage to society and self-interest, and in both cases these important interests cannot be maintained if we seek to assign to particular persons either property or allegiance by reference directly to social advantage. Once there is government, property must be further specified by positive law that modifies the law of nature concerning the stability of possession:
Nor need we fear, that our attachment to this law will diminish upon account of the seeming frivolousness of those interests, by which it is determin’d. The impulse of the mind is deriv’d from a very strong interest; and those other more minute interests serve only to direct the motion, without adding anything to it, or diminishing from it. ‘Tis the same with government. Nothing is more advantageous to society than such an invention; and this interest is sufficient to make us embrace it with ardour and alacrity; tho’ we are obliged afterwards to regulate and direct our devotion to government by several considerations, which are not of the same importance, and to choose our magistrates without having in view any particular advantage from the choice. (T 3.2.10.3; SBN 556)
Compared to Locke’s natural-right grounding of property in mixing of labor by a person with a prior natural right of self-ownership, Hume’s account of property is deflationary. Hume’s “laws of nature” (stability of possession, its translation by consent, and the performance of promises) are antecedent to government and common to humanity, but still, unlike Locke’s laws of nature, a matter of convention established through cooperative human activity to secure private and public advantage. And once there is government, positive laws must further determine and modify these too abstract laws of nature. The positive laws will include much that is historically contingent, even “frivolous.” Although Hume sees maintaining property rights as fundamental, he rejects Locke’s natural rights grounding in individual agency, as he rejects individual agency as the basis of allegiance through a social contract. Such grounding in individual agency would constitute a deep grounding of not only the need for property and allegiance, but also of the specifics of who owns what and who owes allegiance to what regime. Unlike Locke, what property is held by whom and who owes allegiance to what regime are not deep questions for Hume, though it is necessary for there to be clear answers, however contingently provided, and some answers will be unacceptable because they undermine the deep point of having property rules at all or of political loyalty whatever its object.
Despite the parallels, there is a difference in the shallowness of determining the object of allegiance on one hand, and the owner of particular property on the other. Hume’s account of allegiance is more deflationary than his account of property. The difference in shallowness is due to the differing role of present possession in determining allegiance and in determining property. Positive laws must provide for cases of theft or dispossession, to restore property to the person in prior lawful possession. But allegiance to the present possessor must have a very strong claim once there is enough concurrence for stability, for, unlike property, government cannot be easily transferred from the present possessor—disorder, civil war, and great suffering may ensue. The seeming exception is when the fifth principle for determining the object of allegiance (“the fifth source of authority”) is operative: positive laws, as in a constitutional system (T 3.2.10.14; SBN 561). Hume claims that the backing of legislative power in original contract, long possession, present possession, conquest, or succession will not fully transfer to the legislative if it seeks suddenly to change “the whole system of government.” (T 3.2.10.14; SBN 561) Even here, present possession and custom may trump legislative power to innovate radically through positive law. Implicit in Hume’s account is a great insight about constitutional governments: they treat authority as transferable through law just as property is, and with as little instability. But for this to occur, allegiance to such constitutional arrangements for transferring authority must itself be established through custom, habit, and the passage of time.
Again the deflationary intent appears as Hume castigates those who find present possession an inadequate ground: “Any one, who finding the impossibility of the right of the present possessor, by any received system of ethics, shou’d resolve to deny absolutely that right...wou’d be justly thought to shock the common sense and judgment of mankind.” (T 3.2.10.7; SBN 558) Except in rare cases of tyranny or oppression, we are to submit to the established government where we live “without enquiring too curiously into its origin and first establishment. Few governments will bear being examin’d so rigorously.” (T 3.2.10.7; SBN 558)
Commentators seek more depth from Hume’s theory of allegiance than Hume intends to give. David Miller grasps something of Hume’s general deflationary intent, for he argues that perhaps, though Hume does not say so, on Hume’s account allegiance is a fiction, though a useful one.[2] But Miller considers Hume’s account of justice equally open to this characterization. Miller seems, however, only to be making the familiar point that Hume considers all moral properties to be projected upon external matters of fact. But Hume’s theory of allegiance is more radically deflationary than his account of the artificial virtue of justice regarding property, which is itself somewhat deflationary compared to his account of the natural virtues. And Miller also misses the deflationary intent of some of the specific elements of Hume’s account. Miller considers the inclusion of positive law as a final source of authority an ad hoc addition necessitated by the Parliamentary settlements of the Glorious Revolution and then the Hanoverian succession: “The amalgamation is not, however, particularly satisfactory from a philosophical point of view.”[3] But Hume’s deep, philosophical point is that there is no deep, important (philosophical or religious) source of allegiance to a particular regime. Even the fifth and most sophisticated source, positive law, will contain much that is historically contingent and even frivolous. Miller seems to underestimate the contingency Hume sees even in the positive law source of allegiance. Through long custom, some aspects of the laws may be seen as fundamental and unchangeable by the legislature. But no clear lines can be drawn: “There is such an insensible gradation from the most material laws to the most trivial, and from the most antient laws to the most modern, that ‘twill be impossible to set bounds to the legislative power, and determine how far it may innovate in the principles of government. That is the work more of imagination and passion than of reason.” (T 3.2.10.14; SBN 561-2)
Hume did not foresee that there would be constitutional regimes in which the fundamental structural rules would be embedded as constitutional law unchangeable through ordinary legislation and imposed by judges as limits to legislation. Positive law even regarding constitutional matters was everywhere in Hume’s time all on one legislative level, although, as Hume noted, long-standing structural law could attain through custom resistance to change. But with an embedded constitution judicially enforced Hume’s point about custom and historical contingency would simply then occur at a different place in the structure: custom and habit must then operate to ensure allegiance to the law of the land as handed down by judges, even when imposing limits on the legislature (and the executive), and there is much work for imagination and passion as well as technical reasoning in the changing judicial determinations of what is fundamental.
Allegiance-in-general is an artificial virtue, but clearly Hume does not think that a judicious spectator will feel thorough-going approbation for all allegiance regardless of its object. Some are attached so fanatically to a particular person or regime that they endanger the stability of the civil society and thus threaten peace and justice. Such fanatical, misplaced allegiance cannot be approved by a judicious spectator, for his approbation of allegiance is based upon the interests of society in a reliable and stable regime to impose justice. Allegiance that defeats the moral point of allegiance cannot be fully approved morally, though it still has an admirable motivational backing in the separate moral sentiment of loyalty or allegiance. Thus Hume is led to expressions which are oxymoronic in the original sense (intentionally conjoining seeming inconsistencies): “a strict adherence to any general rules, and the rigid loyalty to particular persons and families, on which some people set so high a value, are virtues that hold less of reason, than of bigotry and superstition.” (T 3.2.10.15; SBN 562) Allegiance has two sides, and here only the separate general sentiment meets with approbation on the ground of its tendency to affect social interests, while the direction or object meets with disapprobation on the same ground. This misplaced loyalty may occur either in cases of unjustified rebellion (for instance, Jacobites after the post-Revolutionary established government achieved clear stability) or in cases of passive obedience based on conscience, despite tyranny and oppression. (T 3.2.9.2-4; SBN 550-1)