Hume's Touchstone and the Politics of Meaningful Discourse
In this paper I propose we read David Hume's view of meaningful discourse, or his theory of meaning, as an aspect of his theory of politics. I will argue that readings which ignore the political dimension are incomplete and distort Hume's position. When I use the word ‘political’ in the Humean context, however, it means something similar to what we mean by the term ‘social’; in the Humean context ‘politics’ is inclusive of the narrow sense taken by political science in its study of regular partisan politics and governance structures. My proposal is similar to the social-context or social-constructivist interpretations of commentators such as Pall Ardal, Donald Livingston, and Nicholas Capaldi. A political reading also stresses the importance of social context in our understanding of Hume, and agrees with the social-context argument that there is a social or political dimension to intellectual life which Hume hints at but does not address directly in Book 1 of the Treatise.
Teaching ethics in organisational behaviour : a Humean viewpoint
Problem Statement: Concepts of ethics have rarely been easy to teach in the organizational behaviour curriculum. The philosophical bases of ethics are often abstract and prone to multiple interpretations and dilemmas. The changing global environment of organisations adds complexity to the interacting values that people bring into the workplace. To redress the situation, this articlerepresents the stance of David Hume on human morality and proposes an original nexus of his concepts for application in the teaching and learning of ethics in the field of organizational behaviour. Method: Based on the literature, we develop a conceptual model from a thread drawn between Hume’s influence on the Scottish Enlightenment and accordingly the current complex business environment which was fostered in part by the economic models espoused by his Enlightenment associates. The concepts are presented as a matrix and relevant examples are explained in this context. Results: Pointing out the challenge of the global rifts in organisational morality, we relate the fable of the traveller from Hume’s writings and make the point that the Humean nexus, now distilled from the elaborate reasoning of Hume, provides educators and managers alike with a helpful centre of gravity around which to develop analyses of decisions and actions in order to gain moral perspective that transcends time and place. Conclusions: Business ethics lessons have sometimes been abstract and emotive in organisational Behavior education but the empirical concepts of Hume in this new form have the potential to be useful and agreeable for many.
Personal Identity and the Passions
In two places in the discussion of personal identity in Book 1 of the Treatise, Hume distinguishes personal identity "as it regards our thought or imagination" from personal identity "as it regards our passions."' Only the former is discussed in Book l, and although the self and its passions are the subject of Book 2 of the Treatise, there is no explicit examination of personal identity as it regards the passions. This paper will argue that there is justification for taking Hume's avowed limitation of his analysis seriously. If we do so, it follows that Hume recognized issues about personal identity that he did not attempt to address within the confines of the account of the imagination in Book 1. And, further, Book 2 of the Treatise, in its account of the passions, provides the resources for supplementing our understanding of Hume's discussion of personal identity.