Nature and Artifice: Hume as Critic of Hutcheson and Mandeville

Abstract

Our general objective is to place David Hume’s moral philosophy in the debate initiated by the publication of Bernard Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees. This is intended to nuance Hume’s supposed affiliation with Francis Hutcheson’s moral philosophy, in particular, and the philosophies of moral sense in general. To this end, in addition to a brief exposition of the positions of Mandeville and Hutcheson, we seek to carry out a more detailed analysis of the Humian conception of judgment and moral sentiments, so as to indicate to what extent Hume distances himself and to what extent he approaches the theses of the Dutch philosopher. In this way, it is intended to determine the originality of Hume’s solution to the questions posed by Mandeville’s work.