The Role of Philosophy in Hume’s Critique of Empire

Abstract

The British Empire found itself in uncharted territory during the global competition over military and commercial hegemony in the eighteenth century. Many thinkers questioned the wisdom of empire by comparing Britain’s overseas expansion with the fate of ancient Rome and the government’s controversial colonial policy. David Hume distinguished himself from these critical voices by adopting a detached philosophical approach. His detachment nonetheless ended in scepticism. This article reconstructs Hume’s doubts about empire in order to illuminate the way philosophy interacts with practical political questions. Working at the intersection between political philosophy and epistemology, Hume demonstrates how scepticism shapes his remark on the perennial republican dilemma concerning the trade-off between empire and liberty. His philosophical approach shifts the focus of the debates from attempting to reconcile the two to diagnosing the crux of political instability in modern empires. I argue that Hume defended philosophy's use by highlighting the epistemological aspect of the problem. For him, ideational factors, such as extreme and false beliefs, could provoke public frenzy. This meant that popular politics posed a substantial challenge to modern imperial rule. Governing the passions for empire should therefore be made a matter of a national priority. By pinpointing in this way the role of the citizenry, Hume clarified how epistemic questions remained central to modern politics.