Coordinates	33°51′35.9″N151°12′40″N
name	Amartya Sen
school tradition	Welfare economics , Development economics , Public Health , Gender Studies , Political Philosophy , Utilitarianism
color	lightblue
birth date	November 03, 1933
birth place	Santiniketan, Bengal, British India (present-day West Bengal, India)
nationality	IndianBangladesh (Honorary)
citizenship	India
alma mater	Presidency College
field	Welfare economics, ethics
institution	Jadavpur UniversityUniversity of CambridgeHarvard UniversityMassachusetts Institute of TechnologyCornell UniversityUniversity of OxfordDelhi School of EconomicsLondon School of EconomicsUniversity of California, BerkeleyStanford University
influences	John RawlsPeter BauerJohn Stuart MillKenneth ArrowPiero Sraffa
opposed	James Mill
influenced	Mahbub ul HaqKaushik BasuJean Dreze
contributions	Human development theory
awards	Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (1998) Bharat Ratna (1999)
signature	}}

Amartya Sen, CH (, translit. ''Ômorto Shen''; born 3 November 1933) is an Indian economist and philosopher who was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to welfare economics and social choice theory, and for his interest in the problems of society's poorest members. Sen is best known for his work on the causes of famine, which led to the development of practical solutions for preventing or limiting the effects of real or perceived shortages of food.

He is currently the Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University. He is also a senior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, distinguished fellow of All Souls College, Oxford and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, where he previously served as Master from 1998 to 2004. He is the first Indian and the first Asian academic to head an Oxbridge college.

Amartya Sen's books have been translated into more than thirty languages over a period of forty years. He is a trustee of Economists for Peace and Security. In 2006, ''Time magazine'' listed him under "60 years of Asian Heroes" and in 2010 included him in their "100 most influential persons in the world". New Statesman listed him in their 2010 edition of 'World's 50 Most Influential People Who Matter'.

Early life and education

Sen was born to a Bengali Hindu family of Santiniketan, West Bengal, India. His ancestral home was in Wari, Dhaka, then part of India; now Bangladesh which became a new country in 1971 following its separation from Pakistan which, in turn, was earlier formed as a result of the partition of British India in 1947. Rabindranath Tagore is said to have given Amartya Sen his name ("Amartya" meaning "immortal"). Sen hails from a distinguished family: his maternal grandfather Acharya Kshiti Mohan Sen, a close associate of Rabindranath Tagore, was a renowned scholar of medieval Indian literature, an authority on the philosophy of Hinduism, and also the second Vice Chancellor of Visva-Bharati University. His maternal grandfather was an uncle of Sukumar Sen, ICS the First-Chief Election Commissioner of India and his equally distinguished brothers, Amiya Sen, a very well known doctor, and Barrister Ashoke Kumar Sen, M.P. and a former Union Cabinet Minister for Law and Justice of India. Sen's father Professor Ashutosh Sen and mother Amita Sen were both born in Manikganj, Dhaka. His father was a Professor of Chemistry at Dhaka University and later served for several years in Delhi, becoming the Chairman of the West Bengal Public Service Commission.

Sen began his high-school education at St Gregory's School in Dhaka in 1941, in modern-day Bangladesh. His family came to India following the partition of the country in 1947. In India Sen studied at the Visva-Bharati University school and then at Presidency College, Kolkata, where he earned a First Class First in his B.A. (Honours) in Economics and emerged as the most eminent student of the well known batch of 1953. Subsequently, in the same year, he moved to Trinity College, Cambridge. There he earned a First Class (Starred First) BA (Honours) in 1956. He was elected as the President of the Cambridge Majlis in the same year. While still an undergraduate student of Trinity, he met Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis. Mahalanobis, who was much impressed with Sen, returned to Calcutta and immediately recommended the brilliant Cambridge undergraduate to Triguna Sen, the then Education Minister of West Bengal, who had been instrumental in turning the National Council into the new Jadavpur University.

After Sen had completed his Tripos examination and had enrolled for a Ph.D. in Economics to be completed at Trinity College, Cambridge, he returned to India on a two year leave. Triguna Sen immediately appointed him as Professor and the Founder-Head of Department of Economics at Jadavpur University, Calcutta, which was his very first appointment, at the age of 23. This still remains the youngest age at which anybody has been appointed to a professorship or a head of departmentship in India. During his tenure at Jadavpur University, Sen had the good fortune of having economic methodologist, A. K. Dasgupta, who was then teaching at the renowned Benares Hindu University, as his supervisor. After two full years of full time teaching in Jadavpur, Sen returned to Cambridge to complete his Ph.D. in 1959, which was immediately acclaimed as a pathbreaking work.

Subsequently, Sen won a Prize Fellowship at Trinity College, which gave him four years of freedom to do anything he liked, during which period he took the radical decision of studying philosophy. That proved to be of immense help to his later research. Sen related the importance of studying philosophy thus: "The broadening of my studies into philosophy was important for me not just because some of my main areas of interest in economics relate quite closely to philosophical disciplines (for example, social choice theory makes intense use of mathematical logic and also draws on moral philosophy, and so does the study of inequality and deprivation), but also because I found philosophical studies very rewarding on their own." However, his deep interest in philosophy can be dated back to his college days in Presidency, when he both read books on philosophy and debated philosophical themes.

To Sen, then Cambridge was like a battlefield. There were major debates between supporters of Keynesian economics and the diverse contributions of Keynes' followers, on the one hand, and the "neo-classical" economists skeptical of Keynes, on the other. Sen was lucky to have close relations with economists on both sides of the divide. Meanwhile, thanks to its good "practice" of democratic and tolerant social choice, Sen's own college, Trinity College, was an oasis very much removed from the discord. However, because of a lack of enthusiasm for social choice theory whether in Trinity or Cambridge, Sen had to choose a quite different subject for his Ph.D. thesis, after completing his B.A. He submitted his thesis on "the choice of techniques" in 1959 under the supervision of the brilliant but vigorously intolerant Joan Robinson. During his time at Cambridge, and according to Quentin Skinner, Sen was a member of the secret society "Cambridge Apostles".

Between 1960–1961, Amartya was a visiting Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Later consequently, he was also a visiting Professor at UC-Berkeley, Stanford, and Cornell.

He has taught economics also at the University of Calcutta and at the Delhi School of Economics (where he completed his ''magnum opus'' Collective Choice and Social Welfare in 1970), where he was a Professor from 1961 to 1972, a period which is considered to be a Golden Period in the history of DSE. In 1972 he joined the London School of Economics as a Professor of Economics where he taught until 1977. From 1977 to 1986 he taught at the University of Oxford, where he was first a Professor of Economics at Nuffield College, Oxford and then the Drummond Professor of Political Economy and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. In 1986 he joined Harvard as the Thomas W. Lamont University Professor of Economics. In 1998 he was appointed as Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. In January 2004 Sen returned to Harvard. He is also a contributor to the Eva Colorni Trust at the former London Guildhall University.

Membership and Associations

He has served as Presidents of the Econometric Society (1984), the International Economic Association (1986–1989), the Indian Economic Association (1989) and the American Economic Association (1994). He has also served as President of the Development Studies Association (1980–1982) and is a Honorary Vice-President of the Royal Economic Society, which he has been since 1988.

He presently serves as Honorary Director of Center for Human and Economic Development Studies at Peking University in China and is also a board council member of the Prime Minister of India's Global Advisory Council of Overseas Indians.

Research

Sen's papers in the late 1960s and early 1970s helped develop the theory of social choice, which first came to prominence in the work by the American economist Kenneth Arrow, who, while working at the RAND Corporation, had most famously showed that all voting rules, be they majority rule or two thirds-majority or status quo, must inevitably conflict with some basic democratic norm. Sen's contribution to the literature was to show under what conditions Arrow's impossibility theorem would indeed come to pass as well as to extend and enrich the theory of social choice, informed by his interests in history of economic thought and philosophy.

In 1981, Sen published ''Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation'' (1981), a book in which he demonstrated that famine occurs not only from a lack of food, but from inequalities built into mechanisms for distributing food. Sen also demonstrated that the Bengal famine was caused by an urban economic boom that raised food prices, thereby causing millions of rural workers to starve to death when their wages did not keep up. Sen's interest in famine stemmed from personal experience. As a nine-year-old boy, he witnessed the Bengal famine of 1943, in which three million people perished. This staggering loss of life was unnecessary, Sen later concluded. He presents data that there was an adequate food supply in Bengal at the time, but particular groups of people including rural landless labourers and urban service providers like haircutters did not have the monetary means to acquire food as its price rose rapidly due to factors that include British military acquisition, panic buying, hoarding, and price gouging, all connected to the war in the region. In ''Poverty and Famines'', Sen revealed that in many cases of famine, food supplies were not significantly reduced. In Bengal, for example, food production, while down on the previous year, was higher than in previous non-famine years. Thus, Sen points to a number of social and economic factors, such as declining wages, unemployment, rising food prices, and poor food-distribution systems. These issues led to starvation among certain groups in society. His capabilities approach focuses on positive freedom, a person's actual ability to be or do something, rather than on negative freedom approaches, which are common in economics and simply focuses on non-interference. In the Bengal famine, rural laborers' negative freedom to buy food was not affected. However, they still starved because they were not positively free to do anything, they did not have the functioning of nourishment, nor the capability to escape morbidity.

In addition to his important work on the causes of famines, Sen's work in the field of development economics has had considerable influence in the formulation of the ''Human Development Report'', published by the United Nations Development Programme. This annual publication that ranks countries on a variety of economic and social indicators owes much to the contributions by Sen among other social choice theorists in the area of economic measurement of poverty and inequality.

Sen's revolutionary contribution to development economics and social indicators is the concept of 'capability' developed in his article "Equality of What." He argues that governments should be measured against the concrete capabilities of their citizens. This is because top-down development will always trump human rights as long as the definition of terms remains in doubt (is a 'right' something that must be provided or something that simply cannot be taken away?). For instance, in the United States citizens have a hypothetical "right" to vote. To Sen, this concept is fairly empty. In order for citizens to have a capacity to vote, they first must have "functionings." These "functionings" can range from the very broad, such as the availability of education, to the very specific, such as transportation to the polls. Only when such barriers are removed can the citizen truly be said to act out of personal choice. It is up to the individual society to make the list of minimum capabilities guaranteed by that society. For an example of the "capabilities approach" in practice, see Martha Nussbaum's ''Women and Human Development''.

He wrote a controversial article in ''The New York Review of Books'' entitled "More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing" (see Missing women of Asia), analyzing the mortality impact of unequal rights between the genders in the developing world, particularly Asia. Other studies, such as one by Emily Oster, have argued that this is an overestimation, though Oster has recanted some of her conclusions.

Sen was seen as a ground-breaker among late twentieth-century economists for his insistence on discussing issues seen as marginal by most economists. He mounted one of the few major challenges to the economic model that posited self-interest as the prime motivating factor of human activity. While his line of thinking remains peripheral, there is no question that his work helped to re-prioritize a significant sector of economists and development workers, even the policies of the United Nations.

Welfare economics seeks to evaluate economic policies in terms of their effects on the well-being of the community. Sen, who devoted his career to such issues, was called the "conscience of his profession." His influential monograph ''Collective Choice and Social Welfare'' (1970), which addressed problems related to individual rights (including formulation of the liberal paradox), justice and equity, majority rule, and the availability of information about individual conditions, inspired researchers to turn their attention to issues of basic welfare. Sen devised methods of measuring poverty that yielded useful information for improving economic conditions for the poor. For instance, his theoretical work on inequality provided an explanation for why there are fewer women than men in India and China despite the fact that in the West and in poor but medically unbiased countries, women have lower mortality rates at all ages, live longer, and make a slight majority of the population. Sen claimed that this skewed ratio results from the better health treatment and childhood opportunities afforded boys in those countries, as well as sex-specific abortion.

Governments and international organizations handling food crises were influenced by Sen's work. His views encouraged policy makers to pay attention not only to alleviating immediate suffering but also to finding ways to replace the lost income of the poor, as, for example, through public-works projects, and to maintain stable prices for food. A vigorous defender of political freedom, Sen believed that famines do not occur in functioning democracies because their leaders must be more responsive to the demands of the citizens. In order for economic growth to be achieved, he argued, social reforms, such as improvements in education and public health, must precede economic reform.

Perceptions: In comparisons

Amartya has been called "the Conscience and the Mother Teresa of Economics" for his work on famine, human development theory, welfare economics, the underlying mechanisms of poverty, gender inequality, and political liberalism. However, he denies the comparison to Mother Teresa by saying that he has never tried to follow a lifestyle of dedicated self-sacrifice.

The Spinelli Group

On 15 September 2010, Sen supported the new initiative Spinelli Group in the European Parliament, which was founded to reinvigorate the strive for federalisation of the European Union (EU). Other prominent supporters are: Jacques Delors, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Guy Verhofstadt, Andrew Duff, Elmar Brok.

India: University mentor for growth and revival

Nalanda International University Project

In May 2007, he was appointed by the Government of India as chairman of Nalanda Mentor Group to examine the framework of international cooperation, and proposed structure of partnership, which would govern the establishment of Nalanda International University Project as an international centre of education seeking to revive the ancient center of higher learning which was present in India from the 5th century CE to 1197 CE.

Presidency College, Kolkata

In June 2011, he was appointed as the Chief Mentor of Presidency College by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

Personal life and beliefs

Sen's first wife was Nabaneeta Dev Sen, an Indian writer and scholar, with whom he had two children: Antara, a journalist and publisher, and Nandana, a Bollywood actress. Their marriage broke up shortly after they moved to London in 1971. In 1973, he married his second wife, Eva Colorni, who was Jewish, who died from stomach cancer in 1985. They had two children, Indrani, a journalist in New York, and Kabir, who teaches music at Shady Hill School.

His present wife, Emma Georgina Rothschild, is an economic historian, an expert on Adam Smith and a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. Sen usually spends his winter holidays at his home in Santiniketan in West Bengal, India, where he likes to go on long bike rides, and maintains a house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he and Emma spend the spring and long vacations. Asked how he relaxes, he replies: "I read a lot and like arguing with people."

Sen is a self-proclaimed agnostic and holds that this can be associated with Hinduism as a political entity. In an interview for the magazine ''California'', which is published by the University of California, Berkeley, he noted:

Academic achievements, awards and honors

Sen has received many honorary degrees (over 90) from universities around the world, including from the following: {| | valign="top" | |}

1981; He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

1982: He was awarded honorary fellowship by the Institute of Social Studies.

1998: He received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work in welfare economics.

1999: He received the Bharat Ratna 'the highest civilian award in India' by the President of India.

1999: He was offered the honorary citizenship of Bangladesh by Sheikh Hasina in recognition of his achievements in winning the Nobel Prize, and given that his ancestral origins were in what has become the modern state of Bangladesh

2000: He was awarded the order of Companion of Honour, UK.

2000: He received Leontief Prize for his outstanding contribution to economic theory from the Global Development and Environment Institute.

2000: He was awarded the Eisenhower Medal for Leadership and Service USA;

2000: He was the 351st Commencement Speaker of Harvard University.

2002: He received the International Humanist Award from the International Humanist and Ethical Union.

2003: He was conferred the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Indian Chamber of Commerce.

He is awarded the Life Time Achievement award by Bangkok-based United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP)

2010: He was chosen to deliver the Demos Annual Lecture 2010

Publications

Choice of Techniques, 1960.

Sen, Amartya, ''An Aspect of Indian Agriculture'', Economic Weekly, Vol. 14, 1962.

''Collective Choice and Social Welfare'', 1970, Holden-Day, 1984, Elsevier. Description.

Sen, Amartya, ''On Economic Inequality'', New York, Norton, 1973. (Expanded edition with a substantial annexe by James E. Foster and A. Sen, 1997).

On Economic Inequality, 1973.

Poverty and Famines: an Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation, 1981a.

Sen, Amartya, ''Poverty and Famines : An Essay on Entitlements and Deprivation'', Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1982a.

Sen, Amartya K., ''Choice, Welfare and Measurement'', Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1982b. Description and scroll to chapter-preview links.

Sen, Amartya, ''Food Economics and Entitlements'', Helsinki, Wider Working Paper 1, 1986.

Sen, Amartya, ''On Ethics and Economics'', Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1987. Scroll to chapter-preview links.

Drèze, Jean and Sen, Amartya, ''Hunger and Public Action''. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1989.

''Hunger and Public Action'', jointly edited with Jean Drèze, 1989

Sen, Amartya, "More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing". ''New York Review of Books'', 1990. ()

Sen, Amartya, ''Inequality Reexamined'', Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992.

Nussbaum, Martha, and Sen, Amartya. ''The Quality of Life''. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. Preview.

''India: Economic Development and Social Opportunity'', with Jean Drèze, 1995.

Sen, Amartya, ''Reason Before Identity'' (The Romanes Lecture for 1998), Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-19-951389-9

Commodities and Capabilities, 1999.

Sen, Amartya, ''Development as Freedom'', Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999. (Review by the Asia Times)

Development as Freedom, 1999.

Reason Before Identity, 1999.

Freedom, Rationality, and Social Choice: The Arrow Lectures and Other essays, 2000.

Sen, Amartya, ''Rationality and Freedom'', Harvard, Harvard Belknap Press, 2002.

Rationality and Freedom, 2004.

Inequality Reexamined, 2004.

The Argumentative Indian, 2005.

Sen, Amartya, ''The Argumentative Indian'', London: Allen Lane, 2005. (Review by the Guardian, Review by the Washington Post)

Sen, Amartya, ''The Three R's of Reform'', Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 40(19): pp. 1971–1974, 2005.

Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (Issues of Our Time), New York, W. W. Norton, 2006.

Imperial Illusions: India, Britain, and the wrong lessons. By Amartya Sen. Response by Niall Ferguson.

Equality of Capacity by Amartya Sen

''The Idea of Justice'' Harvard University Press & London: Allen Lane,2009. Description and scroll to chapter-preview links.

Other Publications on Google Scholar

See also

The Equality of autonomy, a concept of equality posed by Sen.

The Kerala model, an expression or concept invented and introduced by Sen.

References

External links

Comprehensive list of articles by Sen

Nobel Prize Biography

Amartya Sen: The Possibility of Social Choice (Nobel lecture)

Profile in The Guardian

Profile at The International Institute of Social Studies (ISS)

;Audio

Sen interviewed about his book The Idea of Justice He discusses how prevailing theories of justice have led us astray. April 2010.

Amartya Sen discusses his book "Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny", on Thoughtcast

Interview on IT Conversations

Immigration and Development, with Amartya Sen, on Open Source (radio show)

Amartya Sen in conversation on the BBC World Service discussion show The Forum

;Video

Lecture at Duke University "The Uses and Abuses of Adam Smith" March 2010

Category:Academics of the London School of Economics Category:Alumni of Presidency University, Kolkata Category:Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Category:Bengali Nobel laureates Category:Bengali people Category:Consequentialists Category:Recipients of the Bharat Ratna Category:Development economists Category:Development specialists Category:Fellows of All Souls College, Oxford Category:Fellows of Nuffield College, Oxford Category:Fellows of the British Academy Category:Fellows of the Econometric Society Category:Feminist economists Category:Harvard University faculty Category:University of Delhi faculty Category:University of Calcutta faculty Category:Honorary Fellows of Darwin College, Cambridge Category:Indian academics Category:Indian atheists Category:Indian economists Category:Indian Hindus Category:Indian Nobel laureates Category:Brazilian Order of Scientific Merit recipients Category:International development Category:Masters of Trinity College, Cambridge Category:Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour Category:Nobel laureates in Economics Category:People associated with Santiniketan Category:People from West Bengal Category:Political theorists Category:The Hunger Project Category:University of Calcutta alumni Category:Wesleyan University people Category:Visva-Bharati University alumni Category:1933 births Category:Living people Category:Presidents of the Econometric Society Category:Trustees of the British Museum Category:Jadavpur University faculty Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Category:Indian people of Bangladeshi descent

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Coordinates	33°51′35.9″N151°12′40″N
region	Western Philosophy
era	18th-century philosophy
birth date	May 07, 1711
birth place	Edinburgh, Scotland
death date	August 25, 1776
death place	Edinburgh, Scotland
school tradition	Scottish Enlightenment; Naturalism, Skepticism, Empiricism, Utilitarianism, Classical liberalism
main interests	Epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, Ethics, Political Philosophy, Aesthetics, Philosophy of Religion, Classical Economics
alma mater	University of Edinburgh
influences	Locke, Descartes, Berkeley, Hobbes, Hutcheson, Newton, Leibniz, Epicurus, Cicero, Malebranche, Earl of Shaftesbury, Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrho, Pierre Bayle
influenced	Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Arthur Schopenhauer, African Spir, Auguste Comte, John Stuart Mill, Baron d'Holbach, Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, William James, Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, Karl Popper, A. J. Ayer, J. L. Mackie, Noam Chomsky, Simon Blackburn, David Kellogg Lewis, W.V.O. Quine, Daniel Dennett, Jerry Fodor, Kenneth Binmore, Gilles Deleuze
notable ideas	Problem of causation, Bundle theory, Induction, Is–ought problem, Utility, Science of man }}

David Hume (7 May 1711 [26 April O.S.] – 25 August 1776) was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He is regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment. Hume is often grouped with John Locke, George Berkeley, and a handful of others as a British Empiricist.

Beginning with his ''A Treatise of Human Nature'' (1739), Hume strove to create a total naturalistic "science of man" that examined the psychological basis of human nature. In stark opposition to the rationalists who preceded him, most notably Descartes, he concluded that desire rather than reason governed human behaviour, saying: "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions." A prominent figure in the skeptical philosophical tradition and a strong empiricist, he argued against the existence of innate ideas, concluding instead that humans have knowledge only of things they directly experience. Thus he divides perceptions between strong and lively "impressions" or direct sensations and fainter "ideas," which are copied from impressions. He developed the position that mental behaviour is governed by "custom"; our use of induction, for example, is justified only by our idea of the "constant conjunction" of causes and effects. Without direct impressions of a metaphysical "self," he concluded that humans have no actual conception of the self, only of a bundle of sensations associated with the self. Hume advocated a compatibilist theory of free will that proved extremely influential on subsequent moral philosophy. He was also a sentimentalist who held that ethics are based on feelings rather than abstract moral principles. Hume also examined the normative is–ought problem. He held notoriously ambiguous views of Christianity, but famously challenged the argument from design in his ''Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion'' (1779).

Kant credited Hume with waking him up from his "dogmatic slumbers" and Hume has proved extremely influential on subsequent philosophy, especially on utilitarianism, logical positivism, William James, philosophy of science, early analytic philosophy, cognitive philosophy, and other movements and thinkers. The philosopher Jerry Fodor proclaimed Hume's ''Treatise'' "the founding document of cognitive science." Also famous as a prose stylist, Hume pioneered the essay as a literary genre and engaged with contemporary intellectual luminaries such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith (who acknowledged Hume's influence on his economics and political philosophy), James Boswell, Joseph Butler, and Thomas Reid.

Life

David Hume, originally David Home, son of Joseph Home of Chirnside, advocate, and Katherine Falconer, was born on 26 April 1711 (Old Style) in a tenement on the north side of the Lawnmarket in Edinburgh. He changed his name in 1734 because the English had difficulty pronouncing 'Home' in the Scottish manner. Throughout his life Hume, who never married, spent time occasionally at his family home at Ninewells by Chirnside, Berwickshire.

Education

Hume attended the University of Edinburgh at the unusually early age of twelve (possibly as young as ten) at a time when fourteen was normal. At first he considered a career in law, but came to have, in his words, "an insurmountable aversion to everything but the pursuits of Philosophy and general Learning; and while [my family] fanceyed I was poring over Voet and Vinnius, Cicero and Virgil were the Authors which I was secretly devouring." He had little respect for the professors of his time, telling a friend in 1735, "there is nothing to be learnt from a Professor, which is not to be met with in Books."

Hume made a philosophical discovery that opened up to him "...a new Scene of Thought," which inspired him "...to throw up every other Pleasure or Business to apply entirely to it." He did not recount what this "Scene" was, and commentators have offered a variety of speculations. Due to this inspiration, Hume set out to spend a minimum of ten years reading and writing. He came to the verge of nervous breakdown, after which he decided to have a more active life to better continue his learning.

Career

As Hume's options lay between a traveling tutorship and a stool in a merchant's office, he chose the latter. In 1734, after a few months occupied with commerce in Bristol, he went to La Flèche in Anjou, France. There he had frequent discourse with the Jesuits of the College of La Flèche. As he had spent most of his savings during his four years there while writing ''A Treatise of Human Nature'', he resolved "to make a very rigid frugality supply my deficiency of fortune, to maintain unimpaired my independency, and to regard every object as contemptible except the improvements of my talents in literature". He completed the ''Treatise'' at the age of 26.

Although many scholars today consider the ''Treatise'' to be Hume's most important work and one of the most important books in Western philosophy, the critics in Great Britain at the time did not agree, describing it as "abstract and unintelligible". Despite the disappointment, Hume later wrote, "Being naturally of a cheerful and sanguine temper, I soon recovered from the blow and prosecuted with great ardour my studies in the country". There, he wrote the ''Abstract'' Without revealing his authorship, he aimed to make his larger work more intelligible.

After the publication of ''Essays Moral and Political'' in 1744, Hume applied for the Chair of Pneumatics and Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. However, the position was given to William Cleghorn, after Edinburgh ministers petitioned the town council not to appoint Hume because he was seen as an atheist.

During the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion, Hume tutored the Marquis of Annandale (1720–92), who was officially described as a "lunatic". This engagement ended in disarray after about a year. But it was then that Hume started his great historical work ''The History of England'', which took fifteen years and ran over a million words, to be published in six volumes in the period between 1754 and 1762, while also involved with the Canongate Theatre. In this context, he associated with Lord Monboddo and other Scottish Enlightenment luminaries in Edinburgh. From 1746, Hume served for three years as Secretary to Lieutenant-General St Clair, and wrote ''Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding'', later published as ''An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding''. The ''Enquiry'' proved little more successful than the ''Treatise''.

Hume was charged with heresy, but he was defended by his young clerical friends, who argued that—as an atheist—he was outside the Church's jurisdiction. Despite his acquittal, Hume failed to gain the Chair of Philosophy at the University of Glasgow.

It was after returning to Edinburgh in 1752, as he wrote in ''My Own Life'', that "the Faculty of Advocates chose me their Librarian, an office from which I received little or no emolument, but which gave me the command of a large library". This resource enabled him to continue historical research for ''The History of England''.

Hume achieved great literary fame as a historian. His enormous ''The History of England'', tracing events from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688, was a best-seller in its day. In it, Hume presented political man as a creature of habit, with a disposition to submit quietly to established government unless confronted by uncertain circumstances. In his view, only religious difference could deflect men from their everyday lives to think about political matters.

However, Hume's volume of ''Political Discourses'' (published by Kincaid & Donaldson, 1752) was the only work he considered successful on first publication.

Religion

Hume wrote a great deal on religion. However, the question of what were Hume's personal views on religion is a difficult one. The Church of Scotland seriously considered bringing charges of infidelity against him. He never declared himself to be an atheist, but had he been hostile to religion. Hume would have been persecuted and his writings constrained, perhaps the reason behind his ambiguity. He did not acknowledge his authorship of many of his works in this area until close to his death, and some were not even published until afterwards.

In works such as ''On Superstition and Enthusiasm'', Hume specifically seems to support the standard religious views of his time and place. This still meant that he could be very critical of the Catholic Church, referring to it with the standard Protestant epithets and descriptions of it as superstition and idolatry as well as dismissing what his compatriots saw as uncivilised beliefs. He also considered extreme Protestant sects, which he called ''enthusiasts'', to be corrupters of religion. Yet he also put forward arguments that suggested that polytheism had much to commend it in preference to monotheism.

In his works, he attacked many of the basic assumptions of religion and Christian belief, and his arguments have become the foundation of much of the succeeding secular thinking about religion. In his ''Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion'', one of his protagonists challenged one of the intellectual arguments for belief in God or one god (especially in the Age of Enlightenment): the Argument from Design. Also, in his Of Miracles, he challenged the idea that religion (specifically Christianity) is supported by revelation.

Nevertheless, he was capable of writing in the introduction to his ''The Natural History of Religion'' that "The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author". In spite of that, he writes at the end of the essay: "Examine the religious principles, which have, in fact, prevailed in the world. You will scarcely be persuaded, that they are anything but sick men's dreams", and "Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgement appear the only result of our most accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject".

It is likely that Hume was skeptical both about religious belief (at least as demanded by the religious organisations of his time) and of the complete atheism promoted by such contemporaries as Baron d'Holbach. Russell (2008) suggests that perhaps Hume's position is best characterised by the term "irreligion". O'Connor (2001, p19) writes that Hume "did not believe in the God of standard theism. ... but he did not rule out all concepts of deity". Also, "ambiguity suited his purposes, and this creates difficulty in definitively pinning down his final position on religion".

Later life

From 1763 to 1765, Hume was Secretary to Lord Hertford in Paris. He met and later fell out with Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He wrote of his Paris life, "I really wish often for the plain roughness of The Poker Club of Edinburgh ... to correct and qualify so much lusciousness". For a year from 1767, Hume held the appointment of Under Secretary of State for the Northern Department. In 1768, he settled in Edinburgh; he lived from 1771 until his death in 1776 at the southwest corner of St. Andrew's Square, in Edinburgh's New Town, at what is now 21 Saint David Street. (A popular story, consistent with some historical evidence, suggests the street was named after Hume.)

James Boswell saw Hume a few weeks before his death (most likely of either bowel or liver cancer). Hume told him he sincerely believed it a "most unreasonable fancy" that there might be life after death. This meeting was dramatized in semi-fictional form for the BBC by Michael Ignatieff as ''Dialogue in the Dark''. Hume asked that he be interred in a "simple roman tomb"; in his will he requests that it be inscribed only with his name and the year of his birth and death, "leaving it to Posterity to add the Rest." It stands, as he wished it, on the southwestern slope of Calton Hill, in the Old Calton Cemetery, not far from his New Town home.

Science of man

In the introduction to ''A Treatise of Human Nature'', Hume writes "'Tis evident, that all the sciences have a relation, more or less, to human nature ... Even ''Mathematics'', ''Natural Philosophy'', and ''Natural Religion'', are in some measure dependent on the science of Man". Also, "the science of man is the only solid foundation for the other sciences", and the method for this science assumes "experience and observation" as the foundations of a logical argument. Because "Hume's plan is to extend to philosophy in general the methodological limitations of Newtonian physics", Hume is characterised as an empiricist.

Until recently, Hume was seen as a forerunner of the logical positivist movement; a form of anti-metaphysical empiricism. According to the logical positivists, unless a statement could be verified by experience, or else was true or false by definition (i.e. either tautological or contradictory), then it was meaningless (this is a summary statement of their verification principle). Hume, on this view, was a proto-positivist, who, in his philosophical writings, attempted to demonstrate how ordinary propositions about objects, causal relations, the self, and so on, are semantically equivalent to propositions about one's experiences.

Many commentators have since rejected this understanding of Humean empiricism, stressing an epistemological, rather than a semantic reading of his project. According to this view, Hume's empiricism consisted in the idea that it is our knowledge, and not our ability to conceive, that is restricted to what can be experienced. To be sure, Hume thought that we can form beliefs about that which extends beyond any possible experience, through the operation of faculties such as custom and the imagination, but he was skeptical about claims to ''knowledge'' on this basis.

Induction

Few philosophers are as associated with induction as David Hume. There is a difficulty, however, in discussing induction and Hume. For Hume himself rarely used the term and when he did, he used it to justify some point he was making. He gave no indication that he saw any problem with induction. Induction got associated with Hume only in the early twentieth century. John Maynard Keynes may have been the first to draw the connection. The connection is now standard, but it must be remembered (as in the following) that what is meant is a connection between Hume's philosophy and what is nowadays meant by "induction," not that Hume himself used the word much in his writings.

The cornerstone of Hume's epistemology is the so-called Problem of Induction. It has been argued that it is in this area of Hume's thought that his skepticism about human powers of reason is the most pronounced. Understanding the problem of induction, then, is central to grasping Hume's general philosophical system.

The problem concerns the explanation of how we are able to make inductive inferences. Inductive inference is reasoning from the observed behaviour of objects to their behaviour when unobserved; as Hume says, it is a question of how things behave when they go "beyond the present testimony of the senses, and the records of our memory". Hume notices that we tend to believe that things behave in a regular manner; i.e., that patterns in the behaviour of objects will persist into the future, and throughout the unobserved present. This persistence of regularities is sometimes called Uniformitarianism or the Principle of the Uniformity of Nature.

Hume's argument is that we cannot rationally justify the claim that nature will continue to be uniform, as justification comes in only two varieties, and both of these are inadequate. The two sorts are: (1) demonstrative reasoning, and (2) probable reasoning. With regard to (1), Hume argues that the uniformity principle cannot be demonstrated, as it is "consistent and conceivable" that nature might stop being regular. Turning to (2), Hume argues that we cannot hold that nature will continue to be uniform because it has been in the past, as this is using the very sort of reasoning (induction) that is under question: it would be circular reasoning. Thus no form of justification will rationally warrant our inductive inferences.

Hume's solution to this skeptical problem is to argue that, rather than reason, it is natural instinct that explains our ability to make inductive inferences. He asserts that "Nature, by an absolute and uncontroulable necessity has determin'd us to judge as well as to breathe and feel". Although many modern commentators have demurred from Hume's solution, some have concurred with it, seeing his analysis of our epistemic predicament as a major contribution to the theory of knowledge. For example, the Oxford Professor John D. Kenyon writes:

Reason might manage to raise a doubt about the truth of a conclusion of natural inductive inference just for a moment in the study, but the forces of nature will soon overcome that artificial skepticism, and the sheer agreeableness of animal faith will protect us from excessive caution and sterile suspension of belief.

Causation

The notion of causation is closely linked to the problem of induction. According to Hume, we reason inductively by associating constantly conjoined events, and it is the mental act of association that is the basis of our concept of causation. There are three main interpretations of Hume's theory of causation represented in the literature: (1) the logical positivist; (2) the skeptical realist; and (3) the quasi-realist.

The logical positivist interpretation is that Hume analyses causal propositions, such as "A caused B", in terms of regularities in perception: "A caused B" is equivalent to "Whenever A-type events happen, B-type ones follow", where "whenever" refers to all possible perceptions.

power and necessity... are... qualities of perceptions, not of objects... felt by the soul and not perceived externally in bodies

This view is rejected by skeptical realists, who argue that Hume thought that causation amounts to more than just the regular succession of events. When two events are causally conjoined, a necessary connection underpins the conjunction:

Shall we rest contented with these two relations of contiguity and succession, as affording a complete idea of causation? By no means ... there is a ''necessary connexion'' to be taken into consideration.

Hume held that we have no perceptual access to the necessary connection (hence ''skepticism''), but we are naturally compelled to believe in its objective existence (hence ''realism'').

It has been argued that, whilst Hume did not think causation is reducible to pure regularity, he was not a fully fledged realist either: Simon Blackburn calls this a quasi-realist reading. On this view, talk about causal necessity is an expression of a functional change in the human mind, whereby certain events are predicted or anticipated on the basis of prior experience. The expression of causal necessity is a "projection" of the functional change onto the objects involved in the causal connection: in Hume's words, "nothing is more usual than to apply to external bodies every internal sensation which they occasion.

The self

According to the standard interpretation of Hume on personal identity, he was a Bundle Theorist, who held that the self is nothing but a bundle of interconnected perceptions linked by the property of constancy and coherence; or, more accurately, that our idea of the self is just the idea of such a bundle. This view is forwarded by, for example, positivist interpreters, who saw Hume as suggesting that terms such as "self", "person", or "mind" referred to collections of "sense-contents". A modern-day version of the bundle theory of the mind has been advanced by Derek Parfit in his Reasons and Persons (1986).

However, some philosophers have criticised the bundle-theory interpretation of Hume on personal identity. They argue that distinct selves can have perceptions that stand in relations of similarity and causality with one another. Thus perceptions must already come parceled into distinct "bundles" before they can be associated according to the relations of similarity and causality: in other words, the mind must already possess a unity that cannot be generated, or constituted, by these relations alone. Since the bundle-theory interpretation attributes Hume with answering an ontological or conceptual question, philosophers who see Hume as not very concerned with such questions have queried whether the view is really Hume's, or "only a decoy". Instead, it is suggested, Hume might have been answering an epistemological question, about the causal origin of our concept of the self.

Another interpretation of Hume's view of the self has been argued for by James Giles. According to this view, Hume is not arguing for a bundle theory, which is a form of reductionism, but rather for an eliminative view of the self. That is, rather than reducing the self to a bundle of perceptions, Hume is rejecting the idea of the self altogether. On this interpretation Hume is proposing a 'No-Self Theory' and thus has much in common with Buddhist thought.

Practical reason

Hume's anti-rationalism informed much of his theory of belief and knowledge, in his treatment of the notions of induction, causation, and the external world. But it was not confined to this sphere, and permeated just as strongly his theories of motivation, action, and morality. In a famous sentence in the ''Treatise'', Hume circumscribes reason's role in the production of action:

Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.

It has been suggested that this position can be lucidly brought out through the metaphor of "direction of fit": beliefs—the paradigmatic products of reason—are propositional attitudes that aim to have their content fit the world; conversely, desires—or what Hume calls passions, or sentiments—are states that aim to fit the world to their contents. Though a metaphor, it has been argued that this intuitive way of understanding Hume's theory that desires are necessary for motivation "captures something quite deep in our thought about their nature".

Hume's anti-rationalism has been very influential, and defended in contemporary philosophy of action by neo-Humeans such as Michael Smith and Simon Blackburn The major opponents of the Humean view are cognitivists about what it is to act for a reason, such as John McDowell, and Kantians, such as Christine Korsgaard.

Ethics

Hume's views on human motivation and action formed the cornerstone of his ethical theory: he conceived moral or ethical sentiments to be intrinsically motivating, or the providers of reasons for action. Given that one cannot be motivated by reason alone, requiring the input of the passions, Hume argued that reason cannot be behind morality

Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason.

Hume's sentimentalism about morality was shared by his close friend Adam Smith, and Hume and Smith were mutually influenced by the moral reflections of Francis Hutcheson.

Hume's theory of ethics has been influential in modern day ethical theory, helping to inspire various forms of emotivism, error theory and ethical expressivism and non-cognitivism and Alan Gibbard.

Free will, determinism, and responsibility

Hume, along with Thomas Hobbes, is cited as a classical compatibilist about the notions of freedom and determinism. The thesis of compatibilism seeks to reconcile human freedom with the mechanist belief that human beings are part of a deterministic universe, whose happenings are governed by the laws of physics.

Hume argued that the dispute about the compatibility of freedom and determinism has been kept afloat by ambiguous terminology:

From this circumstance alone, that a controversy has been long kept on foot... we may presume, that there is some ambiguity in the expression.

Hume defines the concepts of "necessity" and "liberty" as follows:

Necessity: "the uniformity, observable in the operations of nature; where similar objects are constantly conjoined together..".

Liberty: "''a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will''..".

Hume then argues that, according to these definitions, not only are the two compatible, but Liberty ''requires'' Necessity. For if our actions were not necessitated in the above sense, they would "...have so little in connexion with motives, inclinations and circumstances, that one does not follow with a certain degree of uniformity from the other." But if our actions are not thus hooked up to the will, then our actions can never be free: they would be matters of "chance; which is universally allowed not to exist".

Moreover, Hume goes on to argue that in order to be held morally responsible, it is required that our behaviour be caused, i.e. necessitated, for

Actions are, by their very nature, temporary and perishing; and where they proceed not from some ''cause'' in the character and disposition of the person who performed them, they can neither redound to his honour, if good; nor infamy, if evil

This argument has inspired modern day commentators. However, it has been argued that the issue of whether or not we hold one another morally responsible does not ultimately depend on the truth or falsity of a metaphysical thesis such as determinism, for our so holding one another is a non-rational human sentiment that is not predicated on such theses. For this influential argument, which is still made in a Humean vein, see P. F. Strawson's essay, ''Freedom and Resentment''.

Problem of miracles

In his discussion of miracles in ''An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding'' (Section 10) Hume defines a miracle as "a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent". Given that Hume argues that it is impossible to deduce the existence of a Deity from the existence of the world (for he says that causes cannot be determined from effects), miracles (including prophesy) are the only possible support he would conceivably allow for theistic religions.

Hume discusses everyday belief as often resulted from probability, where we believe an event that has occurred most often as being most likely, but that we also subtract the weighting of the less common event from that of the more common event. In the context of miracles, this means that a miraculous event should be labelled a miracle only where it would be even more unbelievable (by principles of probability) for it not to be. Hume mostly discusses miracles as testimony, of which he writes that when a person reports a miraculous event we [need to] balance our belief in their veracity against our belief that such events do not occur. Following this rule, only where it is considered, as a result of experience, less likely that the testimony is false than that a miracle occur should we believe in miracles.

Although Hume leaves open the possibility for miracles to occur and be reported, he offers various arguments against this ever having happened in history:

People often lie, and they have good reasons to lie about miracles occurring either because they believe they are doing so for the benefit of their religion or because of the fame that results.

People by nature enjoy relating miracles they have heard without caring for their veracity and thus miracles are easily transmitted even where false.

Hume notes that miracles seem to ''occur'' mostly in "ignorant" and "barbarous" nations and times, and the reason they don't occur in the "civilized" societies is such societies aren't awed by what they know to be natural events.

The miracles of each religion argue against all other religions and their miracles, and so even if a proportion of all reported miracles across the world fit Hume's requirement for belief, the miracles of each religion make the other less likely.

Despite all this Hume observes that belief in miracles is popular, and that "The gazing populace receive greedily, without examination, whatever soothes superstition and promotes wonder".

Critics have argued that Hume's position assumes the character of miracles and natural laws prior to any specific examination of miracle claims, and thus it amounts to a subtle form of begging the question. They have also noted that it requires an appeal to inductive inference, as none have observed every part of nature or examined every possible miracle claim (e.g., those yet future to the observer), which in Hume's philosophy was especially problematic.

Hume's main argument concerning miracles is the following. Miracles by definition are singular events that differ from the established Laws of Nature. The Laws of Nature are codified as a result of past experiences. Therefore a miracle is a violation of all prior experience. However the probability that something has occurred in contradiction of all past experience should always be judged to be less than the probability that either my senses have deceived me or the person recounting the miraculous occurrence is lying or mistaken, all of which I have past experience of. For Hume, this refusal to grant credence does not guarantee correctness – he offers the example of an Indian Prince, who having grown up in a hot country refuses to believe that water has frozen. By Hume's lights this refusal is not wrong and the Prince is thinking correctly; it is presumably only when he has had extensive experience of the freezing of water that he has warrant to believe that the event could occur. So for Hume, either the miraculous event will become a recurrent event or else it will never be rational to believe it occurred. The connection to religious belief is left inexplicit throughout, save for the close of his discussion wherein Hume notes the reliance of Christianity upon testimony of miraculous occurrences and makes an ironic remark that anyone who "is moved by faith to assent" to revealed testimony "is aware of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience."

Design argument

One of the oldest and most popular arguments for the existence of God is the design argument: that order and "purpose" in the world bespeaks a divine origin. Hume gave the classic criticism of the design argument in ''Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion'' and ''An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding''. Hume argued that for the design argument to be feasible, it must be true that order and purpose are observed only when they result from design. But order is often observed to result from presumably mindless processes like the generation of snowflakes and crystals. Design can account for only a tiny part of our experience of order. Furthermore, the design argument is based on an incomplete analogy. Because of our experience with objects, we can recognise human-designed ones, as when we compare a pile of stones with a constructed wall, but to deduce that the universe is designed, we would need to have an experience of a range of different universes. As we only experience one, the analogy cannot be applied. We must ask therefore if it is right to compare the world to a machine—as in Paley's watchmaker analogy—when perhaps it could be better described as a giant inert animal. Even if the design argument is completely successful, it could not (in and of itself) establish a robust theism. One could easily reach the conclusion that the universe's configuration is the result of some morally ambiguous, possibly unintelligent agent or agents whose method bears only a remote similarity to human design. In this way it could be asked, if the universe is designed, is the designer God? It could also be asked, if there is a designer god, who designed the designer? If a well-ordered natural world requires a special designer, then God's mind (being so well-ordered) ''also'' requires a special designer. Then this designer would need a designer, and so on ''ad infinitum''. Furthermore, if we could be happy with an inexplicably self-ordered divine mind, why should we not rest content with an inexplicably self-ordered natural world? Often, what appears to be purpose, where it looks like object X has feature F in order to secure outcome O, is better explained by a filtering process: that is, object X wouldn't be around did it not possess feature F, and outcome O is only interesting to us as a human projection of goals onto nature. This mechanical explanation of teleology anticipated natural selection.

Political theory

It is difficult to categorize Hume's political affiliations. His thought contains elements that are, in modern terms, both conservative and liberal, as well as ones that are both contractarian and utilitarian, though these terms are all anachronistic. Thomas Jefferson banned Hume's ''History'' from the University of Virginia, fearing that it "has spread universal toryism over the land". Yet, Samuel Johnson thought Hume "a Tory by chance... for he has no principle. If he is anything, he is a Hobbist". His central concern is to show the importance of the rule of law, and stresses throughout his political ''Essays'' the importance of moderation in politics. This outlook needs to be seen within the historical context of eighteenth century Scotland, where the legacy of religious civil war, combined with the relatively recent memory of the 1715 and 1745 Jacobite risings, fostered in a historian such as Hume a distaste for enthusiasm and factionalism that appeared to threaten the fragile and nascent political and social stability of a country that was deeply politically and religiously divided. He thinks that society is best governed by a general and impartial system of laws, based principally on the "artifice" of contract; he is less concerned about the form of government that administers these laws, so long as it does so fairly (though he thought that republics were more likely to do so than monarchies).

Hume expressed suspicion of attempts to reform society in ways that departed from long-established custom, and he counselled peoples not to resist their governments except in cases of the most egregious tyranny. However, he resisted aligning himself with either of Britain's two political parties, the Whigs and the Tories. Hume writes

My views of ''things'' are more conformable to Whig principles; my representations of persons to Tory prejudices.

McArthur says that Hume believed that we should try to balance our demands for liberty with the need for strong authority, without sacrificing either. McArthur characterizes Hume as a 'precautionary conservative': whose actions would have been "determined by prudential concerns about the consequences of change, which often demand we ignore our own principles about what is ideal or even legitimate", He supported liberty of the press, and was sympathetic to democracy, when suitably constrained. Douglass Adair has argued that Hume was a major inspiration for James Madison's writings, and the ''Federalist No. 10'' in particular. Hume was also, in general, an optimist about social progress, believing that, thanks to the economic development that comes with the expansion of trade, societies progress from a state of "barbarism" to one of "civilisation". Civilised societies are open, peaceful and sociable, and their citizens are as a result much happier. It is therefore not fair to characterise him, as Leslie Stephen did, as favouring "...that stagnation which is the natural ideal of a skeptic."

Though it has been suggested Hume had no positive vision of the best society, he in fact produced an essay titled ''Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth'', which lays out what he thought was the best form of government. His pragmatism shone through, however, in his caveat that we should only seek to implement such a system should an opportunity present itself, which would not upset established structures. He defended a strict separation of powers, decentralisation, extending the franchise to anyone who held property of value and limiting the power of the clergy. The Swiss militia system was proposed as the best form of protection. Elections were to take place on an annual basis and representatives were to be unpaid. It is also important to note that the ideal commonwealth laid out by Hume was held to be ideal only for the British Isles in the 18th century. Hume was a relativist, and realized that such a form of government would not be ideal for all cultures, nor would it necessarily be permanent as historical conditions change.

Contributions to economic thought

Through his discussions on politics, Hume developed many ideas that are prevalent in the field of economics. This includes ideas on private property, inflation, and foreign trade.

Hume does not believe, as Locke does, that private property is a natural right, but he argues that it is justified since resources are limited. If all goods were unlimited and available freely, then private property would not be justified, but instead becomes an "idle ceremonial". Hume also believed in unequal distribution of property, because perfect equality would destroy the ideas of thrift and industry. Perfect equality would thus lead to impoverishment.

Hume did not believe that foreign trade produced specie, but considered trade a stimulus for a country's economic growth. He did not consider the volume of world trade as fixed because countries can feed off their neighbours' wealth, being part of a "prosperous community". The fall in foreign demand is not that fatal, because in the long run, a country cannot preserve a leading trading position.

Hume was among the first to develop automatic price-specie flow, an idea that contrasts with the mercantile system. Simply put, when a country increases its in-flow of gold, this in-flow of gold will result in price inflation, and then price inflation will force out countries from trading that would have traded before the inflation. This results in a decrease of the in-flow of gold in the long run.

Hume also proposed a theory of beneficial inflation. He believed that increasing the money supply would raise production in the short run. This phenomenon would be caused by a gap between the increase in the money supply and that of the price level. The result is that prices will not rise at first and may not rise at all. This theory was later developed by John Maynard Keynes.

As historian of England

Between Hume's death and 1894, there were at least 50 editions of his 6-volume ''History of England'', a work of immense sweep. The subtitle tells us as much, "From the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688".

There was also an often-reprinted abridgement, ''The Student's Hume'' (1859).

Another remarkable feature of the series was that it widened the focus of history, away from merely Kings, Parliaments, and armies, including literature and science as well.

Works

''A Kind of History of My Life'' (1734) Mss 23159 National Library of Scotland. A letter to an unnamed physician, asking for advice about "the Disease of the Learned" that then afflicted him. Here he reports that at the age of eighteen "there seem'd to be open'd up to me a new Scene of Thought..." that made him "throw up every other Pleasure or Business" and turned him to scholarship. ''A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to introduce the experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects''. (1739–40) Hume intended to see whether the ''Treatise of Human Nature'' met with success, and if so to complete it with books devoted to Politics and Criticism. However, it did not meet with success. As Hume himself said, "It fell ''dead-born from the press'', without reaching such distinction as even to excite a murmur among the zealots" and so was not completed. ''An Abstract of a Book lately Published: Entitled A Treatise of Human Nature etc''. (1740) Anonymously published, but almost certainly written by Hume in an attempt to popularise his ''Treatise''. Of considerable philosophical interest, because it spells out what he considered "The Chief Argument" of the ''Treatise'', in a way that seems to anticipate the structure of the ''Enquiry concerning Human Understanding''.

''Essays Moral and Political'' (first ed. 1741–2) A collection of pieces written and published over many years, though most were collected together in 1753–4. Many of the essays are focused on topics in politics and economics, though they also range over questions of aesthetic judgement, love, marriage and polygamy, and the demographics of ancient Greece and Rome, to name just a few of the topics considered. The Essays show some influence from Addison's ''Tatler'' and ''The Spectator'', which Hume read avidly in his youth.

''A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh: Containing Some Observations on a Specimen of the Principles concerning Religion and Morality, said to be maintain'd in a Book lately publish'd, intituled A Treatise of Human Nature etc''. Edinburgh (1745). Contains a letter written by Hume to defend himself against charges of atheism and scepticism, while applying for a Chair at Edinburgh University.

''An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding'' (1748) Contains reworking of the main points of the ''Treatise'', Book 1, with the addition of material on free will (adapted from Book 2), miracles, the Design Argument, and mitigated scepticism. ''Of Miracles'', section X of the ''Enquiry'', was often published separately,

''An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals'' (1751) A reworking of material from Book 3 of the ''Treatise'', on morality, but with a significantly different emphasis. Hume regarded this as the best of all his philosophical works, both in its philosophical ideas and in its literary style.

''Political Discourses'', (part II of ''Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary'' within vol. 1 of the larger ''Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects'') Edinburgh (1752). Included in ''Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects'' (1753–6) reprinted 1758–77.

''Political Discourses''/''Discours politiques'' (1752–1758), ''My ovn life'' (1776), ''Of Essay writing'', 1742. Bilingual English-French (translated by Fabien Grandjean). Mauvezin, France, Trans-Europ-Repress, 1993, 22 cm, V-260 p. Bibliographic notes, index.

''Four Dissertations'' London (1757). Included in reprints of ''Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects'' (above).

''The History of England'' (Sometimes referred to as ''The History of Great Britain'') (1754–62) More a category of books than a single work, Hume's history spanned "from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688" and went through over 100 editions. Many considered it ''the'' standard history of England until Thomas Macaulay's ''History of England''.

''The Natural History of Religion'' (1757)

"My Own Life" (1776) Penned in April, shortly before his death, this autobiography was intended for inclusion in a new edition of "Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects". It was first published by Adam Smith who claimed that by doing so he had incurred "ten times more abuse than the very violent attack I had made upon the whole commercial system of Great Britain". (Ernest Campbell Mossner, The Life of David Hume) ''Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion'' (1779) Published posthumously by his nephew, David Hume the Younger. Being a discussion among three fictional characters concerning the nature of God, and is an important portrayal of the argument from design. Despite some controversy, most scholars agree that the view of Philo, the most sceptical of the three, comes closest to Hume's own.

Hume's influence

Attention to Hume's philosophical works grew after the German philosopher Immanuel Kant credited Hume with awakening him from "dogmatic slumbers" (''circa'' 1770).

According to Schopenhauer, "there is more to be learned from each page of David Hume than from the collected philosophical works of Hegel, Herbart and Schleiermacher taken together".

A. J. Ayer (1936), introducing his classic exposition of logical positivism, claimed: "The views which are put forward in this treatise derive from the logical outcome of the empiricism of Berkeley and Hume." Albert Einstein (1915) wrote that he was inspired by Hume's positivism when formulating his Special Theory of Relativity. Hume was called "the prophet of the Wittgensteinian revolution" by N. Phillipson, referring to his view that mathematics and logic are closed systems, disguised tautologies, and have no relation to the world of experience. David Fate Norton (1993) asserted that Hume was "the first post-sceptical philosopher of the early modern period".

Hume's Problem of Induction was also of fundamental importance to the philosophy of Karl Popper. In his autobiography, ''Unended Quest'', he wrote: "'Knowledge' ... is ''objective''; and it is hypothetical or conjectural. This way of looking at the problem made it possible for me to reformulate Hume's ''problem of induction''". This insight resulted in Popper's major work The Logic of Scientific Discovery. In his Conjectures and Refutations, p 55, he writes:

"I approached the problem of induction through Hume. Hume, I felt, was perfectly right in pointing out that induction cannot be logically justified".

See also

Hume Studies

Age of reason

Contributions to liberal theory

Human science

Hume's fork

Hume's Law

Hume's principle

Liberalism

The Missing Shade of Blue

Scientific scepticism

Further reading

Ardal, Pall (1966). Passion and Value in Hume's Treatise. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press.

Beauchamp, Tom and Rosenberg, Alexander, ''Hume and the Problem of Causation'' New York, Oxford University Press, 1981.

Ernest Campbell Mossner. ''The Life of David Hume''. Oxford University Press, 1980. (The standard biography.)

Peter Millican. ''Critical Survey of the Literature on Hume and his First Enquiry''. (Surveys around 250 books and articles on Hume and related topics.) Davidhume.org

David Fate Norton. ''David Hume: Commonsense Moralist, Skeptical Metaphysician''. Princeton University Press, 1978.

Garrett, Don (1996). Cognition and Commitment in Hume's Philosophy. New York & Oxford, Oxford University Press.

J.C.A. Gaskin. ''Hume's Philosophy of Religion''. Humanities Press International, 1978.

P. J. E. Kail (2007) Projection and Realism in Hume's Philosophy, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Norman Kemp Smith''.The Philosophy of David Hume''. Macmillan, 1941. (Still enormously valuable.)

Frederick Rosen, ''Classical Utilitarianism from Hume to Mill'' (Routledge Studies in Ethics & Moral Theory), 2003. ISBN 0-415-22094-7

Russell, Paul (1995). Freedom and Moral Sentiment: Hume's Way of Naturalizing Responsibility. New York & Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Russell, Paul (2008). The Riddle of Hume's Treatise: Skepticism, Naturalism and Irreligion New York & Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Stroud, B. (1977). Hume, Routledge, London & New York. (Complete study of Hume's work parting from the interpretation of Hume's naturalistic philosophical programme).

Hesselberg, A. Kenneth (1961). Hume, Natural Law and Justice. Duquesne Review

Gilles Deleuze, ''Empirisme et subjectivité. Essai sur la Nature Humaine selon Hume'' (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1953) trans. ''Empiricism and Subjectivity'' (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991)

References

Anderson, R. F. (1966). ''Hume's First Principles'', University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln.

Ayer, A. J. (1936). ''Language, Truth and Logic''. London.

Bongie, L. L. (1998) ''David Hume — Prophet of the Counter-Revolution''. Liberty Fund, Indianapolis,

Broackes, Justin (1995). ''Hume, David'', in Ted Honderich (ed.) ''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', New York, Oxford University Press,

Daiches D., Jones P., Jones J. (eds )''The Scottish Enlightenment: 1730–1790 A Hotbed of Genius'' The University of Edinburgh, 1986. In paperback, The Saltire Society, 1996 ISBN 0-85411-069-0

Einstein, A. (1915) ''Letter to Moritz Schlick'', Schwarzschild, B. (trans. & ed.) in ''The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein'', vol. 8A, R. Schulmann, A. J. Fox, J. Illy, (eds.) Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ (1998), p. 220.

Flew, A. (1986). ''David Hume: Philosopher of Moral Science'', Basil Blackwell, Oxford.

Fogelin, R. J. (1993). ''Hume's scepticism''. In Norton, D. F. (ed.) (1993). ''The Cambridge Companion to Hume'', Cambridge University Press, pp. 90–116.

Garfield, Jay L. (1995) ''The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way'' Oxford University Press

Giles, J. (1997) ''No Self to be Found: The Search for Personal Identity'' University Press of America.

Graham, R. (2004). ''The Great Infidel — A Life of David Hume''. John Donald, Edinburgh.

Harwood, Sterling (1996). "Moral Sensibility Theories", in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Supplement) (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co.).

Hume, D. (EHU) (1777). ''An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding''. Nidditch, P. N. (ed.), 3rd. ed. (1975), Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Hume, D. (1751). ''An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals''. David Hume, ''Essays Moral, Political, and Literary'' edited with preliminary dissertations and notes by T.H. Green and T.H. Grose, 1:1–8. London: Longmans, Green 1907.

Hume, D. (1740). ''A Treatise of Human Nature'' (1967, edition). Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Hume, D. (1752–1758). ''Political Discourses''

:Bilingual English-French (translated by Fabien Grandjean). Mauvezin, France, Trans-Europ-Repress, 1993, 22 cm, V-260 p. Bibliographic notes, index.

Husserl, E. (1970). ''The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology'', Carr, D. (trans.), Northwestern University Press, Evanston.

Kolakowski, L. (1968). ''The Alienation of Reason: A History of Positivist Thought'', Doubleday, Garden City.

Morris, William Edward, ''David Hume'', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2001 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

Norton, D. F. (1993). ''Introduction to Hume's thought''. In Norton, D. F. (ed.), (1993). ''The Cambridge Companion to Hume'', Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–32.

O'Connor, D. (2001). ''Routledge philosophy guidebook to Hume and religion'', Routledge, London.

Penelhum, T. (1993). ''Hume's moral philosophy''. In Norton, D. F. (ed.), (1993). ''The Cambridge Companion to Hume'', Cambridge University Press, pp. 117–147.

Phillipson, N. (1989). ''Hume'', Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London.

Popkin, Richard H. (1993) "Sources of Knowledge of Sextus Empiricus in Hume's Time" Journal ''of the History of Ideas'', Vol. 54, No. 1. (Jan., 1993), pp. 137–141.

Popkin, R. & Stroll, A. (1993) ''Philosophy''. Reed Educational and Professional Publishing Ltd, Oxford.

Popper. K. (1960). ''Knowledge without authority''. In Miller D. (ed.), (1983). ''Popper'', Oxford, Fontana, pp. 46–57.

Robinson, Dave & Groves, Judy (2003). ''Introducing Political Philosophy''. Icon Books. ISBN 1-84046-450-X.

Russell, B. (1946). ''A History of Western Philosophy''. London, Allen and Unwin.

Robbins, Lionel (1998). ''A History of Economic Thought: The LSE Lectures''. Edited by Steven G. Medema and Warren J. Samuels. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.

Spiegel, Henry William,(1991). ''The Growth of Economic Thought'', 3rd Ed., Durham: Duke University Press.

Stroud, B. (1977). ''Hume'', Routledge, London & New York.

Taylor, A. E. (1927). ''David Hume and the Miraculous'', Leslie Stephen Lecture. Cambridge, pp. 53–4.

External links

David Hume at the Online Library of Liberty

Books by David Hume at the Online Books Page

David Hume resources including books, articles, and encyclopedia entries

David Hume readable versions of the ''Treatise'', the two ''Enquiries'', the ''Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion'', and four essays

A Bibliography of Hume's Early Writings and Early Responses

Footnotes

Category:18th-century philosophers Category:British sceptics Category:Classical liberals Category:Early modern philosophers Category:Empiricists Category:Epistemologists Category:Enlightenment philosophers Category:Modern philosophy Category:Philosophers of art Category:Scottish economists Category:Scottish Enlightenment Category:Scottish essayists Category:Scottish historians Category:Scottish philosophers Category:Utilitarians Category:Philosophers of science Category:Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Category:People from Edinburgh Category:1711 births Category:1776 deaths Category:Moral philosophers Category:Members of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh Category:Burials at Old Calton Cemetery

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Coordinates	33°51′35.9″N151°12′40″N
Name	Elinor Ostrom
School tradition	New institutional economics
Color	black
Birth date	August 07, 1933
Nationality	United States
Institution	Indiana University, Arizona State University
Field	Public economicsPublic choice theory
Alma mater	University of California, Los Angeles
Influences	Friedrich von HayekJames M. Buchanan
Awards	John J. Carty Award (2004)Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2009)elected to United States National Academy of Sciences (2001)
Signature
Repec prefix	e |repec_idpos55 }}

Elinor Ostrom (née Awan, born August 7, 1933) is an American political economist. She was awarded the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, which she shared with Oliver E. Williamson, for "her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons." She is the first woman to win the prize in this category. Her work is associated with the new institutional economics and the resurgence of political economy.

Ostrom lives in Bloomington, IN, and is on the faculty of both Indiana University and Arizona State University. She holds a Distinguished Professor at Indiana University and is the Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science and Co-Director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University in Bloomington, as well as Research Professor and the Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity at Arizona State University in Tempe. Ostrom also serves as a lead researcher for the Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management Collaborative Research Support Program (SANREM CRSP), managed by Virginia Tech and funded by USAID.

Childhood

Ostrom was born on August 7, 1933, in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Adrian and Leah Awan. Her father was Jewish, while her mother was Protestant. She attended a Protestant church.

Education

Ostrom graduated from Beverly Hills High School in 1951 and then received a B.A. (with honors) in political science at UCLA in 1954. She was awarded an M.A. in 1962 and a Ph.D. in 1965, both from UCLA Department of Political Science.

Career

In 1973, she co-founded A Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University with her husband, Vincent Ostrom. Examining the use of collective action, trust, and cooperation in the management of common pool resources, her institutional approach to public policy, known as the ''institutional analysis and development'' (IAD) framework, has been considered sufficiently distinct to be thought of as a separate school of public choice theory. She has authored many books in the fields of organizational theory, political science, and public administration.

Research

Ostrom is considered one of the leading scholars in the study of common pool resources (CPR). In particular, Ostrom's work emphasizes how humans interact with ecosystems to maintain long-term sustainable resource yields. Common pool resources include many forests, fisheries, oil fields, grazing lands, and irrigation systems. She conducted her field studies on the management of pasture by locals in Africa and irrigation systems management in villages of western Nepal (e.g.Dang). Ostrom's work has considered how societies have developed diverse institutional arrangements for managing natural resources and avoiding ecosystem collapse in many cases, even though some arrangements have failed to prevent resource exhaustion. Her current work emphasizes the multifaceted nature of human–ecosystem interaction and argues against any singular "panacea" for individual social-ecological system problems.

Ostrom identifies eight "design principles" of stable local common pool resource management:

# Clearly defined boundaries (effective exclusion of external unentitled parties); # Rules regarding the appropriation and provision of common resources are adapted to local conditions; # Collective-choice arrangements allow most resource appropriators to participate in the decision-making process; # Effective monitoring by monitors who are part of or accountable to the appropriators; # There is a scale of graduated sanctions for resource appropriators who violate community rules; # Mechanisms of conflict resolution are cheap and of easy access; # The self-determination of the community is recognized by higher-level authorities; # In the case of larger common-pool resources: organization in the form of multiple layers of nested enterprises, with small local CPRs at the base level.

Work with Environmental Protection

"''Ostrom cautions against single governmental units at global level to solve the collective action problem of coordinating work against environmental destruction. Partly, this is due to their complexity, and partly to the diversity of actors involved. Her proposal is that of a polycentric approach, where key management decisions should be made as close to the scene of events and the actors involved as possible.''"

Awards

Ostrom is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and past president of the American Political Science Association and the Public Choice Society. In 1999 she became the first woman to receive the prestigious Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science. Ostrom was awarded the John J. Carty Award from the National Academy of Sciences in 2004, and in 2005 received the James Madison Award by the American Political Science Association. In 2008, she received the William H. Riker Prize in political science, and became the first woman to do so. In 2009, she received the Tisch Civic Engagement Research Prize from the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University. In 2010, Utne Reader magazine included Ostrom as one of the "25 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World."

The International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) awarded its Honorary Fellowship to her in 2002.

Nobel Prize

In 2009, Ostrom became the first woman to receive the prestigious Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences cited Ostrom "for her analysis of economic governance," saying her work had demonstrated how common property could be successfully managed by groups using it. Ostrom and Oliver E. Williamson shared the 10-million Swedish kronor (£910,000; $1.44 m) prize for their separate work in economic governance.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Ostrom's 'research brought this topic from the fringe to the forefront of scientific attention', "by showing how common resources—forests, fisheries, oil fields or grazing lands, can be managed successfully by the people who use them, rather than by governments or private companies". Ostrom's work in this regard, challenged conventional wisdom, showing that common resources can be successfully managed without government regulation or privatization.

Notable publications

''Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action'' Ostrom, Elinor, Cambridge University Press, 1990

''Institutional Incentives and Sustainable Development: Infrastructure Policies in Perspective'' Ostrom, Elinor, and Schroeder, Larry, and Wynne, Susan, Oxford: Westview Press, 1993

''Rules, Games, and Common Pool Resources'' Ostrom, Elinor, and Gardner, Roy, and Walker, James, Editors, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1994

with Crawford, Sue E. S., “A Grammar of Institutions.” American Political Science Review 89, no.3 (September 1995): 582–600.

''A Behavioral Approach to the Rational Choice Theory of Collective Action: Presidential Address, American Political Science Association, 1997.'' Ostrom, Elinor. The American Political Science Review 92(1): 1–22. 1998

''Trust and Reciprocity: Interdisciplinary Lessons for Experimental Research'', Volume VI in the Russell Sage Foundation Series on Trust, Elinor Ostrom and James Walker, Editors, Russell Sage Foundation, 2003

''Understanding Institutional Diversity'' Ostrom, Elinor, Princeton, Princeton University Press. 2005.

''Understanding Knowledge as a Commons: From Theory to Practice'' Ostrom, Elinor and Hess, Charlotte, Editors, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2006.

''Linking the Formal and Informal Economy: Concepts and Policies, edited with Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis and Ravi Kanbur (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2006; paperback published in 2007)

See also

Coproduction of public services by service users and communities

References

Ostrom, Vincent and Elinor Ostrom. "Rethinking Institutional Analysis: Interviews with Vincent and Elinor Ostrom." By Paul Dragos Aligica. Interview, Mercatus Center at George Mason University, 2003.

External links

On Collaboration Elinor Ostrom speaks on BBC The Forum

The Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University

* Elinor Ostrom Curriculum Vitae

Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity at Arizona State University

Beyond Markets and States: Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic Systems, 2009 lecture at NobelPrize.org

Profile and Papers at Research Papers in Economics/RePEc

Elinor Ostrom news, photos & videos from the The Herald-Times Bloomington, Indiana

Profile at The international Institute of Social Studies (ISS)

Category:1933 births Category:American economists Category:American Nobel laureates Category:American political scientists Category:Female economists Category:Living people Category:Nobel laureates in Economics Category:University of California, Los Angeles alumni Category:Public commons Category:Climate economists Category:Women Nobel Laureates Category:American Protestants Category:National Academy of Sciences laureates

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Coordinates	33°51′35.9″N151°12′40″N
Era	18th century19th century
Color	#B0C4eE
Name	Jeremy Bentham
Birth date	February 15, 1748
Birth place	London, England
Death date	June 06, 1832
Death place	London, England
School tradition	Utilitarianism, legal positivism, liberalism
Main interests	Political philosophy, philosophy of law, ethics, economics
Influences	Protagoras Epicurus John Locke David Hume Montesquieu Helvétius Hobbes
Influenced	John Stuart Mill Henry Sidgwick Michel Foucault Peter Singer John Austin Robert Owen David Pearce
Notable ideas	Greatest happiness principle
Signature	Jeremy Bentham signature.jpg }}

Jeremy Bentham ( or ; 15 February 1748 – 6 June 1832) was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism. He is best known for his advocacy of utilitarianism and animal rights, and the idea of the panopticon.

His position included arguments in favour of individual and economic freedom, usury, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the right to divorce, and the decriminalising of homosexual acts. He argued for the abolition of slavery and the death penalty and for the abolition of physical punishment, including that of children. Although strongly in favour of the extension of individual legal rights, he opposed the idea of natural law and natural rights, calling them "nonsense upon stilts."

He became the most influential of the utilitarians, through his own work and that of his students. These included his secretary and collaborator on the utilitarian school of philosophy, James Mill; James Mill's son John Stuart Mill; John Austin, legal philosopher; and several political leaders, including Robert Owen, a founder of modern socialism. He has been described as the "spiritual founder" of University College London (UCL), where he is still greatly revered.

Life

Bentham was born in Houndsditch, London, into a wealthy family that supported the Tories. He was reportedly a child prodigy: he was found as a toddler sitting at his father's desk reading a multi-volume history of England, and he began to study Latin at the age of three. He had one surviving sibling, Samuel Bentham, with whom he shared a close bond.

He attended Westminster School and, in 1760, at age 12, was sent by his father to The Queen's College, Oxford, where he completed his Bachelor's degree in 1763 and his Master's degree in 1766. He trained as a lawyer and, though he never practised, was called to the bar in 1769. He became deeply frustrated with the complexity of the English legal code, which he termed the "Demon of Chicane".

When the American colonies published their Declaration of Independence in July 1776, the British government did not issue any official response but instead secretly commissioned London lawyer and pamphleteer John Lind to publish a rebuttal. His 130-page tract was distributed in the colonies and contained an essay titled "Short Review of the Declaration" authored by Bentham, a friend of Lind's, which attacked and mocked the Americans' political philosophy.

Among his many proposals for legal and social reform was a design for a prison building he called the Panopticon. He spent some sixteen years of his life developing and refining his ideas for the building, and hoped that the government would adopt the plan for a National Penitentiary, and appoint him as contractor-governor. Although the prison was never built, the concept had an important influence on later generations of thinkers. Twentieth-century French philosopher Michel Foucault argued that the Panopticon was paradigmatic of several 19th-century 'disciplinary' institutions.

Bentham became convinced that his plans for the Panopticon had been thwarted by the King and an aristocratic elite acting in their own interests. It was largely because of his brooding sense of injustice that he developed his ideas of 'sinister interest' – that is, of the vested interests of the powerful conspiring against a wider public interest – which underpinned many of his broader arguments for reform.

More successful was his cooperation with Patrick Colquhoun in tackling the corruption in the pool of London which led to the Thames Police Bill of 1798 which was eventually passed in 1800, leading to the formation of the Thames River Police, which was the first preventive police force in the country and was a precedent for Peel's reforms 30 years later.

Bentham was in correspondence with many influential people. Adam Smith, for example, opposed free interest rates before he was made aware of Bentham's arguments on the subject. As a result of his correspondence with Mirabeau and other leaders of the French Revolution, he was declared an honorary citizen of France. Bentham was an outspoken critic of the revolutionary discourse of natural rights and of the violence that arose after the Jacobins took power (1792). Between 1808 and 1810, he held a personal friendship with Latin American Independence Precursor Francisco de Miranda and paid visits to Miranda's Grafton Way house in London.

In 1823, he co-founded the ''Westminster Review'' with James Mill as a journal for the "Philosophical Radicals"–a group of younger disciples through whom Bentham exerted considerable influence in British public life. One such young writer was Edwin Chadwick, who wrote on hygiene, sanitation and policing and was a major contributor to the Poor Law Amendment Act. Bentham employed him as a secretary and bequeathed him a large legacy.

Bentham is frequently associated with the foundation of the University of London, specifically University College London (UCL), though he was 78 years old when UCL opened in 1826 and played no active part in its establishment. It is likely that without his inspiration, UCL would not have been created when it was. Bentham strongly believed that education should be more widely available, particularly to those who were not wealthy or who did not belong to the established church, both of which were required of students by Oxford and Cambridge. As UCL was the first English university to admit all, regardless of race, creed or political belief, it was largely consistent with Bentham's vision. He oversaw the appointment of one of his pupils, John Austin, as the first professor of Jurisprudence in 1829.

An insight into his character is given in Michael St. John Packe's ''The Life of John Stuart Mill'': do not let me go back to the past."}}

Work

Utilitarianism

Bentham's ambition in life was to create a "Pannomion", a complete utilitarian code of law. Bentham not only proposed many legal and social reforms, but also expounded an underlying moral principle on which they should be based. This utilitarianism philosophy argued that the right act or policy was that which would cause "the greatest good for the greatest number of people", also known as "the greatest happiness principle", or the principle of utility. He wrote in ''The Principles of Morals and Legislation'':

He also suggested a procedure for estimating the moral status of any action, which he called the Hedonistic or felicific calculus. Utilitarianism was revised and expanded by Bentham's student John Stuart Mill. In Mill's hands, "Benthamism" became a major element in the liberal conception of state policy objectives.

Bentham proposed a classification of 12 pains and 14 pleasures and 'felicific calculus' by which we might test the 'happiness factor' of any action. Nonetheless, it should not be overlooked that Bentham's 'hedonistic' theory (a term from J.J.C. Smart), unlike Mill's, is often said to lack a principle of fairness embodied in a conception of justice. In "Bentham and the Common Law Tradition", Gerald J. Postema states, "No moral concept suffers more at Bentham's hand than the concept of justice. There is no sustained, mature analysis of the notion ..." Thus, some critics object, it would be acceptable to torture one person if this would produce an amount of happiness in other people outweighing the unhappiness of the tortured individual. However, as P. J. Kelly argued in his book, ''Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice: Jeremy Bentham and the Civil Law'', Bentham had a theory of justice that prevented such consequences. According to Kelly, for Bentham the law "provides the basic framework of social interaction by delimiting spheres of personal inviolability within which individuals can form and pursue their own conceptions of well-being." It provides security, a precondition for the formation of expectations. As the hedonic calculus shows "expectation utilities" to be much higher than natural ones, it follows that Bentham does not favour the sacrifice of a few to the benefit of the many.

Bentham's ''Principles of Legislation'' focuses on the principle of utility and how this view of morality ties into legislative practices. His principle of utility regards "good" as that which produces the greatest amount of pleasure and the minimum amount of pain and "evil" as that which produces the most pain without the pleasure. This concept of pleasure and pain is defined by Bentham as physical as well as spiritual. Bentham writes about this principle as it manifests itself within the legislation of a society. He lays down a set of criteria for measuring the extent of pain or pleasure that a certain decision will create.

The criteria are divided into the categories of intensity, duration, certainty, proximity, productiveness, purity, and extent. Using these measurements, he reviews the concept of punishment and when it should be used as far as whether a punishment will create more pleasure or more pain for a society. He calls for legislators to determine whether punishment creates an even more evil offence. Instead of suppressing the evil acts, Bentham is arguing that certain unnecessary laws and punishments could ultimately lead to new and more dangerous vices than those being punished to begin with. Bentham follows these statements with explanations on how antiquity, religion, reproach of innovation, metaphor, fiction, fancy, antipathy and sympathy, begging the question and imaginary law are not justification for the creation of legislature. Instead, Bentham is calling upon legislators to measure the pleasures and pains associated with any legislation and to form laws in order to create the greatest good for the greatest number. He argues that the concept of the individual pursuing his or her own happiness cannot be necessarily declared "right", because often these individual pursuits can lead to greater pain and less pleasure for the society as a whole. Therefore, the legislation of a society is vital to maintaining a society with optimum pleasure and the minimum degree of pain for the greatest amount of people.

Economics

Bentham's opinions about monetary economics were completely different from those of David Ricardo; however, they had some similarities to those of Thornton. He focused on monetary expansion as a means of helping to create full employment. He was also aware of the relevance of forced saving, propensity to consume, the saving-investment relationship, and other matters that form the content of modern income and employment analysis. His monetary view was close to the fundamental concepts employed in his model of utilitarian decision making. His work is widely regarded to be at the forefront of modern welfare economics.

Bentham stated that pleasures and pains can be ranked according to their value or "dimension" such as intensity, duration, certainty of a pleasure or a pain. He was concerned with maxima and minima of pleasures and pains; and they set a precedent for the future employment of the maximisation principle in the economics of the consumer, the firm and the search for an optimum in welfare economics.

Animal rights

Bentham is widely recognised as one of the earliest proponents of animal rights. He argued that the ability to suffer, not the ability to reason, should be the benchmark, or what he called the "insuperable line." If reason alone were the criterion by which we judge who ought to have rights, human infants and adults with certain forms of disability might fall short, too. In 1789, alluding to the limited degree of legal protection afforded to slaves in the French West Indies by the Code Noir, he wrote:

Gender and sexuality

Bentham said that it was the placing of women in a legally inferior position that made him choose, at the age of eleven, the career of a reformist. Bentham spoke for a complete equality between sexes.

The essay Against One's Self,'' argued for the liberalisation of laws prohibiting homosexuality. The essay remained unpublished during his lifetime for fear of offending public morality. It was published for the first time in 1931. While Bentham clearly disapproves of homosexuality as "irregularities of the venereal appetite," the essay chastises the society of the time for making a disproportionate response to what Bentham appears to consider a largely private offence–public displays or forced acts being dealt with rightly by other laws.

Auto-icon

As requested in his will, Bentham's body was dissected as part of a public anatomy lecture. Afterward, the skeleton and head were preserved and stored in a wooden cabinet called the "Auto-icon", with the skeleton stuffed out with hay and dressed in Bentham's clothes. Originally kept by his disciple Thomas Southwood Smith, it was acquired by University College London in 1850. It is normally kept on public display at the end of the South Cloisters in the main building of the college, but for the 100th and 150th anniversaries of the college, it was brought to the meeting of the College Council, where it was listed as "present but not voting".

The Auto-icon has a wax head, as Bentham's head was badly damaged in the preservation process. The real head was displayed in the same case for many years but became the target of repeated student pranks. It is now locked away securely.

Publications

Bentham was an obsessive writer and reviser, but was constitutionally incapable, except on rare occasions, of bringing his work to completion and publication. Most of what appeared in print in his lifetime (see this list of published works) was prepared for publication by others. Several of his works first appeared in French translation, prepared for the press by Étienne Dumont. Some made their first appearance in English in the 1820s as a result of back-translation from Dumont's 1802 collection (and redaction) of Bentham's writing on civil and penal legislation. On his death, Bentham left manuscripts amounting to some 5,000,000 words. Since 1968, the Bentham Project at University College London has been working on an edition of his collected works. So far, 25 volumes have appeared; there are likely to be at least as many again before the edition is completed. The Project is currently attempting to digitise the Bentham papers and crowdsource their transcription: see Transcribe Bentham below.

Works published in Bentham's lifetime include:

"Short Review of the Declaration" (1776). An attack on America's Declaration of Independence.

''Fragment on Government'' (1776). This was an unsparing criticism of some introductory passages relating to political theory in William Blackstone's ''Commentaries on the Laws of England''. The book, published anonymously, was well-received and credited to some of the greatest minds of the time. Bentham disagreed with Blackstone's defence of judge-made law, his defence of legal fictions, his theological formulation of the doctrine of mixed government, his appeal to a social contract and his use of the vocabulary of natural law. Bentham's "Fragment" was only a small part of a "Commentary on the Commentaries", which remained unpublished until the twentieth century.

''Introduction to Principles of Morals and Legislation'' (printed for publication 1780, published 1789).

''Defence of Usury'' (1787). Jeremy Bentham wrote a series of thirteen “Letters” addressed to Adam Smith, published in 1787 as ''Defence of Usury''. Bentham’s main argument against the restriction is that “projectors” generate positive externalities. G.K. Chesterton identified Bentham's essay on usury as the very beginning of the 'modern world.' Bentham’s arguments were very influential. “Writers of eminence” moved to abolish the restriction, and repeal was achieved in stages and fully achieved in England in 1854. There is little evidence as to Smith’s reaction. He did not revise the offending passages in ''The Wealth of Nations'', but Smith made little or no substantial revisions after the third edition of 1784.

''Panopticon'' (1787, 1791).

''Emancipate your Colonies'' (1793)

''Traité de Législation Civile et Penale'' (1802, edited by Étienne Dumont. 3 vols)

''Punishments and Rewards'' (1811)

''A Table of the Springs of Action'' (1815)

''Parliamentary Reform Catechism'' (1817)

''Church-of-Englandism'' (printed 1817, published 1818)

''Elements of the Art of Packing'' (1821)

''The Influence of Natural Religion upon the Temporal Happiness of Mankind'' (1822, written with George Grote and published under the pseudonym Philip Beauchamp)

''Not Paul But Jesus'' (1823, published under the pseudonym Gamaliel Smith)

''Book of Fallacies'' (1824)

''A Treatise on Judicial Evidence'' (1825)

John Bowring, a British politician who had been Bentham's trusted friend, was appointed his literary executor and charged with the task of preparing a collected edition of his works. This appeared in 11 volumes in 1838–1843: Bowring based his edition on previously published editions (including those of Dumont) rather than Bentham's own manuscripts, and he did not reprint Bentham's works on religion at all. Bowring's work has been criticised, although it includes such interesting writings on international relations as Bentham's A Plan for an Universal and Perpetual Peace written 1786–89, which forms part IV of the Principles of International Law.

In 1952–54, Werner Stark published a three-volume set, ''Jeremy Bentham's Economic Writings'', in which he attempted to bring together all of Bentham's writings on economic matters, including both published and unpublished material. Although a significant achievement, the work is considered by scholars to be flawed in many points of detail, and a new edition of the economic writings is currently being prepared by the Bentham Project.

Transcribe Bentham

The Bentham Project in UCL has launched a digitisation and crowdsourcing initiative whose aim is to engage the public in the online transcription of Bentham's unstudied manuscripts. Manuscripts can be viewed and transcribed by signing-up for an MediaWiki account in Transcription Desk via the Transcribe Bentham website.

See also

List of liberal theorists

Philosophy of happiness

Rule of law

Rule according to higher law

References

Further reading

Lea Campos Boralevi (1980). 'Bentham and the Oppressed'. Walter De Gruyter Inc, 1984 ISBN 3-11-009974-8

John Dinwiddy (1989), ''Bentham'', Oxford University Press. ISBN 0 19 287622 8.

J. A. W. Gunn (1989). 'Jeremy Bentham and the Public Interest'. In J. Lively & A. Reeve (eds.) '''Modern Political Theory from Hobbes to Marx: Key Debates'', London, pp. 199–219

Jonathan Harris (1998),'Bernardino Rivadavia and Benthamite "discipleship"', ''Latin American Research Review'' 33, pp. 129–49

R. Harrison (1983) ''Bentham''. London.

P. J. Kelly (1990). ''Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice: Jeremy Bentham and the Civil Law''. Oxford.

F. Rosen (1983). ''Jeremy Bentham and Representative Democracy: A Study of the "Constitutional Code"''. Oxford.

F. Rosen (1990) 'The Origins of Liberal Utilitarianism: Jeremy Bentham and Liberty'. In R. Bellamy, ed., ''Victorian Liberalism: Nineteenth-century Political Thought and Practice'', London, pp. 5870

Robinson, Dave & Groves, Judy (2003). ''Introducing Political Philosophy''. Icon Books. ISBN 1-84046-450-X.

External links

Jeremy Bentham, "Critique of the Doctrine of Inalienable, Natural Rights", in '' Anarchical Fallacies'', vol. 2 of Bowring (ed.), ''Works'', 1843.

Jeremy Bentham, "Offences Against One's Self: Paederasty", c. 1785, free audiobook from LibriVox.

The Bentham Project at University College London. Includes a history and a FAQ on the Auto-Icon, and details of Bentham's will.

Transcribe Bentham initiative run by the Bentham Project has its own website with useful links

Bentham Index, a rich bibliographical resource

Jeremy Bentham, categorised links

Jeremy Bentham's Life and Impact

Benthamism – Catholic Encyclopedia article

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy has an extensive biographical reference of Bentham.

Utilitarianism as Secondary Ethic A concise review of Utilitarianism, its proponents and critics.

"Jeremy Bentham at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2007" A play-reading of the life and legacy of Jeremy Bentham.

Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation

Detailed summary of Bentham's Principles of Morals and Legislation

;Works

Online Library of Liberty – Jeremy Bentham, partially including Bowring's (1843) ''The Works of Jeremy Bentham'', and additional titles

Jeremy Bentham. Extensive collection of links to writings by and about Bentham

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