Class discussion assignment /AN

Hume argues in “Of the Original Contract” that voluntary consent and agreement, of reasonable and rational persons, is not implicated in the foundation of any government or political order in world history; even legitimate governments, and for Hume the best governments square liberty and authority, are not established by consent, agreement, or promise. Hume takes issue with the consent theory of political obligation, as well, and claims that even Athenian democracy, a model of direct democracy, limited full rights and privileges to adult males who completed military training, a numerical minority of the population (excluding women, slaves, freed slaves, and foreign residents or metics from political participation), would not meet the idea of consent that grounds the obligation for all to obey the law; imperfect democracies and undemocratic forms of government can be just and create such an obligation, for Hume, and so the consent or social contract theory of political obligation is false. Although Locke’s political philosophy, for example, champions constitutional government over royal absolutism, his formulation of the social contract doctrine is deeply flawed because it is compatible with a class state; in Locke’s theory, free and equal persons in a state of nature are in a hypothetical position of equal political right, but persons  in such a situation who are not well-off propertied males might transfer their natural rights to equal political jurisdiction for the benefits of political society, leaving a select group of landowning men to exercise political rights and liberties, such as voting, and holding offices of authority and responsibility. Hume might argue that the eventual foundation of constitutional government in the United States, although the Declaration of Independence is predicated on ideas of natural rights to life, liberty, and property and the consent of the governed central to Locke’s social contract theory, was the outcome of upheaval and violence, and political obligation grounded in utility, or the general interests of society in peace and order, more than promise or consent.

Consider Hume’s arguments in “Of the Original Contract”; are any governments legitimate? Respond.