David Hume, Scepticism, Imagination and Political Philosophy

The main purpose of my presentation is to explore some possible links between Hume’sphilosophy of history and imagination. My point is that although Hume has clearlyrejected narratives about human history and politics based on modern and rationalistversions of Natural Law, his own accounts on the matter were positively based onarguments that went well beyond some sort of retreat into bare empiricism or scatteredhistoricism. Hume’s stance on the matter of history and politics, to my mind, can beinterpreted as an effort to build a natural history of morals, justice and governmentin which imagination plays a non-negligible role. His criticism of rationalistic naturallaw theories does not entail the acceptance of empiricist or institutionalist points ofview. Of course, empiricist and institutionalist languages are in the use, across Hume’sarrays of arguments, but it seems to me that these languages appear as submitted to thesupremacy of imagination. In that sense, we may face in Hume’s theory of justice analternative view, in the form of a breach between pure rationalistic and empiricist views