The Development of Public Conscience

Hume’s Third Way Between Hobbes and Locke

Bibliographic Data

ID6350483
AuthorsAaron Alexander Zubia (0000-0001-6429-4659, Assistant Professor of Humanities, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume53
Issue1
Pages62-82
Publication date2025-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolitical Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0090-5917 • E-ISSN: 1552-7476
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/00905917241288183
OpenAlexW4404220139
LanguageEN
References cited29

Hume devised a third way between Hobbes and Locke that bolstered the former’s defense of stability and the latter’s defense of rebellion. This feat remains underappreciated. Hume’s third way rests on the idea of the public conscience, which, like Hobbes’s idea of the public conscience, derives from communication and consensus. The public conscience orients us toward the public interest, which, in Hume’s theory, is the authoritative standard by which individuals and government alike must abide. In this paper, I elaborate on the moral psychological principles that underlie Hume’s concept of the public conscience, which is liable to both conservative liberal and progressive liberal interpretations. And I argue that Hume’s third way provides valuable insight into the logic of public political discourse in liberal societies

Adam smith · Conscience · Economics · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Law and economics · Neoclassical economics · Sociology · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought

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