Hume's Theory of Justice. By JONATHAN HARRISON. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981. Pp. xxiii+304. Price £16.00.)

Here we have the second fragment of Harrison's intended commentary on Book III of Hume's Treatise. It contains most of what Harrison wants to say about Pt. II of that Book, "Of justice and injustice", though its concluding chapter has been postponed till the completion of the whole exercise. Harrison's borrowing for his title is somewhat disingenuous since he thinks that what Hume called justice is something quite different ("rule-abidingness") and he is content to summarise and comment at length on Hume's discussions of the rules of property, promises, the basis of government, international morality, and the rights and wrongs of adultery.

Anyone working through Hume should be grateful for Harrison's having been there before, if only because no one is likely to find any instance of Hume's carelessness, irony, irreverence, or apparent or real inconsistency that Harrison has failed to correct. If readers find Hume's style and opinions attractive Harrison can usefully serve to remind them how narrow is the path to truth. It is a pity that the sheer weight of often captious commentary obscures the excitement of that truth. The common reader's needs are met more adequately by Hume himself (for Harrison does not challenge the main thrust of Hume's views in this Part) or by Mackie's recent summary with modifications and some historical context. It is indeed curious how far Harrison goes in isolating Hume, and even more himself, from the contemporary intellectual milieux.

Harrison offers a careful exegesis of Hume's text and he allows himself to develop some related points independently. Philosophers will find some forceful remarks about a common argument for rule-utilitarianism; some elaboration of a position Harrison calls "cumulative-effect utilitarianism", which is designed to give sensible answers in cases of threshold effects and cases where we know that other people will not do what would otherwise be the best thing; a dense and I believe confused analysis of promising; an attempted demolition of egalitarianism which succeeds rather too easily by failing to give a coherent account of equality (Harrison has within his grasp a clear recognition of the elliptical nature of all claims about equality but he lets it slip to score the usual tired rhetorical points); some unfashionable thoughts about sexual morality; and inconclusive reflections on the place of animals and Martians in utilitarian thought. But they will not find any discussion of the pre-utilitarian rationality of prisoners' dilemma situations, and but little on Hume's tendency, which Harrison exploits when it suits him, to remain content to contrast what we have with having nothing, instead of evaluating the many possibilities besides these often bleak alternatives. (It suits him when his utilitarianism, or his small faith in human wisdom, assures him that resistance to government is almost always wrong, that laws against inheritance disincline people to accumulate wealth ... It is notable that when one suggests that utilitarianism might require radical changes the calculations are supposed so complicated as to require divine resources, but when a utilitarian endorses the status quo some years ante he does not even need a pocket calculator.)

Apart from wishing to save Hume for the aridities of modern utilitarianism, Harrison fails to do Hume justice in two other respects: his sympathy for Hume's politics leads him not to oppose Hume vigorously enough, while his lack of sympathy for Hume's physicalist tendencies prevents him appreciating the point of the "impish" comparisons with the mystery mongering of sacramental religion. (It might be worth remembering that people who have it often talk of the sanctity of property, as well as the sanctity of consecrated churches which Harrison admits is a meaningless notion.) Hume's comparisons, his harping on the sophistries and circularities associated with the artificial virtues, are part of a strategy to emphasise their artifice; for all that Harrison accepts most of the sober doctrine, he remains unmoved by its intoxicating potentiality.

Harrison hoped that his immersion in Hume's text would bring stylistic rewards. There are some pungent remarks, but in general the writing is non-addictive and sometimes awkward. It is perhaps no accident that apart from a couple of minor spelling mistakes the errors I have found all involve a complete inversion of the sense: p.29, l.29 insert 'not'; p.51, l.27 for' right' read 'wrong'; p.56, l.3 delete 'not'; p.231, ll.4-5 exchange 'solemn and 'casual'; p.251, delete 'not' in l.4 and insert it in l.5.

University of the West Indies, Jamaica

E. P. BRANDON

URL http://www.uwichill.edu.bb/bnccde/epb/HUME.html