Unofficial transcript of the official account of the reason for conferring the Japan Academy Prize on Hume’s Civilized Society: Industry, Knowledge, and Liberty written by Tatsuya Sakamoto (Doctor of Economics)

The book, published by Sobunsha in December 1995, is a historical study of David Hume’s social thought and exposes Hume’s complex system in readable Japanese style. As a result of Hume’s status as one of the representative modern European thinkers and as a highly problematic figure, Sakamoto first required himself to be extensively read in the long and wide-ranging traditions of Hume studies comprising philosophy, history, politics and economics, and proceeded to construct a comprehensive view of Hume’s thought by the method of the history of social thought as developed in Japan after WWII. The work is groundbreaking both domestically and internationally in terms of its comprehensiveness.

Sakamoto begins his account of the making of Hume’s view of civilized society by identifying the reason why the change of Hume’s literary style occurred immediately after the publication of A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-1740). Hume’s decision to write thereafter entirely in the “essay” form except the magnum opus History of England (1754-1762) can be interpreted as representing a possible diffuseness in his thinking. Yet in fact, it enabled Hume to develop his thoughts on a variety of subjects in a flexible manner. Sakamoto’s interest in the methodological importance of the change of style demonstrates his acuteness as historian of social thought. Nevertheless Sakamoto does not neglect the methodological importance of A Treatise as the groundwork of Hume’s “Science of Man” upon which Hume’s subsequent views on “civilized society” are taken to have been shaped. In this connection, Sakamoto identifies the nature of Hume’s anti-rationalist argument against causal necessity which brought him a reputation of atheist or skeptic as an ultimate outcome of British (English) empiricist tradition.

Sakamoto then reveals the significance of Hume’s encounter with Joseph Addison’s “polite” essays, and of Hume’s experience of traveling throughout the European continent in the mid-1740’s. He argues that Hume had learned from Addison not only the effectiveness of essay style as a possible form of philosophical exposition but also the possibility of freedom under monarchical governments. Hume’s travel around some European countries enabled him to transform Addison’s insights into a logical distinction between monarchy and despotism much in advance of Montesquieu’s similar distinction. In Hume’s view, quite differently from the contemporary republican views, rule of law, security of property and practical freedom of trade were able to generate economic prosperity even among monarchical nations.

This view of civilized monarchy was later to develop into a complex historical narrative in History of the process in which the rise of commons and the fall of aristocracy took place under the Tudor and the Stewart absolute monarchies. This in turn meant a formidable attack against the vulgar Whiggish contradistinction between the “Norman York” and the “Anglo-Saxon Liberty”. Sakamoto’s view of Hume’s historiographical novelty consequently presents some refreshing insight into the modern character of absolutism in contrast with Japanese historians’ long-cherished view that the nature of absolute monarchy was fundamentally feudal. In some cases, Hume’s defense of monarchy was taken to be a plausible reason for placing his political position among the Tories.

Sakamoto holds that Hume grasped the course of national economic development under civilized monarchies in the following manner. First early modern foreign trade generates luxurious mode of living among landed aristocrats. In response to the price revolution, luxurious squandering of nobility impoverished themselves in contrast to the rise and prosperity of middling and lower stations among whom those aristocratic luxury were turned into industrious and frugal manners motivated by the general desire for improvement of living conditions. The subtitle of Sakamoto’s book including “industry” and “knowledge” falls into this part of Hume’s account. The author is not the only scholar who ever shed a light on the significance of Hume’s idea of “industry” but it is his original insight that embedded the idea into the more extensive theoretical framework of “manners”. In this wider interpretive context, Hume’s quantity theory of money, his well-known contribution in the history of economic thought, is regarded by Sakamoto as possessing merely limited theoretical relevance as a weapon against mercantilist regulations. On the contrary, in the author’s view, money-inflow through international trade was shown by Hume to have both logical and empirical efficacy for economic growth as a result of its quick spreading and “concoction” throughout the national market.

Sakamoto holds that Hume provided in this way an ideological defense of the Revolution Settlement on the condition that it was made compatible with civilized and industrious manners, but in the final stage of his life, Sakamoto contends, Hume was anxious about the serious and critical nature of the contemporary issues. They are, first, moral and political corruption among the rich, second, the crisis of national debt, and third, the crisis of colonial empire as represented by a pressing revolution in the North America. Hume’s death in the same year as the American declaration of independence made it difficult for him to discuss the third question in detail but his attack against colonialism was unambiguously formulated.

Hume’s criticism of national debt is famous as was Adam Smith’s and is properly to be seen as an expression of Hume’s intense concern over the issue . The author presents a clear-cut view of Hume’s fundamental vision as suggesting in contrast to Smith’s a possible transferring of social hegemony into the hands of modern landed and trading interests by means of sacrificing by state bankruptcy that part of the moneyed interest that was not founded on the principle of industry. Furthermore, by way of comparative analysis of Hume, Robert Wallace and John Brown in their respective views of corruption, Sakamoto successfully demonstrates a highly original character of Hume’s view of political power. Hume is shown to have believed that, regardless of the undoubtedly reproachable case of private bribery, political influence exercised on MPs by the ministry is an inevitable outcome of the system of “checks and balances” inseparable from a proper political management of the rule of law. The author concludes upon these two grounds that Hume did not ultimately lose sight of the possibility of the progress of civilized society in the distant future as shown by the viability of British civilization.

In the light of the forgoing contributions of the book that grasped Hume’s system of social thought as a consistent view of civilized society founded on the principle of modern industrious manners, it deserves to be awarded the Japan Academy Prize.

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