Presented By: Department of Philosophy
Hume, Butler, and Mandevillian Skepticism
Erin Frykholm, University of Kansas
The debate over whether human motivations are fundamentally self-interested or benevolent consumed Shaftesbury, Mandeville, and Hutcheson, but Hume—though explicitly indebted to all three—almost entirely ignores this issue. I argue that his relative silence reveals an overlooked intellectual debt to Bishop Butler, one which allows Hume to employ Mandevillian claims about virtue without endorsing a Mandevillian skepticism.
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