Die Rechts- und Staatsphilosophie David Humes

Hayek’s text is a public lecture-essay on David Hume’s legal and political philosophy. Its scope is corrective: Hume is read not mainly as Kant’s epistemological provocation, but as the major theorist of the rule of law, evolved institutions, and liberal government.

Es ist immer irreführend, ein Zeitalter mit einem Namen zu belegen, der vorgibt, daß dieses unter dem Einfluß allgemein bekannter Vorstellungen stand.

English translation: It is always misleading to label an age with a name that suggests it stood under the influence of generally known ideas.

The opening attack on “the Enlightenment” frames the whole argument. Hayek separates French constructivist rationalism from the British-Scottish tradition running through common law, Mandeville, Hume, Smith, Ferguson, and Burke. The former imagines institutions as products of design; the latter studies how durable practices arise without being invented. Hume, for Hayek, is the thinker who “beschneidet” reason’s claims by rational analysis itself.

Dies ist noch bemerkenswerter, weil von Hume wahrscheinlich die einzige umfassende Darstellung der Rechts- und Staatsphilosophie stammt, die später unter dem Namen Liberalismus bekannt wurde.

English translation: This is all the more remarkable because from Hume comes probably the only comprehensive account of the philosophy of law and the state which later became known under the name of liberalism.

The essay’s main thesis is that Hume supplies the most coherent philosophical foundation of older liberalism: liberty under general law, not democratic omnipotence or rational reconstruction. Hayek therefore revises the standard genealogy that privileges Locke, Bentham, Austin, or Kant. Hume’s Whig liberalism is grounded in skepticism about human knowledge and in a theory of institutions that grow through use.

Die Gesetze und die Moral sind wie die Sprache und das Geld, wie man heute sagen würde, keine bewußten Erfindungen, sondern gewachsene Institutionen oder „Formationen“.

English translation: Laws and morality, like language and money, are, as one would say today, not conscious inventions but grown institutions, or "formations".

This is Hayek’s central conceptual move. Moral and legal rules are neither innate truths nor deductions of pure reason; they are “artifacts” of cultural development. Their authority comes from the discovered usefulness of practices that enable cooperation among limited, partial, and ignorant beings. Scarcity and “begrenzte Großmut” make justice necessary; property, transfer by consent, and promise-keeping precede government rather than deriving from it.

Hume zeigt in Wirklichkeit, daß eine wohlgeordnete Gesellschaft sich nur entwickeln kann, wenn die Menschen lernen, bestimmten Verhaltensregeln zu gehorchen.

English translation: Hume in fact shows that a well-ordered society can develop only if people learn to obey certain rules of conduct.

Hayek then turns this explanatory theory into a political argument without collapsing is into ought. Hume does not infer morality from facts; rather, he shows that the goods we value depend on rules not designed for those goods. Law must be general because human beings cannot reliably judge long-term social consequences or individual merit case by case.

Mögen aber auch die einzelnen den Rechtsnormen entsprechenden Akte dem allgemeinen oder dem Privatinteresse zuwiderlaufen, so ist doch sicher, daß der ganze Aufbau oder das System derselben für die Erhaltung der Gesellschaft und die Wohlfahrt des einzelnen höchst nützlich, ja unbedingt erforderlich ist.

English translation: Even though the individual acts conforming to legal norms may run counter to the general or to private interest, it is nevertheless certain that the entire structure or system of them is highly useful, indeed absolutely necessary, for the preservation of society and the welfare of the individual.

This passage supports Hayek’s reading of Hume as a theorist of system-level utility, not ad hoc expediency. A particular legal act may seem unjust or harmful, but the system of stable, abstract rules makes social order possible. Hence Hayek emphasizes Hume’s rejection of distributive justice based on merit: law can govern outward acts and selected circumstances, not inner virtue or total desert.

The structure of the essay moves from intellectual history to jurisprudence, then to political theory and finally to historical relevance. In Hume’s essays and History of England, Hayek finds the political form of the same principle: free government is government by known, equal, general rules, with divided powers and no discretionary absolutism.

Legt man diesen Sinn zugrunde, so muß zugegeben werden, daß die Freiheit die Vervollkommnung der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft ist.

English translation: On this understanding, it must be admitted that liberty is the perfection of civil society.

Hayek’s Hume is thus a precursor of the Rechtsstaat and perhaps even of Kant’s legal philosophy. Freedom is not collective self-rule in Rousseau’s sense, but protection from arbitrary power through impersonal law. Government may perform positive tasks, but its coercive authority must remain bounded by the general rules that sustain peace and justice.

The conclusion contrasts Hume and Rousseau as rival futures of modern politics. Rousseau’s democratic enthusiasm defeated Hume’s sober liberalism, feeding revolutionary and eventually totalitarian ideas of popular sovereignty. Hayek’s relevance lies in recovering Hume’s negative political wisdom: institutions should restrain ignorance and passion rather than embody grand designs.

Er wußte, daß die größten politischen Werte, Frieden, Freiheit und Gerechtigkeit, ihrem Wesen nach negativ sind, eher ein Schutz gegen Unrecht als positive Gegebenheiten.

English translation: He knew that the greatest political values—peace, liberty, and justice—are by their very nature negative, rather a protection against injustice than positive givens.