ABSTRACT
Reading Hume backwards takes one initially to the Enquiry and to Burne's strongest statement about the role of utility. This chapter discusses the similarities and differences between David Hume and Jeremy Bentham, because the widely held but false views of Hume's conception of utility, seems to depend on and were arrived at by equally false views of Bentham's utilitarianism. It determines why Burne placed so great an emphasis on it in the Enquiry but not in the Treatise, where sympathy seems to be of greater importance. In the material on benevolence and justice, utility plays a crucial foundational role. In both cases Hume called attention to complex systems of social interaction to which we give approval on the basis of their utility to human security and happiness. Hume fully demonstrated the superior excellence of the philosopher, without compromising his own system of morality.
