ABSTRACT
Hume opens ‘‘Of Refinement in the Arts’’ by stating that ‘‘luxury’’ is a word
of ‘‘uncertain signification’’ (Hume 1985t [1752b], 268). He knows full well the position of, on the one hand, those ‘‘severe moralists’’ (Sallust is named
as an example) who berate ‘‘luxury’’ as a vice and, on the other, those men
of ‘‘libertine principles’’ (Mandeville is his unnamed exemplar) who treat
luxury as advantageous even when ‘‘vicious.’’ As he is wont, Hume states
that this essay is designed to correct these opposed extremes. It is clear,
however, if only from the relative attention paid to it, that it is the former
position that is principally in his sights. That focus is unsurprising because
it is central to a particular animus within his political economy. It is this animus-his engagement with a distinctive but well-established and still
well-entrenched moral stance-that is the concern of this paper. While to
look on Hume from this perspective is not novel, its ramifications are more
extensive than might be supposed. I here give an indication of this extent
and limit the discussion to a key central argument. This argument I seek to
capture in the notion (or conceit) of ‘‘superfluous value.’’1
