4 Artifice and order in Hume

‘While the Continent’, Hayek writes, ‘was dominated during the eighteenth century by constructivist rationalism, there grew up in England a tradition which by way of contrast has sometimes been described as “anti-rationalist”’. ¹ As we saw, Hayek describes Bernard Mandeville as the first great figure in this ‘anti-rationalist’ tradition, and argues that his influence on Hume was significant: ‘I do not intend to pitch my claim on behalf of Mandeville higher than to say that he made Hume possible’. ² According to Hayek, David Hume (1711–76) took up and developed Mandeville's evolutionary explanation of the emergence and maintenance of social institutions. ‘Hume's starting point is his anti-rationalist theory of morals … He demonstrates that our moral beliefs are neither natural in the sense of innate, nor a deliberate invention of human reason, but an “artifact” … that is, a product of cultural evolution’ in which ‘what proved conducive to more effective human effort survived, and the less effective was superseded’. ³ While Hayek correctly draws attention to Mandeville's influence on Hume, it will be shown in this chapter that Hume's moral theory can best be described as a reaction against, rather than an endorsement of, Mandeville's interpretation of moral conduct as mere hypocrisy.