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The Deferral of Nature in Hume’s Theory of Justice

In what follows, we must position ourselves in an obscure passage, a passage from the hostilities of nature to the serenity of civilized life. It is precisely here, at the dawn of social existence, that David Hume located the beginnings of law. His search for origins would eventuate in a narrative describing the spread of public peace by way of the greatest obstacle to such peace: unslacking self-interest. (That is what some refer to as an economy of means.) Along the route, language entered into his story with such prominence that it cannot safely be disregarded. We shall have to read Hume’s narrative as a narrative – that is, as a textual framing – if we hope to do justice to its arguments (about justice). To cross the gap between nature and society, we shall have to discover that the gap does not lie simply between them, but also lies within each of them. More specifically, we shall have to find that nature is perforce hollowed out by culture.