•  145
    Hume's Justice and the Problem of the Missing Motive
    Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    The task that Hume explicitly sets himself in 3.2 of the Treatise is to identify the motive that renders just actions virtuous and constitutes justice as a virtue. But surprisingly, he never provides a clear account of what this motive is. This is the problem of the missing motive. The goal of this paper is to explain this problem and offer a novel solution. To set up my solution, I analyze a recent proposal from Geoffrey Sayre-McCord and illustrate what it gets right and what it gets wrong.…Read more
  •  357
    Hume's Account of the Scope of Justice
    Hume Studies 46 (1): 101-119. 2020.
    Hume’s account of the scope of justice, many think, is implausibly narrow, apply- ing almost exclusively to respect for property rights. Such a view would indeed be highly objectionable because it would leave out of the scope of justice altogether requirements to keep our promises, obey the law, and refrain from threats and violence (among many others). I argue that Hume’s theory of justice, properly understood, avoids this objection. And seeing how is instructive because once we understand his …Read more